With some neat nose art, plane named “Lilass.”
-
Home > Low-wing Monoplanes
Category: Low-wing Monoplanes
Aircraft with a single wing mounted in or below the fuselage, including autogiros
Supermarine Spitfire
Thursday, December 4th, 2008
Probably the most famous British aircraft of all time, the great fighter played a secondary role in the Battle of Britain to the less glamourous Hawker Hurricane. But the Spitfire’s elegant looks, excellent handling characteristics, and huge production give it a unique place in aviation history. There was a bit of happenstance in the Spitfire’s [...]
F-86D
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
Here is a photo of an F-86D, with pilot Frank Malone, submitted for identification by his niece.
Mitsubishi A6M, Type Zero
Monday, May 5th, 2008
Early in World War Two, American fliers thought they were facing a “wonder weapon,” in the Pacific: Japan’s A6M2 Zero, the main fighter plane of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). It flew rings around the Brewster Buffalo’s, the Bell P-39’s, and (to a lesser extent) the Grumman F4F Wildcats. The Zero pilots were superb; [...]
Morane-Saulnier N
Sunday, May 4th, 2008
With a distinctive large spinner, the Morane-Saulnier N looks, at least to the modern eye, better than the Parasol Type L, it met with much less success.
While the Type N was a graceful-looking aircraft, with an advanced, aerodynamic design, it was not easy to fly due to its stiff controls (using wing warping instead [...]
Bristol M.1C
Saturday, May 3rd, 2008
One of the fastest planes of its time, the Bristol M.1C monoplane fell victim to official concern about its stability and the perceived hazards of its high landing speed. There seemed to be an official distrust of monoplanes by the British authorities, and the M.1 was much-delayed. Finally some were sent to the [...]
Fokker E.III
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
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 [...]
Deperdussin TT
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
The Deperdussin, along with the Bleriot and Morane-Saulnier, was another speedy French monoplane that dominated the air races in the years leading up to World War One.
A very small monoplane, designed by MM. Bechereau and Koolhoven for the Deperdussin firm to compete in the James Gordon Bennett race, proved to be the fastest machine built [...]
Morane-Saulnier Type H
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
A stream of gasoline burst forth as Gustav Hamel flew over the Thames River on September 20, 1913. The last thing any aviator needed in a wood and cloth monoplane with a barely-covered, hot, sparking, rotary engine a few feet away was gasoline in the cockpit. It was a mortal danger for any pilot, and [...]
TELLIER MONOPLANE
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
The Tellier monoplane flown by Dubonnet was so easy to fly that he obtained his pilot’s license on his fourth outing, and occupied the examiners only half an hour. Shortly thereafter, he made an impressive flight over Paris, and later Dubonnet and others showed the Tellier to be a peculiarly strong and reliable [...]