Biplane

Title

Biplane

Artist

R A W M

Medium

Photograph

Description

Before any successful powered flight, most aeroplane designs envisaged monoplanes. The weakness of the materials and design techniques available made it difficult to design wings which were both light and strong enough to fly. Many designs used external bracing struts and wires. The Cody kite, which comprised a box kite with wings attached to its upper surfaces, took a different approach. By 1896 Octave Chanute was flying a biplane hang glider and concluded that the externally braced biplane offered better prospects for powered flight than the monoplane. The Wright Flyer biplane of 1903 became the first successful powered aeroplane.

Throughout the pioneer years, both biplanes and monoplanes were common, but by the outbreak of the First World War biplanes had started to gain favour due to their better manoeuvrability and inherent strength, as exemplified by the Sopwith Camel. During the period from 1914 to 1925 almost all aircraft were biplanes. Sesquiplane types included the French Nieuport 17 and German Albatros D.III.

However as the available engine-power increased so did speeds, and at higher speeds the bracing - of both biplanes and monoplanes - caused increasing drag. In order to fly faster, it would be necessary to do away with the external bracing to create a clean "cantilever" wing.

Early cantilever designs were either too weak or too heavy. The Fokker V.4 prototype of 1917 (identified by some as the V.3) was an unusual cantilever triplane but suffered excessive flexing of the wings, while the Junkers J 1 of 1915 was heavy and had a poor rate of climb. Up until the 1930s biplanes such as the Bristol Bulldog and Hawker Fury remained commonplace. But by the 1930s engine power had risen to the point where the fast cantilever monoplane — first flown by the end of 1915, as a pioneering all-metal design from the workshops founded by Hugo Junkers — took over and the slower biplane all but died out.
Boeing Stearman E75 (PT-13D) biplane of 1944

Several air forces continued to use biplanes in specialist roles such as primary training or shipboard operation up until WWII and even beyond. Trainers include the de Havilland Tiger Moth in the Royal Air Force, which also served beside the Fleet Finch in Canada (where Tiger Moths were also license-built), Stampe SV.4 in the French and Belgian Air Forces, and the Boeing Stearman in the USAF. The British Fleet Air Arm still flew the Gloster Gladiator and Fairey Swordfish from its aircraft carriers at the start of the war.

The Stearman is also particularly associated with stunt flying such as wing-walkers.
A 1997 model WACO Classic YMF-5C

Modern biplane designs still exist in specialist niche roles such as aerobatics and agricultural aircraft with the competition aerobatics role and format for such a biplane well-defined in the mid-1930s by the Bücker Bü 133 Jungmeister. The Pitts Special, said to have been inspired by the Jungmeister, dominated aerobatics for many years after World War II and is still in production, while the WACO Classic YMF is a reproduction of the original Waco design.

The vast majority of biplane designs have been fitted with reciprocating engines of comparatively low power; exceptions include the Antonov An-3 and WSK-Mielec M-15 Belphegor, fitted with turboprop and turbofan engines respectively. Some older biplane designs, such as the Grumman Ag Cat and the aforementioned An-2 (in the form of the An-3) are available in upgraded versions with turboprop engines.

Other famous biplanes include the Antonov An-2, Beechcraft Staggerwing and Curtiss JN-4. The two most produced biplane designs initiated before 1945 — the 1913-origin British Avro 504 (8,970 built before November 1918) and the 1928-origin Soviet Polikarpov Po-2 (over 20,000 built, at least) — each contributed to air combat within their own era, with similar light bombing raids for each type undertaken during the World Wars, and coincidentally with the Po-2 being the direct replacement for the Soviet Avrushka copies of the 504 itself.

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August 22nd, 2014

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