German copies of Allied warplanes

[centurion]

I've been struck by the number Allied warplanes the Germans attempted to copy (usually unsuccessfully). These included:

Bristol Scout - Rex Scout

Morane Sauliner H - Hanuschke Monoplane, Fokker A III & E series, Pfalz E series

Morane Sauliner L - Pfalz A I and E III

Nieuport XI- Alter A1, Euler D I, Siemens Schuckert D I

Sikorsky IM -Siemens Forssman Bomber

Sopwith Tabloid - Schutte Lanze D I

Then of course there were numerous different triplanes attempting to emulate the Sopwith Triplane but none of these were such close copies

Apart from the Albatross C I's influence on Russian designs there seems to have been no corresponding Allied attempt to copy German designs - any theories why?

[Adrian Roberts]

Off the Top of my Head, it could be that Germany was a young, up-and-coming nation, that had had to build up its armed forces by almagamating the old Prussian and other armies over the previous fify years. The Kriegsmarine had to be built up from scratch, it latest vessels copying the British Dreadnoughts and Battlecruisers. The spandau machine guns were copied from the Maxim; even the U-boat wasn't a German invention. The Germans probably had less scruples about copying.

The British and French probably considered it beneath them.

Was it fair to say the Siemens-Schukert DIV was a copy of the Camel?

[centurion]

Was it fair to say the Siemens-Schukert DIV was a copy of the Camel?

No - a development of the DII and DIII design work starting before the 1st Camel appeared in France. Given that the wing shape and fuselage shape are different from the Camel and it had an entirely different engine design - a geared rotary as opposed to a direct drive - its difficult to se how it could be described as a Camel copy

[Dolphin]

Centurion

There was a well known Allied copy of a Central Powers aeroplane: the Italian Macchi L series flying boats were essentially copies of the Austro-Hungarian Navy's Lohner flying boat L.40 that was captured in the Adriatic on 27 May 1915.

Admittedly, this wasn't a copy of a German aeroplane, but it was an aircraft from their major Ally.

Cheers

Gareth

[Adrian Roberts]

And of course the airships R33 and R34 were to a great extent copies of the L30 class "Super-Zeppelins", via the L33, which came down more or less intact.

Less happily, the R38 and the USS Shenadoah were derived from the L70 class, which no-one realised had been lightened and therefore weakened as "Height-Climbers". The R31 and R32 were copied, at least in terms of the basic structure, from the Schutte-Lanz types.

I guess this came about from, at best, a concern that "we might be at a disadvantage without large rigids", and at worst from national pride "we can't have the Germans doing something better than us". As it was, they needn't have bothered: all that effort developing British rigids contributed virtually nothing to the war effort.