The two-seat W.27 tested a more conventional floatplane arrangement with staggered wings and simplified I-strut bracing. Its Benz engine offered about 195 horsepower, while the structure used fewer struts than earlier Hansa-Brandenburg designs. The W.32 adapted the W.27 arrangement to a Mercedes D.III engine for further trials. Assigning a new design number to an engine change complicates attempts to reconstruct prototype production. Whether any of the intervening W.21 to W.26 designs reached prototype form remains disputed, with the W.23 a particular possibility. The suggestion that missing prototypes were absorbed into later design numbers remains a hypothesis.
Chapter · 50:23-53:43
W.27 and W.32 airframe and engine trials
W.27 and W.32 trials combined revised struts with engine substitutions, leaving uncertainty about how prototype airframes relate to the design numbers.