Type H | |
---|---|
Morane Saulnier Type H on display at the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace at Paris Le Bourget airport | |
Role | Sport aircraft |
Manufacturer | Morane-Saulnier |
First flight | 1913 |
Developed from | Morane-Saulnier G |
Variants | Morane-Saulnier L |
The Morane-Saulnier H was an early aircraft first flown in France in the months immediately preceding the First World War; it was a single-seat derivative of the successful Morane-Saulnier G with a slightly reduced wingspan [1] [2] Like the Type G, it was a successful sporting and racing aircraft: examples serving with the French army were used in the opening phases of the war.
German versions, the Fokker Eindecker fighters, were armed with forward-firing machine guns and became the first single-seat fighter aircraft so armed.
During the second international aero meet, held at Wiener Neustadt in June 1913, Roland Garros won the precision landing prize in a Type H. [3] Later that same year, a Morane-Saulnier H was used to complete the first non-stop flight across the Mediterranean, from Fréjus in the south of France to Bizerte in Tunisia. [4]
The French Army ordered a batch of 26 aircraft under the designation MoS.1. [2] French-built machines saw limited service in the opening stages of World War I, with pilots carrying out reconnaissance missions and occasionally engaging in aerial combat using revolvers and carbines. [2] The British Royal Flying Corps also acquired a small number, impressing three civilian-owned aircraft on the outbreak of the war, and ordering 36 machines Grahame-White, who was manufacturing the type in the UK under licence in two batches. The RFC mainly used the Type Hs for training, with only one example seeing service with operational squadrons (4 and 12 Squadrons). [5]
A German-built copy entered production as the Fokker M.5 in 1913: it featured a slightly longer fuselage, framed in steel tube rather than wood, a comma shaped rudder, and a redesigned undercarriage integrated with the under-wing bracing pylons. When armed in 1915 with a synchronised machine gun it became the first of the Fokker "Eindecker" monoplane fighters. [6]
The type was also produced under licence in Germany by the Pfalz Flugzeugwerke: during the war the company built armed versions as the E.I, E.II, E.IV, E.V, and E.VI, with increasingly powerful engines. Like the better known Fokkers, with which they were often confused by Allied airmen, these were armed with a single, synchronised lMG 08 machine gun. [7] [8]
A Type H is preserved at the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace in Le Bourget and another at the Fantasy of Flight in Florida. Several replicas are in museums or flying.
General characteristics
Performance
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.
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The Fokker Eindecker fighters were a series of German World War I monoplane single-seat fighter aircraft designed by Dutch engineer Anthony Fokker. Developed in April 1915, the first Eindecker ("Monoplane") was the first purpose-built German fighter aircraft and the first aircraft to be fitted with a synchronization gear, enabling the pilot to fire a machine gun through the arc of the propeller without striking the blades. The Eindecker gave the German Army's Air Service (then the Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches) a degree of air superiority from July 1915 until early 1916. This period, during which Allied aviators regarded their poorly armed aircraft as "Fokker Fodder", became known as the "Fokker Scourge".
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The Fokker M.5 was an unarmed single-seat monoplane aircraft designed and built by Anthony Fokker in 1913. It served as a light reconnaissance aircraft with the German army at the outbreak of World War I and was the basis for the first successful fighter aircraft in German service, the Fokker E.I.
The Morane-Saulnier L, or Morane-Saulnier Type L, or officially MoS-3, was a French parasol wing one or two-seat scout aeroplane of the First World War. The Type L became one of the first successful fighter aircraft when it was fitted with a single machine gun that fired through the arc of the propeller, which was protected by armoured deflector wedges. Its immediate effectiveness in this role launched an arms race in fighter development, and the Type L was swiftly rendered obsolete. The original Type L used wing warping for lateral control, but a later version designated Type LA was fitted with ailerons.
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