Ryś Marek Knihy

Gloster Gladiator is a British fighter constructed at the Gloster Aircraft Company. The prototype was created in 1934. It was powered by a 645 HP Bristol Mercury VIS engine. Gloster Gladiator Mk I had a 8382 mm long fuselage, which consisted of four numbered sections. The first of these included the engine bed. The second front fuselage, the third – the rear fuselage, and the fourth – tail. The arrangement of instrumentation and equipment inside the truss was marked with letters or numbered from one to eight fuselage partitions corresponding to the distances between the frames. Clearly straight main panels with a span of 9845 mm were built around two Hawker steel girders. The upper and lower supports of the girders were made of rolled octagonal elements, and the wavy lining provided strong points for attaching four aerodynamically profiled transverse struts. Such wing structure was finished with light alloy ribs, stringers and steel and duralumin spreader bars.

A compilation for aero modellers of 4-view colour profiles, scale plans and photo details of the single variant of the Potez 63-11, with scale plans in 1/72 and 1/48 scales plus drawings from wartime technical manuals.

A French World War II fighter aircraft that saw combat service in North Africa, Bulgaria, and the Eastern Front.

Detailed look at three variants of the world's first operational jet-powered bomber, built in the closing stages of World War II.

The Focke-Wulf Ta 154 Moskito was a fast twin-engined German night fighter aircraft. The German Ta 154 night fighter which supposed to be an answer to the British Mosquito .

Although the German Me 163 Komet rocket fighter was created as a remedy for the mass air raids of the Allied air force on Germany, its origins date back to 1938. Alexander Lippisch then began work at the DFS factory on a tailless rocket-propelled aircraft, designated as DFS 194. At the beginnings of 1939, the project was handed over to the Messerschmitt factory and there it developed into the Me 163A. Two prototypes of this aircraft - V4 and V5 - were completed in 1941 and flown as gliders. Then the V4 received a Walter HWK R.II rocket engine with a thrust of 7.5 kN, and on October 2, 1941 H. Dittmar achieved a speed of 1003 km/h on mentioned plane. Thirteen Me 163As were built for training.

The Dornier Do 335A did not meet all the Luftwaffe requirements. First, the cockpit armor was too weak, which excluded the machine from the role of a fighter intercepting heavily defended Allied bombers. Therefore, in the summer of 1944, a modified version of the Do 335--marked with the letter "B"-- was developed. The main difference was to be an armored pilot's cockpit with a new, easier to manufacture windscreen. The front wheel had larger tire. To be able to retract it without any changes in the landing gear bay construction, it was rotated around the leg axis by 45° during the retraction. The rest of the equipment and weapons were to be the same as in the case of the Do 335A-1. The developed version was designated Do 335B-1, but it was quickly abandoned in favor of heavily armed versions B-2 and B-3, known as Zerstörer. The prototypes of the version B-2 were Do 335M-13 and M-14 powered, like the A-1, by the DB 603E (front) and DB-603QE (rear) engines, but with significantly reinforced armament. The 15 mm MG 151/15 cannons above the engine were replaced with a 20 mm MG 151/20, and the wings were fitted with two 30 mm MK 103 cannons with 70 rounds per barrel. The same cannon fired through the propeller axis.

Aleksander Siewierski, originally from Georgia, was in the United States in 1917 and was there when the revolution in Russia broke out. As Alexander Seversky, he founded the Seversky Aero Corporation. Alexander Kartvelli (also a Georgian) became his main designer. Unfortunately, financial problems led to firing Seversky, and his company changed its name to Republic Aviation Corporation. The projects started and developed by Seversky, which resulted in the P-35 fighter, were continued, though. As a result of its further development, a design for the XP-41 high-altitude fighter equipped with a turbocharger was prepared. Only a prototype was built, while many of its solutions went to a more advanced aircraft, designated AP-4, and finally P-43.