Latécoère 15

Latécoère 15
Role	Airliner
National origin	France
Manufacturer	Latécoère
First flight	February 1925
Primary user	Lignes Aériennes Latécoère
Number built	10

The Latécoère 15 was a French airliner built in 1925 for use on Latécoère's own airline on routes between France and Morocco. It was a parasol-wing monoplane of conventional design, with twin engines mounted among the wing bracing struts, and small stub wings fitted to the lower fuselage as a mounting point for these struts and for the main undercarriage units. Six passengers could be carried in an enclosed cabin, and the pilot sat in an open cockpit in the nose.

The design was soon found to be seriously underpowered, unable to take off with the maximum load intended by the design, and unable to stay aloft on only one engine. Therefore, while Pierre-Georges Latécoère had intended for the aircraft to be used to extend the line's existing route to Casablanca over the desert to Dakar, the pilot assigned to fly it, Didier Daurat, flatly refused to do so. In the end, Daurat's view prevailed, and the ten Latécoère 15s were used on the Oran-Casablanca route and short feeder routes into Casablanca before being withdrawn from service between 1926 and 1929.

One of the aircraft was fitted with pontoons and trialled on a route between Alicante and Oran as the Latécoère 15H, but this was not deemed successful, and the aircraft was converted back.

The third prototype was built as a bomber, with a modified fuselage but otherwise unchanged. It was known as the Latécoère 19. It had a fixed Vickers machine gun in the nose, an open dorsal turret with a Lewis machine gun and another Lewis gun mounted to fire down through a ventral port. There were bomb racks in the place of the passenger cabin, as well as ventral hooks for other ordnance.^[1]

Specifications

General characteristics

Crew: One pilot
Capacity: 6 passengers
Length: 11.85 m (38 ft 11 in)
Wingspan: 18.00 m (59 ft 1 in)
Height: 3.82 m (12 ft 6 in)
Wing area: 56.5 m² (608 ft²)
Empty weight: 1,900 kg (4,190 lb)
Gross weight: 3,530 kg (7,780 lb)
Powerplant: 2 × Lorraine 8Bi, 194 kW (260 hp) each

Performance

Maximum speed: 110 km/h (180 mph)
Range: 600 km (380 miles)
Service ceiling: 4,500 m (14,800 ft)

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Latécoère.

↑ Cuny, Jean (1992). Latécoère Les avions et hydravions. Paris: Editions Larivière. pp. 56–7. ISBN 2-84890-067-9.

Taylor, Michael J. H. (1989). Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation. London: Studio Editions. p. 564.
"The Paris Aero Show 1924". Flight: 791. 18 December 1924. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
aviafrance.com
Уголок неба

Aircraft produced by Latécoère

Completed aircraft	1 2 3 4 5 6 8 14 15 16 17 18 19 21 22 23 24 25 26 28 32 34-0 35-0 225 290 300 301 302 340 350 380 381 440 490 491 500 501 521 522 523 550 570 582 611 631

Pre-World War II and wartime projects	7 9 10 11 12 13 20 27 101 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200 210 220 330 360 370 382 383 384 385 386 410 420 460 470 480 492 493 510 520 524 525 530 560 600 610 612 620 640 670 900

Post-World War II projects	255 270 700 730 740 780 310 700 730 740 780 790 800 810 820 830 840 850 860 870 880

Missiles	100 110 120 231 240 257

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