Caudron C. 02
type of aircraft
The Caudron 02 was a French high-altitude single-seat fighter that was flown in November 1917.
Design and development
The proper name and even the existence of this aircraft have been disputed in the past, but plans for the Type 02 high altitude fighter aircraft have since been found in the French Musée de l'Air. Hauet also refers to it as the C.02 and Green and Swanborough as the Type O, though the latter was a quite different sports aircraft from 1914.
The Type 02 was designed to fight at altitudes up to 9,000 m (29,500 ft) through a combination of engine power and flat airfoil section. It was a conventional single bay biplane with fabric covered, unswept, parallel chord wings ending in angled tips. The lower wing was smaller than the upper one, with a span reduced by 13% and a narrower chord. The wings had neither stagger nor dihedral and only the upper wing was fitted with ailerons. There was a pair of parallel, upright, streamlined interplane struts on each side, with the usual diagonal wire bracing. The upper wing was close to the fuselage, linked by four short, leaning cabane struts.
The intention was to power the Type 02 operationally with either a 112 kW (150 hp) Gnome 9N or a 127–134 kW (170–180 hp) Le Rhône 9R engine, though for about fours months of initial testing it was fitted with a 89 kW (120 hp) Le Rhône 9Jb.
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This entry incorporates text from “Caudron C. 02” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.