Dominators of the Air: the Royal Aircraft Factory S.E. 5a & the Fokker D.VII, by Javier Arango

In the history of aviation, our sources are already almost exclusively held statically in books. They are plentiful, but we can no longer ask a pilot or an aircraft designer what things were really like. Worst of all, aviation has changed so significantly that much of what those historical documents presume to be common sense no longer makes sense to us at all. Understanding the flight characteristics of a WWI aircraft from just reading about it is very hard. We no longer share a common language of flying with the writer. Our experience flying modern aircraft is so vastly different that when a WWI pilot describes his airplane as a good flying airplane, we cannot truly understand his perspective, as that same airplane to us would most likely be a menacing, unstable and dangerous machine.

But in aviation, unlike many other fields of historical study, we have a slight advantage. Even though the human participants may have died, some of the technology they used still survives and functions in one form or another. Very few original WWI aircraft do actually exist in flying condition, but accurate reproductions with original engines can be created. I have been fortunate enough to have flown such reproductions of two of the most famous fighter planes of WWI: the Fokker D.VII and the Royal Aircraft Factory's SE5. My experience flying those aircraft, as well as many other WWI airplanes, has given me a "hands-on" insight into the nature of their flight, and, in a limited way, they have helped me supplement what the written record says about them. I have piloted two different Fokker D.VIIs and three SE5s, all of which were reproduced from good, diverse, sources of information and by separate groups in different countries from the 1960s through the 1990s. I found no significant differences in flight characteristics among both Fokker D.VIIs and the SE5s. This, in a way, validates that the aircraft are truly representative of the originals.  ~ Javier Arango

SE5a from the Aeroplane Collection. Note the top-mounted Lewis gun. (Photo courtesy of Phil Makanna of Ghosts)

SE5a Scouts of 85 Squadron,
St. Omer Aerodrome, 21 June 1918

SE5a, 1917

 

Armament: 1 Lewis & 1 Vickers
 

Ceiling: 19, 500 ft., maximum
 

Endurance: 3 hrs.
 

Engine: 180-hp Hispano-Suiza V-8
 

Height: 9 ft. 6 in.
 

Span: 26 ft. 7 3/8 in.
 

Speed: 120 mph
 

Weight: 2000 lbs., loaded

 

 

 

An SE5 Ace Looks Back

 
Just before my nineteenth birthday I was posted to London Colney to join No. 56 Squadron, which was then forming to go overseas. The squadron was to be equipped with the SE 5, the last word in fighting-scouts, turned out by the Royal Aircraft Factory. It was fitted with a 140-h.p. Hispano Suiza engine Constantinesco gear; and one Lewis gun,clamped on to the top plane firing over the propeller. To change the drums, the Lewis could be pulled down on a quadrant mounting, and in this position it could, if necessary, be fired straight upwards. 

The machine (for 1917) was quite fast. It would do about a hundred and twenty on the level and climb ten thousand feet in twelve minutes. It could be looped and rolled and dived vertically without breaking up. Altogether it was a first-class fighting-scout (probably the most successful designed during the war), and was relied upon to re-establish the Allied air supremacy lost during the winter.

[Later back on the Western Front] Offensive Patrols were carried out daily, and, unfortunately, it soon became clear that, good as the SE 5 was, it was still not equal to the enemy...Later, when the SE 5 got a larger motor [SE 5a, ed.] things looked up.  

                                                                                                ~ Cecil Lewis, Sagittarius Rising

 

 

 

 

           Fokker D.VII from the Aeroplane Collection (Photo courtesy of Phil Makanna of Ghosts)

 

 

  

 

Armament: twin 7.92 mm Spandaus 

Ceiling: 19,685 ft., maximum 

Endurance: 1.5 hrs.; Engine: 160-hp Mercedes in-line 

Height: 9 ft. ¼ in. 

Span: 29 ft. 2 1/3 in.  

Speed: 117.4 mph   

Weight: 1984 lbs, loaded  

 

 A D.VII Ace Looks Back    
        
"Every evening between eight and nine, two Sopwith Camels come over to drop leaflets. Somebody shows me one of these things. It has a black-red-yellow border. Supposed deserters are prompting the soldiers in the trenches to do likewise."Between eight and nine, you say?"

I scrape together some gas from among my buddies and take off. The sun is already low in the west, framing the clouds in a pale golden color.

South of Foucaucourt I meet the two. One immediately takes off westward; the other remains. He rains leaflets on me from above. We begin to maneuver. With his smaller, lighter aircraft, he can make tighter circles than I with my heavy Fokker D VII. But I stay behind him. He tries to shake me and starts a loop from barely one hundred meters altitude. I follow on his heels, and at the apex I flash on underneath him. My turning radius is larger than his. I feel a slight blow, and when I look down again, I see him creeping laboriously from the wreckage of his aircraft. German soldiers are picking him up. I don't know what happened. The only thing I can figure is that I must have rammed him as I flew past. It was my third fight today. The clock shows eight-forty.

 

Three days later I visit him in the hospital in Foucaucourt. As a return favor for his leaflets, I bring him a box of cigars made from beech leaves. My surmise was correct. At the apex of the loop, my undercarriage rammed his upper wing plane, which cracked out beyond the struts. "I wasn't prepared for this kind of clinch fighting," he said laughingly. He is a nice fellow, a student from Ontario.

Fifteen years later, at a flying meet in Los Angeles, I hear from him again. Roscoe Turner brings me a leaflet on his nonstop cross-continent flight. It has a black-red-yellow border, coming from supposed deserters, addressed to the soldiers in the trenches. It is the last of his supply, and he forgot to throw it at me in 1918.    ~ Ernst Udet, Ace of the Iron Cross