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Armstrong Whitworth F.K.9

1916 WORLD WAR 1 X-PLANE

Armstrong Whitworth F.K. 9 Stories

During the First World War (1914-1918), many experiments with multiplane designs were carried out. Biplanes are more or less the standard fighter/bomber form, while some monoplanes spend a lot of time in the air. Triplanes made a brief but useful revolution, but quickly fell out of favor. In addition to these categories, there is also a "quadplane" - a four-wing layout designed to take advantage of the agility and control afforded by the use of four parallel planes in the wing structure to provide excellent lift and turning characteristics, This is essential for close combat.

Critical. Several companies experimented with the type at the time, but many were shelved because they were too impractical for military service.

Armstrong Whitworth from the UK tried out four decks in FK form. 9. This is a two-seat, single-engine form for reconnaissance and combat missions. Development was done by a private company hoping to get the Royal Flying Corps interested in the design. Its fork, FK.

10, will be one of the few four-deck designs to be adopted into official service.

First flight of the FK prototype. The 9 was delivered in the summer of 1916 and some shortcomings were corrected: the hood was completely redesigned and the rear wing was given a larger surface. All new wings have been added, and these also feature larger area ailerons. The landing gear track is wider for better ground travel.

Power is provided by a 110-horsepower Clerget 9Z rotary engine that drives a simple two-bladed wooden propeller in the nose. The two crew members sat side by side above the two open-air cockpits behind the four forward-swept level planes.

The default weapon is 1 x . The 303 Vickers machine gun is in a fixed forward position, operated by the pilot, and the 1 x .303 Lewis Gun is managed by the rear gunner/observer from a trainable mount.

FK. 9 was officially graded at the Central Flying School in November-December 1916. This proved to be enough to warrant a production contract for a series of 50 aircraft - although improvements to the design required changing the name of these brackets to "FK.10".

An FK. 9 aircraft were built, followed by 8 x FK. 10 - Top 50 orders never filled due to heavy drag on design. During the entire war, no one saw combat missions.