A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While a biplane wing structure has a structural advantage over a monoplane, it produces more drag than a monoplane wing. Improved structural techniques, better materials and higher speeds made the biplane configuration obsolete for most purposes by the late 1930s.
A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple planes.
Duralumin is a trade name for one of the earliest types of age-hardenable aluminium–copper alloys. The term is a combination of Dürener and aluminium. Its use as a trade name is obsolete. Today the term mainly refers to aluminium-copper alloys, designated as the 2000 series by the international alloy designation system (IADS), as with 2014 and 2024 alloys used in airframe fabrication.
The history of aviation extends for more than two thousand years, from the earliest forms of aviation such as kites and attempts at tower jumping to supersonic and hypersonic flight by powered, heavier-than-air jets.
Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG more commonly Junkers, was a major German aircraft and aircraft engine manufacturer. It was founded in Dessau, Germany, in 1895 by Hugo Junkers, initially manufacturing boilers and radiators. During World War I and following the war, the company became famous for its pioneering all-metal aircraft. During World War II the company produced the German air force's planes, as well as piston and jet aircraft engines, albeit in the absence of its founder who had been removed by the Nazis in 1934.
Hugo Junkers was a German aircraft engineer and aircraft designer who pioneered the design of all-metal airplanes and flying wings. His company, Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG, was one of the mainstays of the German aircraft industry in the years between World War I and World War II. His multi-engined, all-metal passenger- and freight planes helped establish airlines in Germany and around the world.
Heinkel Flugzeugwerke was a German aircraft manufacturing company founded by and named after Ernst Heinkel. It is noted for producing bomber aircraft for the Luftwaffe in World War II and for important contributions to high-speed flight, with the pioneering examples of a successful liquid-fueled rocket and a turbojet-powered aircraft in aviation history, with both Heinkel designs' first flights occurring shortly before the outbreak of World War II in Europe.
The mechanical structure of an aircraft is known as the airframe. This structure is typically considered to include the fuselage, undercarriage, empennage and wings, and excludes the propulsion system.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1910:
A hangar is a building or structure designed to hold aircraft or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood, or concrete. The word hangar comes from Middle French hanghart, of Germanic origin, from Frankish *haimgard, from *haim and gard ("yard"). The term, gard, comes from the Old Norse garðr.
The Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte —known before October 1916 as Die Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches —was the air arm of the Imperial German Army. In English-language sources it is usually referred to as the Imperial German Air Service, although that is not a literal translation of either name. German naval aviators of the Marine-Fliegerabteilung were an integral part of the Imperial German Navy. Both military branches operated aeroplanes, observation balloons and airships.
Large aircraft allow the transportation of large and/or heavy payloads over long distances. Making an aircraft design larger can also improve the overall fuel efficiency and man-hours for transporting a given load, while a greater space is available for transporting lightweight cargoes or giving passengers room to move around. However, as aircraft increase in size they pose significant design issues not present in smaller types. These include structural efficiency, flight control response and sufficient power in a reliable and cost-effective installation.
The Fokker V.1 was a small German sesquiplane experimental fighter prototype built in 1916 by the Fokker-Flugzeugwerke. Sporting a parasol wing, it was the first Fokker aircraft purportedly designed by Reinhold Platz—the respective roles played by Fokker himself, Platz, and possibly others in the conceptual design of Fokker airplanes are a matter of dispute among historians—and was an early experiment in cantilever wing construction, eliminating the bracing wires typical of aircraft design at the time, something that had already been achieved with metal materials in Hugo Junkers' own pioneering Junkers J 1 in 1915.
The Junkers J 1, nicknamed the Blechesel, was an experimental monoplane aircraft developed by Junkers. It was the first all-metal aircraft in the world. Manufactured early on in the First World War, an era in which aircraft designers relied largely on fabric-covered wooden structures braced with wires, the J 1 was a revolutionary development in aircraft design, making extensive use of metal in its structure as had already been done and in its outer surface.
The Junkers J 2 was the first all-metal aircraft intended as a dedicated military aircraft design, the first all-metal aircraft meant to be a fighter aircraft, and was the direct descendant of the pioneering J 1 all-metal aircraft technology demonstrator design of 1915.
A composite aircraft is made up of multiple component craft. It takes off and flies initially as a single aircraft, with the components able to separate in flight and continue as independent aircraft. Typically the larger aircraft acts as a carrier aircraft or mother ship, with the smaller sometimes called a parasite or jockey craft.
The Zeppelin-Staaken E-4/20 was a revolutionary four-engine all-metal passenger monoplane designed in 1917 by Adolf Rohrbach and completed in 1919 at the Zeppelin-Staaken works outside Berlin, Germany. The E-4/20 was the first four-engine, all-metal stressed skin heavier-than-air airliner built.
During World War II, aviation firmly established itself as a critical component of modern warfare from the Battle of Britain in the early stages to the great aircraft carrier battles between American and Japanese Pacific fleets and the final delivery of nuclear weapons. The major combatants. Germany and Japan on the one side and Britain, the United States and the USSR on the other manufactured huge air forces which engaged in pitched battles both with each other and with the opposing ground forces. Bombing established itself as a major strategic force, and this was also the first war in which the aircraft carrier played a significant role.
The pioneer era of aviation was the period of aviation history between the first successful powered flight, generally accepted to have been made by the Wright Brothers on 17 December 1903, and the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.
In aeronautics, bracing comprises additional structural members which stiffen the functional airframe to give it rigidity and strength under load. Bracing may be applied both internally and externally, and may take the form of struts, which act in compression or tension as the need arises, and/or wires, which act only in tension.
