Nieuport 28

The Nieuport 28 C.1, a French biplane fighter aircraft flown during World War I, was built by Nieuport and designed by Gustave Delage. Owing its lineage to the successful line of sesquiplane fighters that included the Nieuport 17, the Nieuport 28 continued a similar design philosophy of a lightweight and highly maneuverable aircraft. By the time the Nieuport 28 was available, the SPAD XIII had been chosen to equip the escadrilles de chasse of the Aéronautique Militaire for 1918, and this fighter was also the first choice for the projected American "pursuit" squadrons. In the event, a shortage of SPADs led to Nieuport 28s being issued to four American squadrons between March and August 1918, becoming the first aircraft to see operational service with an American fighter squadron. Nieuport 28s saw considerable post-war service: in particular 50 from a later production run were shipped to America, and as well as army and naval service these found civilian use, especially in Hollywood films. By the middle of 1917, it was obvious that the Nieuport 17 and its immediate developments, such as the Nieuport 24bis, could provide only moderate performance gains over the standard model, so that they were unable to keep pace with the latest German fighters. In fact, the Nieuport 17 line was already being supplanted in French service by the SPAD S.VII, as quickly as supplies of the Hispano-Suiza engine would allow. It had become increasingly apparent that the basic sesquiplane "v-strut" layout was approaching the limits of its development. The Nieuport 28 design advanced the concept of the lightly built, highly maneuverable rotary engined fighter typified by the Nieuport 17 to the more demanding conditions of the times. Bowers refers to it as being "an excellent example of the step-by-step evolution of a single basic design to its point of ultimate development and then its transition into a new model to meet changing requirements". During 1917 the Nieuport company experimented with a number of new designs - including monoplanes, biplanes and triplanes.