Aviation / Aerospace

Rumpler C.I

Reconnaissance Biplane [ 1915 ]

The Rumpler C-series of biplane aircraft were introduced in 1915 and, amazingly, managed an existence throughout World War 1 into 1918.

Authored By: Staff Writer | Last Edited: 07/31/2019 | Content ©www.MilitaryFactory.com | The following text is exclusive to this site.

GO TO SPECIFICATIONS [+]

Advertisements

Austrian-born engineer Edmund Rumpler settled his Rumpler Flugzeugwerke concern in 1909 and began by producing copies of the "Etrich Taube" reconnaissance aircraft. In time, he turned his attention to self-designed military-minded biplane scout aircraft for the German military with the onset of war in Europe (World War 1, 1914-1918). When war greeted Germany, Rumpler developed several notable designs that were fielded by the German air service (the "Luftstreitkrafte") and Navy among others. As both sides of the conflict dug in to experience the horrors of Trench Warfare, the once fluid war had bogged down to the point that all manner of weaponry was being considered and developed to unseat the enemy from his positions. The aircraft had arrived as a principle killing machine and Rumpler obliged this with the design of his "Rumpler C.I" of 1915.

Externally, the C.I was a conventionally-arranged biplane fighter with an upper and lower wing assembly joined by reinforced struts and cabling. The engine was mounted at the front of the tapered, slab-sided fuselage and capped at the rear by a single vertical tail fin and triangle-shaped horizontal planes. There were two open-air tandem-seat cockpits just aft of the engine, the pilot in front and the observer/gunner in back. The undercarriage was fixed in position and managed two landing wheels while the tail was supported by a simple skid. Power was served through a Mercedes D.III liquid-cooled inline piston engine delivering 160 horsepower allowing for a top speed of 94 miles per hour to be reached while operating as high as 16,580 feet. Endurance was listed at approximately four hours of flight time. Construction was traditional, consisting of wood and canvas which allowed the airframe to take a rather inordinate amount of abuse before succumbing.

As an armed scout (or "Fighting Scout") airplane, initial production models were delivered with a 7.92mm Parabellum MG14 series machine gun fitted to a trainable mount (a "Schneider Ring") at the rear cockpit. This position allowed the rear gunner to defend the critical "six" position of the aircraft from incoming intercepting threats. The ring mounting allowed some flexibility in managing the firing arc of the machine gun and was primarily limited by the long tail structure and rear fuselage. Later production models then instituted a fixed, forward-firing 7.92mm LMG 08/15 series machine gun - coupled with "interrupter" gear - to provide the pilot with his own forward armament. This machine gun was offset to the portside of the front fuselage while the interrupter unit allowed for firing through the spinning propeller blades. The C.I could, therefore, now engage targets in front of the aircraft, be they enemy airplanes or balloons or ground targets of opportunity. For tactical bombing sorties, the C.I could be further outfitted with up to 100 kilograms of drop ordnance under the wings which degraded performance to an extent. The C.I could, therefore, be called upon to undertake various mission types as required.

Introduced in 1915, the C.I gave a good account of itself once in wide-scale service. Pilots appreciated her strong and forgiving handling characteristics and the system, as a whole, provided a much needed boost to German scouting groups tangling with capable Allied pilots and their mounts. The two-man crew dispersed workload and provided two sets of "eyes in the skies" for identifying key enemy positions, maneuvers and targets while also scanning the skies for potential aerial threats and observation balloons over the battlefield. Aircraft such as the C.I proved critical for the German air service and was therefore split across multiple production lines beyond Rumpler facilities to include four other German firms. The aircraft was also taken into inventory by the Ottoman Air Force for combat in the East.

The Rumpler C.I was branched into two notable variant forms stemming from the base C.I production scout model before manufacture of the line ceased. This included the "C.Ia" which was delivered with an Argus As.III series engine of 180 horsepower and may have included a C.II designated aircraft of which little is known. A dedicated training mount of the base C.I was also developed and manufactured by Rumpler for the German air service for training of pilots and gunners. These were differentiated by their lack of a gun mounting ring at the rear observer's station as well utilization of the Benz Bz.III series 150-horsepower engine (Mercedes types were required of the frontline war effort). The C.I also formed the basis of the "Rumpler 6B" series of floatplane aircraft (detailed elsewhere on this site) which served through 88 examples with the German Navy during the war. Amazingly, the Rumpler C.I, debuting in 1915, would live to see operational service into early 1918 - something of an unheard of accomplishment considering the rate at which aerial technology was advancing during the conflict. It was not uncommon for some newly-minted aircraft to see a service life of just a few months before being replaced by more accomplished types, such was the expediency of war.

Poland, Latvia and Yugoslavia became post-war operators of the Rumpler C.I, ensuring its legacy would extend beyond the end of the war.©MilitaryFactory.com

Note: The above text is EXCLUSIVE to the site www.MilitaryFactory.com. It is the product of many hours of research and work made possible with the help of contributors, veterans, insiders, and topic specialists. If you happen upon this text anywhere else on the internet or in print, please let us know at MilitaryFactory AT gmail DOT com so that we may take appropriate action against the offender / offending site and continue to protect this original work.

Specifications

Service Year

1915

Origin

Imperial Germany

Status

RETIRED
Not in Service.

Crew

2

Production

1,000
UNITS

Rumpler Flugzeugwerke - Imperial Germany

(View other Aviaton-Related Manufacturers)

German Empire; Latvia; Poland; Ottoman Empire (Turkey); Yugoslavia

(OPERATORS list includes past, present, and future operators when applicable)

✓ Intelligence-Surveillance-Reconnaissance (ISR), Scout
Surveil ground targets / target areas to assess environmental threat levels, enemy strength, or enemy movement.

Length

25.8 ft
(7.85 m)

Width/Span

39.9 ft
(12.15 m)

Height

10.0 ft
(3.05 m)

Empty Wgt

2,094 lb
(950 kg)

MTOW

2,932 lb
(1,330 kg)

Wgt Diff

+838 lb
(+380 kg)

(Showcased structural values pertain to the base Rumpler C.I production variant)

Installed: 1 x Mercedes D.III water-cooled inline engine developing 160 horsepower.

Max Speed

94 mph
(152 kph | 82 kts)

Ceiling

16,568 ft
(5,050 m | 3 mi)

Range

360 mi
(580 km | 1,074 nm)

♦ MACH Regime (Sonic)

Sub

Trans

Super

Hyper

HiHyper

ReEntry

♦

(Showcased performance specifications pertain to the base Rumpler C.I production variant. Performance specifications showcased above are subject to environmental factors as well as aircraft configuration. Estimates are made when Real Data not available. Compare this aircraft entry against any other in our database or View aircraft by powerplant type)

STANDARD:
1 x 7.92mm LMG 08/15 machine gun in fixed, forward-firing portside fuselage mounting firing through the spinning propeller.
1 x 7.92mm Parabellum MG14 machine gun on trainable mount in rear cockpit.

OPTIONAL:
Up to 100kg of external stores.

Supported Types

Graphical image of an aircraft medium machine gun

(Not all ordnance types may be represented in the showcase above)

Hardpoint Mountings: 10

C.I - Base Military Designation

C.Ia - Fitted with Argus As.III engine of 180 horsepower.

C.II

5A 2 - Rumpler Company Designation

6B - Single-Seat Floatplane Fighter Variant

Military lapel ribbon for Operation Allied Force

Military lapel ribbon for the Arab-Israeli War

Military lapel ribbon for the Battle of Britain

Military lapel ribbon for the Battle of Midway

Military lapel ribbon for the Berlin Airlift

Military lapel ribbon for the Cuban Missile Crisis

Military lapel ribbon for pioneering aircraft

Military lapel ribbon for the Falklands War

Military lapel ribbon for the French-Indochina War

Military lapel ribbon for the Golden Age of Flight

Military lapel ribbon for the 1991 Gulf War

Military lapel ribbon for the Indo-Pak Wars

Military lapel ribbon for the Iran-Iraq War

Military lapel ribbon for the Korean War

Military lapel ribbon for the 1982 Lebanon War

Military lapel ribbon for the Malayan Emergency

Military lapel ribbon representing modern aircraft

Military lapel ribbon for the attack on Pearl Harbor

Military lapel ribbon for the Six Day War

Military lapel ribbon for the Soviet-Afghan War

Military lapel ribbon for the Spanish Civil War

Military lapel ribbon for the Suez Crisis

Military lapel ribbon for the Ukranian-Russian War

Military lapel ribbon for the Vietnam War

Military lapel ribbon for Warsaw Pact of the Cold War-era

Military lapel ribbon for the WASP (WW2)

Military lapel ribbon for the World War 1

Military lapel ribbon for the World War 2

Military lapel ribbon for the Yom Kippur War

Military lapel ribbon for experimental x-plane aircraft

Ribbon graphics not necessarily indicative of actual historical campaign ribbons. Ribbons are clickable to their respective aerial campaigns / operations / aviation periods.

Images Gallery

1 / 1

Image from the Public Domain.