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Thursday, August 12, 2010

Hanriot






Here are some images of Eduard's 1/48 scale Hanriot HD 1. From Wikipedia "

The Hanriot HD.1 was a French World War I single seat fighter. Rejected for service with French squadrons in favour of the SPAD S.7, the type was supplied to the Belgians and the Italians with whom it proved highly successful. 831 of a total production of about 1200 were in fact produced by Italian companies under licence.

The Hanriot company produced a series of pioneering monoplanes pre-war, but had settled down as a licence manufacturer, notably of Sopwith 1½ strutters, when the HD.1 was produced in 1916.

The type was a conventional fighter with the general characteristics of a typical Sopwith type, being strongly but lightly built, and combining clean lines with a light wing loading. In particular, it used the same “1½” (or "W") cabane strut arrangement as the Sopwith two seater. It had a flat lower wing – but the top wing had quite sharp dihedral.

On the power of its 110 hp Le Rhone rotary it was not outstandingly fast, but it was very manoeverable and proved popular with pilots as a safe and pleasant aircraft to fly. To maintain a competitive climbing and altitude performance it proved necessary to restrict armament to a single synchronised Vickers gun, although two could be fitted, and occasionally were. The gun(s) were fitted to the side of the cockpit, and were accessible to the pilot without the butts being directly in front of his face in the event of a crash - an unusual but welcome feature.

The type was also produced by the Nieuport-Macchi company of Varese, Italy, which built almost 900 HD.1s between 1917 and 1919, more than the parent firm.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think this is an elegant design. The dihedral of the upper wing is pleasing to the eye. I like the colors and markings you chose for this version. Very nice........ Who flew this?

Dave

-Warren Zoell said...

All I can tell you is that it was flown by 85 squadriglia Albania 1918.

Pat Tillett said...

Great model and paint job! Just what exacatly makes a plane design "sopwith?"

-Warren Zoell said...

The way I interpret it is the certain design characteristics that the British aircraft manufacturer Sopwith put into their aircraft.