Warbirds Over the Beach Airshow 4 (Nieuport 17)

In early October I spent the weekend in Virginia Beach at the “Warbirds Over the Beach” airshow. This fourth post on the air show include some more Great War airplane pictures that I took, and a few other pictures. 

Cockpit picture of a Nieuport 17, one of the most common of the French fighters (some 3,600 built). Now, I don’t know how authentic the cockpit is. They may have added some gauges for the sake of modern pilots, as this is a flying model. The sign that says “experimental” is not original issue. I gather it is there to meet an FAA requirement.

The plane was missing a gun. So, here is a period drawing of such:

The Alkan-Hamy synchonization gear installed in a Nieuport 17 (source: Wikipedia)

They also often just carried a Lewis gun on the top wing (or both)

Early Nieuport 17 in July 1916 with a Lewis gun and a cône de penetration (Source: Wikipedia)
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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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