02 February 2013

Scrap irony

Rico says his friend Kelley, a World War One freak, sends this:
Last night I was looking up some info on World War One triplanes, and found a longish article on triplane development; some excerpts:
In the spring of 1916, Herbert Smith, the chief designer at Sopwith, began work on a successor to the Pup. He set out to design a plane that could climb faster, fly higher, and maneuver as well as if not better than its predecessor and, if possible, afford better visibility than the Pup. Surprisingly, the prototype that emerged from the Sopwith hangar on 30 May 1916, was not a biplane but a triplane (painting, above).
By the early 1920s, the triplane fighter concept was dead, although the use of the triplane configuration to increase the lifting capabilities of bombers or commercial aircraft would be explored for several years more. The last military triplane to be produced in any quantity was the Mitsubishi Type 10, a singleseat torpedo plane; twenty were built for the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1922 (painting, below). The Type 10 had been created by a new chief designer whom Mitsubishi had recently recruited from an economically depressed postwar Britain: Herbert Smith, creator of the Sopwith Triplane.
Is that not cool?

No comments:

 

Casino Deposit Bonus