The Thulin K was a Swedish naval fighter aircraft in the 1910s. It was operated by both the Swedish and Dutch armed forces.

Development

Dr. Enoch Thulin, of AB Thulinverken, designed the Thulin K in December 1916. It was a shoulder-wing monoplane of wooden construction employing

wing warping Wing warping was an early system for lateral (roll) control of a fixed-wing aircraft. The technique, used and patented by the Wright brothers, consisted of a system of pulleys and cables to twist the trailing edges of the wings in opposite direc ...

for lateral control. Powered by a 90 hp Thulin A Gnôme derived

rotary engine The rotary engine is an early type of internal combustion engine, usually designed with an odd number of cylinders per row in a radial configuration. The engine's crankshaft remained stationary in operation, while the entire crankcase and i ...

, it could be configured as a single seat or

tandem Tandem, or in tandem, is an arrangement in which a team of machines, animals or people are lined up one behind another, all facing in the same direction. The original use of the term in English was in ''tandem harness'', which is used for two ...

seat aircraft.

Operational history

After initial flights in early 1917, the

Swedish Army The Swedish Army ( sv, svenska armén) is the land force of the Swedish Armed Forces. History Svea Life Guards dates back to the year 1521, when the men of Dalarna chose 16 young able men as body guards for the insurgent nobleman Gustav Vas ...

purchased two of the single seat K versions. However, it was more successful as an export plane; the

Royal Netherlands Navy The Royal Netherlands Navy ( nl, Koninklijke Marine, links=no) is the naval force of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. During the 17th century, the navy of the Dutch Republic (1581–1795) was one of the most powerful naval forces in the world an ...

bought twelve Ks between 1917 and 1918 and three Thulin KAs. Both types were delivered without armament but the Dutch Navy fitted theirs with

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 firing through the

propeller A propeller (colloquially often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon ...

arc and also experimented with 20 mm Madson

cannon A cannon is a large- caliber gun classified as a type of artillery, which usually launches a projectile using explosive chemical propellant. Gunpowder ("black powder") was the primary propellant before the invention of smokeless powder ...

s. The aircraft's performance was good - Thulin himself broke the Swedish altitude record in it in 1919. However, on 14 May 1919 Thulin's own Thulin K lost an

aileron An aileron (French for "little wing" or "fin") is a hinged flight control surface usually forming part of the trailing edge of each wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. Ailerons are used in pairs to control the aircraft in roll (or movement around ...

in a steep dive, crashing and killing him. The rest of the Thulin Ks were written off in 1920 and the Thulin KAs were withdrawn in 1922.

Variants

;Thulin K :Single-seat production variant, two built for Flygcompaniet and twelve for the Dutch Navy. ;Thulin KA :Two-seat version for the

, three built.

Operators

; *

Swedish Air Force The Swedish Air Force ( sv, Svenska flygvapnet or just ) is the air force branch of the Swedish Armed Forces. History The Swedish Air Force was created on 1 July, 1926 when the aircraft units of the Army and Navy were merged. Because of the es ...

;

Specifications (Thulin K)

References

External links

Thulin type K Swedish fighter from 1917
{{Thulin aircraft 1910s Swedish fighter aircraft Shoulder-wing aircraft Single-engined tractor aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1917 Rotary-engined aircraft