Rabbit on Nostr: TIL about an interesting term, “The Triplane Phenomena”. It seems that just ...

TIL about an interesting term, “The Triplane Phenomena”. It seems that just before WW1, most planes were being produced with a single wing.. monoplanes, or eindeckers. After the outbreak of the war, there was rapid advancement and planes like the Newport 17 showed up; a biplane. The new biplanes out performed all the single wing planes due to a large number of innovations- better propellers, better engines, better understanding of aircraft design principles, better balance, larger control surfaces, etc... but people attributed it to the most obvious visual characteristic, the additional wing. Sopwith then rolled out their triplane, which advanced all those things again, but had an obvious third wing. When the Germans captured one and tested it, they were impressed with its performance, and German commanders demanded their own triplanes under the assumption that the performance was due to the three wing design. It turns out that was among the least of the contributors to their superior performance, and after a brief fad of triplanes and some attempts at more wings, engineers started to realize the original monoplane designs were superior.