Rumpler Taube

[castiglione]

Does anyone have any information on the "standard" armament on the Rumpler Taube? I imagine the most it could carry in the way off weaponry would've been a rifle or carbine carried by the observer; was it capable of carrying a machine gun without a deleterious reduction in performance?

[Manfred]

Wikipedia says it only had hand dropped bombs, pistols, and machine guns. I'll try to find more info.

[Old Man]

At the start of the war, even when German aircrew carried side-arms, they were supposed to be used only for self defense in case of a forced landing.

Bombs were certainly carried at times, and they were not only hand dropped: racks were in existance, mostly I believe of the sort that held the missile in a cage upright, nose pointed down.

I do recall reading of a proposal originating before the war for equipping a Taube with a machine-gun, and the argument being advanced that the monoplane design offered dvantages for field of fire, but do not recall if any experiment was actually carried out. I have two books touching on the subject, and will hunt them up and try and provide more detail tomorrow.

On a side note, I believe that the Rumpler Taube was not so predominant in German service at the start of the war as is popularly supposed. Rumpler had great advantages of publicity due to a long legal battle with Etrich, an Austrian, over the design, and the name took on a generic quality in the public imagination. In any case, the Taubes did not last long in front-line service after the war began, and indeed were even before it started in the way of being phased out of active service.

[Old Man]

First, regarding machine-gun armament of Taubes. My recollection of a passage in Mr. John Morrow's "Building German Airpower, 1910-1914" was not quite accurate. Mr. Morrow states the Taube offered an excellent field of fire for a machine-gun, in a paragraph that gives the views of Maj. Siegert on the suitability of differing types of aeroplane for miltary usage before the war began. The paragraph is sourced to documents of the Miltary Science Department of the German Air Force (KAdL), but it is not clear whether the comment concerning field of fire is Maj. Siegert's or the author's. In Col. John de Vries' old monograph "Taube, Dove of War", the author says: "Vague references to machine-gun armed Taubes are to be found in 1912 French publications and 'Flugsport' of 1914." He also notes three references from "Flight" between Nov. 1914 and April 1915 to Taubes armed with machine-guns or "quick-firing" guns. His final word, though, is that no positive verification exists, and that certainly no photograph of a Taube so equipped has ever come to light, at least by the late seventies. I am quite inclined to discount the "Flight" references entirely, and put little weight on the French press of 1912 either. "Flugsport" might have been a little better informed, but I suspect "puffery" in any such account in 1914. There may also have been some confusion between such monoplane experiments as Schnieder's armed L.V.G. monoplane, or Fokker A-types fitted with stocked and extended barreled Mauser automatic pistols, photographs of which do survive, and Taubes, given the emblematic associations "Taube" acquired.

Col. de Vries says that bomb racks on Taubes are confirmed, and frequently referenced, and includes a photograph of a Rumpler Taube flown by Lt. Canter so equipped. I do not have a scanner available, but I believe the photograph could be found in circulation. The rack is directly under the observer's cockpit on the center-line, and seems to consist of a bar along the axis of the fuselage, from which several cages extend downwards, holding bombs vertically, nose down. The photograph shows two "Carbonite" missiles, but it seems to my eye, anyway, that there are two empty holders there as well. But it is difficult to judge, given the shadow and the clutter of the undercarriage and bracings in the small reproduction.

I understand the "Windsock" people have recently released a "Taubes at War" monograph, but I have not purchased it yet, and it might shed some further light on the matter for you.

[Dan_San_Abbott]

castiglione:
The Ru Class A aircraft, (two place unarmed monoplane) were in effectual when put in war time conditions, and for the most part disappeared from the Western front by the end of October 1914. Those other Taube types made by other manufacture lasted until mid 1915. The most succesful a.Class machines were Fokkers A.I, (M.8) A.II(M.5L) and A.III(M.5K), and the Gotha A/14 which lasted in to early 1916. The two-seat single engined unarmed biplane replaced the Class monoplanes very quickly on both the Western and Eastern Fronts. Both A and B classes quickly disappeared when the Class C armed two seater appeared in June 1915.
Blue skies,
Dan-San