No need to Nick
You put the finger on the main problem with Nieuport aircraft, their version numberings and serial numbers applied.
Did the French really order the Nieuport aircraft in such small batches or did they let the factory more or less decide by itself what every given serial number should apply for?
Looking at the known Nieuport serials and beside an initial hefty amount of Type 10 we more or less come to face a myriad of small batches of Type 10, 11, 16 (from about serial 800 range). The situation seems to stablize somewhat later, but I still feel the ordered batches are way too small.
If we now agree that N1386 was a Type 11, why are seemingly N1368 to N1385 (many blanks in between) and N1392 reported as Type 16 and N1396, N1398 as Type 17 and so on?
By mid 1915 (and certainly in 1916) the French must have realised that this would be a long war and to order small batches like this just seems incomprehensible.
At this point I confess, no I haven't looked at the other known manufactures, so perhaps they all followed the same road, and if so what was the purpose of that?
In the above Nieuport case, we have then that a maximum of six Type 11 was inserted inbetween batches of Type 16 and possibly Type 17 as well.
If we had not been able to see that N1386 was given as Type 11 I would gladly have put the Type 16 range all the way from N1368 to N1392!!
Are we facing a large number of misidentified airframes or what?
Cheers
Stig