__NOTOC__
The DFW R.I, (company designation DFW T26), was a prototype German
bomber
A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching aerial torpedo, torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped ...
aircraft of
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
.
Development
Developed as a private venture by
DFW, it was a large
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 ...
of conventional configuration with four
engines
An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy.
Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ...
mounted inside the fuselage, powering propellers on the wings via transmission shafts - two mounted tractor-fashion on the leading edge of the upper wing, and two mounted pusher-fashion on the trailing edge of the lower wing. The DFW R.I was unique, among the Riesenflugzeuge with internally mounted engines, in that each engine drove a separate propeller and was not connected to the other engines or propellers.
After factory tests proved promising, military acceptance trials commenced on 19 October 1916 and led to the aircraft being purchased for the ''
Luftstreitkräfte
The ''Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte'' (, German Air Force)—known before October 1916 as (Flyer Troops)—was the air arm of the Imperial German Army. In English-language sources it is usually referred to as the Imperial German Air Service, alt ...
''. Soon thereafter trouble set in, with crankshafts repeatedly failing. This was attributed mostly to the engine design, but new engine mountings and universal joints for each end of the drive shafts were fitted to mitigate the problem, along with extended wings and other improvements.
Operational history
Following these modifications, R.I (R 11/15) was deployed on the Eastern front with
Rfa 500 at
Alt-Auz, April 1917 to September 1917, from whence it raided
Riga
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...
during the summer of 1917. On its second combat mission, the R.I crashed due to the failure of two engines, and was destroyed.
Specifications (DFW R.I (second version))
See also
References
Further reading
*
* ''The German Giants, The Story of the R-planes 1914-1919'', G.W. Haddow & Peter M. Grosz, Putnam & Company Limited, 42 Great Russell Street, London, First Published July 1962
External links
*
The German D.F.W. Commercial Four-Engined Biplane ''Flight'' 25 September 1919, vol. XI, no. 39, pp. 1274–78. The R.I is only mentioned on p. 1274 and is not illustrated.
{{Idflieg R-class designations
1910s German bomber aircraft
R.I
Four-engined push-pull aircraft
Mid-engined aircraft
Biplanes
Aircraft first flown in 1916