Hannover CL.III and variants

,.. 1 went down to engage him and found that he was a Hannover, a machine which has a biplane tail, and although I fired a lot at him at close range, it had no other effect than to make him dive away, which made me think that perhaps they were armoured. These machines are very deceptive, and pilots are apt to mistake them for Albatros scouts until they get to close range, when up pops the Hun gunner from inside his office'. . . So wrote Major James McCudden VC in his classic biography, Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps. McCudden, like many other Allied pilots, found the Hannover two seat fighters difficult to bring down: strongly-built, highly manoeuverable and stable in tight turns, the 'Hannoverana', as it was dubbed by its British opponents, was held in high regard by those who flew it and those who flew against it. Together with the popular Halberstadt Cl.II (see the forthcoming WINDSOCK DATAFILE No.27) the Hannover was ideally suited to its dual offensive roles of infantry support and ground attack. For this DATAFILE, Peter Grosz presents a unique pictorial profile of the Hannover Cl.II, Cl.III and Cl.IIIa. The author's selection of photographs, together with a translated partial reprint of the original 1918 parts list for the type, makes this a valuable record of an important WW1 combat aeroplane long overdue for detailed reference treatment. Ray Rimell, September 1990.

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