In April 1933, the British Air Ministry issued Specification P.27/32 which sought a two-seat single-engine monoplane day bomber to replace the Hawker Hart and Hind biplane bombers then in service with the Royal Air Force (RAF). A requirement of the prospective aircraft was to be capable of carrying of bombs over a distance of while flying at a speed of . According to aviation author Tony Buttler, during the early 1930s, Britain had principally envisioned that any future war would see France as its enemy and thus the distance to enable the bomber to reach Paris was a factor in determining the necessary range that was sought. According to aerospace publication Air International, a key motivational factor in the Air Ministry's development of Specification P.27/32 had been for the corresponding aircraft to act as an insurance policy in the event that heavier bombers were banned by the 1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference.