WAR

The S.E.5 was the product of a British government establishment, the Royal
Aircraft Factory. Some 5000 machines in various models were built by the Factory
and its sub-contractors. The S.E. was all wood, the basic skeleton being shaped
by plywood formers and spruce stringers covered with fabric. In the nose, plywood
panels and an aluminum cowling enclosed the Hispano Suiza engine and
the radiator respectively. The 1 50-horsepower Hispano Suiza was the standard
engine in the S.E.5. From the beginning of 1918 an improved model, the S.E. 5a,
began to reach the Front. The engine for the S.E. 5a was the Wolseley Viper, a
200-horsepower British version of the Hispano Suiza with a souped-up compression
ratio. With the Viper engine the S.E. 5a was far and away the fastest of
the major single-seaters at the Front, its top speed at ground level being just
shy of 140 miles an hour.
The S.E., like all Factory aeroplanes, was stable, sturdy, and extraordinarily
angular. It was steady in a dive and responsive on the controls. In a fight the
S.E. could be dived very steeply either to attack or to get away, and in a zoom
climb after a sharp recovery it would pull away fast for the first few seconds.
Besides its speed and strength, the S.E.5 had one other significant feature
that was not the least of its virtues. It was the first British single-seater to be
equipped with two guns—a Lewis on the top wing firing over the propeller and
a synchronized Vickers mounted on the top left side of the fuselage midway between
the engine and the cockpit. Both guns fired upward at an angle of five
degrees.
The American Ace George Vaughn survived an accident to testify to the
solidity of the S.E. He had learned to fly in a Jenny in the Princeton Aero Club,
and had enlisted as a private in the Signal Corps, Flying Section. He was sent
to England (a chilly disappointment—he had thought he was going to Italy) and
after a brief single-seater course in Sopwith Pups at Hounslow Heath, went on
to the combat training school at Ayr in Scotland. There he experienced a spectacular
forced landing in an S.E.5 that might have proved fatal even in a Spad.