Death of the Red Baron

[Bob Womack]

Another little fact was that the engines that looked like radials were actually rotary engines - the propeller was bolted to the engine block. The whole engine rotated around a fixed crankshaft mounted to the firewall. The whole affair, with all that engine mass in motion, contributed to generous centrifugal effect, causing the plane to resist directional change. It also caused unexpected torque behavior in the roll axis - a roll with the direction of the engine was aided by the motion of the engine and a roll against the motion of the engine was resisted. Adding or removing power at low speed or on the ground could be fraught with unexpected torque results as well in a hard-to-recover situation. On the Fokker Dr.1, wingtip skids were added to help protect on takeoff and landing. As a result of these odd characteristics and because the rotary engines weren't that successful a design from the start, most reproductions use radial engines in place of the rotaries. A plus was that these engines cooled rather well.

Probably the largest group of DR.1s in the world is living down the road from me at the Military Aviation Museum.



Bob