Thursday 7 July 2016

Avia BH-6/BH-8/BH-17

We're covering also various Czechosloval fighters which are variants of the same one.

The Avia BH-6 was a prototype Czechoslovak fighter built in 1923. It had wings of unequal span with the top wing being shorter than the lower one, something very unusual for the time. It was joined to the bottom one using an I type strut on both sides which sloped inwards from bottom to top. The top wing was attached to the fuselage by a single large pylon instead of a set of cabane struts.
It crashed early when it was being tested.

The Avia BH-8, on it's part, was another prototype, based also on the BH-6 and was essentialy an attempt to solve the problems that the test projects of that one showed. It was basically the same, with some minor alterations.
When tested, it showed some improvements from the previous BH-6, but as the next version, the BH-17, was ready by the time, the BH-6 development was abandoned.

Finally, the Avia BH-17 was another development of the same BH-6 which was built in 1924 and featured even more adjustments made to the original design. It shown even more good performance than the BH-8 and 24 airplanes were ordered by the Czechoslovak Air Force. However, once deployed, they proved to be seriously unreliable and were retired soon.










Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avia_BH-6
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avia_BH-8
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avia_BH-17
4. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters

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