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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 1024.PDF
476 FLIGHT MAY 14TH, 1942 Ahead of Their Time—4 MODERNITY IN 1911 An Antoinette Monoplane with Cantilever Wings, "Trousered" Undercarriage, and Engine with Steam Cooling and Direct Fuel Injection By THE EDITOR A PROPER appreciation of the subject of this week's reminis cence of an early aircraft type which was ahead of its time can only be obtained by recalling briefly the contemporary types in the different countries. The year with which we are concerned is 1911. France was, at that time, well ahead of Great Britain in aviation development, and prob ably Germany came second to France. In Germany the "fashionable" type was the " Taube " (dove), of which the main exponents were the German designers Ettrich and Rumpler. In this country the "opposite number" to these two was Mr. Handley Page, whose monoplanes resembled the tauben slightly, but only slightly. The German monoplanes had fairiy straight wings, with the tips only swept back and up for stability. Handley Page adopted a crescent-shaped wing plan form with up-turned wing tips. In both cases the object was the same: lateral stability. Handley Page used orthodox wire bracing, while the Germans were fond of employing a spanwise boom below the wing, so that the girder was virtually a bipjane truss, and had all the drag of the biplane but without the corresponding advantage, oi the lift of the lower wing (the boom was merely streamlined and non-lifting). These designers were more concerned with what we used to term inherent stability than with performance. In France at the time opinion was fairly evenly divided between monoplane and biplane protagonists. The biplane was nearly always a pusher with open tail booms. The monoplane was generally a smaller machine, with a wing The Antoinette monoplane of 19n had a "trousered" undercarriage. Each leg contained two main wheels and a small nose wheel, the latter to prevent nosing over. of fairly short span, wire braced to pylons above and below the fuselage. Examples were the Bleriots and the Deper-. dussins. A French variant was the Antoinette mono plane, which had a shallow fuselage of triangular section, much larger wings than those of the Bleriots and Deper- dussins, and a fairly elaborate form of wing bracing, which made ue of king posts on the wings. Generally speaking, the biplanes were used for load carrying and the mono planes for speed. Few French designers worried very much abotit stability. Then came the French army competition, and the Antoinette firm decided that their normal type would not stand a chance. A completely new model was produced by M. Levavasseur, and it is this machine with which I propose to deal this week. Levavasseur was, 1 believlFr originally a boat designer. Some years previously he had joined forces with the Gastambides. and the firm had pro duced the Antoinette engine, one of the very first aircraft The plan form and dihedral angle of the Antoinette cantilever monoplane are well brought out in this picture. The span was 52ft. and the wing area 600 sq. ft. The loaded weight was 2,750 lb.
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