Farman F.45

The Farman F.45 was a prototype military biplane built by Farman in France during the First World War. Its performance proved disappointing and it was not ordered into production. It was of mostly conventional layout for its day, though a departure for Farman: a single-bay unstaggered sesquiplane with the pilot and observer in tandem open cockpits, a piston engine in the nose driving a tractor propeller, a fixed tailskid undercarriage and an unusual fuselage mounted on struts in the interplane gap. It belonged to the tractor-configuration prototypes, including the F.30, F.47, F.48 and F.49, that Farman began developing in 1916 as pusher designs became vulnerable to attack from behind, and none of them reached production. A Renault 8Gc eight-cylinder V engine of 130 kilowatts gave it 153 kilometres per hour.