A lovely and very rare period  model of the Bristol Brigand. A very rare and beautifully made period model. 
The Bristol Brigand was a British twin-engine strike aircraft developed by the Bristol Aeroplane Company at the tail end of World War II. Originally designed as a fast, heavily armed torpedo bomber to replace the legendary Beaufighter, the war ended before it could fulfill its initial purpose. Instead, the Royal Air Force (RAF) repurposed it as a ground-attack light bomber, deploying it to police the crumbling British Empire during conflicts like the Malayan Emergency and in Aden.
Despite its formidable appearance and heavy firepower, the Brigand earned a grim reputation as a structural "deathtrap" and went down in history as the RAF’s last piston-engined bomber
Design & Powerful Specifications
The Brigand was directly adapted from the cancelled Bristol Buckingham bomber, utilizing its wings, tail section, and engines, but featuring a newly designed, narrower fuselage for a 3-man crew sitting in tandem.
  • Powerplant: Powered by two massive, 2,400 hp Bristol Centaurus 57 18-cylinder radial engines.
  • Speed & Range: Reached a top speed of 358 mph (576 km/h) with an impressive maximum range of 2,100 miles.
  • Armament: It was heavily armed with four forward-firing 20 mm Hispano cannonsunder the nose. It could additionally carry up to 2,000 lbs of bombs or eight 60-pound RP-3 rockets beneath its wings.
Why It Became Known as a "Deathtrap"
When deployed to tropical environments like Singapore and the Middle East, the Brigand suffered from severe mechanical and structural flaws that resulted in numerous fatal crashes.
  • Shedding Wings & Propellers: The heavy vibration from the radial engines and intense stress fractures during steep dives caused propeller corrosion and instances where the aircraft literally shed its wings or engines mid-flight.
  • Shooting Itself Down: The gas from the 20 mm cannons would occasionally build up in the fuselage gun bays. If a spark ignited this trapped gas during sustained firing, it could blow the nose clean off the aircraft.
  • Hydraulic Failures: The rubber seals in the landing gear hydraulic jacks rapidly deteriorated in the hot, humid tropical climate. This led to common, catastrophic landing gear failures.
  • Leather Air Brakes: Used for dive-bombing, the air brakes relied on leather bellows. In the tropics, these bellows quickly rotted away. If only one side deployed due to rot, the asymmetric drag would violently twist the aircraft into an unrecoverable spin.
Operational Retirement
Because of its high accident rate and the rapid evolution of jet technology, the Brigand's frontline career was short-lived. Only 147 units were ever built. By 1955, the ground-attack variants were completely withdrawn from combat service, replaced by the agile de Havilland Hornet and the jet-powered English Electric Canberra. The last remaining training and meteorological variants were entirely retired and scrapped by March 1958.