Comments by "Big Blue" (@bigblue6917) on "Supermarine Nighthawk – the First Night Interceptor" video.

@casinodelonge Not sure about the Italians as they would have viewed it as not having enough wings.
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I was thinking the same thing. In his book Full Circle: The Story of Air fighting. Group Captain J.E. Johnnie Johnson talks about the early part of air combat in WW1. He mentions that the top speed for these early aircraft was around 50 MPH. If the wind was westerly, which if often was, and around 60 MPH the pilot got a good tailwind and would get to his target much quicker. The problem was coming back as the tailwind was now a headwind. To get back they had to use a method usually seen on sailing ships of tacking across the wind.
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This aircraft, along with the Italian Caproni Ca.60, make it look like an unaired episode of Dastardly and Muttley. Actually we should remember that though referred to as a triplane the Fokker Dr.1 was, in effect, also a quadplane as the Nighthawk was. This was because it had a wing between the wheels. Both the Fokker Dr.1 and the earlier Sopwith Triplane had big problems with wing loading for the top wing. In 1929 the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) investigations found that the upper wing of the Dr.1 carried a higher lift coefficient than the lower wing. At high speeds it could be 2.55 times as much. So I do wonder if the Nighthawk had the same problem.
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@direktorpresident True. But it was the fact that they had to tack across the wind like they were in a sailing ship which struck me as being the most interesting.
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