Hey folks, maybe a strange question today,

What's the brown thing in the Pup's cockpit? The circle/oval deelie right in front of the pilot's face. It kinda looks like there's glass or something in there, so I thought maybe it's a windscreen, but it's positioned weirdly for that.

Think you may be referring to Aldis sight?
Does it zoom into it when you hit F6?

Yeah, but I figured it wasn't an Aldis because it looked so vastly different from the one on the Camel and SE5 (and I thought I remembered seeing in photographs that the Aldis on a Pup is offset to the left, since the gun is in the center in front of the cockpit).

It is the windscreen.

It's a windshield with a padded rim. In the Pup it was mounted on the back of the Vickers gun.

Cool, thanks guys.

Not all Pups had that windscreen... I wish we could have a version without it

Agreed!

I presume it was designed as such to prevent the pilot from smashing his head directly against the back of his metal machine gun during rough landings, etc. No air bags in those days, so the price was reduced visibility.

I think some of the other configurations had a leather pad on the gun butt to provide some face protection without the windscreen.

I'd bet though that breaking the wind (no jokes intended) and particularly the rain would make the screen pretty desirable from a comfort standpoint.

There's a shot of it towards the bottom on the Wingnuts page


http://www.wingnutwings.com/ww/productdetail?productid=30&cat=1#

Yes. My impression was always that the big, padded windscreen was not a typical or usual set-up on Pups on the Western Front but I claim no Pup expertise.
Any pros here?

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Duke, You are quite right from everything I've seen over the years. The padded windscreen on the Pup, or pretty much any other WWI kite, was not the norm.

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Thanks Lou!

That's interesting Lou. While I'm no big fan of it myself, it seems to be in a lot of the Pup pics. Was it particular to a certain factory or timeframe?

I'd love to see it off but always thought of it as something of a "Pupism"..

I'd love to see it off too if there is an historically legit reason to do so. That said, I can't say I personally would ask the devs to do that. Unless it was somehow able to be done as a mod, I'd be content to leave it as is. Hell, almost anything is better than a Spad XIII view. Great plane, but good grief that's such a limited field of view! LOL

You guys are all right. The Pup had the windscreens but they were often removed. The padded windscreens first appeared on Strutters, then Pups, and even Triplanes. I have many photos of these machines with the windscreen in place. I have many photos without it, too.

As regards the Strutter, "The mounting of the Vickers gun brought its breechblock uncomfortably close to the pilot's face and the consequences of this in the event of a crash were all too apparent. Sopwith's solution was a patented padded windscreen that attached to the gun. However, many pilots chose to dispense with the screen in operation service, as it impaired the field of vision." This from Sopwith Aircraft, by Mick Davis, page 44. Later, in the same book, on page 69, "The Sopwith patented windscreen was not popular in service--it restricted the pilot's view and many chose to replace it with more practical designs."

Some random photos. The first one shows the windscreen during manufacture:

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Deacon211, the vast majority of WWI era photos of Pups show them without the padded windscreen. There is even evidence that when one actually did arrive with said item it was removed at the request of the pilot, as shown in this before-and-after of Sopwith Pup "HAPPY" of No. 3 Naval Squadron:



As to a certain factory, I thought I read somewhere that it was more likely to see the item in question on Pups built by Beardmore, but I am not certain of that.

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Oops, I see JFM was posting at the same time I was. Thanks for the info and the great pics Jim!

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Fascinating! Louvert you have a much better selection of pics than I did via the Ministry of Google, so thanks for those.

I agree that it would be great to see off but probably not worth a lot of dev effort. I imagine modding the 3D model itself would be somewhat more work than modding some of the file entries and tread upon OBD's feet a bit.

Still we can always hope. If not, it doesn't diminish my love of the pup...one of my favorite aircraft and a contender were I ever to build one!

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Deacon211, you can thank JFM for those super pics and the information he provided, the man's a treasure trove of such stuff. I only added the before-and-after shot following his post.

As for the WOFF Pup, I am quite content with what we have, patented Sopwith padded windscreen and all.

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