Whenever you see WW1 fighters the Fokker Dr1 tri-plane is always prominent, however I have read that it not a great fighter plane. The Dr1 was slow and very hard to fly very few were made and the only reason it is famous was because the Red Baron died while flying it. Is this correct?
IIRC correctly the DR1 may have been fairly slow, but it had a rate of climb that could not be matched by any other plane at the time. That, combined with its distinctive shape would probably have saved it from complete obscurity.
On the other hand the DR1 does seem to be much better remembered that the similar British plane, the Sopwith “Tripe”, so perhaps you are right, and it is the fame of the Bloody Red Baron that has made the plane so famous.
For most of Rittmeister Manfred von Richthofen’s two year career as a fighter pilot (and for some 60 out of his 80 victories) he flew bi-planes and those only painted partially red, but it certainly seems that the planes habitually associated with him are the all-red Fokker Dr.I Dreideckers which he flew for less than 8 months, and in which he was killed on April 21 1918.
The Fokker triplane was one of the top airplanes in WWI…for less than a year :D. It was VERY manuverable, and could really climb. It was obsolete soon, tho, not fast enuf. It was hard to fly, for a beginner, but THAT the “red baron” wasn’t.
Generally, “hard-to-fly” = “maneuverable”. Some modern aircraft (e.g., the F-117) cannot be flown without computer control because they are so unstable.
IIRC, the best fighter of WWI was the Fokker D-VII. Again IIRC, it was the only aircraft specifically denied to Germany after the war.
Yep–Daniel (and Johnny) are correct here. Air combat went through a remarkable transformation during both world wars as both sides pushed aircraft technology forward. In WW1, a new, top-notch fighter could be obsolete in six months.
The vaunted Sopwith Camel was also quite difficult to fly because of the tremendous torque of it’s engine, but in the hands of a skilled pilot, it could turn faster to the right than any other plane. It also could go into a nasty spin faster than nearly any other plane. After WW1, a study revealed than 80% of all kills were made on the first pass when the victim never saw it coming, so speed became a much more important asset than manueverability–faster targets are harder to hit, and faster attackers have less time to be spotted. Of course, WW2 brought radar and radio coordination…
It’s somewhat ironic that without the bloody conflicts that were the World Wars (and the Cold War), it seems unlikely that the aviation and aerospace industries would be anywhere near the technological level they are at now.
OK, this is off-topic, but while we’re on the subject of WWI planes. . .
There was one model in which the motor spun around the crankshaft.
There were several models where the engine spun around the crankshaft. Unlike cars, whose engines come from the car maker (Ford engines in Ford cars, Toyota engines in Toyota cars…) aircraft have traditionally used engines made by another company. Cessna, Beechcraft, Mooney, Piper and the rest use Lycoming or Continental engines, Boeing uses GE or Rolls-Royce engines…
I think the most common rotary engine (not to be confused with the Wankel rotary engine) was the Le Rhone. I believe the Germans had a copy of it. In this engine, the crankshaft was bolted to the airframe and the cylinders rotated around it. The propeller was fixed to the engine block. This is a lot of mass to be swinging around, and it contributed to the maneuverability of the Sopwith Camel, as stated in a previous post.
I think the reason the Camel and the DR1 were so maneuverable is because they are “short-coupled”. That is, the tail is close to the nose, relatively speaking. Throw in the torque of a couple hundred pounds of spinning metal, and they could turn very quicky to the right. The short-coupling made it very easy to turn in any direction, at the cost of stability.
And yes, most kills (at least most of Richtofen’s, IIRC, were from passing rather than “dog-fighting”.)
Incidentally, those early engines spewed a lot of castor oil and caused severe laxative effects in the pilots. I read that they sometimes had to land during a mission because of it.
“IIRC, the best fighter of WWI was the Fokker D-VII.”
I disagree. The French Spad 13 was faster, stronger and better equiped. Although it’s rate of clime was never that good it’s max altitude was wonderful. Even the Sopwith Camel and Newport 17 were really good.
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OK, this is off-topic, but while we’re on the subject of WWI planes. . .
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Here’s a few more tidbits:
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Although parachutes had been invented, they were not given to pilots, as it was feared they’d jump out of the plane at the first sign of danger, and thus waste a valuable piece of war material.
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The first mid-air refueling took place in WW1, when some looney guy carried a 5 gallon can of gas from one plane to another. (IIRC, they flied wing-tip to wing-tip. I think he was French, which would explain a lot
)
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The celebrated Manfred Richtofen crashed on his first solo flight. He was also shot in the head on one occasion but managed to land on the German side of the lines.
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Pilots often carried a hammer to unjam their somewhat unreliable machine guns.
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IIRC, the life expectancy of a new pilot on the Western Front in 1917 was 17 hours in the air.
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At the beginning of the war (1914), pilots from the opposing sides did not shoot at each other, but instead would wave hello. Later they would take up handguns, rifles, and finally machine guns.
Richthofen was well known for going high and circling above a dogfight, waiting for pilots to break away from the fight.
He said that you could tell the inexperienced pilots as they would fly away in a straight line, at which point he would dive down upon them and begin firing from behind.
I’ve read some suggestions that he was not a terribly talented pilot – and that contributed to his preference not to get involved in dogfights – but that he was an truly excellent marksman. IIIRC, in one of his fights he brought down an opponent after firing a single shot.
One early weapon consisted of a grappling hook attached to a cable, the pilot would try to snag an enemy plane with the hook and tear it apart. I can’t believe this really worked it seems almost suicidal.
BTW My favorite WW1 fighter was the SE5a.
One poignant anecdote I read about Richtofen was that, a month or two before he was downed, he crash landed his plane in some thorn bushes. The thorn tore through his helmet, and bits of thorn were imbedded in his scalp. The doctors poked around trying to get them out, but they didn’t do much more than cause him great pain. He had headaches for the rest of his life (all five or six weeks of it).
My favorite plane of World War I is Russia’s four-engined bomber the Ilya Mourometz. It didn’t make as big a splash as you might think, given that it has been called the world’s first strategic bomber. My second favorite would be that Supermarine quadruplane designed for anti-airship duties. Glazed cockpit, non-recoil gun for its main armament, incredible duration. It wasn’t a traditional fighter though; I’d go out on a limb and call it the first purpose-built interceptor. Okay, so I have a thing for big, early planes.
Igor Sikorsky’s anachronistic masterpiece, the Ilya Mourometz:
http://angela.ctrl-c.liu.se/misc/ram/ilyamour.html
I think the D-VII could certainly be called the best German fighter of WWI. For the British & French I had thought it was the Sopwith Snipe – the Camel’s successor, but I don’t know much about the Spads. Did the 13 have a particularly powerful engine?
Either way, for a personal favourite I’d have to go with the Sopwith Camel. Biggles fan.
As long as we’re talking WWI pilot trivia; Manfred von Richthofen’s body disappeared after his burial.
It is discussed in detail here…
http://www.anzacs.net/who-killed-the-Red-Baron.htm
It talks about his burial too.
The first instance of a pilot using a parachute to bail out of a plane happened here in San Antonio at Kelly Field.
The pilot: Charles Lindberg
The observation balloon “pilots” I believe used parachutes to bail out when fighters approached. Did any WW1 fighter have more than two machine guns?
I thought the first guy to use a parachute to escape from a plane was French. I could be wrong though.
Yes, some WWI fighters had more than two machineguns. Some of the Sopwith models had a pair of Vickers guns fixed to fire through the propeller, and a Lewis gun on the upper wing. There was also a Sopwith (the Snark? Snapper?) with the pair of synchronized Vickers and a pair of Lewis guns on each wing! Six guns! I don’t think it was a very successful design though; all that extra weight on 1918-vintage wings can’t have been easy to deal with, engineering wise.
There were also two-seat planes, with an observer who would be armed with swivel-mounted guns (usually Lewis for the British and Parabellum for the Germans). These weren’t fighters per se, though; they were recon planes.
Then there was the Sopwith T.F.1, a “trench fighter” based on the Camel, which had the wing-top Lewis gun and a pair of Vickers guns pointing down through the fuselage. It was designed to be able to strafe enemy trenches in level flight; it too was unsuccessful, since it was always either underarmored or terribly sluggish.
In reference to the “best” fighter of the war, I am sure that is a matter of some contention…I do know that the Germans were highly regarded as producing pretty much universally the best equipment in both world wars…it was just expensive to make and they couldn’t compete with the sheer volume of Allied materials. One can only wonder how the world would have been different had the germans better access to volume and manpower. (creepy thought!)