 The Supply Room Rubber motors, balsa wood supplies, and more. |
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Sopwith Triplane |
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The Supply Room Rubber motors, balsa wood supplies, and more. |
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Sopwith Triplane |
Click for Larger Picture $5.95
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Ernst Heinkel, founder of
Heinkel Aircraft Works
had owned a single factory in Warnemunde on the Baltic coast. When the
Nazis came to power in Berlin in 1933, they financed the building of
two
more plants, near Rostock and Berlin, for their growing war machine.
Heinkel
hired two talented designers, the brothers Siegfried and Walter Gunter,
who took the lead in crafting airplanes for his expanding
firm.
Their first important success was the He 51. Built initially as an airliner and mail plane, the Luftwaffe—the Nazi Air Force—also used it as a bomber. Highly streamlined, it had a top speed of 233 miles per hour (375 kilometers per hour) and cruised at 190 miles per hour (306 kilometers per hour) During 1933, it set eight world speed records for aircraft of its type. powered by a 750 HP V-12 BMW V1 engine, a feature of which was the six exhaust pipes which vented vertically downwards on each side of the engine. Armament was two 7.9 mm MG-17 machine guns capable of firing 1,200 rounds per minute mounted above the engine. Reloading was done manually. Deliveries to the Luftwaffe began in mid-1934. |
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Fokker D-VII Click for Larger Picture $5.95 |
The Fokker D-VII
was unquestionably the best all-round
German fighter of World War I. The D-VII entered service in April 1918
and the first batch went to jagcigeschwader I, Manfred von Richthofen's
famous flying circus--the Red Baron himself.
The D-VII was very strong, light and rigid, giving it a structural superiority over all other World War I fighters. Its toughness pleased the German frontline pilots, and their confidence was well founded: in spite of violent maneuvers in battle, daring nose dives and hits from enemy fire, the D-VII rarely conked out. When the Armistice was signed The Allies insisted that all Fokker D-VIIs be handed over to them. No other aircraft was mentioned by name, and the allies took great care that this remarkable aeroplane was piled into giant heaps and set on fire. Nevertheless Fokker managed to smuggle 60 trainloads of planes and parts out of Germany into Holland, enabling him to set up his new company. |
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Spirit of St. Louis Click for Larger Picture $5.95 |
"The Spirit of St. Louis is
a wonderful plane. It’s
like a living creature, gliding along smoothly, happily, as though a
successful
flight means as much to it as to me, as though we shared our
experiences
together, each feeling beauty, life, and death as keenly, each
dependent
on the other’s loyalty. We have made this flight across the ocean, not
I or it."
- Charles Lindbergh, 1927
"Spirit of St. Louis" was named in honor of Lindbergh's supporters in
St.
Louis, Missouri, who paid for the aircraft. "NYP" is an acronym for
"New
York-Paris," the object of the flight.
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The Wright Flyer Click for larger picture $1.95 |
The first successful controlled flight was made at Kittyhawk, North Carolina. The Wrights chose this location because of the numerous sand dunes that would afford some cushion for a crash. The 1903 Wright Flyer was constructed of spruce and ash then covered with muslin. The framework "floated" within fabric pockets sewn inside, making the muslin covering an integral part of the structure. This ingenious feature made the aircraft light, strong, and flexible. The 1903 Flyer was powered by a simple four-cylinder engine of the Wrights' own design. |