Blériot 110
| Bleriot 110 | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Type: | Long-range record aircraft |
| Design country: | |
| Manufacturer: | |
| First flight: |
May 16, 1930 |
| Commissioning: |
1930 |
| Number of pieces: |
1 |
The Blériot 110 (or Bl 110 ) was a French long-range test aircraft produced in a single copy by Blériot Aéronautique in 1930 , which set several world records for powered flight. This machine was the first aircraft to cross the North Atlantic in both directions. The machine was designed by the Italian Filippo Zappata , who returned to his home country in 1933.
History and construction
The aircraft was designed and built on behalf of the French Ministry of Aviation in order to surpass the existing world records in long-distance and endurance flights. At the same time, the Ministry of Aviation ordered two more record-breaking aircraft, the Bernard 80 GR Oiseau Tango and the Dewoitine D.33 Trait d'union , which were all successful. The designer of the Blériot 110 was the Italian Filippo Zappata , who worked from 1929 to 1933 as chief designer at the Blériot Aéronautique company and who also designed the transatlantic flying boat Blériot 5190 .
The Blériot 110 was a large, two-seater high - decker with a wingspan of 26.5 m , a length of 14.57 m and a height of 4.9 m. The wings had a surface area of 81 m². The machine had a 600 hp (447 kW) Hispano-Suiza 12L engine, which gave it a top speed of 220 km / h. The service ceiling was 2000 meters. For the planned long-haul flights, three fuel tanks were installed in each wing and another four in the fuselage, which held a total of 6000 liters. This should enable a flight distance of 12,600 km. The empty weight of the machine was 2680 kg, fully loaded it weighed 8790 kg. The pilots sat in a cabin in the fuselage at the wing end with no view to the front. Portholes on the sides of the hull were the only windows.
Comparison of the technical data of the French record-breaking aircraft
| Parameter | Blériot 110 | Latécoère 28.8 | Bernard 80 | Dewoitine 33 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First flight | May 16, 1930 | 07.1930 | November 27, 1930 | November 21, 1930 |
| machinery | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| crew | 2 | 3 | ||
| length | 14.51 m | 13.86 m | 14.85 m | 14.40 m |
| span | 26.50 m | 25.50 m | 24.50 m | 28.00 m |
| height | 4.90 m | 3.85 m | 4.40 m | 5.00 m |
| Wing area | 81 m² | 80 m² | 70 m² | 98.45 m² |
| Empty mass | 2680 kg | 3100 kg | ||
| Takeoff mass | 8790 kg | 8184 kg | 8620 kg | 9800 kg |
| Top speed | 220 km / h | 200 km / h | 240 km / h | 245 km / h |
| Service ceiling | 2000 m | |||
| Range | 12,600 km | 11,000 km | ||
| Engine | Hispano-Suiza 12 Lb | HS 12Nbr | HS 12Nb | |
| power | 600 hp | 650 hp | ||
Services
The first flight on May 16, 1930 had to be canceled prematurely due to problems with the fuel supply, but no damage occurred. After some repairs, the aircraft, registered in July 1930 with the registration F-ALCC, was transferred to Oran in Algeria to start the record attempts there from La Sénia airport . On March 1, 1932, the Blériot chief pilot Lucien Bossoutrot (1890-1958) and his co-pilot Maurice Rossi (1901-1966) succeeded in screwing the world record in non-stop flight to 8,822 km. They surpassed the record set by the Italian Umberto Maddalena with a Savoia-Marchetti S. 64 last year by 744 km. At the same time, they set a new world record for flight duration when they were in the air for a total of 75:23:07 hours non-stop from February 26th to March 1st. The record was broken on April 2nd by the French Paillard and Mermoz with the Bernard 80 with 8960 km. A year later, from March 23 to 26, 1932, Bossoutrot and Rossi beat the circuit distance record again with the Blériot 110 and flew a total of 10,601 km non-stop in 76 hours and 34 minutes. The machine they had in January 1932 on the name of Joseph Le Brix baptized in honor of the aviation pioneer who had the round course-long course record held since June 1931 but then during an attempted non-stop flight on Sept. 12, 1931 Paris - Tokyo in Ufa on the Urals in the second Dewoitine 33 crashed and was killed.
On August 5, 1933, Paul Codos (1896-1960) and Maurice Rossi broke the long-distance record for point-to-point flights with the Blériot 110 when they flew 9,105 km from New York to Rayak . The main base of the French air force in the mandate area of Syria was located near the small town in today's Lebanon (70 km from Damascus). The airfield was laid out for German machines during the First World War.
On 27./28. May 1934, Codos and Rossi flew the Blériot 110 Joseph Le Brix over the North Atlantic in an east-west direction from Le Bourget to New York in 38:28 hours, where they had to abort the flight planned to San Francisco due to technical problems with the propeller . The machine was the first aircraft to fly over the North Atlantic in both directions.
Further record attempts in the following years were unsuccessful and the machine was scrapped in 1935. The last time Codos and Rossi tried to fly from Istres to Santiago de Chile was on February 16, 1935 . At the beginning of the second day of flight, the pilots found that they were losing significant amounts of oil and they turned around in the South Atlantic. They tried to reach the Cape Verde Islands, 800 km away . After thirty hours and 6,000 kilometers of flight, the landing in Praia was successful . The cause was a defective and leaking oil pump, the damage could be repaired and the pilots returned home with the machine on March 15th. The flight of 4,700 km to the Bleriot factory airfield near Buc (Yvelines) took 24:57 hours (~ 188 km / h).
literature
- Carlo Demand: The great Atlantic flights 1919 to today , Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-87943-909-5
- Michael JH Taylor: Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation. Studio Editions, London, 1989
- World Aircraft Information Files. Bright Star Publishing, London; File 890, Sheet 41
Web links
Notes and individual references
- ↑ a b Demand: The great Atlantic flights , p. 57
- ↑ FAI Record ID # 9514. (No longer available online.) Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, archived from the original on July 21, 2015 ; accessed on January 27, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ FAI Record ID # 9513. (No longer available online.) Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, archived from the original on July 20, 2015 ; accessed on January 27, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ FAI Record ID # 9292. (No longer available online.) Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, archived from the original on July 21, 2015 ; accessed on January 27, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Marcel Doret and Joseph le Brix had reached 10,372 km near Istres in June 1931 . ( Les avions de record français (1928–1932) ; PDF; 2.1 MB)
- ↑ Figures de l'Aviation - Codos et Rossi. Retrieved January 27, 2015 (French).
- ↑ Demand, p. 197
