Triplane
Airplanes that have three wings one on top of the other are referred to as triplane (seldom also triple-decker ) . Some of the fighter planes used in World War I were triplane, but also bombers like the Italian Caproni Ca.4 were designed as triplane.
The advantage over a monoplane or double-decker with the same wingspan is the larger lift- generating wing area. The small wingspan of a three-decker allows faster rolling and yawing due to the lower moment of inertia around the longitudinal and vertical axis , so that it can be particularly agile. Alternatively, the wingspan of the wing would have to be increased accordingly, for which a higher stability of the wing construction is required.
However, the three wings influence each other in such a way that the air resistance increases sharply with increasing speed, which means that a high speed cannot be achieved. The progress in aircraft construction with ever higher speeds therefore made triplane increasingly unattractive. After the end of the fighting in 1918, no more triplane were produced in series.
Probably the most famous three-decker construction was the Fokker Dr.I flown by Manfred von Richthofen , the Red Baron , which was based on the English Sopwith Triplane . After the initial success of the Fokker Dr.I, a real three-decker boom broke out in Germany. Almost all manufacturers started with the construction of three-deckers or converted existing aircraft.
literature
- Heinz AF Schmidt: Lexicon aviation . 2nd Edition. transpress VEB Verlag for Transport, Berlin 1972, p. 112 .
