| Blériot XI | |
|---|---|
| Role | Civil tourer/trainer/military |
| Manufacturer | Louis Blériot |
| Designer | Louis Blériot and Raymond Saulnier |
| First flight | 23 January 1909 |
The Blériot XI is the aircraft in which, on 25 July 1909, Louis Blériot made the first flight across the English Channel made in a heavier-than-air aircraft. This achievement is one of the most famous accomplishments of the early years of aviation, and not only won Blériot a lasting place in history but assured the future of his aircraft manufacturing business. The event caused a major reappraisal of the importance of aviation: the English newspaper The Daily Express led its story of the flight with the headline "Britain is no longer an Island".
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The Blériot XI, designed by Raymond Saulnier, was a development of the Blériot VIII which Blériot had flown successfully in 1908. Like its predecessor, it was a tractor configuration monoplane, with a partially covered box-girder fuselage built from ash with wire cross bracing. The principal differences were the use of wing-warping for lateral control, and the tailplane, which had a small balanced rudder and a single rectangular horizontal tailplane with tip-mounted elevators mounted under the lower longerons of the fuselage. Like its predecessor, the bracing and warping wires were attached to a cabane structure made of steel tubing above the fuselage and an inverted pyramid, also of steel tubing, below it. When first built a small teardrop-shaped fin was mounted on the cabane, but this was later removed. The main undercarriage was also like that of the Type VIII, the wheels being mounted in castering trailing arms which could slide up and down steel tubes, the movement being sprung by bungee cords. This simple and ingenuous design allowed crosswind landings with less risk of damage.
When shown at the Paris Aero Salon in December 1908 the aircraft was powered by a 35 hp (26 kW) 7-cylinder R.E.P. engine driving a four-bladed paddle type propeller, but this engine proved extremely unreliable and, at the suggestion of his mechanic Ferdinand Collin, Blériot made contact with Alexandre Anzani, a famous motor-cycle racer whose successes were due to the engines which he manufactured, and who had recently entered the field of aero-engine manufacture. On 27 May 1909 the 25 horsepower (19 kW) Anzani 3-cylinder fan or semi-radial configurations engine was fitted, driving a Chauvière two bladed propeller made from laminated walnut. This propeller design was a major advance in French aircraft technology, and was the first European propeller to rival the efficiency of the propellers used by the Wright Brothers.
The Blériot XI gained aviation immortality on 25 July 1909 when Louis Blériot crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover in 36.5 minutes, using an Anzani engine designed by the Italian engineer Alessandro Anzani. For several days bad weather grounded Blériot and his opponents Hubert Latham, who flew an Antoinette monoplane, and Count de Lambert, who brought two Wright Biplanes.
That morning, Blériot awoke—albeit in a bad mood, reportedly due to having scorched his foot in a flying accident, allegedly from stepping on a hot exhaust manifold—to conditions fair enough to fly in. When Blériot took off, Latham's camp was still quiet; Latham had overslept. Fighting fog and bad weather, Blériot did not even have a compass to guide his crossing. It is said that the Anzani engine completed the flight only with the aid of a brief rain shower to cool it off. Letting the aircraft guide itself, Blériot eventually saw the grey line of the English coast.
Approaching closer and closer, he spotted a French reporter waving the French flag to mark the landing spot. Blériot made a very rough "pancake" landing during which the landing gear collapsed and the propeller snapped; but he walked away, winning the £1000 prize awarded by the Daily Mail. The aircraft itself – which never flew again – was hurriedly repaired and put on limited display at Selfridges Department Store in London.
After the successful crossing of the channel, there was a great demand for the Blériot XI. Blériot began to turn his attention from flying to the aircraft manufacturing business. By September 1909, Blériot had received orders for 101 aircraft. Later versions of the Blériot XI used various engines including more powerful Gnome rotary engines and updated Anzani engines. Blériot marketed the aircraft in four categories: trainers, sport or touring models, military aircraft, and racing or exhibition machines. Some notable models in the "Type Onze" series:
The first Blériot XIs entered military service in Italy and France in 1910, and a year later, some of those were used in action by Italy in North Africa (the first use of aircraft in a war) and in Mexico.[1] The Royal Flying Corps received its first Blériots in 1912. During the early stages of World War I, eight French, six British and six Italian squadrons operated various military versions of the aircraft, mainly in observation duties but also as trainers, and in the case of single-seaters, as light bombers with a bomb load of up to 25 kg.
A flyable 1909-built Blériot XI, with British civil registration G-AANG, is on display at the Shuttleworth Collection, Old Warden, England. It is the world's oldest airworthy aircraft. Another restored and flyable Bleriot XI, with US civil registration N60094, exists at the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome (ORA), believed to be only three weeks newer than the Shuttleworth example by date of manufacture, and the oldest known flyable aircraft in the Western Hemisphere. The ORA example was originally built at the Blériot factory in France, marked with factory serial number 56. Both aircraft use three-cylinder Anzani engines, with the Shuttleworth example having a "W form" Anzani as Blériot's original cross-Channel aircraft used, and with the Old Rhinebeck example using a 120°-angle regular "radial" Anzani three-cylinder engine.
A third flyable Blériot XI, manufactured in 1918 under licence by AETA, Enoch Thulins Aeroplane Works, in Landskrona, Sweden, as type Thulin A, is owned by The Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm, Sweden since 1928. The aircraft was registered with the Swedish Civil Air Traffic Authority in 2010 as SE-AEC. Following a two-year restoration by Mikael Carlson, the Blériot XI made its first flight at the Stockholm Festival of Flight in August 2010. This made the aircraft the oldest airworthy aircraft in Sweden. The Blériot uses its original rotary engine, a Thulin-built copy of the Gnôme Omega. The aircraft was restored in 2009–2010 to celebrate the Centenary of Flight in Sweden in 2010. Flown at the Stockholm Festival of Flight, 20–22 August 2010, the Blériot took off and landed no less than six times from a grass strip at The Royal Park, and was finally rolled 200 meters back to the Museum Exhibition Hall.
Another Blériot survivor with replica wings has its home at the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica in Morón, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It is powered by a W 3 Cyl Anzani 25 hp engine. It is not airworthy.
A 3/4 scale historically accurate replica of the Blériot XI is featured in the New York City premiere of "Flight", running 23 March–11 April 2011 at the Connelly Theatre. A tour of the production through southern states commenced in the fall of 2011. [8]
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