| 531 Spider and 538 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Role | Fighter |
| Manufacturer | Avro |
| Designer | Clifton Britt |
| First flight | April 1918 |
| Number built | 2 |
The Avro 531 Spider was a prototype First World War British sesquiplane fighter aircraft built by Avro.
| 531 Spider and 538 | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Role | Fighter |
| Manufacturer | Avro |
| Designer | Clifton Britt |
| First flight | April 1918 |
| Number built | 2 |
The Avro 531 Spider was a prototype First World War British sesquiplane fighter aircraft built by Avro.
The Spider was a sesquiplane with a largely conventional configuration, but it used Warren truss-type interplane struts, hence the appellation "Spider". In tests, the aircraft demonstrated exceptional performance, handling, and pilot visibility however the time it flew, the War Office had already selected the Sopwith Snipe for mass production.
A second, more refined version, the Avro 531A, was apparently never completed, but some of its components seem to have been used to build a derivative, the Avro 538. This had standard interplane struts and was intended as a racing aircraft. It was never used for this purpose, however, because it was discovered that it had a faulty wing spar, so the Avro firm used it as a hack instead from May 1919 to September 1920. [1]
Data from Avro Aircraft since 1908 [2]
General characteristics
Performance
Armament
1 × fixed, forward-firing .303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers machine gun
The Arado SD I was a fighter biplane, developed in Germany in the 1920s. It was intended to equip the clandestine air force that Germany was assembling at Lipetsk. The layout owed something to designer Walter Rethel's time with Fokker. Of conventional configuration, the SD I featured a welded steel tube frame, metal-covered ahead of the cockpit, and fabric-covered aft of it. The wooden sesquiplane wings were braced with N-type interplane struts, without any wires - a typical Fokker feature.
The Arrow Active is a British aerobatic aircraft built in the 1930s.
The Roe I Triplane was an early aircraft designed and built by A.V. Roe which was the first all-British aircraft to fly..
The Roe IV Triplane was an early British aircraft designed by Alliott Verdon Roe and built by A.V. Roe and Company. It was first flown in September 1910.
The Avro Type D was an aircraft built in 1911 by the pioneer British aircraft designer A.V. Roe. Roe had previously built and flown several aircraft at Brooklands, most being tractor layout triplanes. The Type D was his first biplane.
The Avro Type E, Type 500, and Type 502 made up a family of early British military aircraft, regarded by Alliott Verdon Roe as his firm's first truly successful design. It was a forerunner of the Avro 504, one of the outstanding aircraft of the First World War.
The Avro 523 Pike was a British multi-role combat aircraft of the First World War that did not progress past the prototype stage. It was intended to provide the Royal Naval Air Service with an anti-Zeppelin fighter that was also capable of long-range reconnaissance and bombing.
The Fokker D.XIII was a fighter aircraft produced in the Netherlands in the mid-1920s. It was a development of the Fokker D.XI with a new powerplant and considerably refined aerodynamics, and had been designed to meet the requirements of the clandestine flying school operated by the German Army at Lipetsk in the Soviet Union. Like its predecessor, it was a conventional single-bay sesquiplane with staggered wings braced by V-struts. The pilot sat in an open cockpit and the undercarriage was of fixed, tailskid type. The wings were made of wood and skinned with plywood, and the fuselage was built up of welded steel tube with fabric covering.
The Macchi M.9 was a flying boat bomber designed by Alessandro Tonini and produced by Macchi in Italy close to the end of World War I and shortly afterwards.
The Avro 511 was designed as a fast scouting aircraft just before the First World War. Modified, it became the Avro 514. Though it had innovative features, development did not continue after the start of hostilities.
The de Havilland DH.27 Derby was a large single-engined biplane designed to a heavy day bomber Air Ministry specification. It did not reach production.
The Avro 528 was an unsuccessful large span single-engined biplane built to an Admiralty contract in 1916. It carried a crew of two; only one was built.
The NVI F.K.32 was a tandem two-seat biplane training aircraft designed and built in the Netherlands in the mid-1920s. It did not go into service.
The Fokker D.XII was a Dutch single seat, single engine fighter aircraft designed to an American specification which called for the use of a Curtiss D-12 engine, designated PW-7. Despite considerable efforts to improve the airframe, Fokker failed to win the USAAS competition.
The Levy Biche LB.2 was a single seat French sesquiplane fighter aircraft designed to be used from aircraft carriers. With a watertight fuselage, jettisonable wheeled undercarriage and small under-wing floats, it could survive emergency sea touchdowns; it could also be fitted with seaplane type floats.
The Potez 26 was a single seat fighter aircraft designed and flown in France in the mid-1920s. It did not reach production.
The Caudron C.140 was a French tandem cockpit sesquiplane designed in 1928 as a combination of liaison aircraft and observer and gunnery trainer.
The Caudron Type C was a single seat French biplane, intended for military evaluation. Two were built in 1911.
The Caudron Type D was a French pre-World War I single seat, twin-boom tractor biplane, a close but slightly smaller relative of the two seat Caudron Type C. More than a dozen were completed, one exported to the United Kingdom, where they may also have been licence built, and three to China.
The Caudron Type E two seat trainer was a larger and more powerful development of the Type C. Two or three were bought by the French military and one by the Royal Navy just before World War I but its sales were overtaken by the superior Type G.
