De Marçay Limousine

Last updated
Limousine
Mercay Limousine.jpg
The Limousine at the 1919 Salon
Role Two seat tourer
National origin France
Manufacturer SAECA Edmund de Marçay
First flight 1920

The de Marçay Limousine was a two-seat French touring biplane introduced at the 1919 Paris Aero Salon. A smaller but otherwise very similar single-seater was also there.

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.

Biplane airplane wing configuration with two vertically stacked main flying surfaces

A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While a biplane wing structure has a structural advantage over a monoplane, it produces more drag than a similar unbraced or cantilever monoplane wing. Improved structural techniques, better materials and the quest for greater speed made the biplane configuration obsolete for most purposes by the late 1930s.

Contents

Design and development

As well as the very small and low-powered Passe-Partout, the de Marçay stand at the 1919 Paris Aero Salon displayed two touring aircraft, both powered by 45 kW (60 hp) Le Rhône 9Z nine-cylinder rotary engines. One was a single-seater and the other, the rather larger Limousine, seated two. [1] [2] Some recent sources refer to the latter as the de Marçay T-2. [3] At the time of the show, neither had flown. [4]

De Marçay Passe-Partout

The de Marçay Passe-Partout was a small, low-powered single seat sport and touring aircraft, built in France just after World War I.

Rotary engine internal combustion engine with cylinders rotating around a stationary crankshaft

The rotary engine is an early type of internal combustion engine, usually designed with an odd number of cylinders per row in a radial configuration, in which the crankshaft remained stationary in operation, with the entire crankcase and its attached cylinders rotating around it as a unit. Its main application was in aviation, although it also saw use before its primary aviation role, in a few early motorcycles and automobiles.

Both aircraft were single bay biplanes with wings of rectangular plan mounted with strong stagger. Both upper and lower wings were one-piece, two spar structures. Normally such wings were braced together on each side by a pair of interplane struts, one between each of the two corresponding upper and lower spars and stayed by incidence wires, but the de Marçays had instead rigid interplane braces of parallelogram form. The upper wing was supported over the fuselage with two pairs of N-form cabane struts and the lower one passed under the fuselage and was joined to it by three short struts, two to the forward spar linked to the engine mounting and the other, centrally, to the rear. [1] The wingspan and wing area of the Limousine were about 17% greater than that of the single seater. [5]

Stagger (aeronautics)

In aviation, stagger is the relative horizontal fore-aft positioning of stacked wings in a biplane, triplane, or multiplane.

Spar (aeronautics) Main structural member of the wing of an aircraft

In a fixed-wing aircraft, the spar is often the main structural member of the wing, running spanwise at right angles to the fuselage. The spar carries flight loads and the weight of the wings while on the ground. Other structural and forming members such as ribs may be attached to the spar or spars, with stressed skin construction also sharing the loads where it is used. There may be more than one spar in a wing or none at all. However, where a single spar carries the majority of the forces on it, it is known as the main spar.

Parallelogram quadrilateral with two pairs of parallel sides

In Euclidean geometry, a parallelogram is a simple (non-self-intersecting) quadrilateral with two pairs of parallel sides. The opposite or facing sides of a parallelogram are of equal length and the opposite angles of a parallelogram are of equal measure. The congruence of opposite sides and opposite angles is a direct consequence of the Euclidean parallel postulate and neither condition can be proven without appealing to the Euclidean parallel postulate or one of its equivalent formulations.

They shared a semi-ellipsoidal aluminium engine cowling, split into a spinner from which the propeller protruded and with a large opening for cooling air, and a fixed rear part that reached back to the forward cabane. Behind the engine mounting the fuselage was a circular section, tapered monocoque, with the cockpit of the single-seater under a cut-out in the trailing edge of the upper wing. The absence of internal structure in the fuselage made it straightforward to extend the Limousine's fuselage by 23% to include a second cockpit. At the Salon its two seats were enclosed within a rather blunt canopy or coupé with a flat windscreen and two windows on each side. This was readily detachable and it is not known if the Limousine was flown with it in place. [1] [2] [5]

Spinner (aeronautics) aircraft component

A spinner is an aircraft component, a streamlined fairing fitted over a propeller hub or at the centre of a turbofan engine. Spinners both make the aircraft overall more streamlined, reducing aerodynamic drag and also smooth the airflow so that it enters the air intakes more efficiently. Spinners also fulfill an aesthetic role on some aircraft designs.

Propeller (aeronautics) aircraft component which converts engine torque into forward thrust

An aircraft propeller, or airscrew, converts rotary motion from an engine or other power source, into a swirling slipstream which pushes the propeller forwards or backwards. It comprises a rotating power-driven hub, to which are attached several radial airfoil-section blades such that the whole assembly rotates about a longitudinal axis. The blade pitch may be fixed, manually variable to a few set positions, or of the automatically-variable "constant-speed" type.

Monocoque Structural design that supports loads through an objects external skin

Monocoque, also structural skin, is a structural system where loads are supported through an object's external skin, similar to an egg shell. The word monocoque is a French term for "single shell" or "single hull". First used in boats, a true monocoque carries both tensile and compressive forces within the skin and can be recognised by the absence of a load-carrying internal frame.

Their empennages were conventional, with plywood covered horizontal tails on top of the fuselages. The fins were small and semi-circular and the fabric covered rudders had scalloped, rounded edges. They had fixed, tailskid undercarriages with mainwheels on a single axle rubber-sprung from a transverse member mounted on V-struts. The forward member of the V joined the forward fuselage just behind the metal cowling and the rear one went to the lower wing forward attachment points. [1]

Plywood manufactured wood panel made from thin sheets of wood veneer

Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured boards which includes medium-density fibreboard (MDF) and particle board (chipboard).

Fin flight control surface

A fin is a thin component or appendage attached to a larger body or structure. Fins typically function as foils that produce lift or thrust, or provide the ability to steer or stabilize motion while traveling in water, air, or other fluids. Fins are also used to increase surface areas for heat transfer purposes, or simply as ornamentation.

Aircraft fabric covering

Aircraft fabric covering is a term used for both the material used and the process of covering aircraft open structures. It is also used for reinforcing closed plywood structures, the de Havilland Mosquito being an example of this technique, and on the pioneering all-wood monocoque fuselages of certain World War I German aircraft like the LFG Roland C.II, in its wrapped Wickelrumpf plywood strip and fabric covering.

There are a few reports on the post-Salon activities of the single-seat de Marçay tourer. In late March 1922 it took off from a football pitch near le Bourget and reached 200 km/h (120 mph). [6] In late June that year it was scheduled to be flown by Guérin at an international meeting in Brussels organised by the Belgian Aeroclub. [7]

Le Bourget Commune in Île-de-France, France

Le Bourget is a commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 10.6 km (6.6 mi) from the center of Paris.

Brussels Capital region of Belgium

Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, is a region of Belgium comprising 19 municipalities, including the City of Brussels, which is the capital of Belgium. The Brussels-Capital Region is located in the central portion of the country and is a part of both the French Community of Belgium and the Flemish Community, but is separate from the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region. Brussels is the most densely populated and the richest region in Belgium in terms of GDP per capita. It covers 161 km2 (62 sq mi), a relatively small area compared to the two other regions, and has a population of 1.2 million. The metropolitan area of Brussels counts over 2.1 million people, which makes it the largest in Belgium. It is also part of a large conurbation extending towards Ghent, Antwerp, Leuven and Walloon Brabant, home to over 5 million people.

Variants

Limousine
Two seat, as described.
Single seater
Smaller with span 5.03 m (16 ft 6 in), length 4.52 m (14 ft 10 in), empty weight 140 kg (300 lb), maximum speed 180 km/h (112 mph). [5]

Specifications (Limousine)

Data from Flight (1 January 1920, pp.16-7) [5]

General characteristics

Performance

  • Maximum speed: 140 km/h; 76 kn (87 mph)

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "The Paris Aero Show 1919". Flight . XII (2): 45–6. 8 January 1920.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Les Avions actuels et le 6e Salon Aéronautique". L'Aérophile. 28 (3-4): 44–5. 1–15 February 1920.
  3. ↑ Bruno Parmentier. "de Marçay T-2" . Retrieved 8 August 2015.
  4. ↑ "Les Avions actuels et le 6e Salon Aéronautique". L'Aérophile. 28 (3-4): 34. 1–15 February 1920.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "The Paris Aero Show at a Glance". Flight . XII (1): 16–17. 1 January 1920.
  6. ↑ "On essaie ... L'avion tourisme de Marçay". Les Ailes. 20 (41): 2. 30 March 1922.
  7. ↑ "Le meeting de Bruxelles Marçay". Les Ailes. 20 (51): 3. 8 June 1922.


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