L'Oiseau Blanc

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Postcard with the airplane L'Oiseau Blanc , Charles Nungesser (l.) And François Coli (r.)

L'Oiseau Blanc ( The White Bird or The White Bird ) was a French biplane designed by Pierre Levasseur ( Levasseur PL.8 ). With the specially designed for long-haul flights machine attempted Charles Nungesser and François Coli , two veterans of the First World War, the first in May 1927 Nonstop - Transatlantic -Flight between Paris and New York to perform at the exposed 25,000  US dollars prize money for the Orteig Prize to win. The aircraft was last seen over the cliffs of Étretat in Upper Normandy after taking off from Paris on May 8 . Less than two weeks later, Charles Lindbergh successfully completed the first solo flight across the Atlantic with the Spirit of St. Louis on May 21, 1927 and was thus able to claim the prize.

The whereabouts of the White Bird is an unsolved mystery in aviation history . During the time of the disappearance, numerous rumors emerged about the fate of the aircraft and its crew. Research since the 1980s suggests the plane likely reached Newfoundland and then crashed in Maine . Since 2008, the landing gear has been exhibited as the only remaining part of the L'Oiseau Blanc in the Musée de l'air et de l'espace at Le Bourget Airport near Paris.

The attempt at a transatlantic flight with the White Bird had a great response and is recognized in many films and museums. A street in Paris is named after the plane and a postage stamp was issued in 1967. A statue at Paris Le Bourget Airport honors the attempted flight, and there is a memorial on the cliffs of Étretat , from where the plane was last seen.

background

In 1919, New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig offered a $ 25,000 prize, the Orteig Prize , for the first person to make a non-stop transatlantic flight between New York and Paris for the next five years . After no one had tried it, he renewed the offer in 1924, when aeronautical technology was so advanced that many people tried to get the price. Most tried to fly from New York to Paris, but some French also planned an attempt to fly in the opposite direction, from Paris to New York.

François Coli , 45, veteran of the First World War and holder of the French Legion of Honor , undertook record flights over the Mediterranean and had been planning a transatlantic flight since 1923. His original plans were to fly with his warmate Paul Tarascon, flying ace with 12 victories in the war. They began to be interested in the Orteig Prize in 1925, but in late 1926 an accident destroyed their Potez 25 biplane . Tarascon suffered severe burns and gave up his pilot position to 35-year-old Charles Nungesser , a very experienced flying ace with over 40 victories (the third highest among the French).

Nungesser had previously planned an independent attempt at a solo crossing to win the Orteig Prize. Initial discussions with the designer Pierre Levasseur , however, led to the fact that the company owner insisted that he try a new two-seat variant of the Levasseur PL.4 production with Coli, which is to become his navigator.

construction

At Pierre Levasseur in Paris, Nungesser and Coli worked closely with chief engineer Émile Farret and production manager Albert Longelot to develop the new Levasseur PL.8 double-decker . Based on the Levasseur PL.4, which was developed for the Aéronavale to operate from the French aircraft carrier Béarn , the PL.8 was a conventional, single-handled, wood and fabric clad biplane carrying a crew of two in an open cockpit could transport.

The main changes included the reinforcement of the plywood hull and the removal of the two forward cockpits, one behind the other, so that the main cockpit could be widened so that Nungesser and Coli could sit side by side. The span was also increased to approx. 15 m. Two additional fuel tanks were installed behind the firewall , so that the now three fuel tanks for the PL.8 could contain up to 4,025 l (1,063  US.liq.gal. ) Of gasoline.

Several safety precautions were also built into PL.8 in the event of a ditching at sea. In addition to small floats that were attached directly to the underside of the lower wing, the majority of the solid, dovetail-shaped undercarriage could be thrown off when taking off in order to reduce the weight of the aircraft. The underside of the hull was given a boat-like shape and made waterproof for a water landing planned by Nungesser and Coli in New York in front of the Statue of Liberty .

A single 340 kilowatt W-12 Lorraine-Dietrich ™ engine was used with the cylinders arranged in three rows spaced 60 degrees apart. This was similar to the arrangement used in Napier® engines. The engine was tested to ensure it would last the entire flight by running it in the Paris factory for 40 hours. The engine designer was Marius Barbaroux.

The plane was white, had French tricolor markings and drying Essers personal ace emblem from the First World War : a skull with candles and a coffin on a black heart. The biplane carried no radio and relied only on astronomical navigation , a specialty of Coli from its previous flights around the Mediterranean.

In 1928 a second PL-8, equipped with a Hispano-Suiza 12 M engine, was built.

Operating history

In April 1927, the PL.8-01 was moved from the factory so that Nungesser could begin a series of tests to determine aircraft performance. Most of the flights were conducted around Villacoublay and Chartres . Although it was never flown with the full amount of fuel, Nungesser achieved a speed of 207 km / h and an altitude of 4,900 meters during one flight.

The tests for the flight envelope were also successful without any major changes to the basic design being necessary. The only notable incident was a fire that broke out in the hangar where the PL.8-01 was stored. Burned tissue on the upper wing was the result, and effective repairs were made shortly thereafter. On May 7, 1927, after the tests were completed, the aircraft was prepared for its record-breaking flight and flown from Villacoublay to Le Bourget Airport .

Attempt to cross the Atlantic

Planned route over the North Atlantic

Nungesser and Coli took off from Le Bourget Airport in Paris to New York on May 8, 1927 at 5:17 p.m. Your PL.8-01 weighed 5,000 kg at takeoff, which was comparatively heavy for a single-engine aircraft, and at the end of the airport it only barely passed over a row of trees. To assemble an escort of the French fighter planes, Nungesser and Coli returned as planned, and immediately dropped the main landing gear at a low altitude.

The intended flight route was a curved route that would have taken them across the English Channel , southwestern England and Ireland, the Atlantic to Newfoundland , then via Nova Scotia to Boston, and finally to a water landing in New York .

After take-off, the biplane was escorted to the French coast by four military aircraft , led by Captain Venson of the French Air Force, and was last sighted from the coastal town of Étretat . The commander of the British submarine HMS H50 made this observation and noted in his log that he had seen a biplane at a height of 300 meters 20 nautical miles southwest of the tip of Needles on the Isle of Wight . In Ireland, a plane was reported by a resident of Dungarvan town and a Catholic priest reported a sighting over the village of Carrigaholt, after which no further verified reports were made.

Crowds gathered in New York to witness the historic arrival. Tens of thousands of people crowded around Battery Park in Manhattan for a good view of the Statue of Liberty, where the plane was supposed to land. Rumors circulated that the L'Oiseau Blanc had been sighted along its route in Newfoundland or across Long Island . In France, some newspapers even reported that Nungesser and Coli had arrived safely in New York and had sparked a wave of French patriotism . The L'Oiseau Blanc had a substantial load of 4,000 liters of fuel on it, which would have given them about 42 hours of flight time. After that time passed and no word was known about the fate of the plane, it became clear that the plane was lost. In France, the public was outraged by newspapers such as La Presse , which had printed false reports of the arrival of the plane, and demonstrations against the companies involved were sparked in the streets.

Immediately after their disappearance, an international search was launched to find Nungesser and Coli. Aviation Digest sponsored a well-known pilot, Floyd Bennett , to search the area between New York and Newfoundland for nine days. The Canadian search and rescue organizations also sent out two search planes, one of which crashed. Search parties from the French Navy , US Navy and Royal Canadian Navy combed the route including Labrador , the northeastern coast of the United States and the area around the St. Lawrence River . After the aircraft could not be seen, further searches were abandoned.

Twelve days after the launch of Nungesser and Coli, Charles Lindbergh set off from New York on his famous journey, flying alone in the Spirit of St. Louis . After a 33-hour and 30-minute flight, he received a heroic reception when he arrived in Paris, despite the French mourning the loss of Nungesser and Coli.

Whereabouts

The map shows the flight of the L'Oiseau Blanc over north-west France, over England and Ireland in 1927

The most popular theory was that the L'Oiseau Blanc crashed over the Atlantic because of a storm. Still, 12 witnesses in Newfoundland and Maine claimed to have heard the plane fly overhead. Residents of Harbor Grace , Newfoundland, reported seeing a white airplane circling in fog or haze on May 9, 1927. Since there were no planes on the island and no overflights were pending, the local newspapers highlighted a "mysterious" plane. If these stories were true, they would have meant the flight was way behind schedule. However, this delay could have been explained by the fact that the aircraft flew against the prevailing weather conditions . Fishermen off the Newfoundland coast reported the weather had turned cold and nasty, which may have caused the delay. In May 1927, the US Coast Guard found an airplane wing in Napeague Bay in Fort Pond Bay , Long Island Sound ; Airplane parts were reportedly seen 200 miles off the coast of New York in August 1927.

Many rumors circulated surrounding the disappearance of the plane, including a theory suggested that the airmen were shot down by alcohol smugglers aboard the Amistad rum ship with Thompson submachine guns , as well as the theory that Nungesser and Coli were still alive and among Indians in Canada found. In 1930, claims circulated that the L'Oiseau Blanc's engine had been located in Maine, but nothing was confirmed. Later speculations emerged in 1948 from reports that caribou and fur hunters had found aircraft parts in Long Gull Pond in Newfoundland.

New interest in the whereabouts of L'Oiseau Blanc began in the 1980s after the freelance writer Gunnar Hansen from Northeast Harbor, Maine , investigated the case and an article in the June 1980 edition of the Yankee Magazine, titled "The Unfinished Flight of the White Bird "published. Hansen revealed how Anson Berry (d. 1936), a settler who lived near Machias , Maine, claimed to see a plane with a stuttering engine fly over his isolation camp in Round Lake in the late afternoon of May 9, 1927 . Berry hadn't been able to see the plane because of the fog and low clouds, but in the distance it sounded like an accident or an emergency landing. Berry reportedly tried to locate the crash site but was unsuccessful. Hansen and others did a lot of research in the 1980s and tracked down several other witnesses who reported memories of the aircraft in a line from Nova Scotia to eastern Maine on the date.

In 1984 the French government conducted an official investigation and concluded that it was possible that the plane had reached Newfoundland. In 1989, the NBC television series Unsolved Mysteries launched the theory that Coli and Nungesser made it across the ocean but crashed and perished in the Maine forests. One of Nungesser's relatives, William Nungesser, made several trips to Maine to search, focusing on the northern slopes of Round Lake Hills in Washington County and the Lake Winnipesaukee area.

Famed author Clive Cussler and his NUMA organization also tried to solve the mystery by looking for the plane in Maine and Newfoundland. During the 1980s, they made several visits and interviewed dozen of elderly witnesses: hunters, fishermen, and others who said they saw or heard the plane in 1927. The NUMA expedition was named "Midnight Ghost" after Lindbergh's quote in his book The Spirit of St. Louis , where he said that Nungesser and Coli "disappeared like midnight ghosts." In 1992 divers traveled to Newfoundland trying to search and find Long Gull Pond for a wreck but found nothing and were not even sure they were looking in the right lake. Other lakes from Machias to Chesterfield were also searched.

Certain pieces were found which, while inconclusive, indicated that the L'Oiseau Blanc had made it to the continent. Little of the plane would have remained as wreckage, as it was primarily made of plywood and canvas. The engine and aluminum fuel tanks would have lasted the longest. In Maine, pieces of struts and wood of a similar type to the wood used in the construction of the double decker were found. Motor metal not typical of the United States or Canada has also been found near the town of Machias. Two residents described a large metal object; a "really big engine" that had been towed out of the forest along a path that was supposedly created by a logging operation.

In 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported that an unofficial French team was focusing on theories that the plane crashed off the coast of Canada after flying over Newfoundland.

estate

The disappearance of L'Oiseau Blanc has been dubbed the "Everest of Aviation Mysteries". TIGHAR, the international group for the recovery of historic aircraft, has named the aircraft "the most important missing aircraft in history".

In 1927 a monument was erected in Étretat to mark the last place from which the biplane was seen in France, but which was destroyed by the German occupation army in 1942. A new 24 m high monument, the Nungesser and Coli Monument , was erected on one of the cliffs in 1962. There is also a museum nearby.

Statue at Le Bourget Airport in honor of Nungesser, Coli and Lindbergh

Another monument in France was inaugurated on May 8, 1928 at Le Bourget Airport. The inscription reads, in honor of Lindbergh, Nungesser and Coli: “A ceux qui tentèrent et celui qui accomplicit” (German: “For those who tried and those who made it”). The French issued a commemorative stamp in 1967, 40 years after the flight, to honor the attempt by Nungesser and Coli. A street, "Rue Nungesser et Coli" along the Stade Jean Bouin in the 16th arrondissement of Paris is named after them.

In 1928, the Ontario Inspector General named a number of lakes in the northwestern part of the province to honor Airmen who in 1927 had died primarily attempting oceanic flights. These include Lake Coli and Lake Nungesser.

The chassis is the only remaining part of the L'Oiseau Blanc on display in the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace

The fate of the L'Oiseau Blanc is occasionally mentioned in films. The Canadian film Restless Spirits from 1999, a children's film with the alternative title Dead Aviators , uses the mystery of Nungesser and Coli's disappearance as the central plot. A young girl mourning the death of her father, who was a pilot, in a plane crash a few years ago, visits her grandmother in Newfoundland. There she meets the ghosts of Nungesser and Coli, whose restless ghosts experience their own undiscovered crash in 1927 in a nearby pond. The girl decides to help the couple go to the afterlife by helping them rebuild their plane and end their flight so they can be set free. This allows her to put her own emotional stress behind her over her father's test flight. In the opening scene of the film Sahara Desert Adventure from 2005, based on Cussler's novel Operation Sahara , a French newspaper article is shown telling a fictional story of NUMA finding the plane.

Since 2008, the landing gear has been exhibited as the only remaining part of the L'Oiseau Blanc in the Musée de l'air et de l'espace at Le Bourget Airport near Paris.

Technical data of the aircraft

Parameters Data
crew 2
length 9.75 m
span 15 m
height 3.89 m
Wing area 61.0 m²
Empty mass 1905 kg
Takeoff mass 5000 kg
Top speed 193 km / h
Engines a Lorraine-Dietrich W-12ED, 460 PS (340 kW)

Web links

Commons : L'Oiseau Blanc  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

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  2. ^ Keith Schneider: Win Fabulous Prizes, All in the Name of Innovation. In: New York Times. November 12, 2007, accessed May 25, 2018 .
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  4. ↑ a b c d e f Kenneth McDonaugh: Atlantic Wings 1919-1939: The Conquest of the North Atlantic by Airplane . Hemel Hempstead, Herts, UK 1966, ISBN 0-85344-125-1 , pp. 27 ff .
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  12. ^ A b O'Mara, Richard. "Surviving Amelia." The Sun, January 10, 1999.
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  16. ^ A b Gunnar Hansen: The Unfinished Flight of the White Bird. In: tighar.org. Yankee Magazine, June 1980, accessed May 25, 2018 .
  17. ^ Gunnar Hansen: The Unfinished Flight of the White Bird. In: tighar.org. Yankee Magazine, June 1980, accessed May 25, 2018 .
  18. ^ Aiding in the Search for The White Bird . In: AOTUS . June 4, 2013 ( archives.gov [accessed May 25, 2018]).
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  20. ↑ a b What happened to the White Bird? Fresh search for French plane that mysteriously disappeared as it tried to cross the Atlantic ten days BEFORE Charles Lindbergh's record breaking solo flight . In: Mail Online . ( dailymail.co.uk [accessed May 25, 2018]).
  21. ↑ Jackson, Joe, 1955-: Atlantic fever: Lindbergh, his competitors, and the race to cross the Atlantic . 1st ed. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-374-10675-1 , pp. 257 .
  22. ↑ a b Laskey, Jane. "Uncovering ghosts." St. Cloud Times, July 10, 2007.
  23. ^ Project Midnight Ghost. In: tighar.org. Retrieved May 25, 2018 .
  24. ↑ a b White Bird | National Underwater and Marine Agency. Retrieved May 25, 2018 (American English).
  25. ^ A b Catherine Heins: "White Birds trail fading - Many convinced trans-Atlantic flier made it to Maine." Bangor Daily News, July 29, 1998
  26. ↑ a b Bill Wiggens ". Mystery of the White Bird" Air Classics, July 1999.
  27. ^ Herb Cleaves: Bangor Daily News - Google News Archive Search. September 11, 1986, accessed May 25, 2018 .
  28. ^ Sebastian Moffett: Charles Lindbergh Won the Prize, but Did His Rival Get There First? In: Wall Street Journal . September 6, 2011, ISSN  0099-9660 ( wsj.com [accessed May 25, 2018]).
  29. ↑ Michel Lagarde: Étretat naturellement belle. (No longer available online.) Office de Tourisme d'Etretat, archived from the original on May 4, 2008 ; accessed on May 25, 2018 (English).
  30. ^ Journal des débats politiques et littéraires . [sn], Paris May 9, 1928 ( bnf.fr [accessed May 25, 2018]).
  31. ↑ Bernard Le Lann: Nungesser et Coli L'Oiseau Blanc - May 8, 1927 - Timbre de 1967 . In: Phil-Ouest - les timbres de France et les flammes d'oblitérations de l'Ouest . ( phil-ouest.com [accessed May 25, 2018]).
  32. ^ St. Raphael Signature Site Strategy. (PDF) Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, 2007, p. 14 , accessed on May 25, 2018 (English).
  33. ↑ LOST AVIATORS. In: West Australian (Perth, WA: 1879-1954) . Ottawa January 13, 1928, p. 13 ( gov.au [accessed May 25, 2018]).
  34. ^ David Wellington: Restless Spirits. August 1, 1999, accessed May 25, 2018 .
  35. ^ Breck Eisner: Sahara. April 8, 2005, accessed May 25, 2018 .