Designed by Robert Thelen, R. Schubert and Gnädig as a response against the newest entente fighters like the Nieuport 11 or the De Havilland DH2 which they were better than the Fokker Eindecker which, until this airplane was available, was the main German Fighter during the first period of the war.
It was designed in a plywood made semi-monocoque fuselage suported by a minimal internal structure. The fuselage proved to be very aerodinamically clean.
It was powered by a 120Kw (160hp) Benz III or a Mercedes D.III engine. The enormous amount of power that any of those two engines provided, allowed the two Spandau machine guns to be fired without any loss of power.
It had, however one important flaw. The higher wing was overloaded, causing a great loss of maneouvrability even if the speed and the firepower were excellent for it's time. The configuration of the higher wing made the pilot's upper and forward vision to be poor. Because of that, the production of this model was cancelled when only 50 units of it were manufactured and was replaced by the improved D.II version. It was most probably the best fighter around in the first half of 1916 and there's no doubt why the German prince Friedrich-Karl von Preußen chose this airplane to fight, even if he was shot down. That was maybe the most famous action this airplane took part on.
It was only used by the Luftstreitkräfte and, it is known that the French Aéronautique Militaire capture at least one airplane.
No comments:
Post a Comment