Using Biplanes

Many of the planes that fought in World War I (1914-1918) were biplanes. There were fighters and bombers built by man­ufacturers such as Nieuport-Delage in France, Fokker in Germany, and Sopwith in the United Kingdom. The first four – engine bomber was a biplane-Igor Sikorsky’s giant Ilya Mourometz-that could carry sixteen people at 80 miles per hour (129 kilometers per hour). The Vickers Vimy airplane that made the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic

Ocean (June 14-15, 1919) was a biplane. So was the U. S. Army Air Service Martin MB-1 plane that made a “round the rim” flight, traveling the perimeter of the United States in November 1919.

In the 1920s, biplanes were used by barnstormers for aerobatic displays. Biplanes also carried mail and passen­gers when commercial airlines started running regular services. They were widely used by the military, both as land-based planes and as naval aircraft on the first aircraft carriers.

Biplanes and monoplanes competed on equal terms for the first thirty years of powered flight history. No airplane of the period could fly much faster than around 200 miles per hour (320 kilome­ters per hour). The fastest biplane fight­ers of the early 1930s, such as the British Hawker Fury, had a top speed of only 210 miles per hour (338 kilometers per hour). By the mid-1930s, however, a new era was dawning. Streamlined mono­planes were flying at over 300 miles per hour (480 kilometers per hour). Biplanes could not be stream­lined, and even with bigger engines they were unable to com­pete in terms of speed.

О An early airliner, the Handley Page 42 (HP-42) of the 1930s was a biplane with a luxurious lounge.

THE SESQUIPLANE

A variation of the biplane is the sesquiplane (literally, "one-and-a – half wings"). It has one wing (the lower) much smaller than the normal-sized upper wing. One of the largest of the sesquiplanes was the Antonov 2, originally a Soviet design of 1947, but later built in Poland and China. This sesquiplane carried up to twelve passengers, and it could land on snow (with skis) or on water (with floats) as well as operate from small wilderness airfields.

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