Prewar service During the pre-war period, those B.E.2s that had reached service were primarily flown by
No 2,
No 4 and
No 6 Squadrons, During this time, multiple long-distance flights were conducted using individual B.E.2s, especially by personnel of No. 2. Squadron.
Western Front The early models of the B.E. 2 had already served in the RFC for two years prior to the outbreak of the Great War, and were among the aircraft that arrived with the British Expeditionary Force in France during 1914. Like all service aircraft of this period, they had been designed at a time when the qualities required by a warplane were largely a matter for conjecture and speculation, in the absence of any actual experience of the use of aircraft in warfare: at this stage all the combatants were still feeling their way and aerial combat, especially the need for reconnaissance aircraft to be able to defend themselves, was not widely anticipated. As a result, the B.E.2 was originally designed without any provision for armament. While some flew entirely unarmed, or perhaps carried service revolvers or automatic pistols, others armed themselves with hand-wielded
rifles or
carbines as used by ground troops, or even fitted a Lewis gun. The performance of the early Renault powered models of the B.E. was degraded by any additional weight, and in any case the carriage of this weaponry proved of questionable effectiveness. It was still necessary for the observer to be located over the centre of gravity, in front of the pilot, to ensure fore and aft balance when the aircraft was flown "solo". In this awkward position, his view was poor, and the degree to which he could handle a camera (or, later, a gun) was hampered by the struts and wires supporting the centre section of the top wing. In practice, the pilot of a B.E.2 almost always operated the camera, and the observer, when he was armed at all, had a rather poor field of fire to the rear, having, at best, to shoot back over his pilot's head. Whenever bombs were to be carried, or maximum endurance was required, the observer would normally have to be left behind. By this time, prewar aircraft were already disappearing from RFC service. The type that replaced the B.E.2a and B.E.2b (as well as the assortment of other types in use at the time) in the reconnaissance squadrons of the RFC in 1915 was the B.E.2c, which had also been designed before the war. The most important difference in the new model was an improvement in stability – a genuinely useful characteristic, especially in aerial photographic work, using the primitive plate
cameras of the time, with their relatively long exposures. Unfortunately, in this case the stability was coupled with "heavy" controls and relatively poor manoeuvrability. A suitable engine was not available in sufficient quantities to replace the air-cooled Renault – the
RAF 1a being essentially an uprated version of the French engine – so that the improvement in the B.E.2c's performance was less than startling. This agitation prompted the setting up of two enquiries; one into the management of the Royal Aircraft Factory, and another into the high command of the Royal Flying Corps, the latter of which being headed by a
judge. These reports largely cleared both Factory management and the
RFC commanders responsible for ordering the B.E.2, but Mervyn O'Gorman was effectively dismissed as supervisor of the Factory by a "sideways promotion", while many of the most talented individuals amongst the factory's designers and engineers followed de Havilland into private industry. Once the threat from the Fokker monoplanes had been effectively contained by the introduction of a new generation of Allied fighters, such as the
Airco D.H.2 and
Nieuport 11, the rate of B.E.2c losses over the
Western Front dropped to an acceptable level; official records indicate that during the second quarter of 1916, the B.E.2 actually had the lowest loss rates of all the major types then in use by the service. Encouraged by this, the RFC took delivery of large numbers of the BE.2e, which promised improved performance, and combined the stability of the B.E.2c with rather "lighter" controls (which held the promise of better manoeuvrability). By the spring of 1917, however, conditions on the Western Front had changed again; the German fighter squadrons having been re-equipped with better fighters, especially the
Albatros D.III. It had been planned that by this time B.E.2s in front-line service would have been replaced by newer aircraft, such as the
Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8 and
Armstrong Whitworth F.K.8, but delivery of these types was initially slower than hoped. This situation culminated in what became known as "
Bloody April", with the RFC losing 60 B.E.2s during that month. An incident illustrating both the poor level of piloting skills with which new RFC pilots were sent to France in 1917 and the level of popularity of the B.E.2e on the Western Front at that time is recorded by
Arthur Gould Lee, then a young RFC novice, in his book
No Parachute. On 19 May 1917, six pilots, newly arrived in France and still to be allocated to a squadron, were each given a new B.E.2e to ferry between RFC depots at
St Omer and Candas. One crashed in transit, three crashed on landing and one went missing (the pilot was killed). Lee, the pilot of the only aircraft to arrive safely, wrote in a letter to his wife: :
I felt rather a cad not crashing too because everyone is glad to see death-traps like Quirks written off, especially new ones. Fortunately, by this time, the B.E.2e was already being rapidly replaced on the Western Front by later types, but this was from several points of view more than a year too late. The new tactic proved to be highly effective. On the night of 2–3 September 1916, a single B.E.2c was credited with the downing of
SL 11, the first German airship to be shot down over Britain after over a year of night raids. This feat led to the pilot, Captain
William Leefe Robinson, being awarded a Victoria Cross and various cash prizes, totalling up to £3,500, that had been put up by a number of individuals. This was not an isolated victory; five more German airships were destroyed by Home Defence B.E.2c interceptors between October and December 1916. The performance of the B.E.2 was inadequate to intercept airships flying at 15,000 feet much less the
Gotha bombers that emerged during 1917, and its career as an effective home defence fighter was over.
Other fronts While the majority of operational B.E.2s served on the Western Front, the type also saw limited use in other overseas theatres. As early as 1914, some B.E.2as went to Australia, where they served as trainer aircraft for the nascent
Australian Flying Corps at
Point Cook, Victoria.
Airship gondola A number of B.E.2 fuselages were employed as makeshift
gondolas for the hastily designed
SS class "
blimps", which were introduced into service by the
Royal Naval Air Service for
anti-submarine duties during March 1915. Later classes featured purpose-built gondolas.
Non-combat use From 1917 onwards, the B.E.2 was generally withdrawn from both the front line and night fighter use. The surviving examples continued in use for
submarine spotting and as
trainers throughout the rest of the conflict. In spite of the type's rather unresponsive controls, it was capable of executing comprehensive (if somewhat stately) aerobatics, and was by no means a bad trainer. On 19 February 1917, a B.E.2c was used to conduct the British Army's first
aeromedical evacuation when it flew out the sole casualty of the
raid on Bir el Hassana in the
Sinai Peninsula. The man had a shattered ankle, and the 45-minute flight in the observer's seat spared him an agonizing multi-day journey by camel. in London
Post-war use A B.E.2e was used to conduct the first flight across Australia, flying from
Melbourne to
Port Darwin. It was piloted by Captain
H. N. Wrigley, accompanied by Sergeant
A. W. Murphy. The journey, made between 16 November and 12 December 1919, involved a combined 46 hours of flying time. Another B.E.2e was one of the first two aircraft (the other was an
Avro 504K) owned by the new Australian airline
Qantas when it was founded in Queensland in 1920–1921. ==Surviving aircraft and reproductions==