Donnet-Lévêque Type A

     
Název:
Name:
Donnet-Lévêque Type A Donnet-Lévêque Type A
Originální název:
Original Name:
Donnet-Lévêque Type A
Kategorie:
Category:
víceúčelový letoun utility aeroplane
Výrobce:
Producer:
DD.MM.1912-DD.MM.1913 Société des Hydroaéroplanes Donnet-Lévêque, Bezons /
Období výroby:
Production Period:
DD.MM.1912-DD.MM.1913
Vyrobeno kusů:
Number of Produced:
5+
První vzlet:
Maiden Flight:
DD.MM.RRRR
Osádka:
Crew:
2
Základní charakteristika:
Basic Characteristics:
 
Vzlet a přistání:
Take-off and Landing:
CTOL - konvenční vzlet a přistání CTOL - conventional take-off and landing
Uspořádání křídla:
Arrangement of Wing:
dvouplošník biplane
Uspořádání letounu:
Aircraft Concept:
klasické conventional
Podvozek:
Undercarriage:
pevný fixed
Přistávací zařízení:
Landing Gear:
člunový trup flying boat
Technické údaje:
Technical Data:
 
Hmotnost prázdného letounu:
Empty Weight:
310 kg 683 lb
Vzletová hmotnost:
Take-off Weight:
? kg ? lb
Maximální vzletová hmotnost:
Maximum Take-off Weight:
~580 kg ~1279 lb
Rozpětí:
Wingspan:
9,001) m 29 ft 6 ⅜ in1)
Délka:
Length:
7,80 m 25 ft 7 ⅛ in
Výška:
Height:
2,90 m 9 ft 6 ⅛ in
Plocha křídla:
Wing Area:
17,00 m2 182.99 ft2
Plošné zatížení:
Wing Loading:
? kg/m2 ? lb/ft2
Pohon:
Propulsion:
 
Kategorie:
Category:
pístový piston
Počet motorů:
Number of Engines:
1
Typ:
Type:
Gnome N-1 o výkonu 36,8 kW/50 k Gnome N-1, power 49 hp
Objem palivových nádrží:
Fuel Tank Capacity:
? ?
Výkony:
Performance:
 
Maximální rychlost:
Maximum Speed:
110 km/h v ? m 68 mph in ? ft
Cestovní rychlost:
Cruise Speed:
92 km/h v ? m 57 mph in ? ft
Rychlost stoupání:
Climb Rate:
1,4 m/s 276 ft/min
Čas výstupu na výšku:
Time to Climb to:
? min do ? m ? min to ? ft
Operační dostup:
Service Ceiling:
2500 m 8202 ft
Dolet:
Range:
250 km 155 mi
Maximální dolet:
Maximum Range:
? km ? mi
Výzbroj:
Armament:
- -
Uživatelské státy:
User States:






Poznámka:
Note:
1) 9,50 m? 1) 31 ft 2 in?
Zdroje:
Sources:
Liron, Jean. Les hydravions de Francois Denhaut, Le Fana de l'Aviation 1987/01-03.
Opdyke, Leonard E. French Aeroplanes before the Great War. Schiffer Publishing, Atglen 1999. ISBN 0-7643-0752-5.
Munson, Kenneth. Flying Boats and Seaplanes since 1910. Blandford Press, London 1971.
Петров, Г. Ф. Гидросамолеты и экранопланы 1910-1999. РусАвиа, Москва 2000. ISBN 5-900078-05-1.
www.aviationsmilitaires.net
www.gutenberg.org
www.avrosys.nu
URL : https://www.valka.cz/Donnet-Leveque-Type-A-t222058#619253 Version : 0

Donnet-Lévêque hydroplanes


François Victor Denhaut, one of the lesser-known pioneers of French aviation, was born in 1877 in the central French village of Champagnat. Like his father, he had been a stonemason for some time, but he was drawn to something completely different. In 1908 he built his first aeroplane, and from 1910 he lived in one of the main centres of French aviation life, Juvisy-sur-Orge, a town near Paris. It was there that Port-Aviation, a cross between an airport and a race track, was founded, attracting many famous names in the industry as well as Parisian sightseers. A flight school was set up there by, among others, Pierre Levasseur, and Denhaut became his pupil and later chief pilot. This gave him a small but steady income, as well as access to his employer's workshops.

At this time Denhaut decided to build another, approximately fifth aircraft, this time a seaplane. Several water-launched aircraft were already flying at this time, with Frenchman Henri Fabre demonstrating his machine in 1910 and Glenn Curtiss experimenting with them on the other side of the Atlantic, but these were mostly floatplanes. Denhaut set out to build a machine with a boat hull, a true flying boat. Pierre Levasseur, who knew of Denhaut's aspirations and his financial problems, also put one of his employees at his disposal - of course he was to work in his spare time. Denhaut began work on the new aeroplane at the end of 1911 and it was completed in February the following year. Unlike Denhaut's previous aircraft, which were usually of the Wright frame design, this one had a boat-shaped fuselage with a flat bottom and a triangular rear section. The lower wing was mounted on 25 cm high struts, with the engine in the pushrod position between the wings. The wings lacked ailerons. To improve the buoyancy on the water surface, Denhaut added a small oblique water wing to the nose. As take-off from the airfield was envisaged, fixed landing gear was also placed on the fuselage sides under the lower wing.

What Denhaut couldn't afford, however, was an engine. But he knew of the Blériot XI, which had been sitting for some time in a hangar in nearby Issy-les-Moulineaux and whose 50hp Gnome was merely catching dust. Its owner was Swiss engineer Jérôme Donnet, who inspected Denhaut's new seaplane and, when he was satisfied that the engine would be placed high enough to survive a possible crash, loaned it to Denhaut and made a monetary contribution. Ground tests looked good and on March 10, 1912, Denhaut, unaware that the first takeoff of a central float plane (though not a real flying boat) had been made by Glenn Curtiss on January 10, took off from Port-Aviation Airport with the seaplane. Denhaut chose a stretch of the Seine near the Juvis Bridge as the site for his first attempt at a surface landing, but misjudged the height and flipped on a hard landing. The wing under the nose and the undercarriage wheels both helped. The machine, which had largely sunk, suffered further damage when towed ashore. Denhaut had the foresight to wear a life jacket.

The repair, or rather rebuild, also meant the construction of a new fuselage, which this time lacked a hydrofoil, but was given a "step" which became part of every flying boat thereafter and which was recommended to him by Robert Duhamel, another pioneer in the field of seaplanes. Simply put, the step allowed most of the fuselage to be above the water at higher speeds, making take-off easier. Around the same time, Denhaut's secret nemesis, Glenn Curtiss, was testing a similar step on the floats of his aircraft... The repair/rebuild work went very quickly, with the entire aircraft being rebuilt in essentially four days by volunteers at Levasseur's workshops for free, which was handy as Donnet, although he had again loaned the engine, could not afford further funding. This was helped by Thérould, the director of Port-Aviation, who helped Denhaut contact the owner of the car factory, Henri Lévêque.

So, in early April, Denhaut was able to test his seaplane on the surface of a pond on the edge of Juvisy, and on 13 April he was able to take off for his first test on the Seine. On the way, he broke off the landing gear wheels stuck in the mud when he landed on the river bank, but many advised him to get rid of them anyway... In the presence of Donnet and Lévêque, Denhaut made a series of successful take-offs and landings from the surface. After the successful take-off of the flying boat was published in the press, the curious began to flock, some even willing to buy it.

Among them was one Thomas O. M. Sopwith, who not only appreciated the stability of the machine in the water and in the air, but to test it out, he also demonstrated by flying under the Juvis bridge. Another visitor was the young ensign Jean Louis Conneau, known in the aviation world under the pseudonym André Beaumont, who accompanied Colonel Hirschauer, the future commander of the French Air Force. The result was the conclusion of Denhaut's contracts with Donnet and Lévêque, and on 25 July 1912 the establishment of a joint venture to build flying boats to Denhaut's design. The Donnet-Lévêque firm was based at Bezons, on the other side of Paris, as was Lévêque's car factory.

But by this point Denhaut's role had begun to diminish greatly, and the paths of the aircraft and its creator diverged. First, his partners patented its layout under their own name, then, in August 1912, they hired André Beaumont as the new technical director. The latter, by then discharged from the Navy, had already won many air race victories and, most importantly, a diploma from the Higher School of Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering. Under Beaumont's leadership, the company began offering three types of Denhaut seaplane:
Type A - essentially identical to the final version of Denhaut's seaplane, the 50 hp Gnome engine
Type B - a slightly enlarged version with a modified nose shape, 70 hp engine and aileron control (probably some Type A machines had this as well)
Type CType C - a three-seat version with again a different nose, larger wingspan and 80hp engine.
Prices ranged from 30,000 francs for the Type A to 38,000 francs for the C.

With the new aircraft, Beaumont began to "sweep" various flying events throughout France and beyond. In August, he had to abandon a flight to London after Boulogne-sur-Mer damaged his Type A on take-off, but he made up for it by winning the Belgian Royal Cup at Tamise-sur-Escaut on 7 August. The latter used the machine under the number H7 (and then 18) as its first flying boat. Initially stationed at Eastchurch, it was sent to Grain in February 1913 and scrapped in June. The French Navy showed no interest, still preferring the tried and tested float planes.

And this eventually proved fatal to the company. Donnet left the company in early 1913 and the firm briefly used the name Société des Hydroaéroplanes Lévêque, but a lack of government contracts led to Lévêque eventually selling his patents and the firm to Louis Schreck, director of Ateliers d'Artois, in July 1913. The latter had already brought Beaumont to his side in April, and François Molla succeeded him at Lévêque. Denhaut, long neglected at the firm that had been his job, was not working for Lévêque at the time either. Before his departure at the end of 1912, he had helped design an "aeroyacht" for Borel, and after his official parting he worked briefly on the construction of a seaplane for Morane-Saulnier.

During its existence, Donnet-Lévêque reportedly built some thirty aircraft of all three versions, more than half of which eventually failed to find buyers. These machines were then attempted by Schreck, who based on his original company, Lévêque, and the patents of other seaplane pioneers, Georges Lévy and Marcel Besson, formed a new company proudly named Franco British Co. Ltd. FBA, "British" because of its London office, may have built some of the alleged thirty machines.

Denhaut's original machines, however, were not entirely without buyers and certainly not without influence. One of the first customers was Austria-Hungary, which bought two Type A and two Type C machines as late as the end of 1912. The A's were given serial numbers 10 and 11, the C's 8 and 12 (No. 9 was a Curtiss-Paulhan). Although they did not stay in service very long (No. 8 was scrapped on 2 September 1913, No. 10 - damaged in an accident on 6 December of the same year, No. 11 - damaged in Pula on 28 March 1913, No. 12 - scrapped after a crash in January 1913), the Austrians liked them so much that they were still in the naval arsenal in Pula in 1913 under the command of Ing. Josef Mickel, three slightly enlarged copies with Gnome engines were built, designated A22, A23 and A242). Probably these three machines were in service with the 2nd Battleship Squadron in 1914. They were originally stationed aboard Radetzky class battleships, but were later moved to an improvised naval station at Teod in the Kotor Bight. The "Donnet-Lévêquy" provided great service in monitoring and photographing the Montenegrin coast around Mount Lovcen and tracking the movements of Serbian troops. These three machines are apparently sometimes referred to as Mickl type A. Two other machines, designated S2 and S8 (S4?), were also built in Pula in 1914, and S26 and S27 are sometimes cited as copies of the Donnets. They also had a considerable influence on the Lohner flying boats, which were in turn copied by the Italians as Macchi type L.

Sweden came to their Donnets in an interesting way. It organized a national collection in 1912 to help pay for a new battleship. This not only succeeded, but the money was enough to buy several aircraft for the navy. One of these was the Donnet-Lévêque Type A delivered in 1913. This machine was given the local designation L I and the number S22 and, because it was without an engine, also the Gnome engine from a Shetland-made copy Blériot XI-2 called Nyrop N: o 3. L I had a fairly uneventful service, first at the Navy flight school at Fort Oscar-Fredriksborg, then after the outbreak of war at Hårsfjärden base near Stockholm. It was not decommissioned until 1916. In the meantime, the Swedish Navy acquired a second machine. One of the first interested parties to test Denhaut's prototype was Swedish aviator Baron Carl Cederström, who promptly ordered a machine for himself. In this case it was a Type C, which was given a thorough "camouflage" with fish scales and the name Flygfisken, Flying Fish. This machine was then bought by the Navy and used in an unfortunately much duller livery as the L II (number S23) until 1918 at bases in Karlskrona and Gothenburg. This machine has survived, and is on display at the Flygvapenmuseum.

Another user was Denmark. It too acquired a "mixture", one type A and one type C, again these were the first flying boats in the country. (Incidentally I have not a single piece of information that anyone used type B...) The Danish Donnet-Lévêquy acquired the designation F.B.I and the names Mågen, seagull, and Ternen, tern. Later all flying boats were renamed Seagulls and the Tern became Mågen 2. Initially they were assigned to the naval base at Klovermarken, where a hangar and water slip were also built for them. While Mågen 1 was still disappearing in 1914, Mågen 2 was damaged in 1915 in a fall from a pulley and eventually scrapped. By that time, however, it probably did not match its original form very much, the Danes were not too happy with these machines, and designed a new wing and other modifications for them to improve performance considerably. Later they also developed a new fuselage, and thus eight homebuilt F.B.IIs were built, followed by the increasingly modified F.B.III (10), F.B.IV (2) and F.B.V (3). The repaired Mågen 2 is on display today at Copenhagen's Tøjhusmuseet.

The last known military user of Denhaut's original seaplane is Russia. The Russian Navy purchased one Type A and on 1 June 1913 it was flown from the Rowing Port in St. Petersburg. However, already on 24 June P. E. von Lipgart crashed it and the machine was handed over to the S. S. Shchetinin factory for repair. Here it was thoroughly studied by one D. P. Grigorovich, who shortly afterwards introduced his flying boat M-1... There are also mentions of another Donnet-Lévêque machine in Russia, and again it should be a C version.

So although Donnet-Lévêque failed, the few machines it sold abroad had a huge impact on the development of naval aviation. It seemed that they would have no effect on France alone, where, as already mentioned, the navy originally preferred floatplanes. This soon changed, however; indeed, the FBA company itself built only a slightly improved version of Denhaut's machine as the FBA Type A, and its other designs also bear a clear affinity. And to make matters worse, in 1915 Denhaut reunited with Donnet in a new company Société des Établissements Donnet-Denhaut, which built over a thousand successors to that little 1912 aircraft for the French Navy...

2) According to the same source (Opdyke), however, these machines were FBA Type A, but for which there is no photographic evidence. The numbers A22 and A24 were also later given to the completely different Hansy-Brandenburg CC. Welcome to the land of Franz Kafka...

Liron, Jean. Les hydravions de Francois Denhaut, Le Fana de l'Aviation 1987/01-03.
Opdyke, Leonard E. French Aeroplanes before the Great War. Schiffer Publishing, Atglen 1999. ISBN 0-7643-0752-5.
Munson, Kenneth. Flying Boats and Seaplanes since 1910. Blandford Press, London 1971.
Petrov, G. Ф. Seaplanes and Seaplanes 1910-1999. RusAvia, Moscow 2000. ISBN 5-900078-05-1.
https://www.hydroretro.net/etudegh/donnetl.pdf
www.avrosys.nu
www.ole-nikolajsen.com
www.aviationsmilitaires.net
jn.passieux.free.fr/html/Donnet_Leveque_A.php
https://www.precurseursaviation.com/denhaut.htm
forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com
URL : https://www.valka.cz/Donnet-Leveque-Type-A-t222058#619453 Version : 0
http://www.airwar.ru/enc/other1/dl.html
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Donnet-Lévêque Type A -


URL : https://www.valka.cz/Donnet-Leveque-Type-A-t222058#619284 Version : 0
chezpeps.free.fr
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Donnet-Lévêque Type A -


URL : https://www.valka.cz/Donnet-Leveque-Type-A-t222058#619256 Version : 0
http://www.precurseursaviation.com/denhaut.htm
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Donnet-Lévêque Type A - Denhautův nešťastný první prototyp.

Denhautův nešťastný první prototyp.
URL : https://www.valka.cz/Donnet-Leveque-Type-A-t222058#619454 Version : 0
http://www.airwar.ru/enc/other1/dl.html
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Donnet-Lévêque Type A - Typ A, i s neúspěšným zatahovacím podvozkem, vystavený v Paříži.

Typ A, i s neúspěšným "zatahovacím" podvozkem, vystavený v Paříži.
URL : https://www.valka.cz/Donnet-Leveque-Type-A-t222058#619455 Version : 0
commons.wikimedia.org
.
Donnet-Lévêque Type A - Type B, Musee de lAir et de Espace Paris le Bourget.

Type B, Musee de l'Air et de 'Espace Paris le Bourget.
URL : https://www.valka.cz/Donnet-Leveque-Type-A-t222058#619257 Version : 0
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