L.Opdyke French Aeroplanes Before the Great War (Schiffer)
Deleted by request of (c)Schiffer Publishing
Du Breuil
The Marquis Picat du Breuil built headlamps for automobiles, using a constant-speed dynamo running on a gas made from oil; at least one of his dynamos was named La Patineuse (the skater); the name sometimes is sometimes erroneously applied to one of his aeroplanes.
He designed or sponsored 3, all built by Pouvarel, all odd and little publicized; all offered "an outstanding natural stability." The first was shown first at the 1911 Salon. It featured a semicircular wing formed with a steel tube leading edge filled with reed, the rest of the surface being formed of a loose piece of fabric, the whole thing set at an impressive angle of attack on a steel tube frame above the fuselage. The front of the 2-seated fuselage was streamlined like the front of a racing car, with the engine mounted low and driving a high-set tractor propeller through belts and a shaft. The radiator was made of tubes laid flat on the cowl.
The covered triangular-section rear fuselage was arranged to move fore and aft; a "lifting tailplane" was set at a large negative angle, and there was a "double-warping rudder." It rested on 2 main wheels, and its way through the night was lit with 2 large du Breuil headlamps. It was sent in 1912 to Juvisy, where a test-pilot named Koenig damaged it in February.
(Span: 9 m; length: 12 m; wing area: c 50 sqm; 70 hp Labor-Picker)
One, perhaps 2, other du Breuil monoplanes appear in contemporary photographs. A wing similar to that of his first machine was now set at the mid-position, with the same high incidence, the tips braced to the fuselage with struts. The fuselage was a box, covered in one version, uncovered in the other, with a small semicircular rudder above the rear end, a small rectangular elevator at the very rear, and a fixed - maybe warping - tailplane ahead of the elevator, again with the same high negative angle of his first machine. A double set of inverted V struts made up the pylon.