Nieuport 17: Weapon's effect on performance

[Mogadeet]

A question here.

How much was the Nieuport 17's degraded when it carried both deck gun and wing gun as opposed to one or the other?

Mogadeet

[YavorD]

"Quick and dirty" assessment show about 2 to 3 mph difference in favour of synchronized gun. Aerodynamics is affected by the drag of over-the-wing gun and mounts, and further by a pitching momentum which should be compensated by elevator action adding some more drag.
Regards,
Yavor

[austin08]

Hi Mogadeet,

The RFC when purchasing the Nieuport 17 insisted that the overwing Foster mounting be installed as opposed to the fixed vickers (synchronising problems?).

" RFC Nieuport 17 A6678 was tested with dual installationof a synchronised Vickers gun & a Foster-mounted Lewis,but this was not favourably reported on"- J.M Bruce

I've also looked up the windsock datafiles on the Nieuport 17 which state that dual gun installation showed a significant decline in performance

[EAGLEDAD]

Greetings all!

In Ray Sangar’s book on Nieuport Aircraft there is mention RFC test of a Nieuport 17 being tested with a Vickers machine gun and over wing Lewis machine gun. According to the test, the 2 gun Nieuport was 3mph (5km/h) slower, had its ceiling lowered by 4,100 ft (1,250 m), had its time to climb to 9,580 ft (3,000 m) increased by 45 seconds, and time to climb to 15,000 ft (4,575m) increased by 6.5 minutes.
I must wonder what the ceiling of the Nieuport was. If it is the often mentioned 17,400 ft (5,300 m), then the ceiling reduction and time to 15,000 ft (4,575m) appear to contradict themselves. I think that one may conclude that adding a second gun to the Nieuport did not make a great difference in regards to maximum speed, but did make a major difference in the altitude performance of the Nieuport 17. Unfortunately, the book makes no mention of what the extra weight and drag did for the turning and handling performance of the machine.
Any thoughts?

May God fly your wing always!

Eagledad