(David Trost, MD–Outdated Rhinebeck Aerodrome)
Mike Fithian approached his re-creation of a 1912 Etrich Taube with compulsive workmanship and a spotlight to element. That’s as a result of he needed to construct a devoted illustration of the airplane his grandfather had flown in World Warfare I.
He succeeded.
Robert Eyb was a pilot within the tiny Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Air Service through the run-up to World Warfare I. When his maternal grandson sought a constructing enterprise, Fithian recalled {a photograph} he had seen of Grandpa Eyb and his airplane.
The unique Taube was not designed as a warbird, for it first flew in 1910. When it did go to struggle, it achieved notoriety because the world’s first bomber, after an Italian Military Taube in 1911 dropped a number of grapefruit-size grenades on Bedouin troops in Libya who have been allied with Turkey through the temporary Italo-Turkish Warfare. (See “The Father of Aerial Bombardment,” Could 2022.) Simply days earlier, on October 23, Captain Mario Piazza reconnoitered the enemy for about an hour in a French Blériot XI, making that historical past’s first heavier-than-air “warbird.”
Since Taube is German for “dove,” many assume that the airplane’s bird-like planform signifies the designer’s inspiration. Actually, the wings are patterned after the seeds of the Javan cucumber tree, which burst from pods excessive within the bushes and propagate after gliding for lengthy distances. Austrian engineer Ignaz Etrich utilized the principal to his primitive, wing-warping design.
Some consider this airplane as a Rumpler Taube, as a result of one other Austrian, Edmund Rumpler, made some minor adjustments to the design—similar to changing the castering four-wheel crosswind touchdown gear with a pair of typical wheels—and named the outcome after himself. Easygoing Etrich didn’t hassle to defend his patent; earlier than lengthy, his unlicensed design was being cranked out by 14 totally different firms, together with Rumpler’s.
Fithian’s Taube is at present primarily based at Outdated Rhinebeck Aerodrome, the well-known upstate New York vintage-airplanes web site, the place it would often take to the air on gentle-weather days for the amazement of summer-weekend guests.
This text appeared within the Autumn 2022 concern of Aviation Historical past. Click on right here to subscribe.
