Country of origin:

France

Description:

Single-seat fighter scout

Power Plant:

One 90 kw (120 hp) Le Rhone 9Jb nine-cylinder rotary piston engine

Specifications:

Armament:

One 7.7 mm (0.303 in) Vickers machine gun; eight Le Prieur rockets

History:

Development of the Nieuport series continued during World War I, and new models introduced included the Types 23, 24 and 27. The Model 27 was the last design by Gustave Delage and was the last Nieuport with V-struts to see service. It was based on the successful Models 17 and 24 and incorporated a large plywood vertical tail and a re-designed, rounded, horizontal tail to improve stability. It also had a re-shaped rear fuselage which used wooden stringers to give a rounded shape. It was armed with a synchronized fuselage-mounted Vickers or Lewis machine-gun mounted on the top wing. It served with the French Aviation Militaire and the Royal Flying Corps during the years 1917 – 1918. However, by mid-1918 most had been withdrawn and replaced by the Spad S.XIII or the newly designed Nieuport 28.  A total of 120 Model 27s was supplied to the United States Army Air Service for training duties in 1918.

A division of the Nieuport Company, known as Nieuport and General Aircraft Co, Ltd, of Cricklewood, UK was set up to manufacture French Nieuport designs in Britain. It employed Major S Heckstall-Smith and Henry P Folland, and the first aircraft they produced was a single-seat fighter known as the B.N.1 with a 172 kw (230 hp) Bentley B.R.2 rotary engine. Subsequently the Nighthawk was produced, this being a conventional biplane fighter fitted with the ABC Motors Ltd Dragonfly engine. However, this engine had more than its share of problems. The Armistice overtook the aircraft and production was only small.

The Nieuport designs have been popular with enthusiasts over the years and replicas have been built in a number of countries. In the United States, Walter Redfern produced plans of a number of World War I fighter aircraft using modern technological construction techniques, these including the Nieuport 17 and the Nieuport 24, and more than 100 have been sold. One Nieuport 24 replica became ZK-JOZ (c/n 001 – ex N1895A) in April 2003 and is based at Omaka, NZ. This aircraft was later in 2007 exported to the United States as N5246 but it was written off in an accident in 2008.

An example of the Nieuport 27 and at least one further aircraft have been imported and joined the Omaka collection. One machine is painted as N5426, an aircraft flown by Sous Lieutenant Gilbert Discours of N87 of the French Air Force in 1917. In South Australia a full-scale replica of a Nieuport 28 has been built and this aircraft is fitted with the Australian-built Rotec 112 kw (150 hp) R-3600 nine-cylinder radial air-cooled engine. A scale replica Model 24 built in New Zealand and fitted with a Volkswagen engine became ZK-NIE (c/n MAANZ/471).

A replica Nieuport 24 (ex N333EL), which was built in the United States and previously flown at the Old Rhinebeck airfield in New York, was imported to join the TAVAS collection of aircraft at Caboolture, QLD, the container containing this aircraft and two others arriving at Caboolture, on 8 January 2018, this aircraft becoming VH-IJI (cn 261) to Andrew Carter of Wavell Heights, QLD on 13 April that year, joining the TAVAS collection.