Zeppelin-Lindau V I

The Zeppelin-Lindau V I was a German experimental sesquiplane with a metal frame and a pusher propeller, designed by Claude Dornier while he worked for Zeppelin-Werke Lindau, and the first landplane he designed. It was a single-seat test aircraft for the Dornier department with a two-bay sesquiplane layout, a lower wing shorter and narrower than the upper one, steel tube V struts, metal spars and ribs covered in fabric, and a 160 horsepower Maybach Mb.III engine partly exposed at the rear of an ovoid aluminium forward fuselage that held the cockpit behind the nose. The pusher layout was probably influenced by successful British fighters of summer 1916. Built at Seemoos, Friedrichshafen, and stored at Loewental airfield, it proved top heavy in taxiing trials. On its first flight on 13 November 1916 it rose, flew an undulating path, climbed almost vertically and dived into the ground; the volunteer pilot, Hans Haller von Hallerstein, was killed and the aircraft was not repaired.