After De Havilland was appointed assistant designer and test pilot at the Army Balloon Factory at Farnborough (later the Royal Aircraft Factory) in December 1910 the War Office bought the aircraft for £400.

In fact it was a "rebuild" in name only, as it was a completely new design,[3] incorporating few if any actual components of the original (at this stage Farnborough were still not authorised to build aircraft from scratch).

Gnome rotary engine, a two-seater nacelle was fitted, and the fore-elevator was replaced with one incorporated into a sesquiplane tail in the conventional manner.

[3][4] In 1913 the F.E.2 design was once more heavily reworked[3] with a new and streamlined nacelle, upper wing panels which extended the span to 42 ft (12.08 m) and a revised tail with a smaller rudder and tailplane lifted to the top longerons.

[3][5] The F.E.2a/b/d types produced in numbers in World War I followed the same general layout, but were considerably larger, and again of totally new design.