Blériot 5190
The Blériot 5190 was a French flying boat, which then conducted in November 1934 the first French commercial postal flight across the South Atlantic and 1935-1937 airmail service of Air France over the South Atlantic. It gave her only a single model.
Development and construction history
The machine was designed by Filippo Zappata and built by Blériot Aéronautique in Suresnes on behalf of the French Ministry of Aviation to be used in air mail service to South America. The machine made its first flight on August 3, 1933 (Note: in the literature August 11 is called ) at Caudebec -en- Caux with the Blériot- chief pilot Lucien Bossoutrot on the control stick and the designer Filippo Zappata, on board. The machine, with a takeoff weight of 16.2 tons, took off after 17 seconds from the Seine. This was followed by about five months testing at Caudebec -en- Caux and Cherbourg, which ended on January 6, 1934.
The machine was registered as a loan from the Air Ministry on 19 November 1934 by Air France with the registration F- ANLE and named in honor of in July 1932 divorced from the life of aviation pioneer Alberto Santos Dumont in the name of Santos - Dumont. Bossoutrot moved the flying boat, first on the marsh near Marseille and then flew it on 22 November to Port Lyautey in Morocco and 23 from there to Dakar. On November 27, 1934 he flew and his eight -man crew ( including as a flight engineer who later became Chief of Staff Admiral Henri Nomy ) then in 16 hours and 15 minutes to Natal (Brazil ) and thus completed the first French commercial postal flight across the South Atlantic.
After a second test crossing in December was also successful, the machine took on February 4, 1935 line postal service for Air France to over the South Atlantic. Until April 1, 1935, she made , at this time the only evidence available machine, nine scheduled round-trip flights a week. Then came a Latécoère 300 of the former, adopted in August 1933, Aéropostale, the Croix du Sud, and the Farman F.220B added named Le Centaure, with whom she shared this task. The Santos-Dumont was the purpose of overhaul withdrawn from circulation for three months after the arrival of these two machines and took their service until July 1935 again. In March 1936, she was, after her 30th crossing of the Atlantic, again drawn from the line service and made into a major overhaul on the Etang de Berre, near Marseille. She took the South America Flights only in April 1937 again, but was finally retired in June 1937, after a total of 38 Dakar -Natal -Dakar flights.
Construction
The Blériot 5190 was a high-wing monoplane with a somewhat unusual shape. The hull made of duralumin was kept very low and resembled in shape more like a submarine. The four -man crew (commander, two pilots, a mechanic ) and the radio were housed in a large, semi-circular pylon that resembled a submarine tower and joined the large parasol - wing to the fuselage. This " command post " was 4.00 m long, 1.20 m wide and 2.50 m high. Three of the four motors were at the front of the supporting surface, a pusher propeller with a fourth centrally on the rear side behind the cockpit. The wings were so thick that it was possible to carry out engine repairs during the flight. A float of 3 m3 volume was set on both sides of the trunk, each under the textile - covered wings. The aircraft was 26.00 m long and had a wingspan of 43.00 m. The wing size was 236 m2.
The flying boat had an empty weight of 12,750 kg and a maximum take-off mass of 22,000 kg. The four water-cooled Hispano -Suiza twelve- cylinder V- engines of the type 12Nbr each had 485 kilowatts ( 650 hp) and enabled a top speed of 210 km / h For the transatlantic flights were in 16 built- in fuselage tanks up to 11,684 liters ( 8500 kg ) of fuel to be carried, and the range was thus 5000 km. The permissible payload amounted to only 600 kg, as these round-trip flights a double crew of eight men mitflog. For shorter flights in the Mediterranean, which would have a lower amount of fuel needed, a passenger capacity of up to 60 people was planned, but it never came.
Injury
Since the beginning of 1935, the Santos -Dumont was the only available transatlantic flying boat, the Air Ministry ordered three more copies of the Blériot 5190th In order to finance the construction, fighting through the construction of the first machine already having financial difficulties Blériot Aéronautique took to high loans. When the construction contract was then canceled surprisingly without explanation and without compensation in the spring of 1936, this forced the company into bankruptcy.