Breguet 670

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Breguet 670
Wibault 670 photo L'Aerophile February 1936.jpg
Role18 seat airliner
National origin France
Manufacturer Société des Avions Louis Breguet
First flight1 or 16 March 1935
Number built1

The Breguet 670, Breguet 670T or Breguet-Wibault 670 was a French twin engine, all metal eighteen seat airliner with a retractable undercarriage flown in 1935. Only one was built.

France Republic with mainland in Europe and numerous oversea territories

France, officially the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is bordered by Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany to the northeast, Switzerland and Italy to the east, and Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres (248,573 sq mi) and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice.

Airliner aircraft designed for commercial transportation of passengers and cargo

An airliner is a type of aircraft for transporting passengers and air cargo. Such aircraft are most often operated by airlines. Although the definition of an airliner can vary from country to country, an airliner is typically defined as an aeroplane intended for carrying multiple passengers or cargo in commercial service. The largest of them are wide-body jets which are called also twin-aisle because they generally have two separate aisles running from the front to the back of the passenger cabin. These are usually used for long-haul flights between airline hubs and major cities. A smaller, more common class of airliners is the narrow-body or single-aisle. These are generally used for short to medium-distance flights with fewer passengers than their wide-body counterparts.

Contents

Design

In 1934 Breguet acquired Chantiers Aéronautiques Wibault-Penhoët and produced some of their unbuilt designs. [1] The Breguet 670 was one of these, an all-metal, low wing, twin engine airliner accommodating eighteen passengers. [2] Engine layout apart, it was similar to though larger than the successful trimotor Wibault-Penhoët 282, used by six French airlines including Air France. [3] In the mid-1930s companies worldwide were designing and producing twin engine aircraft of the same configuration, most notably the earlier Douglas DC-2, which was less powerful and carried only fourteen passengers. [4]

Wibault

The Wibault company or Société des Avions Michel Wibault was a French aircraft manufacturing company. Its workshops were located in Billancourt, in the Paris area.

A trimotor is an aircraft powered by three engines and represents a compromise between complexity and safety and was often a result of the limited power of the engines available to the designer. Many trimotors were designed and built in the 1920s and 1930s, when engine power lagged behind the designers' power requirements.

Air France, stylized as AIRFRANCE, is the French flag carrier headquartered in Tremblay-en-France. It is a subsidiary of the Air France–KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global airline alliance. As of 2013 Air France serves 36 destinations in France and operates worldwide scheduled passenger and cargo services to 168 destinations in 78 countries and also carried 46,803,000 passengers in 2015. The airline's global hub is at Charles de Gaulle Airport with Orly Airport as the primary domestic hub. Air France's corporate headquarters, previously in Montparnasse, Paris, are located on the grounds of Charles de Gaulle Airport, north of Paris.

The Breguet 670's wing had a constant thickness centre section, with wing roots faired into the fuselage on its trailing edges, and two outer panels, tapering in both thickness and plan to semi-elliptical tips. It was a two spar structure, with sheet duralumin, I-section [5] spars which had extruded webs, and was duralumin skinned. Narrow chord slotted ailerons occupied the outer two-thirds of the span and the rest fitted with similar flaps. [2]

Wing root

The wing root is the part of the wing on a fixed-wing aircraft that is closest to the fuselage. On a simple monoplane configuration, this is usually easy to identify. On parasol wing or multiple boom aircraft, the wing may not have a clear root area.

Aircraft fairing

An aircraft fairing is a structure whose primary function is to produce a smooth outline and reduce drag.

Fuselage aircraft main body which is the primary carrier of crew, passengers, and payload

The fuselage is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, and cargo. In single-engine aircraft it will usually contain an engine, as well, although in some amphibious aircraft the single engine is mounted on a pylon attached to the fuselage, which in turn is used as a floating hull. The fuselage also serves to position control and stabilization surfaces in specific relationships to lifting surfaces, which is required for aircraft stability and maneuverability.

It was powered by two wing-mounted 615 kW (825 hp) Gnome-Rhône 14Krs Mistral Major fourteen cylinder radial engines driving three blade variable pitch propellers. [6] The engine mountings were steel tube structures supported by the longerons; [6] the engine cowlings were most prominent above the wings. [2] The main legs of the 5.56 m (18 ft 3 in) track [5] landing gear, with fairings mounted on the front of, them retracted rearwards into the cowlings. [2] [7] The undercarriage was completed with a oleo mounted, steerable tailwheel. There were fuel tanks in the central section of the wings between both the engines and the longerons. [5]

Radial engine reciprocating engine with cylinders arranged radially from a single crankshaft

The radial engine is a reciprocating type internal combustion engine configuration in which the cylinders "radiate" outward from a central crankcase like the spokes of a wheel. It resembles a stylized star when viewed from the front, and is called a "star engine" in some languages. The radial configuration was commonly used for aircraft engines before gas turbine engines became predominant.

Landing gear aircraft part which supports the aircraft while not in the air

Landing gear is the undercarriage of an aircraft or spacecraft and may be used for either takeoff or landing. For aircraft it is generally both. It was also formerly called alighting gear by some manufacturers, such as the Glenn L. Martin Company.

Oleo strut

An oleo strut is a pneumatic air–oil hydraulic shock absorber used on the landing gear of most large aircraft and many smaller ones. This design cushions the impacts of landing and damps out vertical oscillations.

The fuselage was duralumin throughout and was flat sided and bottomed, though its top was slightly rounded and the nose was rounded in both plan and elevation. [2] The pilots' cabin had two seats side-by-side, fitted with dual control and radio equipment by the righthand seat. [5] Behind them there was a separate cabin with a 0.75 m × 1.8 m (2 ft 6 in × 5 ft 11 in) floor, which could be fitted as a navigator's post or a bar and gave access to an underfloor baggage hold; [5] a port-side external door accessed this space and allowed the pilots to reach their positions via an internal door. A second internal door opened into the passenger cabin, 9.1 m × 1.8 m (29 ft 10 in × 5 ft 11 in) in plan and 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in) high, which had nine rows of seats, one on each side under its own window. There was a toilet at the rear and behind it a final space containing a library [5] and the main passenger door port-side. [2] [6]

The Breguet 670 was designed so that it could be adapted to carry merchandise or mail instead of passengers. With a 2,030 kg (4,480 lb) payload, its range was 750 km (470 mi) but reducing this to 1,320 kg (2,910 lb) increased the range to 1,500 km (930 mi). [6]

The empennage was conventional, with a tapered, round tipped horizontal tail mounted on top of the fuselage. The fin and rudder were straight edged, meeting in a rounded top. Neither the rudder, which reached down to the keel and worked in a small cut-out between the elevators, nor the elevators were balanced. [2]

Operational history

Two slightly different dates for the first flight appear in the contemporary literature, 1 March 1935 [3] and 16 March 1935. [7] This was followed by about six months testing and refining at the hands of pilots Détroyat and Ribière before going for its air ministry tests at Villacoubly. [5]

The Breguet 670 did not go into production and only the prototype was built. In June 1936 structural problems appeared when the passenger door detached from the fuselage whilst the aircraft was on the ground; it turned out that the adhesive attaching soundproofing material to the cabin walls was attacking the duralumin. After a major rebuild ownership passed in March 1938 to La Société Francaise des Transportes Aérien, a company formed to supply aircraft clandestinely to the Spanish Republican government forces during the Spanish Civil War. It may have been used for spares or re-registered in Spain but destroyed by bombing in Catalonia. [8]

Specifications

Data from L'année aéronautique 1934-5 [9]

General characteristics

Performance

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References

  1. ↑ Gunston, Bill (1993). World Encyclopaedia of Aircraft Manufacturers: from the pioneers to the present day. Sparkford, Somerset: Patrick Stephens Limited. pp. 327–8. ISBN   9 781852 602055.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Variation on a theme". Flight . 28 (1374): 443. 25 April 1935.
  3. 1 2 Wibault, Michel (March 1935). "Genèse d'un avion commercial: le Breguet-Wibault 670". L'Aéronautique (192): 122.
  4. 1 2 Précoul, Michel (21 November 1936). "Les avions de transport modernes". Le Génie Civil. 109 (21): 452–6.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "L'avion commercial Bréguet-Wibault "670"". Les Ailes (748): 3. 17 October 1935.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "L'avion de transport Breguet 670". L'Avion (133): 12–13. January 1936.
  7. 1 2 "Société Anonymes de Ateliers d'Aviation Loius Breguet". L'Aéronautique (199): 334–5. December 1935.
  8. ↑ Howson, Gerald (1990). Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War. London: Putnam Aeronautical Books. pp. 67–8. ISBN   0 85177 842 9.
  9. ↑ Hirshauer, L.; Dolfus, Ch. (1935). "Avion Breguet, Type 670". L'année aéronautique. Paris: Dunod. 1934-5 (16): 30.
  10. ↑ Bruno Parmentier (24 June 1998). "Breguet Wibault 670" . Retrieved 21 September 2015.
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