Edwin Verdon Roe left his home in England at 14 and headed to Canada. He sort of bounced around from job to job and country to country until he fell in love with the notion of flying. Back in England now, he built his first successful plane, a tri plane, where he lived--under a bridge. He was so poor he covered the wings with packing paper because he couldn't afford cloth. But it did fly, and he was on a roll.

By 1912 Roe had the silly notion that folks didn't really need to be outside in the cold in order to fly an airplane. He told his incredibly talented draftsman, Roy Chadwick, what he had in mind and Roy drew it up. A tiny plane weighing only 550lbs./250kg with room for fuel and one large pilot, it was a wonderful collection of the old and new. Roe hung on to the old wing warping thing, but totally enclosed the cabin in an aluminum skin with celluloid windows (the rest of the plane was covered with linen). The skeptics hooted--for sure the pilot would not be able to see anything. Well, he could, and the plane flew just fine. Notice that the tail skid is attached also to the bottom of the rudder--obviously a steer-able tail skid.

Surely there weren't that many planes around with that feature! I found a couple of references on the web that say not only was this the first plane with an enclosed cabin, but also the first monoplane. The enclosed cabin bit I'm buying, but not the first monoplane part--I know there were several successful monoplanes years before this. Eventually the plane was destroyed in a wreck, but Roe was moving on. Another great little model from Fiddlers Green / John Freeman