Hanriot 1909 monoplane
The Hanriot 1909 monoplane was an early French aircraft constructed by Rene Hanriot, a successful automobile racer. The Hanriot 1909 monoplane had an uncovered rectangular-section wire-braced wooden fuselage with cambered parallel-chord wings; the main undercarriage consisted of a pair of skids which carried a pair of independently sprung wheels mounted on a steel cross tube, the skids being carried on two pairs of struts which converged inwards, the aft pair being continued above the fuselage to form an inverted V cabane to which the wing bracing and warping wires were attached. The front struts terminated at the engine bearers, which were midway between the upper and lower longerons. Tail surfaces consisted of a tailplane and elevator mounted on top of the fuselage and a fixed fin mounted under the fuselage with the attached rudder underneath the horizontal tail surfaces; the aircraft was controlled with a pair of handwheels on either side of the cockpit operating wing warping and elevator, foot-pedals operating the rudder.
Two examples were shown at the Paris Aero Salon in October 1909 in an unfinished condition. One was powered by a (37 kW Buchet engine and the other by a 25 kW Hanriot engine. One was flown at Rheims in December 1909, first by Eugene Ruchonnet and afterwards by Rene Hanriot followed by his son Marcel aged 15; the two aircraft displayed at the 1909 Paris exhibition were the only examples manufactured. Flight refers to them as the Hanriot I and Hanriot II. By the time that they were first flown Hanriot and Ruchonnet had started work on a series of related monoplane designs, which were exhibited at the Salon d'Automobiles, d'Aeronautique, du Cycles et des Sports, which opened in Brussels on 16 January 1910. Data from General characteristics Crew: 1 Length: 9.4 m Wingspan: 9.16 m Wing area: 24 m2 Empty weight: 400 kg Powerplant: 1 × Buchet 6-cylinder inline piston engine, water cooled, 37 kW Opdycke, French Aeroplanes before the Great War. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1999 ISBN 0-7643-0752-5
Hanriot H.43
The Hanriot H.43 was a military utility aircraft produced in France in the late 1920s and early 1930s, used by the Aéronautique Militaire as a trainer. While Hanriot had spent most of the 1920s manufacturing further and further developments of the HD.14 that had flown in 1920, the H.43 was an new design. It was a conventional single-bay biplane with staggered wings of unequal span and a fuselage of fabric-covered metal tube. Accommodation for the pilot and passenger was in tandem, open cockpits and the main units of the fixed, tailskid undercarriage were linked by a cross-axle. Two prototypes in 1927 were followed by the LH.431 in 1928, a much-modified version that dispensed with the sweepback used on both the upper and lower wings of the H.43, had a new tail fin and added metal covering to the sides of the fuselage. This was ordered into production by the Aéronautique Militaire; these were different again from the LH.431 prototype, having divided main undercarriage units, wings of greater area, redesigned interplane struts.
From 1927 to 1933, the Army would purchase nearly 150 examples for a variety of support roles including training, observation, as an air ambulance. At the Fall of France in 1940, 75 of these aircraft remained in service. H.43 variants were operated by civil flying schools in France, as well as 12 examples purchased for the military of Peru H.43 - prototype with Salmson CM.9 engine H.430 - version with Salmson 9Ab engine H.431.01 - development of H.430 with revised wings and fuselage and Lorraine 7Ma engine LH.431 - production version with divided main undercarriage units and Lorraine 7Mc engine LH.432 - gunnery training version with machine gun on ring mount in rear cockpit LH.433 - revised LH.431 with modified landing gear and tail fin, Lorraine 7Me engine LH.434 - H.436 - dedicated trainer version based on LH.433 with Salmson 9Ab engine LH.437 - air ambulance version based on LH.433 LH.437ter - air ambulance version with Salmson engine. H.438 - export version of LH.433 for Peru H.439 - civil trainer version, some with tailwheel in place of tailskid.
FranceFrench Air Force PeruPeruvian Air Force SpainSpanish Republican Air Force, Hanriot LH.437/239 Data from Jane's all the World's Aircraft 1928General characteristics Crew: 2 Length: 7.24 m Wingspan: 10.6 m Height: 4.2 m Wing area: 53.5 m2 Empty weight: 842 kg Gross weight: 1,420 kg Powerplant: 1 × Salmson CM.9 9-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine, 170 kW Propellers: 2-bladed fixed pitch propellerPerformance Maximum speed: 185 km/h 180 km/h at 2,000 m 173 km/h at 4,000 m 166 km/h at 5,000 m Range: 450 km Endurance: 3 hours Service ceiling: 6,000 m Time to altitude: 2,000 m in 8 minutes 36 seconds4,000 m in 22 minutes 12 seconds 5,000 m in 38 minutesWing loading: 50.3 kg/m2 Power/mass: 0.1236 kW/kg Related lists List of Interwar military aircraft List of aircraft of the Spanish Republican Air Force Taylor, Michael J. H.. Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation. London: Studio Editions. P. 470. World Aircraft Information Files. London: Bright Star Publishing. Pp. File 896 Sheet 10
Italian Air Force
The Italian Air Force is the air force of the Italian Republic. The Italian Air Force was founded as an independent service arm on 28 March 1923 by King Victor Emmanuel III as the Regia Aeronautica. After World War II, when Italy was made a republic by referendum, the Regia Aeronautica was given its current name. Since its formation, the service has held a prominent role in modern Italian military history; the aerobatic display team is the Frecce Tricolori. Italy was among the earliest adopters of military aviation, its air arm dates back to 1884, when the Italian Royal Army was authorised to acquire its own air component. The Air Service operated balloons based near Rome. In 1911, reconnaissance and bombing sorties during the Italo-Turkish War by the Servizio Aeronautico represented the first use of heavier-than-air aircraft in armed conflict. On 28 March 1923, the Italian Air Force was founded as an independent service by King Vittorio Emanuele III of the Kingdom of Italy; this air force was known as the Regia Aeronautica.
During the 1930s, the fledgling Regia Aeronautica was involved in its first military operations, first in Ethiopia in 1935, in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. After a period of neutrality, Italy entered World War II on 10 June 1940 alongside Germany; the Regia Aeronautica could deploy more than 3,000 aircraft, although fewer than 60% were serviceable. It fought from the icy steppes of Russia to the sand of the North African desert, losing men and machines. After the armistice of 8 September 1943, Italy was divided into two sides, the same fate befell the Regia Aeronautica; the Air Force was split into the Italian Co-Belligerent Air Force in the south aligned with the Allies, the pro-Axis Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana in the north until the end of the war. On 8 May 1945, the hostilities ended. A popular vote by the people resulted in the end of the Kingdom of Italy and the establishment of the Italian Republic on 18 June 1946. Hence the Regia Aeronautica lost its "Royal" designation, it became the Aeronautica Militare, a name that it has continued to hold since.
The Peace Treaty of Paris of 1947 placed severe restrictions on all of the Italian armed forces, but the establishment of NATO in 1949 with Italy as a founding member brought about the necessity for the modernization of all of the Italian armed forces, including the Italian Air Force. American military aid sent by the Mutual Defense Assistance Program brought about the introduction of American-made P-47 Thunderbolt and P-51 Mustang propeller-driven fighter planes. In 1952, the Italian Air Force was granted jet fighters for the first time, American F-84G Thunderjets and F-86D Sabres, followed by F-84F fighters and C-119 Flying Boxcar transport planes from the United States; the reborn Italian aviation industry began to develop and produce a few ingenious aircraft designs of its own, such as the Fiat G91, the Aermacchi MB-326, the Piaggio Aero P.166 and the line of Agusta-Bell helicopters. The first supersonic fighters added to the Italian Air Force were American-designed F-104 Starfighters that were produced by a group of several European aircraft companies, including Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm, Fiat, Fokker and SABCA.
During the 1970s, the Air Force acquired the Italian Aeritalia G222 and the modern American C-130 Hercules tactical transport planes, capable of carrying cargo or paratroopers. It received the new Lockheed-Aeritalia F-104S Starfighter fighters for ground attack and air-defence purposes. A push to expand the Italian aircraft industry led Italy into the huge trilateral project that developed the Panavia Tornado fighter-bomber and air-defence fighters along with West Germany and the United Kingdom. Tornado fighters were still in service with all three countries, plus a few more, as of 2012. Italian companies worked with the Embraer Company of Brazil in a smaller project to develop and produce the AMX International AMX aircraft. In 1990, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Italy joined the coalition forces, for the first time in 45 years Italian pilots and aircraft were assigned to combat operations. Needing to replace the obsolete F-104 Starfighters, Italy joined with Germany and the United Kingdom in the development of the Eurofighter Typhoon, expected to enter the Italian Air Force in 2000.
In 1994, with the Typhoon still some years from introduction to service, 24 Panavia Tornado Air Defense Variant interceptors were leased from the United Kingdom for a period of 10 years. The ADV Tornados served as fighter-interceptors to supplement and to replace the old F-104 Starfighters. However, delays in the production of the Typhoon forced the Italians to seek a supplement, replacement, for the leased Tornado ADVs. With the UK lease due to expire in 2004, the Italian government wished to avoid a costly lease extension and instead opted to lease 34 F-16 Fighting Falcon multi-role fighter planes on multi-year leases from the US; the last of these fighters was returned to the United States in May 2012, following the Italian Air Force's acquisition of a sufficient number of Typhoons over a period of several years. The Typhoons are intended to replace all of Tornado ADV and F-16 aircraft; the last of the Italian F-104s was withdrawn from service in 2004. Armed conflicts in Somalia and the nearby Balkan Peninsula led to the Italian Air Force becoming a participant in multinational air forces, such as that of NATO over the former Yugoslavia, just a few minutes flying time east of the Italian peninsula.
The commanders of the Italian Air Force soon saw the need to improve the Italian air defences. The capability
Hanriot HD.15
The Hanriot HD.15 was a French two seat fighter aircraft fitted with a supercharger for good high altitude performance, built in the 1920s. Three were lost at sea during delivery; the Hanriot HD.15 was designed in response to a government call for a turbo-supercharged high altitude fighter-reconnaissance aircraft. It was powered by a Hispano-Suiza 8Fb 8-cylinder upright water-cooled V-8 engine fitted with a Rateau turbo-supercharger intended to maintain sea level powers to altitudes up to 5,000 m. Structurally the HD.15 was an all-metal aircraft, though the flying surfaces and rear fuselage were fabric covered. The wings had rectangular section Duralumin box spars, assisted by tubular auxiliary spars forward and aft of them. In plan they were straight edged, unswept and of constant chord and thickness; the lower wing had a greater span. The wing tips were square, except that the horn balances of the short span ailerons on both upper and lower wings projected beyond. There was no stagger; the HD.15 had unusual interplane struts: instead of the familiar division of the wing into bays by struts braced with crossed flying and landing wires, it had a rigid, spanwise, X-shaped strut on each side, linking the upper and lower spars.
Vertical wires maintained the interplane gap and the location of the crossing point, below mid-gap. The inboard end of each upper X-strut met the wing at the top of the aft member of a pair of cabane struts; the lower ends of the X-strut met the wing further outboard, at the bottom of a strut that ran to the upper fuselage longeron. The empennage of the HD.15 was like those used on earlier Emile Dupont designs, with a braced, rectangular tailplane mounted on top of the fuselage and a small, curved edged fin. Both carried balanced control surfaces, the elevator's balances projecting beyond the tailplane tips, the low but broad chord, curved edge, deep rudder reaching down to the keel and moving within an elevator cut-out; the rather tubby fuselage of the HD.15 had tubular cross-section longerons with similar, triangularly arranged, cross bracing. The pilot's open cockpit was just behind the main wing spar, under a deep trailing edge cut-out to improve his upwards and forward vision. Close behind was the observer's cockpit, fitted with a mounted pair of swivelling machine guns.
The fuselage was fabric covered from the pilot's cockpit aft. The Hispano engine, enclosed under a metal cowling, was cooled with a pair of circular cross-section radiators mounted ventrally between the undercarriage legs; the HD.15 had a fixed conventional undercarriage, with mainwheels on a single axle mounted on the lower fuselage longerons by two pairs of V-struts. The HD.15 first flew in April 1922 and should have been in competition with the Gourdou-Leseurre GL.50, but the two seat reconnaissance fighter programme had been abandoned before this date. The whole high altitude fighter project, which included single seaters, was dropped with the inability of Rateau to deliver reliable superchargers in quantity because of high temperature material problems. Nonetheless, the Japanese Army became interested in supercharger-engined fighters and in 1926 the prototype HD.15 was sold and delivered to them. An order for three more followed, but the ship taking them to Japan was sunk by a tidal wave en voyage.
Data from Green & Swanborough p.278General characteristics Crew: Two Length: 7.60 m Wingspan: 11.40 m Height: 2.57 m Wing area: 32.48 m2 Empty weight: 1,050 kg Gross weight: 1,750 kg Powerplant: 1 × Hispano-Suiza 8Fb 8-cylinder upright water-cooled supercharged V-8, 220 kW Propellers: 2-bladedPerformance Maximum speed: 180 km/h Range: 800 km Service ceiling: 10,250 m Armament Guns: 2 × fixed, forward-firing 7.7 mm Darne machine guns.
Hanriot HD.18
The Hanriot HD.18 was a three-seat colonial police aircraft built by Hanriot in the early 1920s. Data from General characteristics Crew: 3 Length: 9.50 m Wingspan: 13.10 m Wing area: 42 m2 Empty weight: 1,270 kg Gross weight: 2,470 kg Powerplant: 1 × Renault 12Fe V-12 water-cooled piston engine, 220 kW Performance Maximum speed: 169 km/h Range: 500 km Service ceiling: 5,500 m Taylor, Michael J. H.. Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation. London: Studio Editions. P. 470. World Aircraft Information Files. London: Bright Star Publishing. Pp. File 896 Sheet 11. Morgała, Andrzej. Samoloty wojskowe w Polsce 1924-1939. Warsaw: Bellona. ISBN 83-11-09319-9
Hanriot H.41
The Hanriot H.41 was a military trainer aircraft produced in France in the 1920s. It was a further development in the family of aircraft that had commenced with the HD.14 in 1920, incorporated a number of design features, developed for other members of that family. Like those other aircraft, however, it was a conventional, two-bay biplane with unstaggered wings of equal span; the H.41 used the modern engine and mixed construction developed for the HD.40 air ambulance and used them in a new design for a military trainer. The design did not prove a success and only eleven were built, with three different engine types. A floatplane variant based on the HD.17 was more successful, with twelve examples exported to Greece and Portugal. H.41 Two-seat training aircraft. H.410 version with Lorraine 5Pa engine H.411 version with Salmson 7Ac engine LH.412 version with Lorraine 5Pb engine HD.41H: - floatplane with Salmson 9Ac engine + GreeceHellenic Air Force Hellenic Navy PortugalPortuguese Navy YugoslaviaYugoslav Royal Navy Data from Jane's all the World's Aircraft 1928General characteristics Crew: 2 Length: 7.25 m Wingspan: 10.26 m Height: 3.13 m Wing area: 34.9 m2 Empty weight: 625 kg Gross weight: 900 kg Powerplant: 1 × Lorraine 5P 5-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine, 75 kW Propellers: 2-bladed fixed pitch propellerPerformance Maximum speed: 185 km/h Landing speed: 50 km/h Range: 400 km Service ceiling: 3,500 m Time to altitude: 1,000 m in 13 minutes Wing loading: 25.8 kg/m2 Power/mass: 0.0830 kW/kg Taylor, Michael J. H..
Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation. London: Studio Editions. P. 470. World Aircraft Information Files. London: Bright Star Publishing. Pp. File 896 Sheet 11. Janić, Čedomir. Short History of Aviation in Serbia. Beograd: Aerokomunikacije. ISBN 978-86-913973-2-6
Isle of Grain
St James, Isle of Grain is a village and the easternmost point of the Hoo Peninsula within the district of Medway in Kent. No longer an island and now forming part of the peninsula, the area is all marshland and is a major habitat for diverse wetland birds; the village constitutes a civil parish, which at the 2011 census had a population of 1,648, a net decrease of 83 people in 10 years. Extract from the Topographical Dictionary of Great Britain and Ireland by John Gorton, 1833: "GRAINE, ISLE OF, co. Kent "A parish in the Hundred of Hoo, lathe of Aylesford, opposite to Sheppey at the mouth of the Thames; the Creek was filled up, had a road across it for 40 years until 1823, when the Lord Mayor ordered it to be again reopened, so as to give about eight feet navigation for barges at spring tide. The severing of the road resulted in an inconclusive High Court case in 1824, by 1835 the causeway had been reinstated; the goods route from the Medway Towns to the upper Thames Estuary was shortened by the Thames and Medway Canal, although this route, was abandoned.
In 1855, as part of military defences guarding the Thames, Grain Tower, a fort, was built. It remained in use until 1946. In various warm years the incidence of "marsh fever" was high. Since the removal of livestock from marshy areas, the number of native mosquitoes has declined, Britain's last recorded outbreak of malaria was in 1918. Yantlet Creek at the south of the Yantlet Line was the downstream limit of the City of London's ownership of the bed of the River Thames, it is marked by a London Stone beside the mouth of the creek. Its successor for navigation purposes, the Port of London Authority owns the river bed down to here but has navigation policing rights on a debatable area of estuary or sea as far as the seaside resort of Margate which has normal sea salinity; the south of the Isle is an important industrial area. Until 1982 it was home to a major oil refinery. Construction of this facility for British Petroleum took from 1948 to 1952, it suffered flooding immediately when the North Sea flood of 1953 breached the sea wall.
In the 1990s the refinery site was chosen for a purpose-built facility to make concrete lining segments for the Channel Tunnel. There was not the space to make the sections at the Shakespeare Cliff construction site near Folkestone at the tunnel's entrance, so the Isle of Grain was used because large quantities of granite aggregate could be delivered there by ship from Glensanda in Scotland, the finished sections could be transported by a pre-existing rail link to east Kent. Following completion of the Channel Tunnel, the site is now part-occupied by Thamesport, the UK's third largest container port; the remainder is allocated for warehousing use under the Thames Gateway project. Next to the former BP site is Grain Power Station, built in the 1970s, which burnt oil, it was mothballed in 2003, but reopened in 2006 to provide up to three percent of the National Grid supply. The oil-fired power station was demolished in 2015 and a new gas-fired station now stands on the site. Another major installation is a new Grain Liquefied Natural Gas import facility.
The Isle of Grain was the site of Grain Fort, built in the 1860s and used for coastal defence until the 1950s. The fort was completely demolished about 1960, leaving only the original earth rampart, complete with some tunnels running underground. Grain Tower, about a quarter of a mile off-shore and accessible at low tide, originated about the same time as the main fort. Additions, consisting of concrete emplacements and shelters, were added during the World Wars, the tower was used as a boom control point; the boom was a chain supporting a huge antisubmarine net across the two rivers, preventing entry by German U-boats. The Isle of Grain is the landing point for the Britned undersea power cable between The Netherlands and the UK. An 1801 map shows that the ancient village of Grain was at one time called St James in the Isle of Grain. Like others in the Hundred of Hoo, the village was named after the dedication of its parish church. Wallend is the other settlement, now contained within a fenced-off industrial site.
The Medway Power Station now occupies the site. Local historian Alan Bignell gives this description of the new port and accompanying railway: In the late 1870s the South Eastern Railway decided to promote a line through the district, with a view to competing for the traffic from London to Sheerness an unchallenged stronghold of the London and Dover Railway. For some years past a steamer had been running from Sheerness to Strood, whence South Eastern trains gave a connection to London.... The journey was along the rather tortuous course of the Medway. In 1879 the South Eastern obtained an act for a branch leaving their North Kent line at a point about from Gravesend... to Stoke... In the following year powers were obtained for an extension, long, to St James, in the Isle of Grain, where a deep-water pier was to be built on the Medway. A ferry was to connect the new pier with Sheerness... The railway was opened throughout on 11 September 1882; the pier was built for passenger traffic and Queen Victoria was indeed a passenger.
Bignell records that she "... took a rather curious fancy to Grain as a chosen departure point for trips to Germany"
