Albatros DIII bracing wires

[StephenLawson]

Using your nomenclature...it is
V-1
N-1
N-2
V-2

God luck. Stephen

[Romani]

Aaaaaarrrghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Too late, I rigged it already! And I was so happy of my deduction
snif!sob! buaaaaaahhhh! *crying*

I trust that you have seen the real thing and know it... but

Curse you, Red Baron!

Oh well, like if anybody is going to notice at this scale, and doesn't look bad at all. I wish kit instructions came with rigging notes!

[Romani]

Another rigging question:

One feature is a wire or pair of wires that comes from the nose to the wings. (of course each wire has an opposite on the other side so it's 2 or 4 wires)

I see considerable variation on this theme, I thought the second wire was added after the lower wing flutter problems were discovered, but examination of photos doesn't bear this out. Was the second nose wire a field modification or a factory one and it depends of manufacturer

So far I've noticed the following examples:

—Albatros DII

Single nose wire: Goes from nose to the top of V strut aft (towards the tail)

—Albatros DIII

-Some have 2 nose wires:
Top: Goes from nose to the top of V strut aft (towards the tail)
Bottom: Goes from nose to the bottom of V strut

-Others have just the bottom wire

In both cases the attachment holes in the nose are very close together being practically the same point
I had thought the OAW machines with the rounded rudder were the ones that had only 1 bottom wire, but I see it's not the case, in fact the 2 wire version seems to be the exception rather than the norm.

-Albatros DV. some examples such as Dostler 1060/17 or Könnecke "Green tail" have again a pair of wires, but in this case the holes are apart about 15 cm or so, so they crisscross in X shape near the nose, the top wire (nose to top of V strut) goes into the bottom nose hole

Yest most seem to have just the bottom wire.

-Albatros DVa

Just seems to have the bottom wire.

Probably this depends on the production batch, I guess than when the wing was reinforced , the top wire was no longer deemed neccesary. Or it could have been a field mod.

Anyway, best to see photos of the individual aircraft you are building, since not always the color profiles depict these nuances..tsk tsk

[StephenLawson]

Originally Posted by Romani

Another rigging question:

One feature is a wire or pair of wires that comes from the nose to the wings. (of course each wire has an opposite on the other side so it's 2 or 4 wires)

I see considerable variation on this theme, I thought the second wire was added after the lower wing flutter problems were discovered, but examination of photos doesn't bear this out. Was the second nose wire a field modification or a factory one and it depends of manufacturer... Probably this depends on the production batch, I guess than when the wing was reinforced , the top wire was no longer deemed neccesary. Or it could have been a field mod.

Anyway, best to see photos of the individual aircraft you are building, since not always the color profiles depict these nuances..tsk tsk

By jove I think 'es got it!

[StephenLawson]

Oh by the way even some of the Albatros D.Va types in Palestine in 1918 did not have them at all.

[Romani]

Ok , I don't know if Stephen Lawson was being ironic at the nonsense I was writing, because it came out quite confused as I wrote it as I thought it, and my punctuation was terrible. Or if he was praising me for noticing, as unlikely as it might be, what do I know, I think if I saw it, surely somebody has noticed before, but I think I'm onto something. In fact, I was surprised at reading the Squadron Signal book Albatros Fighters in Action, and see they got it backwards. The top nose wire came before the bottom one.

So let's try again.

The top nose wire is a feature inherited from the Albatros DII. Later, a bottom wire was added when the wing flutter problems became apparent. Or perhaps from the design stage. I don't know, but it's there.

I believe this bottom wire came from factory. Doing the neccesary stress calculations, making a wire of the appropiate length and installing the fittings for the attachment seems like a complex work and possibly not undertaken at an airfield. Perhaps in a Armee Flugpark, but I will assume the modification was done at the factory and the airplanes were delivered as it is.

It's confusing because the DIII and the DV coexisted for a long time, and later production DIIIs incorporated improvements of the DV

So, as far as I tell, early DIIIs until summer 1917 and early DVs that made the appearance at that time had 2 pairs of nose wires.

In the DV for further strenghtening the attachment points are displaced so they criss cross, why was it done? I don't know how to explain well in technical terms, but I will try saying that if you change the direction the wire is pulling from the wings, the components of the vector will change, exerting more force on the bottom wing to keep it in place. Or in plain words, by changing the attachment point more leverage is gained. I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.


It seems that sometime in mid 1917, it was decided that the top wire, the one that goes from the nose to the rear of the V strut was of not much use since the problem was with the lower wing, and would cause extra drag, so when the wing was reinforced and/or the small auxiliary struts were added to the V struts, the upper wire was eliminated as unnecessary and this change applied to both DIIIs and DVs.

I can only assume that the DVa types sent to Palestine in 1918 were of the last batches of the DVa and they had the wing strenghtened with the box spar and that did away with the neccesity of the bottom wire once and for all.

One more rigging oddity, perhaps related to the above, is that the Squadron Signal book shows a 3 plan view of the DV and I see photographs of DVa types with a new wire that goes from the bottom of the V strut towards the tip of the upper wing.

It can't be the aileron control wires, as the DV had the cables running through the upper wing, and the DVa reverted to the DIII exposed cables system. I am sure is an additional bracing wire.

In fact, on Osprey Albatros Aces you can see a picture of Böning checkered Albatros DVa in page 83 that shows it. On the left wing the aileron control cables are seen and they are distincint from that bracing wire.

It seems that this improvement was added to some later DVs and the last DIIIs to come out of the line before production ended in early 1918 as evidenced by the picture of Strähle's OAW DIII in the photo in page 79 of the same book.

It would be nice to conclude that these additional wires led to the removal of the nose wire as unnecesary, explaining the Palestine Albatros, but I have to point out that the nose wires are visible in Böning machine mentioned above. Again, is a matter of dates.

I hope all of this is of some use to somebody who is making a model, as there's so many variations, only a general guideline can be provided, so a good photo of the particular aircraft is neccesary, but if the details are not in visible, or in doubt, I hope this will help.

[StephenLawson]

Right on Romani. Some of the best research is done by....searching for clues. Photos are our best source. The internet has made many of us too lazy.

I seemed to remember a young man that impressed even Pete Grosz and A.E. Ferko with a similar piece of research. There was some confusion over what aircraft (serial number specific) MvR flew at what time. This young upstart (having almost all of the Cross & Cockade USA volumes in hand) searched through each volume noting every mention of a serial number within the specific batch, its unit and location. Doing so he proved that a specific serial number could not have been at the front when even the old hands of research thought it was there. Dig little brother dig.