German hang-glider enthusiast Hans Richter flew a triplane variant. Following the craze for the homebuilt tandem-wing Mignet Pou du Ciel (Flying Flea), a triplane variant, the American Flea, was produced in America around 1939. In this variant the top wings were fixed and the bottom wing acted as all-flying ailerons. In 1975 a triplane glider, titled BrO-18 „Boružė“ (lith. Ladybird) was built in then-Soviet occupied Lithuania by Bronius Oškinis. The aircraft having a wingspan of 4.9 meters, also earned the title of world's smallest glider at that time. Similar configuration was used in hydro-glider BrO-17V „Antelė“ (Lith. Duckling). Tandem triplanes A tandem triplane has two sets of triplane wings, fore and aft. Few have been made. The Dufaux triplane of 1908 was Switzerland's first native aircraft design, configured as a tandem triplane with a smaller biplane horizontal stabiliser. The 1909 Roe I Triplane has also been described as a tandem triplane due to its relatively large triplane aft plane. The Fokker V.8 of 1917 was another tandem design although not a true tandem triplane, having a triplane fore wing, biplane rear wing and monoplane tail stabiliser. In 1921, the Italian Gianni Caproni mated three stacks of triplane wings from his Ca.4 series to a single fuselage in a tandem triple triplane arrangement, to create the Caproni Ca.60 Noviplano prototype transatlantic airliner. It proved unstable and crashed on its second flight. A further example was under construction in Kansas City, Kansas, as late as 1922. Recently, the term "tandem triplane" has been used for some new monoplane types that have active "canard" foreplane surfaces in addition to conventional wings and horizontal tailplane. A configuration having three comparable lifting surfaces in tandem is more typically referred to as a three surface aircraft, or sometimes a tandem triple or tandem triplet, and is not a triplane as such. These modern types may also be compared to the pioneer Voisin-Farman I and Curtiss No. 1 which also had a large main wing with smaller fore and aft planes; the smaller planes were not regarded as part of the main wing arrangement, and they were not described as tandem types. See also List of triplanes Multiplane (aeronautics) John Stringfellow Frederick Marriott References Notes Bibliography Angelucci, E. and P. Matricardi. World Aircraft - Origins-World War 1. London: Sampson Low, 1977. Green, William and Gordon Swanborough. The Complete Book of Fighters: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Every Fighter