PLUNKETT AIR

"One thing that Joe told me some considerable time after his return from Germany, was that while in Berlin he offered the Germans an idea he had in connection with aeroplanes. The device consisted of two narrow planes mounted a relatively short distance apart and parallel to one another. A model we made had behaved in the manner of a glider descending at a very slow speed. The suggestion was to reverse the process and use it to provide lift. We made some out of cardboard which we stiffened by bending it in our fingers. One of the officers in the Berlin Aeronautical School to whom Joe explained it said it would not work and I have an idea somebody told me it was later tried out by the Germans but was not successful."

This is a quote from Jack Plunkett's witness statement referring to his brother Joe who signed the proclamation and was executed for hi part in the Easter Rising.

This is a possibility for the type of aircraft that Joe Plunkett had designed and had rejected but was later built by the Germans.

Fokker built a twin fuselage aircraft which was effectively two of his early biplanes (minus engines) joined by a push pull pod (engine at front and rear) in which the pilot sat. Each fuselage housed a gunner. It was known as a battle plane but was very unsafe structurally and made only one flight piloted by Fokker after which it was abandoned. The Germans did have three types of twin boom land planes The Otto C I and the Ago CI and CII in service in 1915 (there was an AGO CIII that did not enter service). The aircraft in Strange's account was probably the Ago CII which was also reported by other pilots in the same period usually with an over estimate of the armament and crew carried.