Description
The A.F.B.1 was a biplane with unstaggered, equal-span wings. They had no dihedral but were slightly swept. The tailplane was rather large, and triangular in shape - the rudder on the other hand was a rather small balanced affair, with no vertical fin.
While the fuselage was of conventional construction it was unusually deep, almost filling the gap between the planes, in the manner of the LFG Roland C.II. The portly dimensions of the fuselage made for a fairly clean engine installation - but the radiators were rather clumsily attached to the fuselage sides, in a position that must have interfered with the pilot's view forward and down past the nose. Apparently either could be bypassed to limit loss of coolant in the event of battle damage. An advanced feature was that the controls were operated by rods mounted within the airframe rather than cables carried externally, as was more usual at the time.The very small gap between the top wing and the fuselage gave the pilot excellent visibility above, but probably precluded the fitting of a standard Foster mounting for the upper Lewis gun; existing photographic evidence points to a fixed gun pointing up at a slight angle to clear the propeller arc. This would not have been conducive to Ball's favourite attack from behind and below, as is often stated (see illustrations), although if the type had gone into production it is possible that a variant of the Foster mounting would have been devised, to allow the Lewis to be fired at various upward angles, including the steep one favoured by Ball, as well as at a flat angle directly forwards.
Read more about this topic: Austin-Ball A.F.B.1
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