Kasyanenko "KPI-5" - the Russian fighter - prototype

With the outbreak of World War I, the Kasyanenko brothers had the idea of ​​building a combat aircraft. The body of the "KPI-5" fighter was a rotating body of an elongated drop shape with a slightly rounded nose and a clearly pointed stack at the rearmost point. This arrangement of the engine was intended to provide the pilot with the maximum possible forward visibility and the most convenient conditions for aiming and firing at the front hemisphere. An English "Browning" machine gun with a replaceable disk magazine for 47 rounds (48th in the barrel) of 7.71 mm caliber was installed in the nose of the fuselage. "KPI-5" was built in the workshops of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in 1916. Tests began only at the end of June 1917. Flight tests ended with... the first attempt at acceleration at the Syretsky airfield. On July 1, 1917, during a fall after an energetic approach, a breakdown occurred. The aircraft was never put into serial production.