Blériot III

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III

Bleriot III in original floatplane configuration
Type Experimental aircraft
Manufacturer Louis Blériot and Gabriel Voisin
Produced 1906
Number built 1
The Bleriot IV depicted in a fanciful contemporary postcard. The aircraft was not capable of anything like this.
The Bleriot IV depicted in a fanciful contemporary postcard. The aircraft was not capable of anything like this.

The Blériot III was an early French aeroplane built by pioneer aviators Louis Blériot and Gabriel Voisin, and eventually became their first design to actually leave the ground under its own power. The Blériot III was a design radically different from what would later become orthodox for aircraft, featuring two large elliptical annular wings joined by a boom. A single Antoinette engine drove two tractor propellers and it was provided with float undercarriage. Blériot and Voisin made repeated attempts to fly it from Lake Enghein between May and September 1906, but the machine would not become airborne.

In October they made major changes to the design, replacing the forward annular wing with a conventional biplane cellule, adding a second engine, and changing the propellers from tractors to pushers. At this point, it was renamed Blériot IV. Even with these modifications however, the aircraft still refused to leave the ground, so on 12 November, they removed the floats and added a wheeled undercarriage to try again on land. Matching power between the two engines proved to be a major problem, but they nevertheless coaxed the machine into making a series of short hops before one of its wingtips struck a gutter, damaging it beyond repair. Modern sources differ as to whether to dignify these hops as "flight", but the failure of the aircraft to achieve anything greater drove Voisin to terminate his partnership with Blériot and pursue his own designs alone.




[edit] Specifications (IV)

General characteristics

  • Crew: one pilot
  • Wingspan: 10.50 m (34 ft 5 in)
  • Wing area: 73 m² (785 ft²)
  • Gross weight: 480 kg (1,060 lb)
  • Powerplant: 2 × Antoinette V-8, 18 kW (24 hp) each

Performance

[edit] References

  • Taylor, Michael J. H. (1989). Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation. London: Studio Editions, 161. 
  • Devaux, Jean and Michel Marani. "Les Douze Premiers Aéroplanes de Louis Blériot". Pegase No 54, May 1989.
  • Nova: A Daring Flight
  • earlyaviators.com


[edit] See also

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