Fighter planes, originally Pursuit, and including undifferentiated early military types
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An effective response and a worthy adversary to the Fokker Eindekkers, the F.E.2b appeared in September, 1915. It was a two-seater, pusher biplane, that was quite speedy and allowed for two machine guns, one firing forward, and one (albeit awkwardly) firing rearward over the upper wing. The ‘pusher’ concept would soon be [...]
This is the airplane that ushered in fighter combat. Before Tony Fokker fashioned his famous synchronizing gear to a machine gun so that it could fire through the prop, aerial combat was a hit-or-miss proposition. After his E.III swept the skies in 1915, air fighting developed into a deadly serious skill.
The earliest planes of [...]
Known to Allied aviators as the German “Spad,” the Albatros D.I, Appearing in 1916, is a high-speed type of machine, technically termed a destroyer and armed with two machine guns. The one shown in Fig. 48 was shot down in the British lines. It is a conglomerate copy of the French Nieuport and [...]
The Halberstadt biplane, was used in large numbers by the Germans during 1916, but, as it was almost invariably downed by French and British flyers, it apparently has since been abandoned. A brief review of its salient points shows that it would tend to be unstable to a degree unknown in any of [...]
During the first two years of the war, the Albatross biplane was one of the types used in the greatest numbers by the Germans. The machine shown is one of the later models captured and its design indicates a number of departures from those taken at an earlier date, the most noticeable of which [...]
The Ago pursuit-type flying boat was an Austrian biplane that the Italians captured a number of. It was distinguished by a radically different type of construction in that the usual interplane struts were replaced by a spider-shaped member composed of steel tubes.
Top Speed: n.a.
Engine: six-cylinder Warskalowski motor rated at 218 h.p.
Wingspan: [...]
The image is a Nieuport 17
The French answer to the Fokker Eindekker was the Nieuport 11, equipped with the 80 horse-power Le Rhône (later the 110 horse-power), and armed with a Lewis gun, mounted on the top plane and shooting over the propeller. The machine was superior to the Fokker — all WWI pilots agreed [...]
The Farman Brothers were among the pioneers in French aviation, Henri Farman winning several of the prizes offered in the first years of aviation development with his early machines. He came to this country for one of the International meets but, being a very conservative flyer, proved a disappointment to American spectators. From this beginning, [...]
In its wing plan, the Burgess scout seaplane, resembles a sesquiplane, such as the Nieuport, in that the lower wings are so much shorter than the upper that it is almost a monoplane with auxiliary wings. It is also distinguished by the elimination of interplane struts, their place being taken by two flat [...]
Henri Farman on this machine established the world’s record for duration of flight, when on December 18th, 1910, he flew continuously for almost eight hours and a half. This achievement was made possible by the great weight-lifting capacity of this type, enabling him to carry almost 450 pounds of fuel in [...]
