At the end of 1916, the British were trying a number of methods
for combating the German zeppelins that had been bombing their cities. Hoping
to intercept the enemy airships before they could reach England's shores, the
Admiralty set about designing a small fighter capable
of taking off from flight platforms mounted on the gun turrets of battleships
and cruisers, or even from warships as small as torpedo boats. Toward that end,
two different aircraft emerged, from the Royal Naval Air Service Experimental
Construction Depot (ECD) at Port
Victoria and from the Experimental Flight at Eastchurch. Both were diminutive,
lightweight planes, each powered by 35-hp A.B.C. Gnats and armed with a single
Lewis machine gun. Both the P.V.7 and P.V.8 were flown in October 1917, and
both were rejected. Zeppelins were no longer a serious threat by then, and heavier-than-air
bombers such as the Gotha G.IV and Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI were taking their place
in the skies over Britain.
On March 13, 1918, an official instruction called for the P.V.8 Eastchurch Kitten to be dismantled and shipped to the United States for evaluation by, among others, James V. Martin, whose version is pictured above. The basic concept behind Martin's Kitten was clearly the same as that of its British counterparts--a small, lightweight, low-powered airship interceptor. In contrast to the structurally conventional Grain and Eastchurch Kittens, however, Martin got somewhat more creative with the K.III--most notably by giving it semiretractable landing gear.
It was not until December 1918, after the armistice had been signed and World War I concluded, that the K.III arrived at McCook Field for testing. The U.S. Army promptly rejected it as structurally unsound and refused to test-fly it until it was strengthened. When Martin flatly refused to allow any changes to be made on his original design, the Army dropped the K.III from consideration.
Incredibly--considering the less than amiable circumstances of its rejection--the original K.III somehow survived the decades. It can currently be seen hanging from a hangar ceiling at the Paul E. Garber facility in Silver Spring, Md.
Text and pic shamelessly swiped from The
History Net.