[2] It would be six months before the young pilot received his leave; it seems to have been during this period he began drawing up his own ideas for specifications for a single-seat fighter aircraft; these he mailed to his father.

Albert Ball Sr, was (or had been) on the Board of Directors of Austins, and was certainly in a position where he might have presented plans for new aircraft to the company.

The position of Ball's biographer Colin Pengelly seems to be that he most certainly did present his son's ideas and drawings to the company, and that these formed at least the basis of the design of the A.F.B.1.

[1] On 1 December 1916, events had progressed to the point of the War Office formally requesting technical data from the motor company.

He also added a note at the end of the specifications sheet, dated 8 December 1916, that the finished plane should have "neutral flying characteristics".

It was noted that, in an attempt to lower the plane's weight and thus increase its performance, it would only carry fuel enough for two hours running at full throttle.

[2] While the fuselage was of conventional construction it was unusually deep, almost filling the gap between the planes, in the manner of the LFG Roland C.II.

An advanced feature was that the controls were operated by rods mounted within the airframe rather than cables carried externally, as was more usual at the time.

[2] The very small gap between the top wing and the fuselage gave the pilot excellent visibility above, but probably precluded the fitting of a standard (S.E.5 type) Foster mounting for the upper Lewis gun; existing photographic evidence points to a fixed gun pointing up at a slight angle to clear the propeller arc.

[2] A photograph of an A.F.B.1 exists with straight SPAD-type wings, complete with the usual SPAD mid-bay reinforcing of the interplane bracing.

[1] Data from Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1919[4]General characteristics Performance Armament 2 × fixed, forward-firing 0.303 in (7.70 mm) Lewis guns (One firing through hollow propeller shaft, the other on an angled mount above the top mainplane)