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Sunday, July 2, 2017

200 MPH Biplane

I followed a click-bait link to a WW2 aircraft identification quiz. You know, something that I have a passing interest in, and since it's click-bait, it should be easy. If I am lucky there might be something new-to-me in there and I will learn something. The test starts out being very easy. You don't even need to recognize the aircraft. If you know the markings used by the belligerents, and you recognize the manufacturer's names, the answer is obvious. Occasionally they will slip in one like the Seafire, which looks just like a Spitfire, but it's a multiple choice quiz and only one of the answers contains a British manufacturer, so the answer is easy even if you have never heard of a Seafire before.

Rogožarski IK-3
So I'm clicking along through this test and I notice that Rogožarski IK-3 is one of the answers. It's not the answer, but still the name is unusual enough that I go check it out. It was a Yugoslavian airplane developed during the 1930's. They build a dozen before the Nazi's showed up. That put an end to that. In the Wikipedia article there is a note that this aircraft's performance was similar to the Hawker Fury, but the picture shows a biplane and I'm thinking there must be some kind of mistake. No biplane was ever powerful enough to challenged a monoplane, was there?

Hawker Fury by Iain Wyllie
Well, yes, the Hawker Fury was able to hit 220 MPH. I would never have thought such a thing possible. When WW2 came along and things got serious all this piddling about with 200 MPH fighters came to an end.


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