Westland N.1B
The Westland N.1B was a prototype British single-engined floatplane fighter aircraft of the First World War. The first aircraft to be designed by Westland Aircraft, it was a single-engined tractor biplane. Despite good performance, only two aircraft were built, the Royal Naval Air Service operating landplane fighters from ships instead. Development and design In 1916, the British Admiralty drew up Requirement N.1B for a single-seat floatplane or flying boat fighter aircraft to operate from the Royal Navy's seaplane carriers, demanding a speed of 110 mph (177 km/h) and a ceiling of 20,000 ft (6,100 m). Three companies submitted designs in response, Blackburn and Supermarine with flying boats (the Blackburn N.1B and Supermarine Baby), while Westland proposed a floatplane, the Westland N.1B. Westland received an order for two aircraft.James 1991, p.69. Westland's design, which was the first original design built by Westland, was a single-engined tractor biplane ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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WikiProject Aircraft
A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is a Wikimedia movement affinity group for contributors with shared goals. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sister projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News noted the role of Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine in maintaining the accuracy of articles related to the disease. Another WikiProject that has drawn attention is WikiProject Women Scientists, which was profiled by '' Smithsonian'' for its efforts to improve coverage of women scientists which the profile noted had "helped increase the number of female scientists on Wikipedia from around 1,600 to over 5,000". On Wikipedia Some Wikipedia WikiProjects are substantial enough to engage in cooperative activities with outside organizations relevant to the field at issue. For e ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Blackburn N
Blackburn () is an industrial town and the administrative centre of the Blackburn with Darwen borough in Lancashire, England. The town is north of the West Pennine Moors on the southern edge of the Ribble Valley, east of Preston and north-northwest of Manchester. Blackburn is the core centre of the wider unitary authority area along with the town of Darwen. It is one of the largest districts in Lancashire, with commuter links to neighbouring cities of Manchester, Salford, Preston, Lancaster, Liverpool, Bradford and Leeds. At the 2011 census, Blackburn had a population of 117,963, whilst the wider borough of Blackburn with Darwen had a population of 150,030. Blackburn had a population of 117,963 in 2011, with 30.8% being people of ethnic backgrounds other than white British. A former mill town, textiles have been produced in Blackburn since the middle of the 13th century, when wool was woven in people's houses in the domestic system. Flemish weavers who settled ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sopwith Pup
The Sopwith Pup is a British single-seater biplane fighter aircraft built by the Sopwith Aviation Company. It entered service with the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps in the autumn of 1916. With pleasant flying characteristics and good manoeuvrability, the aircraft proved very successful. The Pup was eventually outclassed by newer German fighters, but it was not completely replaced on the Western Front until the end of 1917. Remaining Pups were relegated to Home Defence and training units. The Pup's docile flying characteristics also made it ideal for use in aircraft carrier deck landing and takeoff experiments and training. Design and development In 1915, Sopwith produced a personal aircraft for the company's test pilot Harry Hawker, a single-seat, tractor biplane powered by a seven-cylinder Gnome rotary engine which was known as Hawker's Runabout. Another four similar aircraft have been tentatively identified as Sopwith Sparrows. Sopwith next developed ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Port Victoria Marine Experimental Aircraft Depot
The British Royal Naval Air Service established an R.N. Aeroplane Repair Depot on the Isle of Grain on the River Medway Estuary in Kent in early 1915. As there was already a RNAS seaplane base on the Isle of Grain, the Depot was named Port Victoria, after the nearby railway station. It became the Marine Aircraft Experimental Depot,Bruce in ''Flight'', 29 November 1957, p.846. comprising 3 sections: *Experimental Construction Depot *Seaplane Test Depot *Experimental Armament Section It was renamed ''Marine and Armament Experimental Establishment'' on 16 March 1920 in recognition of the fact that weapons and other equipment were evaluated as well as complete aircraft. It was renamed again on 1 March 1924 to the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment and eventually moved to Felixstowe. While at Port Victoria it designed a range of experimental aircraft, not all of which were constructed and flown. Port Victoria aircraft types * P.V.1 * P.V.2 * P.V.3 - Design only, not produced ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Yeovil
Yeovil ( ) is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the district of South Somerset, England. The population of Yeovil at the last census (2011) was 45,784. More recent estimates show a population of 48,564. It is close to Somerset's southern border with Dorset, from London, south of Bristol, from Sherborne and from Taunton. The aircraft and defence industries which developed in the 20th century made it a target for bombing in the Second World War; they are still major employers. Yeovil Country Park, which includes Ninesprings, is one of several open spaces with educational, cultural and sporting facilities. Religious sites include the 14th-century Church of St John the Baptist, Yeovil, Church of St John the Baptist. The town is on the A30 road, A30 and A37 road, A37 roads and has two railway stations. History Archaeological surveys have yielded Palaeolithic burial and settlement sites mainly to the south of the modern town, particularly in Hendford, where a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Harry Hawker
Harry George Hawker, MBE, AFC (22 January 1889 – 12 July 1921) was an Australian aviation pioneer. He was the chief test pilot for Sopwith and was also involved in the design of many of their aircraft. After the First World War, he co-founded Hawker Aircraft, the firm that would later be responsible for a long series of successful military aircraft. He died on 12 July 1921 when the aircraft he was to fly in the Aerial Derby crashed in a park at Burnt Oak, Edgware, not far from Hendon Aerodrome. Early life Hawker was born on 22 January 1889 at Moorabbin, Victoria in Australia, the second son of George Hawker, a blacksmith, and Mary Ann Gilliard Anderson.''The Automobile'' September 2007 Harry Hawker - Automobilist. author Bruce Lindsay He attended Moorabbin Primary School. As an 11-year-old, he worked at the Melbourne garage of Hall & Warden, helping to build engines for five shillings a week, moving on to the Tarrant Motor & Engineering Co, helping make Tarrant cars, whe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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United Kingdom Military Aircraft Serials
United Kingdom military aircraft serial numbers are aircraft registration numbers used to identify individual military aircraft in the United Kingdom (UK). All UK military aircraft are allocated and display a unique registration number. A unified registration number system, maintained initially by the Air Ministry (AM), and its successor the Ministry of Defence (MoD), is used for aircraft operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF), Fleet Air Arm (FAA), and Army Air Corps (AAC). Military aircraft operated by government agencies and civilian contractors (for example QinetiQ) are also assigned registration numbers from this system. When the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was formed in 1912, its aircraft were identified by a letter/number system related to the manufacturer. The prefix 'A' was allocated to balloons of No.1 Company, Air Battalion, Royal Engineers, the prefix 'B' to aeroplanes of No.2 Company, and the prefix 'F' to aeroplanes of the Central Flying School.Bruce 1956, p.922 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sopwith Aviation Company
The Sopwith Aviation Company was a British aircraft company that designed and manufactured aeroplanes mainly for the British Royal Naval Air Service, the Royal Flying Corps and later the Royal Air Force during the First World War, most famously the Sopwith Camel. Sopwith aircraft were also used in varying numbers by the French, Belgian and American air services during the war. In April 1919, the company was renamed as the Sopwith Aviation & Engineering Company Limited. In September 1920, the company entered voluntary liquidation after an attempt to build motorcycles failed. The patents and other assets were bought by a new company, H.G. Hawker Engineering. Early years The Sopwith Aviation Company (based at Brooklands) was created in June 1912 by Thomas Octave Murdoch (Tommy, later Sir Thomas) Sopwith, a wealthy sportsman interested in aviation, yachting and motor-racing, when he was 24 years old. Following their first military aircraft sale in November 1912, Sopwith moved to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vickers Machine Gun
The Vickers machine gun or Vickers gun is a Water cooling, water-cooled .303 British (7.7 mm) machine gun produced by Vickers Limited, originally for the British Army. The gun was operated by a three-man crew but typically required more men to move and operate it: one fired, one fed the ammunition, the others helped to carry the weapon, its ammunition, and spare parts. It was in service from before the First World War until the 1960s, with air-cooled versions of it on many Allies of World War I, Allied World War I fighter aircraft. The weapon had a reputation for great solidity and reliability. Ian V. Hogg, in ''Weapons & War Machines'', describes an action that took place in August 1916, during which the British 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten Vickers guns to deliver sustained fire for twelve hours. Using 100 barrels, they fired a million rounds without breakdowns. "It was this absolute foolproof reliability which endeared the Vickers to every Britis ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Synchronization Gear
A synchronization gear (also known as a gun synchronizer or interrupter gear) was a device enabling a single-engine tractor configuration aircraft to fire its forward-firing armament through the arc of its spinning propeller without bullets striking the blades. This allowed the aircraft, rather than the gun, to be aimed at the target. There were many practical problems, mostly arising from the inherently imprecise nature of an automatic gun's firing, the great (and varying) velocity of the blades of a spinning propeller, and the very high speed at which any gear synchronizing the two had to operate. In practice, all known gears worked on the principle of actively triggering each shot, in the manner of a semi-automatic weapon. Design and experimentation with gun synchronization had been underway in France and Germany in 1913–1914, following the ideas of August Euler, who seems to have been the first to suggest mounting a fixed armament firing in the direction of flight (in 191 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bentley BR1
The Bentley BR.1 was a British rotary aircraft engine of the First World War. Designed by the motor car engine designer W. O. Bentley, the BR.1 was built in large numbers, being one of the main powerplants of the Sopwith Camel. Design and development The Clerget 9B was an important engine for the British Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Flying Corps, being license-produced in Britain and powering a number of important British aircraft, including the Sopwith Camel. However, at £907 a copy it was expensive, and prone to overheating, so the Admiralty asked Lieutenant W. O. Bentley, an established pre-war engine designer, to produce a modified version to solve these problems. Bentley came up with his idea of an engine - fitted with aluminium cylinders with cast iron liners, and aluminium pistons. Dual ignition was introduced to improve reliability (much as the 160 CV Gnome 9N had already been), and the stroke increased to which allowed power to be increased to . The cost of th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |