Nieuport 10

The Nieuport 10 was a French First World War sesquiplane built by Nieuport and designed by Gustave Delage, who joined the company in January 1914. It was originally designed to compete in the 1914 Gordon Bennett Trophy race, but the outbreak of the war cancelled that contest, and the type was developed instead as a two-seat military reconnaissance aircraft that entered service in 1915. Its distinctive V strut layout gave it an upper wing much larger than the lower one, an arrangement meant to combine the strength and stability of a braced biplane with the speed and easy handling of a monoplane. The aircraft filled a wide variety of roles, serving as a reconnaissance machine, as a single-seat fighter with a machine gun carried above the top wing, and as a trainer. Georges Guynemer flew several of them, and the design led directly to the smaller single-seat Nieuport 11 and the more powerful two-seat Nieuport 12.