Gotha G.II, G.III

Roden 1/72

The Gotha G.II series was a heavy bomber used by the Luftstreitkräfte (Imperial German Air Service) during World War I.

The G.II carried a crew of three and a defensive armament of two 7.92 mm (.312 in) machine guns. The forward section of the fuselage was skinned in plywood, with the remainder covered in fabric. The fuselage and two very large nacelles were mounted on the lower wing. Each nacelle contained fuel and oil tanks beneath each of a pair of geared-output 160 KW (220 hp) Mercedes D.IV straight-eight engines, one per nacelle, driving pusher propellers. The undercarriage was unusual, being quadricycle in arrangement with a pair of wheels mounted at the front and rear of each engine nacelle. This feature was intended to remove the possibility of a nose-over on landing. In fact, the nacelles and undercarriage constituted fully self-contained, wheeled units intended to facilitate construction and maintenance. The entire aircraft was intended to be easily dismantled so that fuselage, engines, and wings would easily fit onto three railway flatcars.

The G.II prototype first flew in March 1916, and testing revealed several shortcomings. The most significant problem was that the aircraft was not capable of carrying the bombload that was specified by the Idflieg. This was solved by a redesign of the wing cellule to extend its span. At the same time, it was changed from a two-bay to a three-bay structure. The second issue was that the undercarriage arrangement made for very long and uncontrollable landing rolls. This was solved by changing it to a conventional tailskid configuration. Other revisions included horn-balanced ailerons and a triangular vertical fin. In this configuration, production commenced in April 1916.