Hanriot HD.1
| Hanriot HD.1 | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Type: | Fighter plane |
| Design country: | |
| Manufacturer: |
Appareils d'Aviation Hanriot |
| First flight: |
June 1916 |
| Commissioning: |
1917 |
| Production time: |
1917-1918 |
| Number of pieces: |
about 1000 |
The Hanriot HD.1 was a French fighter aircraft in the First World War of 1916 .
history
René Hanriot was already active in aircraft construction before the war, but his company Société des monoplans Hanriot went bankrupt in 1913. It was not until 1916 that Hanriot joined forces with Emile Dupont, who had previously developed racing aircraft at Deperdussin , Ponnier, Morane and Nieuport . Initially, Hanriot manufactured the British Sopwith 1½ Strutter under license at his plant in Billancourt near Paris . Meanwhile, Dupont designed a single-seater similar to the British Bristol Scout or Sopwith Pup , which made its first flight in June 1916 as the HD.1.
construction
The Hanriot HD.1 was a single-handled double-decker. The fuselage and wings were fabric-covered wooden constructions with duralumin sheets in the fore-fuselage area; the tail units were reinforced with a tubular steel frame. Upper and lower wings were of different lengths and staggered, whereby the pilot got an excellent view. The machine had ailerons only on the upper wings and had a tail wheel landing gear .
variants
In addition to the standard version with the Le Rhône 9J rotary engine with 110 hp, the HD.1 was equipped with different engine variants due to the often criticized poor engine performance. Machines were equipped with the Le Rhóne 9Jb with 120 HP or with the Le Rhóne 9Jby with 130 HP. In addition, a single unit has been equipped with the Gnome Monosoupape with 150 HP, another single machine is said to have been equipped with a 170 HP engine on a trial basis.
The further development of the single-seater Hanriot HD.7 , of which a test model had reached a speed of 214 km / h in 1918, was ended with the end of the First World War.
commitment
The Hanriot HD.1 was an easy-to-fly and extremely manoeuvrable small fighter that, despite simple armament and the somewhat inefficient Le Rhône 9J engine, became one of the most manufactured fighters of the First World War. Since the French air force had opted for the SPAD S.VII because of its better performance , part of the production of the HD.1 went to the Italian Corpo Aeronautico Militare . The Italian military commission had the aircraft tested and from November 1916 had around 900 aircraft built under license at Macchi in Varese in order to be able to replace outdated Nieuport fighters. The successful fighter pilots Silvio Scaroni , Gastone Novelli , Mario Fucini and Giorgio Michetti achieved numerous aerial victories with their HD.1. Their opponents, the fighter pilots of the Kuk Luftfahrttruppen , judged the HD.1 to be on a par with the Austrian Oeffag D.III ; it was faster, but the HD.1 was more agile. The Belgian Aviation Militaire also received 125 French-made aircraft in 1917.
Post-war use
The US Navy also used some machines after the end of the war. B. 1919 attempted to take off from the battleship USS Mississippi from a launch pad. Smaller sales went to Switzerland (16 pieces), Ecuador and Venezuela .
With a Hanriot HD.1, Lieutenant Paul Teste landed the first successful landing of a French aircraft on the deck of a ship on October 20, 1920, on a 45-meter-long wooden platform that had been placed on the aft deck of the unfinished battleship Béarn . The Béarn was then converted into an aircraft carrier.
The Hanriot remained in service in some countries until 1930, making it one of the longest-lived hunters of the First World War, although a more powerful machine, the SPAD S.VII , appeared early on .
Technical specifications
| Parameter | Data |
|---|---|
| crew | 1 |
| length | 5.85 m |
| span | 8.70 m |
| height | 2.55 m |
| Wing area | 18 m² |
| payload | 252 kg |
| Empty mass | 400 kg |
| Max. Takeoff mass | 652 kg |
| Top speed | 184 km / h |
| Rate of climb | 4:40 min at 2000 m |
| Service ceiling | 6540 m |
| Range | 550 km |
| Flight duration | 2:30 h |
| Engines | a Le Rhône 9J star engine with 110 hp (81 kW) |
| Armament | one or two 7.7 mm Vickers MG |
Museum aircraft
- National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola
- Museum of the Swiss Air Force in Dübendorf
- Military Museum in Brussels , Belgium
See also
literature
- Kenneth Munson: Combat aircraft 1914–1919 , Orell Füssli-Verlag, Zurich 1968.
- Heinz Nowarra: The Development of Airplanes 1914–1918 , Lehmanns, Munich 1959.
- Bernhard Tötschinger: Hanriot HD-1 , in ÖFH Nachrichten, Vienna, 4/1985, p. 31ff.
- David Méchin: Hanriot HD 1: nul n'est prophète en son pays. L'aviation en 1918 - episode 1. In: Le fana de l'aviation, No. 579, Février 2018, pp. 46–55.
Web links
- HD 1 at eads.com ( Memento from March 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- HD 1 on Worldatwar.net