page_title: Biplane
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Biplane / History
caption_attribution_description: Based in Belgium as part of the CAI (Corpo Aereo Italiano) during the Battle of Britain. Forced landed on the beach at Orfordness, Suffolk on 11th November 1940 when an oil pipe broke during a raid on Harwich. Taken to Martlesham Heath for repair and then flown to Farnborough. In April 1941 it joined the Air Fighting Development Unit at Duxford and remained in use there until October 1942. It was then allocated for preservation by the Air Historical Branch and by mid 1943 it was dismantled and stored. In 1964 it had reached Biggin Hill, where it was then ‘restored’. Further restoration was carried out at St Athan in 1974 and in 1978 it went on permanent display in the Battle of Britain Hall where it remains today. RAF Museum, Hendon, London, UK. 22-3-2015
context_page_description: A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While a biplane wing structure has a structural advantage over a monoplane, it produces more drag than a monoplane wing. Improved structural techniques, better materials and higher speeds made the biplane configuration obsolete for most purposes by the late 1930s.
  Biplanes offer several advantages over conventional cantilever monoplane designs: they permit lighter wing structures, low wing loading and smaller span for a given wing area. However, interference between the airflow over each wing increases drag substantially, and biplanes generally need extensive bracing, which causes additional drag.
  Biplanes are distinguished from tandem wing arrangements, where the wings are placed forward and aft, instead of above and below.
  The term is also occasionally used in biology, to describe the wings of some flying animals.
context_section_description: Stacking of wing planes was suggested by Sir George Cayley in 1843. Hiram Maxim adopted the idea for his steam-powered test rig, which lifted off but was held down by safety rails, in 1894. Otto Lilienthal designed and flew two different biplane hang gliders in 1895, though he is better known for his monoplanes. By 1896 a group of young men in the United States, led by Octave Chanute, were flying hang gliders including biplanes and concluded that the externally braced biplane offered better prospects for powered flight than the monoplane. The Wright Flyer biplane of 1903 became the first successful powered aeroplane.
  Throughout the pioneer years, both biplanes and monoplanes were common, but by the outbreak of the First World War biplanes had gained favour after several monoplane structural failures resulted in the RFC's "Monoplane Ban" when all monoplanes in military service were grounded, while the French also withdrew most monoplanes from combat roles and relegated them to training.
  During the period from 1914 to 1925 most new aircraft were biplanes but from 1917, the Germans began experimenting with a new generation of monoplanes such as the Fokker D.VIII that might have ended the biplane's advantages earlier had the war not ended when it had. The French meanwhile had the Morane-Saulnier AI strut braced parasol monoplane in service. Sesquiplane types, which were biplanes with abbreviated lower wings such as the French Nieuport 17 and German Albatros D.III, offered lower drag than a conventional biplane while being stronger than a monoplane.
  As the available engine-power and speed increased, the drag penalty of external bracing increasingly limited aircraft performance. To fly faster, it would be necessary to reduce external bracing to create an aerodynamically clean design. Early cantilever designs were too weak or too heavy. The 1917 Junkers J.I sesquiplane utilized corrugated aluminum for all flying surfaces, with a minimum of struts, but it was slow. The 1918 Zeppelin-Lindau D.I fighter was an all-metal stressed-skin monocoque fully cantilevered biplane but was too late to enter service.
  By the 1930s biplanes had reached their performance limits, and monoplanes become increasingly predominant, particularly in continental Europe where monoplanes had been increasingly common from the end of World War I. At the start of World War II, several air forces still had biplane combat aircraft in front line service but they were no longer competitive, and most were used in niche roles, such as training or shipboard operation, until shortly after the end of the war. The British Gloster Gladiator biplane, the Italian Fiat CR.42 and Soviet I-153 sesquiplane fighters were all still operational after 1939. The German Heinkel He 50 and the Soviet Polikarpov Po-2 were both used in the night ground attack role throughout  the Second World War, with the latter soldiering on until the Korean War. 
  The British Fleet Air Arm flew Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers from its aircraft carriers in the anti-submarine warfare role until the end of the war because they could operate from the decks of small escort carriers. 
  Later biplane trainers included the de Havilland Tiger Moth in the RAF, RCAF and others and the Stampe SV.4, which saw service postwar in the French and Belgian Air Forces. The Stearman PT-13 was widely used by the USAAF and the US Navy operated the Naval Aircraft Factory N3N. In later civilian use in the US, the Stearman became particularly associated with stunt flying such as wing-walking, and with crop dusting, where its compactness worked well at low levels, where it had to dodge obstacles.
  Modern biplane designs still exist in specialist roles such as aerobatics and agricultural aircraft with the competition aerobatics role and format for such a biplane well-defined by the mid-1930s by the Udet U 12 Flamingo and Waco Taperwing. The Pitts Special dominated aerobatics for many years after World War II and is still in production.
  The vast majority of biplane designs have been fitted with reciprocating engines. Exceptions in
caption: Late 1930s Fiat CR.42 with Warren truss interplane struts which reduced the work needed in rigging a biplane
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "6016", "Image ImageLength": "4000", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D3200", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "9038333/10000", "Image YResolution": "9038333/10000", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 11.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2015:04:16 23:30:11", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "316", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "1024", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1138", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9406", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/8", "EXIF FNumber": "19/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2015:03:22 10:39:14", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2015:03:22 10:39:14", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "3", "EXIF ApertureValue": "3851999/1000000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "19/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "20", "EXIF SubSecTime": "90", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "90", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "90", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "5423", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3615", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "992", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "30", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}