Blériot XI
| Blériot XI | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Type: | Sport plane |
| Design country: | |
| Manufacturer: | |
| First flight: |
January 23, 1909 |
| Commissioning: |
1909 |
| Number of pieces: |
800 |
The Blériot XI was a single-seat aircraft built by the French aviation pioneer Louis Blériot .
construction
The fuselage of the machine consisted of a framework made of ash wood , braced with steel wires , the wing frame was also constructed in wood and covered with fabric. The main landing gear consisted of the two large wheels of a bicycle, supplemented by a smaller rear wheel, attached under the rear third of the fuselage.
During the first flight on January 23, 1909, the machine was equipped with an additional stabilizing fin on the front part of the fuselage, which Blériot removed again due to lack of effectiveness. At that time, the XI was powered by a REP aircraft engine with an output of 21 kW (28 hp), but before the second flight, which took place on May 27, 1909, it was driven by an Anzani engine with 18.4 kW (25 PS) was replaced.
use
In 1908 Louis Blériot designed his most successful model, the Blériot XI, a monoplane . Before that, the ambitious French aviation pioneer had invested all of his fortune in the development of an operational aircraft for almost a decade. In December 1908 Blériot presented at the air show in Paris the plane with a 7-cylinder - REP -Motor of which made 35 hp.
In 1909 he replaced the 23 hp engine with a 25 hp engine and on June 26, 1909 set a European flight endurance record of 36 minutes and 55 seconds. A month later, on July 25, 1909, he succeeded in flying across the English Channel , with which he won the Daily Mail's Cross Channel Prize and became internationally famous. As a result of this overflight, there was great demand for this model, which could be increased when Louis Blériot on August 24, 1909 at the flight week in Reims for the event circuit of 10 km with a flight time of 8 minutes and 4.4 seconds ( Average speed 74.318 km / h) set the lap record.
A Blériot XI flown by Jorge Chávez Dartnell took off on September 23, 1910 above Brig ( Switzerland ), flew for the first time over the Simplon Pass , which is located at 2006 m above sea level, and then had an accident on landing near Domodossola ( Italy ). On January 24, 1913, the Swiss aviation pioneer Oskar Bider flew over the Pyrenees for the first time on the route Pau (France) - Madrid ( Spain ) .
In 1911 the German army administration procured a Blériot XI as a training aircraft.
At the end of 1913, Blériot had already delivered 800 machines. There were also numerous licensed buildings in Italy and Great Britain ( Humber Limited ). At the beginning of the First World War , the Blériot was even used as a reconnaissance or artillery observation aircraft for a short time, as it offered the observer a good field of vision.
In 1915, however, the Blériot XI were withdrawn from service at the front and only served as training aircraft, as in the flight school in Issy-les-Moulineaux .
A two-seat Blériot XI with a Gnome -T-9 rotary engine ( nine-cylinder - four-stroke engine with 100 HP at 1200 rpm) built in 1914 was the first aircraft of the Swiss Air Force . The machine was acquired second-hand and was used for border control and pilot training until the end of 1917. The armament consisted of a carbine attached to the side of the machine. The decommissioning took place due to material fatigue in the cell made of wood. The engine of this aircraft is exhibited today in the Flieger-Flab-Museum in Dübendorf near Zurich , the museum of the air troops of the Swiss Army.
Economic success
Before the historic canal flight, Blériot had already broken various long-distance records with this machine.
The flight over the English Channel initiated considerable demand for the XI; Blériot was able to sell around 800 of this aircraft in 1913 alone, with a total French aircraft production of around 1,300. In order to be able to meet the demand, he had the aircraft produced by subcontractors .
Various air forces soon became interested in Blériot's machine. The XI was used by the Italian Air Force in Cyrenaica and Libya against the Ottoman Empire in 1911 and 1912 .
From the XI, Blériot developed a two-seater model with larger dimensions and considerably more powerful engines, called the XI-2. Of the Bleriot XI-2, 104 machines were manufactured under license in Great Britain and 70 in Italy . With the start of the First World War, the Bleriot XI-2 was the first to drop small bombs and aviator arrows on ground targets by hand .
Both versions were in service with the Armée de l'air at the beginning of the First World War . In the meantime, the XI has also been built under license in Italy and England .
At the beginning of 1915, most of the XI were removed from service in the first lines and were mainly used in flight schools.
Technical specifications
| Parameter | Data |
|---|---|
| crew | 1 pilot |
| length | 7.05 m |
| span | 7.81 m |
| height | 2.52 m |
| Wing area | 14.0 m² |
| Wing extension | 4.4 |
| drive | an Anzani engine (three-cylinder half-star) with 18.4 kW (25 PS) |
| Top speed | 74 km / h |
| Max. Takeoff mass | 320 kg |
| Parameters | Data |
|---|---|
| crew | 2 |
| length | 8.45 m |
| span | 10.25 m |
| height | 2.50 m |
| Wing area | 23.00 m² |
| Wing extension | 4.6 |
| Empty mass | 349 kg |
| Max. Takeoff mass | 625 kg |
| drive | a Gnome-7B rotary engine with 52 kW (70 hp) |
| Top speed | 106 km / h at sea level |
| Service ceiling | <200 m |
| Flight duration | 3.5 h |
| Armament | but no, the crew threw grenades and flechettes from |
variants
- XI-BG (Blériot-Gouin): two-seater umbrella decker (Parasol) , designed as a reconnaissance aircraft with a better field of vision for the observer
- XI-3: three-seater with a 88 kW (120 PS) engine
- XI E1: single-seat trainer aircraft
- XI-2bis: Version with two seats next to each other
- XI R1: since a large part of the covering was removed from this machine, it was no longer airworthy and was only used for rolling exercises, hence the nickname "Pingouin"
The XI today
Due to the special importance that this aircraft had for the development of aviation, many replicas - often airworthy - can still be found around the world.
The oldest still flying Blériot XI was found in a barn by the Swedish pilot Mikael Carlson at the end of the 1980s and brought back into an airworthy condition by him. It is a so-called Thulin-Blériot, which was produced by the Swedish aircraft manufacturer Dr. Enoch Thulin was built under license.
In the Aviation Museum Altenrhein at Lake Constance (Switzerland) a flightless efficient replica of a Bleriot XI from 1910 is on display, which was built according to original plans and using a stock engine and -fahrwerks.
In the Flying Museum in Grossenhain there is another airworthy replica, built according to the original plans and powered by a Salmson A5A engine.
Three different versions of the XI are z. B. in the Musée de l'air et de l'espace at Le Bourget Airport . Another original machine from 1909 is in the Deutsches Museum in Munich in the "Historical Aviation" department. It comes from a Munich flight school and was donated to the museum in 1912.
On July 25, 2009, the 100th anniversary of Blériot's crossing of the English Channel, the Frenchman Edmond Salis repeated the crossing in a faithful replica of the machine. It took a few minutes longer than Louis Blériot at the time, but the landing gear of his aircraft survived the landing without damage. In 1909 it buckled when it landed, but this did not detract from the success of the campaign. At the time, Blériot received £ 1,000 (which is now approx. 104,000 euros ) for the first successful flight across the English Channel , which was advertised by the British daily Daily Mail .
See also
Web links
- Mikael Carlson Flying Machines (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bleriot Flies with His Short-Span Machine . In: Proprietors of FLIGHT (Ed.): Flight . tape 5 . Flight, London 1909, p. 64 ( flightglobal.com [accessed February 28, 2015]).
- ↑ Flight, January 2, 1909 edition, p. 8
- ↑ RHEIMS AVIATION WEEK . In: Proprietors of FLIGHT (Ed.): Flight . tape 35 . Flight, London 1909, p. 515-523 .
- ↑ Kroschel, Stützer, The German Military Aircraft 1910–1918, Mittler & Sohn, Herford, p. 115
- ↑ Flying Museum
- ↑ deutsches-museum.de