When the American Expeditionary Forces reached France they had pilots but no modern fighters. The obvious choice, the SPAD S.XIII, was in such demand that French factories could not spare enough of them. The Nieuport 28, already in production and surplus to French needs, filled the gap.

The result was an accident of supply that made history: the type the French had passed over became the mount on which the United States Air Service learned to fight in the air. By late summer 1918, as SPAD deliveries caught up, the Americans re-equipped with the S.XIII — but the Nieuport 28 had already carried them through their bloodiest first months.

The 94th “Hat in the Ring” and 95th Aero Squadrons flew the type first. Eddie Rickenbacker scored his opening victories in it before becoming America’s 26-kill ace of aces; Douglas Campbell became the first American-trained ace on it; and Alan Winslow shared the squadron’s celebrated first double victory over the airfield at Gengoult on 14 April 1918.

Not every story ended well. Raoul Lufbery, the veteran Lafayette Escadrille ace, died in May 1918, and Quentin Roosevelt was shot down and killed in a Nieuport 28 over France on 14 July 1918 — a loss that made headlines around the world.

Where the Nieuport 17 was a small, single-gun sesquiplane of about 110 hp, the Nieuport 28 was larger, heavier and far more powerful. Its two-spar lower wing and raked, rounded wingtips gave it a distinctly different silhouette, and its twin guns and 160 hp rotary put it in a different class of fighter altogether.

It was, in effect, Nieuport’s attempt to keep pace with the SPAD — lighter and more agile than the S.XIII, but never as strong.

Ten/Ta/To Monosoupape (“single valve”) rotary spun its whole cylinder block with the propeller, throwing castor-oil mist over the pilot and controlling power partly by blipping the ignition. It was powerful for its weight but thirsty and temperamental, giving the Nieuport 28 its lively performance and its short, roughly 90-minute endurance.

Figures for output vary around ~160 hp; treat exact numbers as period estimates.

Reports describe the leading-edge fabric of the upper wing stripping back under the airloads of a prolonged dive, occasionally taking structure with it. Rickenbacker himself survived such an event and landed with wing fabric gone. Riggers introduced field fixes and stronger attachment, and the problem eased — but confidence never fully recovered, and the sturdier SPAD S.XIII soon took over.

Numbers of aircraft or pilots lost specifically to the fault are not reliably recorded; contemporary accounts agree it was real and feared.

The Nieuport 28 was bought in the chaos of 1917–18 wartime procurement, when aircraft were ordered in batches at prices that were rarely published and are not consistently preserved. The United States acquired roughly 300 of them — about 297 for the Army Air Service and 12 for the Navy — but a clean per-unit dollar figure is not part of the reliable record.

Running one today is equally unofficial: a single airworthy original and a few replicas exist, maintained by specialist warbird operators whose hourly costs are private. Any figure you see quoted should be treated as an estimate.

The main production type was the single-seat Nieuport 28 C.1 fighter. After the war the U.S. Navy used a small number for pioneering shipboard flying-off trials, launching them from platforms built over the gun turrets of battleships — an early step toward carrier aviation.

Note: the Nieuport 28 is a different, later aircraft than the earlier Nieuport 17 sesquiplane scout; the two are often confused but share little beyond the maker’s name.