Loss of Upper Wing

[Roadhog]

Dear gamers, I was goofing off one night last month after I got home from the hospital, playing Red Baron II. I was flying an Albatros D-III against a skilled French flyer in a Nieuport 17 at low altitude in hilly, forrested terrain. During diving and ensuing manuevers the plane almost shook apart and I was informed via script that I had just lost my upper wing.

Still the plane flew one straight and I was able to cut back the throttle and gradually lose altitude and crashland the plane and survived.

Could this have really happened in real life? Is there any such cases on record? Was this a fluke? BTW, don't ask what happened to the Frenchman, he was probably above me laughing his ass off.

Thanks for any help. VR, Roadhog "Memnto mori."

[FlyXwire]

Roadhog,

I'd say bringing your Albatros down to a walk-away landing, after losing it's top wing, was very unlikely.

I've read of WWI scouts losing one of their bottom wings during the war, with the pilot able to manage a crash landing, but losing the lifting area, and the bracing of a biplane's upper wing for instance, would have jeopardized the tensioned support needed to maintain the lower wing's positional integrity......most multi-wing configurations depended on mutually-supporting bracing (structurally they're wing cellules).

Additionally, not only would lift and wing support have been substantially degraded when losing the top wing, but longitudal balance (CG) would be tremendously upset with the loss of the upper wing's weight, and with most aileron cable controls being routed through the upper wing, this means that most lateral pilot input would have been lost also, let alone the aileron's themselves (see my assembled chart below):

[JFM]

I had the same thing happen to me in RB3D, flying an Alb D.III. I used rudder and power to get the plane turned around and back over the lines, where I made a beautiful landing. Using yaw to raise/lower the wings was no sweat, and the plane was perfectly balanced throughout.

Oh, well. At least I got her home.

[ONEALM]

Roadhog -

Once the upper wing is gone, the lowers will follow in quick order and you'll be flying a Lawn Dart with a 200 HP engine. Looks, smells and will act exactly the same - nose down, smoking hole at the end of the ride.

Structurally, the only thing really providing any support whatever for the lower wings is the "box" formed by the Upper wing, struts and to some extent the rigging.

Guess the designers missed that small point.....

Mike

[MilesC]

W/C Norman MacMillan in his WWI autobiography "Into the Blue" mentioned that one day he was trying out a new Camel in England and noticed that the upper wings had lifted off of their central struts and were about to tear away. He throttled back and they returned to their proper places on the struts. Being extremely cautious he got it down again and he and the mechanics analyzed the cause. It turned out that the factory forgot to insert the pins to hold the upper wing onto the central struts. He hypothesized that this may have been the cause of many of the unexplained, instantaneous losses of Camels around that time. They suddenly turned into lawn-darts. So, the answer is "No", most WWI biplanes would not fly with the upper wings missing.

[Executioner128]

Upper wings particularly broke off during Triplane flights

[David_Layton]

As an old RB 3D'er (My on-line game Nom de Sim was 'Moritz') let me add something to the conversation.

The folks at Sierra were in the habit of using exagerated wing damage to show that you were hit. On some of the plane type flight models, losing a wing gave you a faster controllable plane. This was a source of frustration in the RB community.

This dumbed down damage and graphic model, I believe, was massaged in some of the non-official patches.

In real life wing failure was a sudden and explosive event. I have a photo or a very good WWI era drawing in my bound copy of La Guerre Avion vol 1 showing a Nieuport folding up in mid air. Very scary to look at.

[Simba]

A German pilot called von Hippel famously survived the loss of a lower mainplane on his Albatros D.V. The change from the conventional interplane struts of the D.II variant to the sesquiplane V-strut arrangement led to a flexing of the lower mainplane in torsion; the wing would twist around its single mainspar above a certain airspeed and usually broke off downwards at the root fitting. The phenomenon was described in an article in an early issue of 'Aeroplane Enthusiast', I forget which number.

Von Hippel survived because the D.V's aileron control cables were routed through the upper wing; all other Albatros 'V-strutter' variants had the cable routed through the lower wing and up to the aileron. Had he been flying any of those, he'd have been left with no aileron control - ouch!