Design and Development
Handley Page designed the Hampden to the same specification as the Wellington (Air Ministry Specification B.9/32) for a twin-engined day bomber. One prototype HP.52 was ordered which first flew on 21 June 1936. The first production batch of 180 Mk I Hampdens was built to a production Specification 30/36 with the first aircraft flying on 24 May 1938. Lady Katharine Mary Montagu Douglas Scott, Viscountess Hampden, christened the first flight at Radlett aerodrome in 1938.
The Mk I had a crew of four: pilot, navigator/bomb aimer, radio operator and rear gunner. Conceived as a fast, manoeuvrable, "fighting bomber", the Hampden had a fixed .303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers K machine gun in the forward fuselage. To avoid the weight penalties of powered-turrets, the Hampden had a curved Perspex nose fitted with a manual .303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers K gun and two more single .303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers K installations in the rear upper and lower positions. The layout was similar to the all-guns-forward cockpits introduced about the same time in the Luftwaffe's own medium bombers, notably the Dornier Do 17. The guns were thoroughly inadequate for defence, consequently, by 1940, the single guns had been replaced by twin Vickers K guns.
The Hampden used a stressed skin design reinforced with a mixture of bent and extruded sections with the wing having a single main spar. Construction was from sections prefabricated then joined. The fuselage was in three major sections - front, centre and rear. The centre and rear sections were themselves made of two halves. This meant the sections could be fitted out in part in better working conditions before assembly. In a similar way, the wings were made up of three large units: centre section, port outer wing and starboard outer wing, which were in turn subdivided.
A total of 1,430 Hampdens were built: 500 by Handley Page, 770 by English Electric at Samlesbury in Lancashire; and in 1940–41, 160 in Canada by the Canadian Associated Aircraft consortium (although some were retained in Canada, 84 were shipped by sea to the United Kingdom).
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