It was designed and developed by Armstrong Whitworth to meet the requeriments of the F9/26 specification but, as the prototype was flown for the first time in 1930, it was already too late to for consideration against that specification, and was instead, presented for the N21/26 one, which requested a naval fighter for the Fleet Air Arm.
It was a single bay biplane of unequal span braced with N-type struts which resembled somehow to the previous Starling one. Undercarriage was fixed, undivided and spatted. It was powered by a 525hp Armstrong Siddeley Panther radial engine enclosed within a townend ring, however, problems with that engine delayed the production of the aircraft and the Hawker Nimrod was chosen for the N21/26 evaluation. It was armed with the usual pair of British Vickers 0.303 machine guns located in the frontern part of the fuselage. In any way, when it was evaluated, it showed inferior performance to the Nimrod and it was difficult to handle in a carrier deck.
As Armstrong Whitworth still tried to sell the airplane, they produced a second prototype, powered by a more reliable version of the Panther Engine, the Panther IIA and submitted the fighter for the F7/30 specification, which was eventually won by the Gloster Gladiator. Needless to say that, for that specification, the A.W.16 was too obsolete and was quickly discarded for consideration.
It's also known that the original prototype was retrofitted in 1933 with an Armstrong Siddeley Hyena engine but it was quickly discarded as that engine offered serious cooling problems.
In spite of the unsuccessful attempts, an order from the Chinese warlord Guangxi clique was placed for 17 airplanes and were delivered to them via Hong Kong.
They served with that warlord until 1937 when that clique was absorbed into the Republic of China led by Chiang Kai-Shek. From then on, they passed on to the Republic of China air Force. Their fate from then on, is unknown.
Update: We update the post to show the Armstrong Whitworth A.W.28, which was a regular A.W.16 powered by the experimental and troublesome Armstrong Siddeley Hyena. It was tested on 24th October 1933 and the results showed that the engine was too heavy, it was underpowered and it was hard to cool-off, even if various types of hoods were tried on the A.W.28.
Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_Whitworth_A.W.16
2. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters
3. http://cwlam2000.0catch.com/caf23.htm (translated)
4. http://p-d-m.livejournal.com/242051.html (translated)
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