SPAD (Société Pour L'Aviation et ses Dérivés)

[Snautzer01]

SA2

 

[Wurger]

 

[buffnut453]

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

 

[tyrodtom]

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.

 

[buffnut453]

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!"

 

[Robert Porter]

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

 

[tyrodtom]

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

 

[vikingBerserker]

That would require a lot of bourbon!

 

[Snautzer01]

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

 

[Wurger]

 

[Snautzer01]

 

[Wurger]

 

[Graeme]

I wonder just how safe that gunner felt ?

The Russian SA.4 experience...

 

[Graeme]

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...