An 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.
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 [...]
The Aviatik is one type of machine which has been used to a large extent by the Germans for their bombing raids. It is equipped with two bomb-launching tubes having a diameter of 8 1/2 inches and placed at either side of the body forward of the pilot’s seat. The bombs are released [...]
With a few differences, such as the fact that the Gotha is a pusher type, whereas the A.E.G. twin-motored bombing plane is a tractor, the latter machine is designed along essentially the same lines as the Gotha, which has been developed by the Germans especially for bombing service. Doubtless, machines of both these types have [...]
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 machine is known as the Hansa-Brandenburg and represents the Austrian version of the German Albatross type. While designed as a reconnaissance machine, neither its speed nor its radius of action are such as to make it particularly suited for this service. It is, moreover, characterized by a number of features of design [...]
Italian single-seater biplane of World War One
Across the Carnic Alps, the self-styled warrior-poet Gabriele d’Annunzio, flew with eleven Ansaldo biplanes of the 87a Squadriglia, in a dramatic long-distance bombing raid on Vienna, August 9, 1918. They arrived over the ancient capital of the Hapsburgs and rained down a lethal storm of … leaflets … encouraging [...]
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, [...]
