A Wildly Painted Bird
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Painted like a bird with feathers. One of the first aircraft designs to use winglets. Sometimes called the Firebird. One of the world’s
Category: What’s That?
An Air Racer Turned Deadly
This Week’s Hints to help you along: An air racer that became a fighter plane. Scored 12 kills after it was withdrawn from service. Flew in active military service in
A Competition Winner
This Week’s Hints to help you along: This aircraft won numerous competitions. An innovative design by one of the great engineers. A two-seat aircraft powered by a British engine. The
A Radical Testbed
This Week’s Hints to help you along: This is another experimental aircraft. Built by designers in an unexpected country. Just what are those big paddles above the wing? Influences from
Secret Weapons of the…
This Week’s Hints to help you along: An experimental, secret weapon design. Three engines — two on the nose, one in the tail. The war ended before it was ready
The Little Tub
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Displayed at Harrod’s at the end of the Great War. An early “ultralight”, in a class of its own. No fixed tail —
An Early Tilt Rotor?
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A 1930s era design, from a patent filing done in the USA. Was it a US design or from Europe; what lines are
The First Fork Tail?
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A twin-tailed plane designed for the military. Early enough that it uses wing warping! A Wright design — with Manning, however. 2,000 total
Quite a Bus
This Week’s Hints to help you along: For the darkness of night, a shadow falls across the Moon. There might be a good clue in the tail design. This came
To the Extremes — and Beyond
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Just whose roundel insignia is that — French, British, something else? Are those Americans in uniform walking around the plane? Developed for very
A Ground Attack Triplane
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Designed specifically for ground attack, yet a triplane! The personnel look quite lax — yet is it from the interwar period? A single
A Flying Cartoon
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A fat, pudgy, shortened, cartoonish design from Germany. Certainly unique, in all respects — only one was built! It flew, though not well;
Seven Records to Obscurity
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A truly record-setting airplane with seven records in its class. Unique in design, unique in construction, and unique overall. Often missed though it
A Michigan Catastrophe
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Oh the tragedy, the ill will of the skies and the wires! The True North strong and free! From far and wide…. A
A Rare Three-Engine Beast
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Originally designed with radials, flown with 4 cyl. inline engines. Performed well, but only six were built despite marketing efforts. Could this have
A Retracting Float Seaplane
This Week’s Hints to help you along: After take-off, the pilots retracts the float against the fuselage. The wing floats retract outward and form wingtip fairings. Designed to hunt submarines;
From Instructor to Fighter
This Week’s Hints to help you along: The tail design might help you, but probably not…. Exceedingly rare and later scrapped after rejection by the military. Sleek, but still a
Ungainly to a Tee
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Perhaps the least likely mass produced bomber in history. An unexpected country of origin, quite unlike other such designs. Designed for night bombing
An Innovative Duster
This Week’s Hints to help you along: An agricultural aircraft with many unique features. Designed by a man of Italian descent, but very far from Italy. Could drop bundles of
An Improved Model
This Week’s Hints to help you along: We don’t know where to start with this — but it did fly. Designed before the Wright Brothers first came to Europe. A
No Visible Support
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Features a radical reduction in the number of struts for racing. Created for competition and aerobatics, especially for looping. Seemingly underpowered, but light
A Red Firecracker
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A two-seat hot rod with a 125 hp engine. Delayed by war and only a handful built. Developed further into agricultural applications. A
A Strange Bird
This Week’s Hints to help you along: The tail shape (and tail flash) tell a lot. Whose markings are those on the side of the fuselage? Twin-engined but so aerodynamically
Not Quite Defiant
This Week’s Hints to help you along: No relationship to the Boulton Paul Defiant. Incredible firepower through the nose! A V-12 engine gave it extraordinary power and speed. Designed by
A Corrugated Duralumin Mess
This Week’s Hints to help you along: An all-metal concept using riveted duralumin sheets. Look Ma! No bottom wing! The tail is a giveaway of the manufacturer’s marque. Testing in
A Rare Bullet Bird
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Unique truly applies — there was only one. A late experiment in bird-like designs — nearly to World War I. Aerodynamically ahead of
An All-Metal Wonder
This Week’s Hints to help you along: An all-metal aircraft in a time of fabric and wire. The designer invented the world’s first flying wing — in 1910! An little
A Long Nose Probe?
This Week’s Hints to help you along: This is definitely an American design. Your answer must include information about the nose. Flying over the USA in tests — but what’s
A Line of Mystery
This Week’s Hints to help you along: That isn’t from France, Britain or Germany. Are those single engine bombers or something else. The tail flash is still a tricolor, but
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Without an engine, clearly a glider. Designed for training rather than pleasure. Extremely sensitive on the rudders. A French tail flash gives an
An Innovative Float Plane
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Those corrugated aluminum wings remind us of a Ford Trimotor. A mid-wing design when most others were high wing or biplanes. A radial
A Serious Record-Setter
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Built by an unlikely company in an unexpected place. Highly streamlined — for speed records or for something else. Massive in size with
At the Grand Palais
This Week’s Hints to help you along: This curious design was displayed at the Grand Palais in November 1912. 100 years ago today this was one of the most innovative
Is that a Boeing?
This Week’s Hints to help you along: That may be a Boeing marque on the tail, but…. The cockpit is distinctly a Dornier-type design. Two 1,400 hp engines gave a
An Innovative Plane
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Twin-engine but with pusher props on the nacelles. Are those crew stations on the engine nacelles? Clearly an American machine, but was it
A Radical Flying Wing
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A two-seater, featuring a side-by-side cockpit design. The designer’s one and only aircraft creation. Is that an early flying wing, parallel to the
A Firecracker with a V-12
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Sporting a supercharged V-12 engine imported from Central Europe. One of the few planes to bear a swastika with two air forces. Its
The Ace’s Steed
This Week’s Hints to help you along: This aircraft is one of the few that defended its own factory at the outset of the war. In the hands of one
A Horse of Another Color?
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Well, it looks very familiar at least but this one never flew for the USAF. Is that a two person cockpit or just
Little Hot Rod
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Absolutely unique in both form and function. Destroyed by fire in the first weeks of the war. Two 20mm cannons in the wings.