4500 x 3600 px | 38,1 x 30,5 cm | 15 x 12 inches | 300dpi
Date de la prise de vue:
5 octobre 2014
Lieu:
Old Warden Airfield, Bedfordshire, UK
Informations supplémentaires:
The Bristol M.1 Monoplane Scout was a British monoplane fighter of the First World War. Despite excellent performance - it had a maximum speed some 30-50 mph (50–80 km/h) higher than any of the contemporary German Fokker Eindecker and French Morane-Saulnier N monoplanes - it was rejected by the Air Ministry for service on the Western Front, ostensibly because its landing speed of 49 mph was considered too high for small French airfields, but more likely because of a widespread belief that monoplane aircraft were inherently unsafe in combat. The RFC had imposed a ban on monoplanes after the crash of one in 1912, and despite the subsequent 1913 Monoplane Committee clearing the design type there persisted a deep-rooted suspicion of monoplanes. Nevertheless, a production order for 125 aircraft was placed on 3 August 1917. Designated M.1C, this version had a Le Rhône rotary engine and a Vickers machine gun centrally-mounted in front of the pilot. 33 M.1Cs served in the Middle East and Balkans in 1917–18, while the rest were used by UK-based training units, where they were popular as personal mounts for senior officers. One pilot of the M.1Cs that served on the Macedonian Front was Captain Frederick Dudley Travers DFC of No. 150 Squadron RAF, the only ace on this type. Travers switched from the Royal Aircraft Factory SE.5a, in which he had scored 3 of his 4 kills and scored the last 5 of his victories between 2 and 16 September 1918, possibly all in the M.1C serial number C4976. Amongst his victims was a Fokker D.VII, widely regarded as the best German fighter of its day. Twelve were sent to Chile in late 1918 in part payment for the battleships Almirante Latorre & Almirante Cochrane being built for Chile in Britain but commandeered for the Royal Navy before completion. One of these, flown by Lt. Godoy, was used to fly from Santiago to Mendoza, Argentina and back on 12 December 1918 s a 1917 replica of a Bristol M.1C owned by the Shuttleworth collection
