Wight Navyplane
Страна: Великобритания
Год: 1913


Wight No 1 Seaplane at East Cowes, summer 1913.
White Seaplane
Wight No 2 Navyplane at White’s Gridiron Yard, 1913.
The prototype of the Wight 1914 Enlarged Navyplane, built by renowned shipbuilding company J. Samuel White, at the Olympia Aero Show in March 1914.
The pusher seaplane designed by Howard-Wright while chief designer to Samuel White of Cowes. Superficially the machine does not look very unusual, but it had an extraordinary wing profile in which the bottom camber was normal, but the top surface was "double-cambered," i.e., was pinched inwards at about mid-chord. Wind tunnel tests indicated the wing to be very efficient, and Howard-Wright applied the same principle to the airscrew. Whether there really was "anything in it," is, perhaps, now open to doubt, but at the time the invention caused quite a stir.
A bigger version of the Wight Navyplane of 1913, which had three-bay wings, the five-bay 1914 Navyplane was powered by a 200 h.p. Salmson two-row liquid-cooled radial engine. The largest seaplane in the world at the time, the type was ordered by the British and German Admiralties.
The 1914 Enlarged Navyplane in flight during trials at Cowes. Germany’s first example of the type was launched on May 16, 1914, after which it was delivered by sea to Kiel. Sadly, England’s partner-in-crime, Kapitan-leutnant Schroeter, was killed in the Enlarged Navyplane on June 25, 1914, the day after their “wicked” overflight.