Operational history
One of these aircraft was flown by Joseph Sadi-Lecointe in the race of 22 June and was the only one out of the five entrants to actually finish the course. [3] [6] [7] Indeed, having finished the prescribed six laps of the 50 km (31 mi) course, Sadi-Lecointe flew another four laps to break the world speed record over a 500-km closed-course. [7] His average speed in winning the Coupe Beaumont was 311 km/h (193 mph; 168 kn) and over the 500 km (310 mi) was 306 km/h (190 mph; 165 kn), beating the previous record for the latter by 36 km/h (22 mph; 19 kn). [7] On 15 February the following year, Sadi Lecointe took a NiD 42S up to a speed of 375 km/h (233 mph; 202 kn) [6] and went on to win the 1925 Coupe Beaumont with a NiD 42S on 18 October [6] with an average speed of 313 km/h (194 mph; 169 kn). [8]
While the NiD 42S was achieving these distinctions, development continued on the fighter version. Nieuport-Delage designed two further such variants in 1924; a single-seater designated NiD 42 C.1 and a similar machine with a second cockpit for a tail gunner with a machine gun in a ring mount, designated the NiD 42 C.2. [2] One of the latter was exhibited at that year's Salon de l'Aéronautique , along with a NiD 42 C.1 nose section to illustrate an alternative engine mount. [9] These differed from the original NiD 42 fighter in having a second, small wing added to the lower fuselage, turning the parasol monoplane into a sesquiplane, a design feature adopted from the NiD 37 [10] which would be a key identifying feature through most of the versions developed from the 42.
Only two examples of the two-seater were built, [1] but Nieuport-Delage entered the single-seater in the 1925 concours des monoplaces, a competition by the Army's Technical Service to find a replacement for the NiD 29. [10] The NiD 42 was selected from a field of eleven competitors, and an order for 50 aircraft was placed, [10] of which 25 were eventually delivered. [2] Although impressive at the time it was designed, technology had already surpassed the NiD 42 when it entered service in 1928, particularly with regard to its wooden structure, [10] and most of the development work associated with the design was made in an effort to cure it of a tendency to enter a flat spin. Nevertheless, it provided the foundation for further development as the NiD 52 and NiD 62. [11]
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
