Country of origin:

France

Description:

Single-seat fighter scout

Power Plant:

One 82 kw (110 hp) Le Rhone 9Ja nine-cylinder rotary piston engine

Specifications:

Armament:

One 7.7 mm (0.303 in) Lewis fixed forward firing machine gun mounted above the upper wing

History:

Edouard de Nieuport, one of the pioneers of early flight, began design of a monoplane in 1905, and set up a facility at Suvesnes, France in 1909 where a number of advanced designs were built under the name Nieuport. However, he was killed in an aircraft accident on 16 September 1911 and the Company was taken over by his brother, Charles, but he too lost his life in an accident on 24 January 1913. Probably the first successful Nieuport was the Model 10 in 1915, and development continued through the Models 11 and 12, examples of which were bought for the Royal Naval Air Service, a few bring diverted to the Royal Flying Corps.

Christened the Bebe, the first operational Model 11 was delivered to the Aviation Militaire on 5 January 1916 and within a month 90 examples had been delivered to the Front. It was found to be fast and manoeuvrable and was usually fitted with a Hotchkiss or Lewis machine gun. In addition to French production, it was built under licence by Dux in Russia, and by Nieuport Macchi and Eletrro Ferroviare in Italy. Twenty were built in The Netherlands and some carried Le Prieur rockets attached to the interplane struts.

In 1916 the Model 17 appeared, retaining the sesquiplane layout of the types 10, 11, 12, 13 and 16. Engine installed was usually the Le Rhone, but the 97 kw (130 hp) Clerget is also known to have been installed. The type 17 was built in large numbers and some were fitted with twin Lewis machine guns above the upper wing. The type at one stage developed a propensity for losing the lower wing in a dive but, be that as it may, it was very highly regarded as a fighting machine.

During World War I Chief Designer was Gustave Delage. Whereas up to World War I all the designs had been monoplanes, the fighters produced subsequently were all wire-braced biplanes, the lower wing being less than half the size of the upper wing to give the pilot the best possible downward visibility. The Nieuport was operated by the Belgian, French, Italian, Russian, Swiss and probably Romanian Air Wings, as well as the US Escadrille Lafayette and the British RFC and RNAS. Many aces used the type, including Ball, Bishop, Mannock, Guynemer, Lufbery and Rickenbacker.

The Nieuport series of fighters was one of the best-known Allied fighters of the First World War. Produced in a series of variants in some numbers, it used a variety of engines of varying powers, and accumulated many alterations as the type was improved in service, but suffered from a system of factory design-number allocations which seemed to follow no logical sequence. For example, variants were known as the Nieuport Type 11, 13, and 15 which referred to the wing area. The Model 12 was built in some numbers, a two-seat variant known as the 12bis being introduced in 1916. The first main production model was the Type 11, introduced in 1915, which was used extensively. This had either the 60 kw (80 hp) or 75 kw (100 hp) Le Rhone rotary engine. The next main variant was the Type 16 introduced in 1916 with a 97 kw (130 hp) Clerget 9B or a 75 kw (100 hp) Le Rhone 9J. A Vickers machine gun was the main armament but British units usually preferred the Lewis machine gun.

Nieuports are known to have been used in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign in the Dardanelles to make reconnaissance flights over Turkish positions, one Nieuport 10 being flown by Commander Charles Samson of the Royal Naval Air Service in 1915.

Replicas have been built and imported to Australasia. A Nieuport 11 was registered in New Zealand as ZK-NIM (c/n 101) to The Vintage Aviator of Wellington in late 2005. This machine represents the Nieuport 11 (N2123) built by Macchi under licence in 1917, flown by Sgt Alvaro Leonardi and assigned to the 80a Squadriglia of the Italian Air Service in May that year. Leonardi had eight confirmed victories, one in serial 2123, on 24 May 1917 when he shot down an Ufag L.1 seaplane.

Others have been completed, including a Bebe 11 completed in 2011 in Omaka, becoming ZK-NII (c/n CAS-01) to Classic Aircraft Sales. A number of ⅞-th scale replicas have been constructed in Australia of various models and most of these have been registered under AUF / RAA rules. One replica Model 17 has become VH-NIE (c/n 001), this machine being fitted with an 1800 cc Subaru engine. In the United States a company, Leading Edge Air Foils of Peyton, Colorado produced ⅞-th scale kits of the Nieuport 11 and Nieuport 12. More than 1,000 kits have been sold and over 200 have been completed. Scale replicas have also been built in the ultralight area and one of these became 10-1968 (c/n 11) fitted with a Rotax 503 engine.

A scale replica Nieuport 15 was obtained by a syndicate at Omaka, NZ. This aircraft, marked N4187, is painted in the markings of the Imperial Russian Air Service. Construction of it commenced in Oregon in the United States in the 1970s and it was to be completed as a ⅞-th scale replica of the Nieuport 15. It was not completed in the United States and was imported but is not known to have been flown as at late 2015. It has been fitted with mockups of Le prieur rockets.