History of AirplanesAn airplane with two main wings.
The Wright brothers’ Wright Flyer, used a biplane design, as did most airplanes in the early years of aviation. While a biplane wing structure has a structural advantage, it produces more drag than a similar monoplane wing. Improved structural techniques and materials, and the need for greater speed, made the biplane configuration obsolete for most purposes by the late 1930s.
Biplanes include sesquiplanes, which feature a small lower wing.
THE 1912 B. E. (BRITISH EXPERIMENTAL)
In 1912 the British Government, realizing the importance of the airplane as a war-machine for scouting purposes, established the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farmborough, with Geoffrey de Havilland, one of the early British experimenters, as designer. Machines of his invention have been called D. H.’s. His 1912 airplane, the [...]
In 1915, when the British Empire forces (mostly Indians and Australians) attacked the Turks in Mesopotamia, they needed aircraft. Or wanted them; perhaps it was a matter of national pride, that every modern army ought to have air support. At any rate, the Rajah of Gwalior underwrote the expense of the air contingent - a [...]
Avro 504A
Avro 504B
Avro 504J
Produced by Alliott Verdon Roe, Britain’s great pioneering aircraft designer, the Avro 504 trained nearly every British pilot in the Great War; over 8,000 were built. Especially suitable for the purpose of training pilots, it was the standard training machine of the Royal Air Force. The plane’s diagnostic feature is the the [...]
On the morning of October, 5, 1914, French Sergeant pilot Joseph Frantz and mechanic Corporal Quenault in their Voisin biplane spotted a German Aviatik flying at about 3500 ft. He closed on until Quenault found the range and opened fire with a light machine gun. The Aviatik dove away, but Frantz followed, Quenault firing intermittently. [...]
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 [...]
A characteristic feature of the German policy in aviation has been the adoption of a certain model of machine and its use in large numbers until such time us it is displaced by a later type. The Rumpler biplane, affords a typical instance of this. During the second year of the war it very largely [...]
Introduced in mid-1916. Designed along very similar lines to the Gotha, the Friedrichshafen bomber, is one of the principal heavy bombing machines turned out by the Germans. Its makers have long specialized in the manufacture of seaplanes of the single and the twin-engine type, and the bombing machine resembles the latter, except for the sweep [...]
As far as its wing shape and construction are concerned, the Ago fighting biplane is in a class by itself since it is characterized by features not to be found on aeroplanes of any other make.
Top Speed: n.a.
Engine: six-cylinder Benz
Wingspan: 39 feet 3 inches
Weight: n.a.
Armament: n.a.
Specifications from “Practical Aviation,” [...]
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 [...]