The Weymann W-1 was a French single seat

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 ...

fighter aircraft Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...

, built 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 ...

. It had a most unusual layout, with an engine buried in the

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 ...

driving a

pusher configuration In an aircraft with a pusher configuration (as opposed to a tractor configuration), the propeller(s) are mounted behind their respective engine(s). Since a pusher propeller is mounted behind the engine, the drive shaft is in compression in nor ...

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 ...

behind a

cruciform tail __NOTOC__ The cruciform tail is an aircraft empennage configuration which, when viewed from the aircraft's front or rear, looks much like a cross. The usual arrangement is to have the horizontal stabilizer intersect the vertical tail somewhere ...

. It was not successful and soon abandoned.

Design

Apart from its rear mounted pusher propeller, shaft driven from a centrally mounted engine, the W-1 was unusual in other respects. It was an all-metal aircraft; a single bay biplane with constant chord, equal span, unswept and unstaggered wings, braced by parallel

interplane strut In aeronautics, bracing comprises additional structural members which stiffen the functional airframe to give it rigidity and strength under load. Bracing may be applied both internally and externally, and may take the form of strut, which act in ...

s assisted by

flying wire In aeronautics, bracing comprises additional structural members which stiffen the functional airframe to give it rigidity and strength under load. Bracing may be applied both internally and externally, and may take the form of strut, which act in ...

s. There were

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 ...

s on both upper and lower planes, externally connected. The deep, flat sided and flat topped fuselage entirely filled the interwing space, with the pilot's open cockpit immediately level with and ahead of the upper wing

leading edge The leading edge of an airfoil surface such as a wing is its foremost edge and is therefore the part which first meets the oncoming air.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third edition'', page 305. Aviation Supplies & Academics, ...

. He had twin machine guns faired into the upper surface ahead of him and, beyond, a smooth, rounded nose. The absence of engine and propeller gave him a good forward view and avoided the need for engine-gun synchronisation. The engine was behind him at the aircraft's

centre of gravity In physics, the center of mass of a distribution of mass in space (sometimes referred to as the balance point) is the unique point where the weighted relative position of the distributed mass sums to zero. This is the point to which a force may ...

(cg), totally enclosed within the fuselage. An intake into the underside of the fuselage immediately below the cockpit provided cooling air for the

Clerget 7Z The Clerget 7Z was a seven-cylinder rotary aircraft engine of the World War I era designed by Pierre Clerget. First appearing in 1911 it was nominally rated at 80 horsepower (60 kW). 347 examples were jointly built in Britain by Gordon Watn ...

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 ...

, which had an exhaust in the upper fuselage. The fuselage tapered both in height and width to the tail, where the

tailplane A tailplane, also known as a horizontal stabiliser, is a small lifting surface located on the tail (empennage) behind the main lifting surfaces of a fixed-wing aircraft as well as other non-fixed-wing aircraft such as helicopters and gyroplane ...

and split

elevators An elevator or lift is a cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or decks of a building, vessel, or other structure. They are ...

were mounted on its upper surface. The upper

fin A fin is a thin component or appendage attached to a larger body or structure. Fins typically function as foils that produce lift or thrust, or provide the ability to steer or stabilize motion while traveling in water, air, or other fluids. Fin ...

and

rudder A rudder is a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft, or other vehicle that moves through a fluid medium (generally aircraft, air or watercraft, water). On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to ...

was quite short but the lower part extended well below the lower wing in level flight. All the tail surfaces had curved leading edges; the two blade propeller was immediately behind their straight

trailing edge The trailing edge of an aerodynamic surface such as a wing is its rear edge, where the airflow separated by the leading edge meets.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third edition'', page 521. Aviation Supplies & Academics, 1997. ...

s. The W-1's undercarriage was also unusual. Though the mainwheels were conventionally positioned close to the cg and mounted on a rigid single axle attached to the fuselage by a pair of V-struts, it had a nosewheel of about the same diameter; unlike that of modern

tricycle gear Tricycle gear is a type of aircraft undercarriage, or ''landing gear'', arranged in a tricycle fashion. The tricycle arrangement has a single nose wheel in the front, and two or more main wheels slightly aft of the center of gravity. Tricycle g ...

it was well above the ground when the aircraft was in the level flight position. On the ground the W-1 rested level on its mainwheels and a tailskid on the tall lower fin. The W-1 made only two short test flights, the first in the autumn of 1915, which revealed severe and ultimately insurmountable cooling problem with the buried engine. The development programme was abandoned in December 1915.

Specifications

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite book , last=Green , first=William , first2= Gordon, last2= Swanborough , title=The Complete Book of Fighters , date=1994, publisher=Salamander Books, location=Godalming, UK, isbn=1-85833-777-1, page=595 Single-engined pusher aircraft Biplanes 1910s French fighter aircraft W-1 Rotary-engined aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1915