Quote:
Originally Posted by Soviet Ace
If you put up any Biplane against a monoplane, the biplane will no doubt out-turn the monoplane, if its a slow dogfight. And the I-153 Chaika is an I-16 biplane. first there was the I-15 which was a I-16 biplane with fixed landing gear, and an R1820 engine. Then came the I-15bis, which was the same, but the plane didn't have the "gull" wing on top, it just had a solid wing above. Then as the Spanish Civil War rolled around the I-153 Chaika came along, and was yet another I-16 biplane. Same engine: M25, but with once again "gull" wings, and this time with raisable landing gear. So the I-153 Chaika is an I-16, just with a top "gull" wing. And yes, the I-153 Chaika is in game, but it has the M25 engine I believe. Which was actually more of a reliable engine than the M63, which would cut out a lot more than before. And the reason the Biplane was still being used in the USSR, was because Stalin and the rest thought that the biplane would become the lead design of aircraft, rather than monoplanes.
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The I-153 was not an I-16 biplane. The two plane might share some resemblance in features such as the shape of the cockpit and tail, due to their sharing a designer, but they are rather different apart from this. The I-153 was the final development of a family of fighter biplanes that started with the I-5 in 1931. The I-15(1934) was a heavily revised version of this with a M22 engine and the famous gulled wing which lead to the Chaika(Seagull) nickname. In turn this became the I-15bis(1937) with a straight upper wing and a M25V engine, and a further development was the I-153(1939) with a return to the gulled upper wing and consequently the old nickname, an M62 engine and a retractable undercarriage.
The I-16 was first introduced to service in 1934, only months after the I-15. The two planes shared the M22 engine but very little else. The I-15 was a biplane with a metal forward forward fuselage and a fabric covered rear fuselage, wooden wings and fixed undercarriage, while the I-16 was a monoplane with a metal frame covered in wood and a retractable undercarriage. The I-16 mirrored the advances in engines fitted to the I-15 family, which where produced alongside the I-16, and was fitted in turn with the M25V, M62 and M63 engines as these became available, but without any name change.