The Hansa-Brandenburg GW was a floatplane

torpedo A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, su ...

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 ...

produced in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

during

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 ...

for the Imperial German Navy. In configuration, it was similar to the

Hansa-Brandenburg G.I The Hansa-Brandenburg G.I was a bomber aircraft used to equip the KuKLFT, Austro-Hungarian aviation corps in World War I. It was a mostly conventional large, three-bay biplane with staggered wings of slightly unequal span. The pilot and bombardi ...

land-based bomber, but the GW was substantially larger and heavier. Like the G.I, it was a conventional three-bay

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 ...

design with staggered wings with the lower wing of slightly greater span than the upper. The undercarriage consisted of twin pontoons, each mounted on a separate truss structure, leaving space between them for a single torpedo to be dropped from the underside of the fuselage. The metal trusses that had attached the engines to the sides of the G.I's fuselage were not present in this design, with the engine nacelles carried on struts in the interplane gap.

Specifications (variant)

References

Further reading