Aircraft Museum · Trainer · Tiger Moth

de Havilland DH.82 Tiger Moth
The Commonwealth’s Classroom

The biplane on which most RAF pilots of the Second World War first flew solo: more than 8,800 were built on four continents, and its gentle but honest handling shaped a generation of airmen.

1931First flight

8,800+Aircraft built

1932–1959RAF service

130 hpGipsy Major engine

Photo: Mike Burdett / CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

RolePrimary / elementary military trainerEra1930s to 1950s (civil to present)Enginede Havilland Gipsy Major 4-cylinder inverted inlineOriginUnited Kingdom · de Havilland, Morris Motors; licence and local production in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and PortugalStatusRetiredWant to fly a real military jet?

The Story

The Tiger Moth: how a club biplane trained an empire’s air forces

On 26 October 1931 de Havilland’s chief test pilot Hubert Broad took a small silver biplane off from Stag Lane Aerodrome at Edgware, in north London. It was the first DH.82 Tiger Moth, and it looked like what it was: a militarised descendant of Geoffrey de Havilland’s hugely successful Moth family of club aircraft. The changes were practical rather than glamorous. The upper wing was moved forward and the wings were staggered and swept so that an instructor or student in the front cockpit could get out quickly with a parachute, and the inverted Gipsy engine improved the view over the nose. The RAF liked what it saw. In February 1932 the first Tiger Moths reached the Central Flying School at Upavon, the home of RAF instructional standards, and a type that would outlast its maker’s wildest expectations had entered service.

The Second World War turned the Tiger Moth into an industrial product. With Hatfield needed for other work, Morris Motors at Cowley built more than half of the wartime aircraft, while de Havilland’s overseas companies built their own: 1,548 in Canada, many as the enclosed, cold-weather DH.82C, and about 1,070 in Australia, with smaller runs in New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Portugal. In all, more than 8,800 were built. The Tiger Moth became the principal elementary trainer of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and of the RAF’s home schools, and the US National Museum of the US Air Force notes that most RAF pilots of the war trained on it, including the Americans who flew with the Eagle Squadrons before Pearl Harbor.

The Tiger Moth was never meant to fight, but in 1939 and 1940 it was pressed into roles its designers never imagined. Tiger Moths flew coastal patrols to force U-boats under, and after Dunkirk some 350 were fitted with light bomb racks to attack invaders on the beaches. A radio-controlled derivative, the Queen Bee, served as a gunnery target and is credited with giving the word drone to unmanned aircraft. The RAF finally retired the type in 1959, replaced by the Chipmunk, but thousands flowed onto the civil register to tow banners and gliders, spray crops and teach new generations. Today a Tiger Moth trial lesson remains one of aviation’s classic rites of passage.

Easy to fly, difficult to fly well: the Tiger Moth exposed every sloppy habit before a student met a Spitfire.The Tiger Moth — the first step of thousands

01The Tiger Moth’s war: patrols, bombs and the paraslasher

When war came in September 1939, Britain had several hundred Tiger Moths at its elementary schools and many more civil Moths that were quickly impressed. The trainer’s first operational job was at sea. In December 1939 RAF Coastal Command formed flights of Tiger Moths to patrol coastal waters in pairs. They carried no real armament, at most a Very pistol and occasionally a small bomb, plus a pair of homing pigeons in case they came down, and their purpose was simply to be seen: a U-boat commander who spotted an aircraft would dive and lose his chance to attack. No Tiger Moth is known to have attacked a submarine, but the so-called scarecrow patrols filled a gap until proper maritime aircraft arrived.

The summer of 1940 brought more desperate ideas. With invasion expected after Dunkirk, the RAF Museum records that in August 1940 some 350 Tiger Moths were fitted with light bomb racks, and well over a thousand rack sets designed to carry eight 20 lb bombs were distributed so that training aircraft could be thrown at landing barges and troops on the beaches. Stranger experiments followed: the paraslasher, a scythe-like blade meant to cut the canopies of descending paratroops, and a crop-sprayer conversion to dust poison over landing troops. None was ever used in anger, because the invasion never came. Elsewhere Tiger Moths served as communications aircraft with the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1940, and in the Far East some were modified to carry a single stretcher casualty.

Design & Engineering

What makes the Tiger Moth special

Easy to fly, difficult to fly well

The Tiger Moth’s reputation among instructors rests on a paradox. It is docile in ordinary flight, with a low stall speed and forgiving manners, yet it rewards only precise, co-ordinated handling. The ailerons are on the lower wing only and work through a differential linkage, so careless turns produce obvious adverse yaw that the student must cure with rudder. Spinning and stalling are part of the syllabus, and the aircraft shows mistakes plainly. That honesty made it an effective screening tool: a pupil who could fly a Tiger Moth tidily was ready for an advanced trainer.

Built from wood, steel tube and fabric

The structure is deliberately simple. The fuselage is a welded steel-tube frame shaped with wooden formers and covered in fabric, while the wings are all-wood and fabric-covered. Repairs could be carried out by any competent workshop, and production could be spread to a car factory like Morris Motors at Cowley without retooling a whole industry. The Canadian DH.82C added a sliding canopy, cockpit heating, wheel brakes and a tailwheel in place of the skid, while Canadian engine shortages produced the Menasco-powered Menasco Moth.

A parachute-friendly layout

The feature that separated the Tiger Moth from its DH.60 Moth ancestors was a matter of escape. The original Moth’s front cockpit sat under the upper wing and its bracing, making a bale-out awkward. On the DH.82 the upper wing was moved forward and the wings were given stagger and sweep, opening up the front cockpit so that a pilot wearing a parachute could climb out cleanly. The inverted Gipsy engine, with its cylinders hanging below the crankshaft, also lowered the nose line and improved the view ahead for both occupants.

02The Tiger Moth’s spin fix: strakes and mass balances

The Tiger Moth’s gentle reputation did not extend to every corner of the flight envelope. As wartime training expanded and students spun the aircraft deliberately, the RAF wanted more reliable spin recovery, particularly with heavier occupants and in fully developed spins. From 1941 military Tiger Moths, and many civil ones, were fitted with anti-spin strakes along the rear fuselage ahead of the tailplane, a change known as Modification 11. Later the aileron mass balances were removed, again to improve recovery.

The result was an aircraft that still demanded proper technique but recovered predictably when the correct inputs were made, which is exactly what a trainer must do. Restored aircraft flying today still carry the strakes, and their presence is one of the quickest ways to tell a wartime or post-war military airframe from an early pre-war example. The episode also illustrates a general truth about elementary trainers: handling that is merely charming for a club pilot has to be engineered to be safe for thousands of nervous novices flying several sorties a day.

Technical Data

de Havilland DH.82A Tiger Moth specifications

Specifications

Crew: 2 (tandem, open cockpits)
Length: 7.29 m (23 ft 11 in)
Wingspan: 8.94 m (29 ft 4 in)
Height: 2.67 m (8 ft 9 in)
Wing area: 22.2 m² (239 sq ft)
Empty weight: 506 kg (1,115 lb)
Max take-off weight: 828 kg (1,825 lb)
Powerplant: 1 × de Havilland Gipsy Major I inverted 4-cylinder inline, 130 hp (97 kW)
Maximum speed: about 167 to 175 km/h (104 to 109 mph), depending on source
Cruise speed: about 145 km/h (90 mph)
Range: about 480 km (300 mi)
Service ceiling: about 4,100 to 4,300 m (13,600 to 14,000 ft)
Climb rate: about 3.4 m/s (673 ft/min)
Armament: None as a trainer; 1940 emergency racks for up to eight 20 lb (9 kg) bombs

Costs & production

Market value today: Airworthy civil examples are commonly advertised in the region of £60,000 to £120,000 depending on history, hours and engine (2020s market, indicative only)
Cost per flight hour: Roughly £180 to £300 per hour for a privately or group-owned example: an estimate based on a Gipsy Major burning in the region of 25 to 30 litres of fuel an hour plus oil, insurance, hangarage and engine overhaul reserves
Production: 8,868 commonly given: UK (de Havilland and Morris Motors), Canada 1,548, Australia about 1,070, New Zealand about 132, Portugal 91, Norway about 38, Sweden 23
Programme: RAF service from February 1932 to 1959; Queen Bee target drone derivative built in parallel

03The Tiger Moth’s variants: from Tiger Moth I to Queen Bee

DH.82 Tiger Moth I: original version with the 120 hp Gipsy III; early RAF batch.
DH.82A Tiger Moth II: main production model from late 1934 with the 130 hp Gipsy Major.
DH.82B Queen Bee: radio-controlled target drone using Tiger Moth wings and a wooden fuselage based on the DH.60 Moth; built at Hatfield and by Scottish Aviation at Prestwick.
DH.82C: Canadian winterised version with sliding canopy, heating, brakes and tailwheel.
Menasco Moth: Canadian aircraft fitted with American Menasco engines during Gipsy shortages.
PT-24: 200 Canadian-built aircraft ordered for the USAAF under Lend-Lease and diverted to the RCAF.
Sk 11: Swedish licence-built version.
Thruxton Jackaroo: post-war four-seat cabin conversion.
Super Tiger: Tiger Club racing modifications.

04The Tiger Moth’s operating costs: cheap engine, expensive wood

No air force published an hourly cost for the Tiger Moth that is meaningful today, so any modern figure has to come from civil operation. The Gipsy Major is frugal by warbird standards, burning in the region of 25 to 30 litres of avgas an hour, but it uses oil freely and its overhauls are specialist work. The real expense is the airframe: wooden wings and fabric covering need regular inspection, and a full rebuild is a long, skilled job.

Group and club owners in Britain typically spread these costs across many members, which is why hourly rates in the region of £180 to £300 are a reasonable estimate for self-fly operation. Trial lessons and pleasure flights from commercial operators cost more per minute, because they also carry the operator’s insurance, instructors and maintenance. Treat all of these figures as indicative: they vary with fuel prices, insurance and the individual aircraft.

Timeline

The Tiger Moth from Stag Lane to the wing-walkers

1931

First flight at Stag Lane

Hubert Broad flies the prototype from Stag Lane Aerodrome, Edgware, on 26 October.

1932

RAF service begins

The first Tiger Moths reach the Central Flying School at Upavon in February.

1934

The Tiger Moth II

The DH.82A with the 130 hp Gipsy Major becomes the main production version.

1935

The Queen Bee

The radio-controlled Queen Bee target, built from Tiger Moth parts, enters service as an early military drone.

1939

Coastal patrols

In December Coastal Command forms Tiger Moth flights to patrol inshore waters against U-boats.

1940

Anti-invasion bomb racks

In August some 350 Tiger Moths are fitted with light bomb racks to attack an expected German landing.

1940s

Mass production

Morris Motors, de Havilland Canada and de Havilland Australia build thousands for the Commonwealth training schemes.

1956

The Tiger Club

Norman Jones of Rollason Aircraft founds the Tiger Club, which keeps Tiger Moths at the heart of British sport flying.

1959

RAF retirement

The Tiger Moth is officially retired from RAF service, long since replaced by the Chipmunk.

1962

Wing-walking

The Tiger Club flies its first live wing-walk on a Tiger Moth on 4 March.

1967

The last biplane deck landing

A Royal Navy Tiger Moth lands on HMS Eagle, commonly cited as the last biplane landing on an aircraft carrier.

Stories & Eyewitnesses

Stories & eyewitnesses: the Tiger Moth in war and peace

Design

Hubert Broad’s first flight

A modest Moth derivative took off from north London in 1931.

Read the full story

The Tiger Moth began as a practical revision of the DH.60 Moth for military training. On 26 October 1931 de Havilland’s chief test pilot Hubert Broad flew the prototype from Stag Lane Aerodrome at Edgware. Within months the RAF had ordered it for the Central Flying School at Upavon, the organisation that set the standard for every RAF instructor. Nobody at Stag Lane could have guessed that the design would be built in thousands on four continents and still be flying nearly a century later.

Production

Built by a car factory

Morris Motors at Cowley built more than half of the wartime Tiger Moths.

Read the full story

When the war began, de Havilland’s Hatfield works was needed for more urgent types, including the Mosquito. Production of the Tiger Moth was therefore handed to Morris Motors at Cowley, Oxford, which according to BAE Systems Heritage built more than half of the wartime aircraft. The simple wood, steel tube and fabric structure suited a car maker’s workforce and supply chain. It was an early example of the shadow-factory principle that would also put car plants to work on fighters and bombers.

People

Roald Dahl goes solo in Kenya

The future author soloed after seven hours and forty minutes.

Read the full story

In November 1939 a young Shell employee named Roald Dahl joined the RAF in East Africa and began elementary flying training near Nairobi on Tiger Moths. According to his biographer Donald Sturrock, he flew solo after seven hours and forty minutes of dual instruction. Dahl went on to fly Gladiators and Hurricanes in Libya and Greece, and later described his flying training and first solo in his memoir Going Solo (1986). His experience was typical of thousands of Commonwealth aircrew whose war began in a Tiger Moth’s cockpit.

Training

The Eagle Squadron Americans

US volunteers learned the RAF way in a British biplane.

Read the full story

Before the United States entered the war, American volunteers crossed to Britain to fly with the RAF, eventually forming the three Eagle Squadrons. The National Museum of the US Air Force notes that most RAF pilots trained in Tiger Moths, including these Americans. For pilots used to American trainers, the Tiger Moth’s open cockpits, tailskid, speaking tubes and heavy rudder work were a lesson in themselves, and a reminder that the RAF trained by its own methods. The museum’s own DH.82A is displayed in Dayton, Ohio.

Combat

The scarecrow patrols

Unarmed trainers hunted U-boats by being seen.

Read the full story

In December 1939 RAF Coastal Command formed flights of Tiger Moths to patrol British coastal waters. Flying in pairs, the crews carried at most a Very pistol or a small bomb, and a pair of homing pigeons to send for help if they ditched. No Tiger Moth is known to have attacked a U-boat. The point was deterrence: a submarine captain who saw an aircraft would dive, giving merchant ships time to pass. The patrols filled a gap until proper maritime patrol aircraft arrived in numbers.

Combat

Bombers for the beaches

After Dunkirk, trainers were readied to attack an invasion fleet.

Read the full story

In the summer of 1940, with a German landing expected, the RAF prepared to throw everything it had at the beaches. The RAF Museum records that in August 1940 some 350 Tiger Moths were fitted with light bomb racks, and more rack sets were distributed so that training schools could arm their aircraft with eight 20 lb bombs each. Experiments included the paraslasher, a blade to cut parachute canopies. The invasion never came, and the plans became one of the stranger footnotes of the Battle of Britain summer.

Record

The Queen Bee and the word drone

A Tiger Moth derivative became one of the first military drones.

Read the full story

In the mid-1930s de Havilland produced the Queen Bee, a radio-controlled, pilotless target for anti-aircraft gunners. It used Tiger Moth wings and, for economy, a wooden fuselage based on the DH.60 Moth, with pneumatic servos in the rear cockpit. Several hundred were built at Hatfield and by Scottish Aviation at Prestwick. BAE Systems Heritage describes it as one of the earliest examples of drones in military use, and the term drone is widely thought to derive from the Queen Bee’s name.

Training

A canopy for the Canadian winter

De Havilland Canada adapted the Tiger Moth to the prairies.

Read the full story

The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan brought thousands of trainees to Canada, where open cockpits were miserable in winter. De Havilland Canada built 1,548 Tiger Moths at Downsview, most as the DH.82C with a sliding canopy, cockpit heating, wheel brakes and a tailwheel. Shortages of Gipsy engines produced the Menasco Moth, and 200 aircraft ordered for the USAAF as the PT-24 went to the RCAF instead. The Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum in Brandon displays both a Canadian and a British example.

Display

The Tiger Club and wing-walking

A club founded in 1956 kept the Tiger Moth flying for sport.

Read the full story

In January 1956 Norman Jones of Rollason Aircraft founded the Tiger Club over a Royal Aero Club dinner, donating its first Tiger Moths. The club flew air displays across Britain, modified two aircraft as racing Super Tigers and supplied pilots such as Neil Williams to British aerobatic teams. On 4 March 1962 it flew its first live wing-walk, with Lewis “Benjy” Benjamin at the controls, starting a tradition that Tiger Moth displays still continue.

Survivor

G-ACDC: more than 16,000 hours

The third Tiger Moth built is still flying.

Read the full story

Registered on 6 February 1933, G-ACDC is the third DH.82A built and the oldest Tiger Moth still flying. It served with the RAF as BB726 during the war and has belonged to the Tiger Club since the 1950s, wearing maroon and silver. According to the club it has now accumulated more than 16,000 hours. Few aircraft of any type can match a working life measured in nine decades.

Record

The last biplane on a carrier

In 1967 a Tiger Moth landed on HMS Eagle.

Read the full story

The Royal Navy kept a handful of Tiger Moths long after the RAF had retired the type, using them for glider towing and general flying. In 1967 one of them landed on the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle in the English Channel, a landing commonly cited as the last by a biplane on a carrier. With an approach speed far below that of the jets Eagle normally recovered, the Tiger Moth needed very little deck, and the event was a whimsical coda to the biplane era at sea.

Gallery

The Tiger Moth in pictures

Operations

Where the Tiger Moth flies and flew

Service Record

The Tiger Moth’s record

The Tiger Moth’s true record is in its students: it gave most RAF and many Commonwealth pilots of the Second World War their first solo. Its only operational use came in 1939 and 1940, with unarmed coastal patrols and emergency bomb racks fitted against an invasion that never came.

8,800+Built on four continents

350Fitted with bomb racks, August 1940

16,000+ hFlown by G-ACDC, the oldest survivor

See how training and combat types compare in the military aircraft statistics database. Figures are approximate.

Questions & Answers

Everything people ask about the Tiger Moth

Can I fly in a de Havilland DH.82 Tiger Moth?

MiGFlug does not offer flights in the Tiger Moth. If you want to experience military aviation first-hand, you can fly several genuine military jets today, from the L-39 Albatros to the MiG-21, see MiGFlug’s jet flights.

When did the Tiger Moth first fly?

The prototype first flew on 26 October 1931 from Stag Lane Aerodrome at Edgware, London, with de Havilland chief test pilot Hubert Broad at the controls.

How many Tiger Moths were built?

More than 8,800 in total, commonly given as 8,868. They were built in Britain by de Havilland and Morris Motors, and in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Portugal.

Why was the Tiger Moth such a good trainer?

It was easy to fly but hard to fly well. Its benign handling suited beginners, while its lower-wing ailerons and honest stall and spin behaviour exposed poor technique, so instructors could judge which students were ready for advanced training.

Did the Tiger Moth see combat?

Not in a conventional sense. In 1939 and 1940 Tiger Moths flew unarmed coastal patrols against U-boats, and about 350 were fitted with light bomb racks in case of a German invasion, which never came.

What replaced the Tiger Moth?

In the RAF it was replaced by the de Havilland Canada Chipmunk in the early 1950s, and it was officially retired from RAF service in 1959.

Are Tiger Moths still flying?

Yes. Several hundred survive worldwide and many remain airworthy, used for trial lessons, tailwheel training, displays and wing-walking. G-ACDC, the third built, has flown more than 16,000 hours.

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