Albatros C.V

The Albatros C.V was a military reconnaissance aircraft built by Albatros Flugzeugwerke in the First World War. It was developed to use the newly available Mercedes D.IV eight-cylinder engine and drew greatly on the company's earlier aircraft, with more balanced flight control surfaces and a new tail, which made it heavier than its predecessors. The first version, the C.V/16, had cumbersome and demanding controls in flight testing, so the design was reworked as the C.V/17, which handled better and went into quantity production. The Luftstreitkräfte accepted it promptly and used it in combat, but the unreliable Mercedes D.IV hurt its availability, its maker could not fix the engine problems, and production of that engine stopped.