What was the Most Design Flawed Air Craft

[ushistoryprof]

sukhe_bator
scientist
Posts: 204
Re: Favourite WW1 airplane
« Reply #23 on: May 20, 2010, 01:20:24 PM » Quote 

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I agree the SPAD A2 is like a cross between a blender and one of those Florida fan powered swamp boats with wings. One of unlikeliest designs I've ever seen. All for the sake of front gun visibility without gun-synchronisation.
Some of these early a/c designs had very un H&S features. Fuel tanks by the pilot's seat, radiators directly over the head of the pilot to scald the pilots eyes when it leaks/gets shot at... Some design flaws were simply unthought of scenarios - like Fokker DVIIs not having enough ventilation louvres in the engine compartment so it overheated and cooked the incendiary ammo...

Along side this poll we should see if we can come up with the a/c design that combined the most stupid design flaws, bar not flying at all that is
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Got this idea from sukhe_bator on a previous thread.  So what was the worst designed-most flawed aircraft of the Great War?

[Ruarigh]

The earliest RE8s had a structural weakness in the top wing so that it had a tendency to break in two under any kind of stress. That seems pretty poorly thought out to me!

[ushistoryprof]

The earliest RE8s had a structural weakness in the top wing so that it had a tendency to break in two under any kind of stress. That seems pretty poorly thought out to me!

Especially in a time period when parachutes were not issued to sirplane pilots-bad for morale you know,

[zebcook]

I can't resist saying...

I'd vote for the ones that crashed on their first test flight.

This video has a load of candidates -- Experimental aircraft of WWI.

[andekmcc]

interesting stuff, some ideas for weird world war 1 stuff  the first plane reminds me of the hasegawa egg plane series

http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/e-w/ITEMLIST/EGG.html

[ushistoryprof]

I can't resist saying...

I'd vote for the ones that crashed on their first test flight.

This video has a load of candidates -- Experimental aircraft of WWI.

Those are great! I hope the "Flying Bomb" was not flow by a pilot-talk about bad karma-"Hey mom don't worry I'm piloting the "Flying Bomb" in todays mission."

I really need the "Flea" and some of the wierd Britih designs for BOB and Pulp missions-what fun.

[archangel1]

The problem with the Floh wasn't its flying characteristics (it hit about 180kph on its first flight) but rather the fact that landing the thing sucked! In fact, it was damaged on its first attempt to rejoin the ground.

Here's a neat little CGI video of the pair of them in flight.  Just click on the picture.

http://mithrin.net/flightsimflicks/page_bw_floh.html

[MerlintheMad]

If we limit the bad designs to actual operational aircraft it becomes more interesting.

The RE8's wing failure problem has already been mentioned. But this was more of a production flaw than design flaw. The RE8 saw service from late 1916 through the end of the war. There was even an RE8 "Fokker killer" crew in the fall of 1918 that went looking for D7's after their arty spot missions were over! So the aircraft was capable of killing if the pilot wanted to get aggressive.

The other design flaws, e.g. the Nieuport sesquiplane wing failures, and the Nieuport 28 tending to shed fabric in a prolonged dive, were again more material and construction failures rather than design flaws per se. In the case of the N.28 iirc it was the glue used: this was corrected but it was moot, as the Americans were by then flying Spads (Rickenbacker was almost killed in a N.28 when a copious amount of his upper wing shed its fabric in a dive as he was pursuing a Hun: he barely pulled out of the spin in time and limped back across the Lines.)

And the Albatros sesquiplane design (inspired by the Nieuport's maneuverability) inherited the lower wing fragility flaw: but it was nowhere as pronounced as in the Nieuport: the Albatros was very swift in a dive and wing failures were rare.

One of the worst design flaws was the DH4's tendency to burst into flames if hit in the gas tank.  Being between the pilot and observer the crew got cooked if it caught fire.

As famous as it was as a fighter, nevertheless the Camel killed more pilots than were shot down in them, simply by being too tricky for most pilots to handle on take off and landing. It probably holds the record in WW1 for killing its own pilots. That has to rank as an inherent design flaw that was never overcome.

The Fokker DR1 early batch killed several famous aces by having the top wing fail. That was a flaw that redesigning corrected. The most famous ace to die in an early DR1 was Gontermann, Germany's balloon buster. His top wing collapsed as he was circling to land.

Even as famous a diver as the Pfalz D3 later became, the earliest aircraft issued to the front had several structural failures before the flaw was corrected (I can't recall specifically what it was - perhaps it was more a manufacturing rather than design flaw)....

[archangel1]

Back to the SPAD A.2 for a moment...One thing nobody's mentioned is the fact that the gunner's position is hinged so they can swing it down to access the engine.  Can you imagine flying in a machine where your life depends on a couple of latches or bolts not releasing at altitude?

[MerlintheMad]

Is there any known case where the A2's forward nacelle broke and pitched the gunner? Of course, the plane would crash as a result anyway and kill the pilot too....