Hybrid biplane of the Russian civil war (1917-1922)

[Tuizentfloot]

It is known that during the Russian civil war (1917-1922) the Red side built some hybrid planes from parts of captured British and French aircraft. Photographs and information are scarce.

In K-H. Eyermann, Die Luftfahrt der UdSSR 1917-1977 (Berlin, 1977), p. 23, these two photographs allegedly illustrate a neat looking biplane (single seater?) built from captured aircraft.

I have some doubts if this is really such a hybrid. It is certainly not crudely built.

Does anyone knows this plane?

 

[hi-flyer]

This looks very much like a SPAD SA 2 or SA 4 with the front 'pulpit' position removed altogether and the engine moved forward to restore the c.g. position. Look at the undercarriage of the first photo: it is identical with the SPAD's, complete with the forward extension at axle level to which the pulpit supports were attached. The A 2 was of course very unpopular with pulpit gunners as they would be crushed in a landing accident. Converting the aircraft to a single-seater probably improved its performance and manoeuvrability.

 

[Tuizentfloot]

Thank you, hi-flyer, your answer seems very plausible. In any case the plane has certainly a SPAD-look (not only the undercarriage). Unfortunately the photographs are heavily retouched.

If really built during the civil war it was certainly a one-off conversion. Few of the 100 Russian A.2's were still available at that time.

 

[iverson]

If really built during the civil war it was certainly a one-off conversion. Few of the 100 Russian A.2's were still available at that time.

I found an image of a Red S.P.A.D A2 in my collection (atached), so at lest a few were available. I believe that single-seat conversions that retained the pulpit but replaced the gunner with 2-3 fixed guns were also produced prior to the revolution.

 

[Tuizentfloot]

Thank you, iverson. Since both sides in the civil war flew with everything they could find, certainly a very limited number of survivors of this unpopular plane were in service. Probably briefly.

 

[Tuizentfloot]

Rereading Shavrov’s Istoriya (vol 1, 3th edition, 1986, p. 310) I came across the answer to my question. As said by hi-flyer it was an adaptation of the Spad SA-2 (or the SA-4, since both were in Russian service). And it was not an hybrid plane built from different parts of others.

It was the idea of the Red military pilot R.E. Yarmorkin, who early in 1920 proposed to build an automatically stable aircraft by changing the inclination of the wings in flight. Yarmorkin got an old Spad to realise his project. Yarmorkin's plane was built in the workshop of the 4th Aviapark. The front position was removed, and the plane got a circular cowling around the Rhône, 110 hp, and a large spinner. is the aircraft with automatic stabilization by R.E. Yarmorkin. The wings could turn around an axe near the front longeron. The ailerons were removed.

The plane was test flown in Nizhny Novgorod in December 1920 by Yarmorkin himself and by S.F. Smirnov, a well-known Red pilot of the civil war period. It was not successful (impossible to obtain automatic longitudinal stability). Further work on the plane was stopped in 1922.

Sources:

Шавров, История конструкций самолетов в СССР до 1938г. (1986)

Хронология Ивана Родионова (v.10, 2014) – 1920, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/aviaprom/ver10/

 

[hesham]

Hi,

does anyone hear about Dil Experimental Recce Biplane of 1917 ?,it had a wing incidence controllable from the cockpit.

 

[Tuizentfloot]

Ivan Ivanovich Dil' (Иван Иванович Диль) has always been an enigmatic designer. There is only a very scarce biographical information on him.

From the following sources I tried to compile an overview of the aircraft designed by Dil':
- Шавров - История конструкций самолетов в СССР до 1938г., 1986, p. 208, 220
- Маслов - Русские самолеты 1914-1917, 2006, p. 87
- Кондратьев, Хайрулин - Авиация гражданской войны,1994, p. 35
- Хайрулин, Кондратьев - Военлеты погибшей империи. Авиация в Гражданской войне, 2008, p. 128
- Нешкин, Шабанов - Авиаторы - кавалеры ордена Св. Георгия и Георгиевского оружия периода Первой мировой войны 1914-1918 годов, 2006, p. 20
- Соболев - Наши соотечественники в зарубежном авиастроении, 1996, pp. 31-34
- Демин - Авиация Великого соседа. Книга 1. У истоков китайской авиации, 2008, pp. 31-32
- Andersson - A History of Chinese Aviation, 2008, p. 63, 263

Since 1910 Dil' worked as an aircraft mechanic at the flying school of Gatchina. At the outbreak of WWI he became an aircraft mechanic and non-commissioned officer at the 6th Aviapark (South-Western Front).
In 1916 he participated in the design and construction of the VI (ВИ), the Voisin LAS modification by P. Ivanov, later series built by Anatra.
His first own design appeared in 1917, a two seat biplane with variable incidence of the wings, a common characteristic of all the Dil' planes.
After the revolution he took side with the Whites, and in 1919 built a second plane for the army of admiral Kolchak.
After the defeat of the Kolchak regime, he ended in the vast White Russian colony in Harbin, Manchuria. In Manchuria he built some other airplanes, before he apparently left for the USA. But nothing more is known of Dil' afterwards (according to Sobolev in the USA he took the name John Dil).

Aircraft designed by I.I. Dil'

1917 Biplane with 1 x 80 hp, Rhône. Two seater. Built in Zhmerinka (Жмеринка) at the Aviapark. It crashed on its first flight on 18 May 1917.

1919 Biplane with 1 x 110 hp, Rhône. Two seater. Built in Omsk at the Central Aviation Workshops of admiral Kolchak's army (TsAM - ЦАМ, Центральные авиационные мастерские). First flight: 18 August 1919 with lt. Rozhdestvensky (Рождественский). Good results, and 10 were ordered from TsAM in September 1919. None built.
In January 1920, after the defeat of the Kolchak regime, Dil' went with his second aircraft in service with the regime of ataman Semyonov in Chita. The same year he took refuge, still with his second plane, in the vast White Russian colony in Harbin, Manchuria.
On 22 September 1920 the well-known pilot A.Ya. Abakumenko (А.Я. Абакуменко) crashed to his death at the hippodrome of Harbin while flying the Dil' biplane.
It seems that this crashed plane was rebuilt, and after the reconstruction made his first flight on 8 June 1922, and a second flight on 18 June 1922. Pilot was D.A. Kudlayenko (Д.А. Кудлаенко - and not Kudaienko, as says Andersson).
British and American witnesses described the performances as exceptional, despite the old engine.
The Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin (Chang Tso-lin) began negotiations to buy the biplane (and other former White Russian armaments). In October 1922 it went in service with the Manchurian military, together with a number of White Russian pilots and mechanics.

1923 Biplane with 1 x 130 hp. Clerget. Two seater built in Harbin for the army of Zhang Zuolin. In service in July 1923.

1923 Biplane with 1 x 300 hp Salmson. Two seater for the army of Zhang Zuolin. Two built in Harbin. In service in July 1923.

 

[hesham]

Wow,you made my day,thank you my dear Tuizentfloot.

 

[hesham]

Hi,

does anyone hear about Dil Experimental Recce Biplane of 1917 ?,it had a wing incidence controllable from the cockpit.

From this Russian book,

Ivan Ivanovich Dil in the period 1910-1913
He was a mechanic at the Gatchina Aviation School.
The beginning of the design activity of non-commissioned
officer Dil refers to 1916, when he
participated in the creation of a modified
aircraft "Voisin" pilot P. Ivanov. In the period 1916-17. Diehl built a two-seat biplane with a rotary engine "Rhone"
80 hp.The aircraft, intended for use as a reconnaissance aircraft, had a mechanism for changing the angle of the wings. At tests in Zhmerinka on May 5, 1917, the apparatus crashed.

With the outbreak of the civil war, Dil joined the White movement. In 1919, while in Kolchak's army, he built a biplane in Omsk with a wing having a mechanism for changing the angle of attack. aircraft equipped with
engine "Rhone" 110 hp successfully flew and
even recommended for adoption.

In the early 1920s, I.I. Dil was in Manchuria (China), where he managed to build several more successful flying machines. In 1924 he emigrated to the USA.