The Ongoing Mystery Aircraft Thread Part Deux.

[lefty]

Moses has pounced on the Burns -thought he might get that one.

[Moses03]

Thanks Lefty. I liked that design myself.


This next one had a very interesting history...

[lefty]

You're a generous man, Kevin. Every time the phrase 'interesting history' is used for an aircraft of this vintage, it shouts 'Spanish Civil War' to me ! That conflict ended up as a sort of sump for the most bizarre collection of aircraft from all over the world.

This one was no exception. the Breese-Dallas X Racer.

Funnily enough, my pic shows different windows, so it must have been tinkered with at some stage.

[Moses03]

That was quick!

From Aerofiles:

Dallas X 1933 = 6pClwM rg; 450hp P&W Wasp SC-1. W A Mankey. POP: 1 [X12899] c/n 1, born as Michigan Model 1 (qv) at the same address as Breese & Dallas. Vance Breese purchased it from Lambert Aircraft 4/5/35 and flew it to Los Angeles, repowered it, and NR-licensed it for "exhibition and motion picture camera work." Assumably this is when its name changed to Breese & Dallas X. Soon after it was modified with an 800hp P&W Twin Wasp SR-B and new fuel tanks (185- and 105-gallons in the fuselage, 40- and 15-gallons in each wing), then licensed 4/24/36 "for long-distance cross-country flights" and sold to Jackie Cochran 10/3/36 for the 1937 Bendix Race. However, Paul Mantz (United Air Services, Burbank CA) acquired it on 1/6/37 and flew it to Mexico 1/10/37 to sell to Col Roberto Fierro of the Mexican AAF (price: $25,000). Scheduled for shipment to Spain for use in their Civil War, it crashed in early 1937 flying from Mexico City to Vera Cruz (p: Cloyd Clevenger). Its CAA license expired 4/12/37.


Knew I should have pulled something from the Tibet folder.

Over to Lefty-

[lefty]

OK, thanks for the beer, shouldn't have one, am off curling tonight.

This won't last more than a few minutes.........

[Moses03]

Er Lefty, & Co posted this one in the first thread- Moynet M 360 Jupiter. You might have been on holiday at the time.

Got another?

[Moses03]

While we wait for Lefty's next horror, here is one I found that I have not had time to research. All I know is that is was built in the USA by a Rumanian designer.

Any ideas?

[lefty]

Well your Rumanian designer had obviously been abusing substances, and as for the mechanics - extras from the Texas Chain Saw Massacre by the looks of it.

Please don't tell me this thing ever flew !

(Later) Well, here is the whole story of the Fernic T-9

http://www.aviatori.ro/v2/dict_pers.php?sel=F

My Romanian ain't what it was..............................................

[Moses03]

Excellent Mike. I ran it through a translator-

"FT-9, 1929

The device was built by the company Fern. The plane made the first flight on 9 September 1929 on Rosevelt Field, Long Island, New York. Fern T-9 and runs off a flight 22 minutes after landing perfectly spulberând doubts of 100 pilots and specialists at the airfield. At the club was George Fern attended as a mechanical engineer Head of Romanian factory Paul Dorian, his friend. Plane to transport passengers and cargo. 8 passenger capacity in outstanding comfort.

Engines: two model Wright Whirlwind J-5 radial 220CP cooled air.

Size: Main Wing Span 18,000 m; front wing span 6700 m, 13,100 m in length, height 4120 m.

WEIGHT: empty weight 2268 kg weight 4536 kg.

Performance: maximum speed 196 km / h, cruising speed 161 km / h, landing speed 68 km / h."


I bookmarked that site. Might come in handy sometime...


Edit: More info found here: http://translate.google.com/translat...3Doff%26sa%3DG


"The first test flight of the aircraft "Fern T-9" was held in the afternoon of 10 September 1929, the Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York.
George Fern himself, assisted by engineer-in-chief of the aerodrome, Paul Dorian, as a mechanic, took off running a flight of 22 minutes, then landed in a perfect outfit.


The daily "New York Times remarked, on this flight, that:" ... over 100 specialists and aviator skeptics have come to look, convinced that strange monoplan tandem will not even take off. They were shown but very Fern enthusiastic when a porint, evoluand in a perfect flight at a height of 500 meters for almost half an hour.. "


And the American newspaper "World", in turn, pointed out: "Fern was so convinced of the safety device, or they refused his left usually not missing the first flight.."

Fern has fixed the date of the flight itself to Bucharest by mid-September 1930.


To check up capacities plane "Fern T-9", reserving however the expected resource engine intercontinental raid, Fern built a still camera easier for acrobatics and tourism, but after making the same rigorous new principles constructive.

That is born monoplan another plane with one engine "Rover" 75 HP customary today in all encyclopaedias and dictionaries aviation, the original "Cruisaire" (see photo).


The number as of June 1930, the American specialist "Aero Digest" show, with the wealth of details, new product Uzinelor "Fern" in Arlington, stressing that the "center of gravity is placed between plans and plan ahead to take effect contact with air before the plan mainly to produce a moment which excludes the possibility of employment (in tail spin, nn) of the device.. "

Sadly, he died a year later in a crash:

From Time magazine in September. 8, 1930

"Georg B. Fernic, Rumanian designer, of Staten Island, NY, was demonstrating his tandem-wing, "spin-proof, stall-proof" plane. For no apparent reason the plane nosed straight down from 50 ft. in landing, bashed the top of another plane on the ground, killed Inventor Fernic."

[lefty]

Talking of the Spanish affair, this curiosity featured in it too.

[Moses03]

Maillet 20, Maillet 20 (201) or Maillet-Taupin-Lignel 20 depending on your source.

[lefty]

Well, actually, my source says it wasn't any of those, but the Maillet 21 F-AODA !
The same book (Howson's Aircraft of the SCW) says its probable fate was landing on a beach near Barcelona and being washed away by the tide !

(not quite up to the brim) for Moses.

[Moses03]

...its probable fate was landing on a beach near Barcelona and being washed away by the tide !

Lets turn back the clock a bit on this next one. Note the tuba in the background.

[lefty]

Now that 'tuba', as every good All-American boy should know, is a Sousaphone.

They don't have many of those outside the U.S.A...............??????

[Sopwith Chameleon]

................that's a Sousaphone? - I thought it was the in-flight (ahem) "rest facillity"..............