SPAD (Société Pour L'Aviation et ses Dérivés)

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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.
 
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!"
 
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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