Payen Pa 22
| Payen Pa 22 | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Type: | Experimental airplane |
| Design country: | |
| Manufacturer: | |
| First flight: |
October 18, 1941 |
| Number of pieces: |
1 |
The Payen 22 was an experimental aircraft by the designer Nicolas Roland Payen , which had a very unconventional design. The concept, called Fléchair by Payen , provided for a tandem wing, with the front wing being a trapezoidal wing with a short span. This had ailerons and flaps. The rear surface, on the other hand, had an extreme delta shape with a leading edge sweep of 67 ° and had combined flaps and elevators. This construction can also be seen as an unconventional form of a duck plane.
history
The Payen 22 was the result of a development that began with a patent application under the number 729,568 under the name "Avion Autoplan". The subject of this patent was an aircraft with movable primary and rigid secondary wings. A racing aircraft initially planned in 1933 with the designation SP-25 could not be realized due to financial problems. Nicolas Roland Payen, however, managed to raise funds for a new project, the Pa 100 “Flèche Volant”. Rotatable wing tips should act as ailerons . The secondary wing was swept strongly at 67 degrees, and the cabin went directly into the rudder .
After an inspection of the unusual aircraft, the engine sponsor Régnier surprisingly withdrew from its commitment to a 180 hp in- line engine . As a replacement, Payen has now procured a 380 hp radial engine . This meant that the engine's displacement was too large to be able to participate in the Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe as planned . The machine was renamed Pa 101. On April 17, 1935, this aircraft, now with a conventional rudder, took off for its first flight. Shortly thereafter, the machine was damaged in a crash landing and could no longer be used. The fuselage served as a template for the Pa 112 C1 "Flèchair", which reached 580 km / h with two 100 hp radial engines and propellers rotating in the opposite direction . However, the French Air Force showed no interest. Payen now turned to an alternative propulsion technology, the ramjet engine . The first thing to do was to design the Pa 100R, which was supposed to carry two ramjet engines under the wings.
In the spring of 1939 he began building the Pa 22 / 1R. A Mélot ramjet engine with a power of 2 kN built into the fuselage was to serve as the drive. The main landing gear was detachable, next to the tail wheel there was a non-retractable safety wheel under the fuselage. However, experiments with a newly developed fuel mixture were not very successful.
A new hull was then constructed and the Pa 22/2 developed. In the meantime, the French government has shown interest in the concept. As a result, the Pa 22/2 received a 180-hp Régnier in-line engine on August 28, 1939. Except for the bonnet, the aircraft was painted in the typical French “racing blue” and brought to Chalais-Meudon to be tested in the local wind tunnel . But just one day after arriving there, the Second World War broke out. The Pa 22/2 had to leave the wind tunnel because a Bf 109 captured by the republican troops in the Spanish civil war was to be examined there. The Pa 22 was stored and fell into German hands with the conquest of France a few months later. On June 12, 1940, the machine was confiscated, given German camouflage and transported to Villacoublay . There it was given the mark BI + XB under the management of Junkers and should be tested as soon as possible.
In the first tests, the aircraft was found to have poor longitudinal stability. Attempts to eliminate this problem with the help of metal sheets mounted on top of the vertical stabilizer failed. As a result, the cockpit that merged into the rudder was exchanged for a more conventional one and a conventional rudder was used. The underside, which was previously painted in light blue, was also painted yellow, as is customary with captured aircraft. The designation has also been changed to Pa 22 V5. Towards the end of the summer of 1941, the first careful flight attempts were made, which ended with an unpleasant incident: the Pa 22 stopped with an engine failure in the middle of the runway when the Ju 88 was about to take off for England. On October 18, 1941, a real flight at low altitude could be completed for the first time. However, an attempt to escape by a French pilot with another aircraft led to the fact that from now on all flights with French aircraft in Villacoublay were prohibited. Instead, the aircraft should be tested further in Germany. Under the pretext of being able to make important changes to the Pa 22 only in Payen's workshop, the machine actually got back there - and was forgotten. In 1943 the machine was badly damaged in an Allied bombing raid. Only part of the hull survived.
Technical specifications
| Parameter | Pa 22/2 |
|---|---|
| crew | 1 |
| length | 7.48 m |
| span | 4.8 m |
| height | 2.35 m |
| Wing area | 10.0 m² |
| Empty mass | 560 kg |
| Max. Takeoff mass | 955 kg |
| Top speed | 360 km / h * |
| Range | 1200 km * |
| Engine | 1 × Regnier R6 with 180 PS (132 kW) |
* Since it was no longer possible to determine the performance data with test flights, the performance values listed in the technical data are only estimates.
literature
- Alain J. Pelletier: Paper Darts to Deltas - The Designs of Roland Payen . In: AIR Enthusiast, No.68, pp. 33–44
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Plane Facts, Air International, November 1977, p. 256