Ricky wrote in news:5f96da3b-7f80-4b6f-aac7-
:


I am not an expert on aerodynamics so I do not know much about the
pros & cons of a monoplane vs. a biplane or triplane.
I've a re-kindled interest in the Red Baron recently and was looking
at a Fokker Triplane replica picts & videos and doing a bit of reading
about it's flying characteristics.
I have not, however, read much about the "advantage" of 3 wings. I can
guess that there would be quite a bit of maneuverability but also a
lot of drag.
Why a triplane? What are some of it's "advantages?" What are some
"disadvantages?"

Well, the Sopwith Triplane was the reason Tony went for a triplane
design.
The Sopwiht had some reasonable level of succes. Sopwith went for it
mostly to improve visibviliy, believe it or not.
In fact, there are no aerodynamic avantages. None at all. The center
plane is almost completely useless. There's a lot of interplane
interference with a biplane, though this can be put to some advantage
with decalage and stagger. Basically, the one plane influences the
other. With a tripe, the top and bottom planes affect the center, which
can't be practically spaced from it's neighbors givng it very little
lift and effectively neutralising it.
There were actually very few DR1s built. A few hundred IIRC.It would
have been forgotten but that Richtofen died in one. All sides tried
them. The Neiuport tripe showed an interesting approach to getting
around the interplane interference problems by a multiple stagger
approach ( look one up, it;s hard to descibe) Albatross, Pfalz,
Armstrong Whitworth and a few others tried them and all abandoned them
eventually. Tony Fokker built a bunch of different tripes, including a
tandem triplane giving a total of six wings!
The biplane was a pretty good way to go and the monoplane was up and
coming, particularly with the Germans, so the triplane was largely
ignored after that.


Bertie