Another unusual approach to improving visibility was utilized by the French in a little-known triplane version of the Nieuport 17. As a sesquiplane (1 1/2 wings), the little Nieuport was considered a delight to fly and had been favored by many Allied aces, as well as by the American volunteers of the Lafayette Escadrille. It had also impressed the Germans, who were emulating its sesquiplane wing arrangement before they began copying that of the Sopwith Triplane. In its triplane guise, however, the Nieuport was a very different kettle of fish. Its middle wing was staggered forward in the normal manner, but its top wing was staggered well back, above and behind the pilot. One would think that such an arrangement would have actually hindered the pilot's view for landing, while also masking the approach of an enemy from above and behind.

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In any event, the modification certainly did nothing to improve the Nieuport's handling characteristics. Undeterred, Nieuport built another triplane, based on the earlier Nieuport 10 two-seater. This time the top wing was staggered forward and the middle wing was set back. Whether or not that triplane was any improvement over the previous version is not recorded, but the French authorities do not appear to have thought so, for they abandoned the experiment completely in December 1916. On January 26, 1917, however, one of their triplane Nieuport 17s, N1588, was delivered to the RFC and given the British serial number A6686. It was extraordinarily unstable and I didn't like it at all, recalled Sir Vernon Brown, a British pilot fortunate enough to survive a test flight at Martlesham Heath.

Despite such unflattering comments, the British themselves fitted a similar wing arrangement on the fuselage of a French-built Nieuport 17bis, N1946, gave it the Royal Navy serial N521 and shipped it to No. 11 Squadron, RNAS at Dunkirk on March 29, 1917. Clearly inferior to the Sopwith Triplane, N521 saw little operational use before being retired for good in June.

Sopwith, meanwhile, built another triplane with a 150-hp Hispano-Suiza V-8 engine, but it displayed no significant improvement over the Clerget-powered production model. In any case, the RFC had found a better use for the Hispano-Suiza engine in the SE-5 biplane. By the same token, Austin Motors' otherwise promising Osprey triplane of early 1918 was designed to utilize the 230-hp Bentley BR-2 rotary engine that had already been earmarked for another superior biplane, the Sopwith Snipe. The Sopwith Snark triplane of 1918 also performed well, but it was handicapped by the mechanical unreliability of its 320-hp ABC Dragonfly stationary radial engine.

Ironically, one of the few aircraft producers who was not enthusiastic about building triplanes was Anthony Fokker, a Dutch pilot and aviation entrepreneur who had set up shop in Germany. In 1916, Fokker had lost his initial lead in the German fighter business to Albatros through a combination of stagnant design and poor quality control. By the beginning of 1917, however, Fokker and his new chief engineer, Rheinhold Platz, had an entirely new fighter to offer the German air service. Called the V.1 (the V standing for Verspannungslos, or without external bracing), the new Fokker was a rotary-engine sesquiplane combining a streamlined fuselage with plywood cantilever wings. Two versions with in-line engines, the V.2 and V.3, were also built. All of them were so far ahead of their time that they would not have looked out of place among the Gee Bees, Lairds and Travel Airs at the Cleveland Air Races 15 years later.

Despite the excellent performance of the V.1, Idflieg remained lukewarm to its concept. Part of the problem was suspicion of the plane's unusual flight controls, which included pivoting wingtips instead of ailerons. In view of the structural problems experienced with previous Fokker airplanes-and subsequently with the Dr. I triplane — Idflieg was probably justified in its concern. In any case, what the German air service really wanted from Fokker was a triplane. So on June 13, 1917, Fokker reluctantly shelved his promising sesquiplane program and began altering the VA, a prototype biplane intended for Austro-Hungarian evaluation, into triplane configuration.

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