Canada's Fighting Pilots by Edmund Cosgrove

Author:Edmund Cosgrove
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2003-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Undated photo shows a Sopwith Triplane on the flight line. This aircraft has the standard 110-hp Clerget engine and rarer twin Vickers .303-in. machine gun armament -- most Triplanes carried only one -- mounted atop the fuselage and synchronized to fire between the propeller blades. The Triplane, which debuted in prototype form on May 28, 1916, was initially ordered for Britain’s Royal Flying Corps but an interservice swap meant the 140 built served exclusively with the Royal Naval Air Service. B Flight of No. 10 Naval Squadron, manned entirely Canadians, was known as the Black Flight; its five aircraft, painted overall black except for squadron and rudder markings, were dubbed Black Maria, Black Death, Black Roger, Black Prince and Black Sheep. Between May and July 1917, they shot down 87 enemy aircraft. The Triplane was replaced by the Sopwith Camel in November 1917. Top speed was 117 mph, service ceiling was 20,500 ft. and endurance was 2 hrs. 45 mins. The Triplane was 18 ft. 10 in. long, spanned 26 ft. 6 in., stood 10 ft. 6 in. tall and weighed 1,101 lb. empty and a maximum 1,541 lb. at takeoff.

Department of National Defence/AH493

This was “Bloody April.” Baron Manfred von Richthofen’s flying circus had gone into action in January as an untried group of fledglings. Now they were all aces, thanks to the superiority of their equipment, a fact not realized by one correspondent, who called them “cold-eyed killers.” Most of the machines used by the RFC were not adequate to cope with the German planes, and for a time the Germans enjoyed complete aerial dominance. The RFC, at the mercy of the British Government’s Air Board, which was still trying to standardize aircraft design to cut costs, was unable to get the variety of machines it needed. The aircraft situation became so bad that General Trenchard, the commander of the RFC, told his superiors: “I want to beat the Boche in this war, not the next.”

Number 10 Squadron, RNAS, had just been re-equipped with the Sopwith Triplane, which had passed its final production tests almost a year earlier. Despite its high performance record, the triplane had been rejected by the RFC, probably because of its unusual appearance. Consequently, most of the three-wingers went into action as naval aircraft on Channel patrol. Sopwith engineers had had no precedent to guide them when they designed the Tripe. They had wanted a plane that would incorporate maximum lift in a short wingspan, plus the ability to turn inside the turning radius of contemporary German planes. The result was the triplane, a light ship with a fast rate of climb and a ceiling of 20,500 feet. Armed with a single machine gun synchronized to fire through the propeller arc, the triplane had a top speed of 115 miles per hour at 15,000 feet. A Sopwith Triplane, probably from Collishaw’s squadron, was credited with shooting down and wounding the youngest brother of the Red Knight, Lothar von Richthofen, who was an ace in his own right with forty victories.

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