Black Flight Brief depicts the famous Sopwith triplanes of Royal Naval Air Service 10 Squadron's "Black Flight". Although it was the last of the RNAS Squadrons to be equipped with the Triplane, Naval 10 is perhaps best known for its use of the Triplane in combat. B Flight, or "Black Flight" as it was more well known, was made up entirely of Canadian pilots and led by the legendary Raymond Collishaw. The flight become particularly iconic for its black-nosed triplanes, all of which bore the word "Black" as part of their name.
In his book
Air Command, Collishaw said of the Triplane "The three-wing design was adopted to permit the pilot the widest possible field of vision, and also as a means of ensuring maneuverability. The middle wing was at the pilot's eye level, and interfered very little with his vision. All three wings had a narrow chord, and because of this the top and bottom wings blocked off less from the pilot's view than in the case of biplanes, which had wings of far greater chord, or measurement from leading to trailing edge."
Based at Droglandt Aerodrome during the summer of 1917, "Black Flight" is credited with 87 enemy aircraft between June 1st and July 28th 1917 and was one of the most successful units of the war.
I tried something a little different with this one. Since there is so much going on here I made it a point to give good, sharp detail to
Black Maria and the grouping of pilots, while at the same time keeping most of the other edges soft, especially on the elements behind the main grouping. In fact, in the distant background I stuck with the old painting rule of thumb that says to use the largest brush possible.
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