# SPAD (Société Pour L'Aviation et ses Dérivés)



## Snautzer01 (Feb 24, 2017)

SA2


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## Wurger (Feb 24, 2017)




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## buffnut453 (Feb 24, 2017)

I see the trend for French planes to be ugly started in the early years of aviation.


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## tyrodtom (Feb 24, 2017)

You take away that front gunners gondola you end up with something that closely resembles the later Spad 7 &13.

I wonder just how safe that gunner felt ? If the opponents gunfire didn't get him, then a simple hard landing could really be painful.


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## buffnut453 (Feb 24, 2017)

There were a couple of designs like this that were tried during WWI. The RFC tried this effort, the BE9 which looks like a modified BE2:







It does make me shudder to think of flying (and, worse, fighting) in that machine. Shades of the immortal call of the Wild Weasels "YGBSM!"


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## Robert Porter (Feb 24, 2017)

Kind of brings new meaning to the term "Cut your nose off to spite your face!"


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## tyrodtom (Feb 24, 2017)

I'll bet they weren't over run by troops volunteering to be gunners in those aircraft.


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## vikingBerserker (Feb 24, 2017)

That would require a lot of bourbon!


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## Snautzer01 (Feb 26, 2017)

How about this for a model? SPAD VII abgeschossen von Jasta36 am 6.4.1917

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## Wurger (Feb 26, 2017)




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## Snautzer01 (Feb 27, 2017)




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## Wurger (Feb 27, 2017)




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## Graeme (Mar 1, 2017)

tyrodtom said:


> I wonder just how safe that gunner felt ?



The Russian SA.4 experience...

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## Graeme (Mar 1, 2017)

There was an experimental version of the S2 that replaced the gunner (much to his relief) with a nose containing Hotchkiss MGs and fired by the pilot...


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