3/22/09

Mystery Plane Revealed


Traffic to the blog spiked after I announced the contest on Small Flying Arts, so I know that lots of people looked at the Mystery Plane, but nobody identified it correctly.

Was the Mystery Plane too obscure? The contest is supposed to be challenging; we can't ask you to identify P-51s. Tom says "the more obscure the better" and this is a fairly obscure airplane.

The unusual double-chassis Grade-Eindecker was designed and built by Hans Grade in Germany. These photographs from 1914 show aerobatic pioneer Gustav Tweer at the controls. It is unknown if the plane ever landed upside down on the auxiliary landing gear.

EDIT: Al Backstrom from Texas identified this as a "Grade something or other" which is a good way to describe it. Al emailed his answer after the Mystery Plane was revealed, but I don't think he knew that. Good answer, Al. Thanks for playing our game.

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