|
The Nieuport 28 C.1 was a French biplane fighter aircraft flown during World War I, built by Nieuport and designed by Gustave Delage. Owing its lineage to the successful line of sesquiplane fighters that included the Nieuport 17, the Nieuport 28 continued a similar design philosophy of a lightweight and highly maneuverable aircraft. The Nieuport 28 wasn't ready for flight trials when the French chose the SPAD XIII and Morane-Saulnier AI as the standard fighters for the Aéronautique Militaire as the equipment of its own ''escadrilles de chasse'' (fighter squadrons) for 1918. A shortage of SPADs and structural problems with the Moranes led to Nieuport 28s equipping four American squadrons between March and August 1918, becoming the first aircraft to see operational service with an American fighter squadron. Nieuport 28s saw considerable post-war service: in particular 50 from a second batch ordered later were "returned" to America, and as well as army and naval service these found civilian use, especially in Hollywood films. ==Design and development== By the middle of 1917, it was obvious that the Nieuport 17 and its immediate developments such as the Nieuport 24bis, with only moderate performance gains, were unable to offer sufficient improvements to deal with the latest German fighters. The Nieuport 17 line was already being supplanted in French service by the SPAD S.VII〔Cheesman 1960, p. 94.〕 as quickly as supplies of the Hispano-Suiza engine would allow. The Nieuport 28 design advanced the concept of the lightly built, highly maneuverable rotary engined fighter typified by the Nieuport 17 to the more demanding conditions of the times. It had a more powerful engine, twin machine guns, and a new wing structure – for the first time, a production Nieuport fighter was fitted with conventional two-spar wings, top and bottom, in place of the sesquiplane "v-strut" layout of earlier Nieuports. Ailerons, controlled with torque tubes were fitted to the lower wings only. The design of the tail unit closely followed that of the Nieuport 27, but in order to provide a more streamlined profile, the fuselage was longer and slimmer, so narrow that the machine guns had to be offset to the left.〔() ''National Air and Space Museum''. Retrieved: 30 August 2009.〕 Several prototypes were built - testing three different dihedral settings for the top wing, including a completely flat wing, and one with marked dihedral that rested very close to the top of the front fuselage. Production machines had an intermediate configuration, with a slight dihedral in the upper wing, taller cabane struts, and room for the second machine gun to be mounted under the center section.〔Hamady 2008, ''Appendix B'' pp. 193–203.〕 Aside from the original three variants, additional prototypes were built to test a wooden monocoque fuselage〔Davilla, 1997, p.407〕 and alternate engine installations including the 300 hp Hispano-Suiza 8Fb,〔 170 hp Le Rhône 9R,〔 275 hp Lorraine-Dietrich 8Bd〔Davilla, 1997, pp.409-410〕 and 200 hp Clerget 11E.〔 The results of these tests facilitated the development of the Nieuport 29. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Nieuport 28」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|