__NOTOC__ The Albatros L 77v was a German tandem two-seat

reconnaissance In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities. Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmisher ...

fighter

biplane A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...

, four examples of which were built under license for

Albatros Flugzeugwerke Albatros Flugzeugwerke GmbH was a German aircraft manufacturer best known for supplying the German airforces during World War I. The company was based in Johannisthal, Berlin, where it was founded by Walter Huth and Otto Wiener on December 20, 1 ...

by Ernst Heinkel Flugzeugwerke in 1928. Based upon the L 76 Aeolus reconnaissance trainer, the aircraft was powered by a 450 kW (600 hp)

BMW VI The BMW VI was a water-cooled V-12 aircraft engine built in Germany in the 1920s. It was one of the most important German aero engines in the years leading up to World War II, with thousands built. It was further developed as the BMW VII and B ...

5.5 water-cooled

V12 engine A V12 engine is a twelve-cylinder piston engine where two banks of six cylinders are arranged in a V configuration around a common crankshaft. V12 engines are more common than V10 engines. However, they are less common than V8 engines. The fi ...

. Like the L 76, the L 77v had a fabric-covered welded-steel

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraft t ...

and wooden dual-spar wings with

plywood Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...

skins supported by N-type struts. It was armed with twin 7.92 mm (.312 in)

machine gun A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) a ...

s in fixed forward-firing positions and a third on a ring mounting in the rear

cockpit A cockpit or flight deck is the area, usually near the front of an aircraft or spacecraft, from which a Pilot in command, pilot controls the aircraft. The cockpit of an aircraft contains flight instruments on an instrument panel, and the ...

. Three of the aircraft saw service performing armament trials in

Lipetsk Lipetsk ( rus, links=no, Липецк, p=ˈlʲipʲɪtsk), also romanized as Lipeck, is a city and the administrative center of Lipetsk Oblast, Russia, located on the banks of the Voronezh River in the Don basin, southeast of Moscow. Populatio ...

in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

; these included one aircraft testing a free-mounted 20 mm cannon. The fourth aircraft had been destroyed while undergoing tests in March 1929. Between December 1929 and their retirement in October 1931, the surviving L 77vs were based at the

Staaken Staaken () is a locality at the western rim of Berlin within the borough of Spandau. Geography Staaken borders on the localities of Spandau proper, Falkenhagener Feld and Wilhelmstadt. In the west it shares border with the Brandenburg municipalit ...

''Erprobungsstelle'' (Test Centre).

Specifications (L 77v)

References

* Green, W. & Swanborough, G. (1994). ''The Complete Book of Fighters''. London: Salamander Books.
German Aircraft between 1919–1945
{{Albatros aircraft Single-engined tractor aircraft Sesquiplanes 1920s German military reconnaissance aircraft L 077v Heinkel aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1928

Specifications (L 77v)

See also

References