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The Hannover CL.II was an
escort fighter The escort fighter was a concept for a fighter aircraft designed to escort bombers to and from their targets. An escort fighter needed range long enough to reach the target, loiter over it for the duration of the raid to defend the bombers, and ...
, produced in
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during
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
, designed in response to a 1917 requirement by the '' Idflieg'' for such a machine to protect
reconnaissance aircraft A reconnaissance aircraft (colloquially, a spy plane) is a military aircraft designed or adapted to perform aerial reconnaissance with roles including collection of imagery intelligence (including using photography), signals intelligence, as ...
over enemy territory. It was a compact
biplane A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While a ...
of largely conventional configuration with single-bay staggered wings of unequal span. The fuselage was a thin
plywood Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...
paneled, wooden monocoque design, very similar to the style of fuselage in Robert Thelen's Albatros series of single-seat fighters. The main units of the fixed tail skid undercarriage were linked by a cross-axle and the pilot and tail gunner sat in tandem, open cockpits, with the gunner's cockpit elevated above the line of the upper fuselage to afford him a greater
field of fire The field of fire of a weapon (or group of weapons) is the area around it that can easily and effectively be reached by gunfire. The term 'field of fire' is mostly used in reference to machine guns. Their fields of fire incorporate the beaten zon ...
. For the same purpose, the aircraft featured an unusually compact empennage, with a short fin integral with the rear fuselage structure and a biplane tail unit that allowed the rear gunner to have a larger field of fire aft when defending the aircraft. Smaller than the usual C-class reconnaissance aircraft, it was easy for enemy pilots to mistake it for a single-seat fighter; a mistake that would bring them into the line of fire of the rear facing observer when closing from astern. The CL.II was also produced under licence by
LFG LFG may refer to: * Landfill gas, a waste gas containing methane and other gases emitted by landfills * Lexical functional grammar, a theory of syntax * Lagged Fibonacci generator, an example of a pseudorandom number generator * "Looking for grou ...
, under the designation CL.IIa. The type was widely produced, and as the war continued, was increasingly employed as a ground attack machine, remaining in service in this role until the
Armistice An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace. It is derived from the ...
. A copy of Hannover CL.II, named CWL SK-1 Słowik, was the first aircraft built in independent
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
, in CWL in Warsaw in 1919. It however crashed during a public flight on August 23, 1919 in
Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...
, due to faulty bracing wires, killing its constructor Karol Słowik.Morgała, Andrzej. ''O samolocie inż. Słowika raz jeszcze'' in: "Lotnictwo z szachownicą" nr. 21(1/2007), pp.30-33


Specifications


References


Further reading

* * {{Idflieg C-class designations 1910s German fighter aircraft Hannover aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1917