Airco DH.5 - Design and Development

Design and Development

Captain Geoffrey de Havilland designed the Airco DH.5 to combine the superior performance of a tractor biplane with the excellent forward visibility of a "pusher" type. The construction was that of a conventional tractor biplane of the time, but the main planes were given 27 inches of backward stagger, so that the lower wing was positioned forward of the upper wing. In the prototype armament installation, the forward-firing .303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers machine gun, equipped with the new Constantinesco interrupter gear, was either fixed to fire upward at an angle or possibly mounted so that its elevation could be adjusted in flight; in the production installation the gun was given a more conventional fixed mounting on top of the cowl, offset to the left, to fire in the line of flight. As the pilot was seated forward of the centre of gravity, the main fuel tank was necessarily behind the cockpit, below the oil tank. An auxiliary gravity fuel tank was fitted over the top main plane, offset to the right.

By the time the prototypes of the DH.5 underwent service trials in December 1916 in France, superior types such as the Sopwith Camel and the Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5 were not far behind. In fact, the new fighter was inferior in most respects to the earlier Sopwith Pup. The provision of a single machine gun at a time when most fighters carried two also meant the aircraft was somewhat under-armed for operations in 1917. Nonetheless, the DH.5 was ordered in quantity from four manufacturers: Airco (200), British Caudron (50), Darracq (200) and March, Jones & Cribb (100).