Editing Airframe (section)

=== First World War ===
Many early developments were spurred by [[military]] needs during [[World War I]]. Well known [[aircraft]] from that era include the Dutch designer [[Anthony Fokker]]'s combat aircraft for the [[German Empire]]'s {{lang|de|[[Luftstreitkräfte]]}}, and U.S. [[Glenn Curtiss|Curtiss]] [[flying boat]]s and the German/Austrian Taube [[monoplanes]]. These used hybrid wood and metal structures.

By the 1915/16 timeframe, the German [[Luft-Fahrzeug-Gesellschaft]] firm had devised a fully [[monocoque]] all-wood structure with only a skeletal internal frame, using strips of plywood laboriously "wrapped" in a diagonal fashion in up to four layers, around concrete male molds in "left" and "right" halves, known as ''Wickelrumpf'' (wrapped-body) construction<ref>{{cite book |title=German Combat Planes: A Comprehensive Survey and History of the Development of German Military Aircraft from 1914 to 1945 |author1=Wagner, Ray  |author2=Nowarra, Heinz  |name-list-style=amp |year=1971 |publisher=Doubleday |location=New York |pages=75 & 76 }}</ref> - this first appeared on the 1916 [[LFG Roland C.II]], and would later be licensed to [[Pfalz Flugzeugwerke]] for its D-series biplane fighters.

In 1916 the German [[Albatros D.III]] biplane fighters featured [[semi-monocoque]] fuselages with load-bearing plywood skin panels glued to longitudinal [[longeron]]s and [[Bulkhead (partition)|bulkhead]]s; it was replaced by the prevalent [[stressed skin]] structural configuration as [[metal]] replaced wood.<ref name=AW161121/> Similar methods to the Albatros firm's concept were used by both [[Hannoversche Waggonfabrik]] for their light two-seat [[Hannover CL.II|CL.II]] through [[Hannover CL.V|CL.V]] designs, and by [[Siemens-Schuckert]] for their later [[Siemens-Schuckert D.III]] and higher-performance [[Siemens-Schuckert D.IV|D.IV]] biplane fighter designs. The Albatros D.III construction was of much less complexity than the patented LFG ''Wickelrumpf'' concept for their outer skinning.{{Original research inline|date=May 2018}}

German engineer [[Hugo Junkers]] first flew all-metal airframes in 1915 with the all-metal, [[cantilever]]-wing, stressed-skin monoplane [[Junkers J 1]] made of [[steel]].<ref name=AW161121/> It developed further with lighter weight [[duralumin]], invented by [[Alfred Wilm]] in Germany before the war; in the airframe of the [[Junkers D.I]] of 1918, whose techniques were adopted almost unchanged after the war by both American engineer [[William Bushnell Stout]] and Soviet aerospace engineer [[Andrei Tupolev]], proving to be useful for aircraft [[Tupolev ANT-20|up to 60 meters in wingspan]] by the 1930s.