Henri Fabré on the dock beside his invention.
|
The Wright Brothers may have been first,
but for a number of reasons within
the first decade of flight the French leapt ahead of the Americans and their chief rival Glenn Curtis in technical
innovation and the advancement
of aviation. It was not really so surprising. In
the early decades of the 20th Century French
science and engineering led the world in
many areas.
Perhaps one of the most important advancements in aviation
was the development of a float plane—an
aircraft that could take off and land on
water. Everyone knew that such a
development was crucial in making air travel practical over long distances
and commercially viable. Some had tried
with disastrous results. Until Henri
Fabré.
On March 28, 1910 Fabré, who had never before flown an airplane of any type,
took off from the Étang de Berre, a tidal lagoon by the small
port of Martigues northwest of Marseilles near the Côte d'Azur, and successfully touched down on the water 1,500 feet later. Fabré made three more flights that day until
the plane, dubbed the Fabre Hydravion, crashed with minor damage. By the end of the week Fabré was able to fly
over three and a half miles.
Fabré in the air astride the top beam of the Fabre Hydravion. |
Fabré,
born on November 28, 1882 had the perfect combination of background and training
to become the first to build and fly a seaplane. He was born into a prominent Marseilles
ship building family and educated at the Jesuit College there
and then in engineering at the University of Mars. Unlike the Wrights, Curtis and other American
aviation pioneers who were basically tinkering mechanics, Fabré was
a trained scientist and engineer.
He immersed himself with everything that was known about
aircraft and especially propeller design.
By 1906 he
began to work on solving the challenges of building a float plane. To do so, he had to make several
innovations, especially the development of light, reliable pontoons. To create a light weight but strong
frame, Fabré designed and patented the Fabre beam—two
girders joined by an internal system of rectangular struts, known as a warren
truss.
Fabré was assisted
in the construction and testing of his aircraft by Marius
Burdin, a former mechanic for Captain Ferdinand Ferber, the Army
officer considered the Father of French Aviation, and by naval
architect Léon Sebille.
Together this highly skilled team built a fragile
looking buy deceptively sturdy monoplane
with a frame and the leading
edges of the single wing and two
small foreplanes made of Fabre
beams. The pilot sat on a bicycle seat
with legs astride the top beam of the frame. A double-bladed
Gnome Omega rotary 7-cylinder pusher engine provided the power.
The whole contraption sat on
three pontoons, one mounted below the
bottom frame beam in front the pilot, and two from the wings, all supported by
strong guy wires.
This museum model of the Fabre Hydravion show how fragile it appeared. Note the Fabre beams used in the construction of the wing and foreplanes and the three pontoons. |
Word of the successful
flights soon got around and soon others interested in float plane technology
beat a path to Fabré’s door. Gabriel and Charles Voisin, proprietors of France’s first aircraft manufacturing company, bought several Fabré pontoons for
use on their own Voisin Canard, a land based aircraft they converted
for the French Navy. Glenn
Curtis, known as the Father of American Naval Aviation also bought Fabré pontoons which he used for the first successful U.S. float plane flight on
January 26, 1911 at San Diego.
Curtis soon adapted the Fabré design with modifications to
create an amphibious Model
D.
Fabré took the Hydravion to the prestigious Concours de Canots Automobiles de Monaco for a demonstration
flight on April 12, 1911. This time
mechanic Burdin was at the controls when he crashed and smashed the aircraft beyond repair.
Fabré never built another
model. Instead he turned his
attention to the manufacture of
pontoons for others, the exploitation of
the Fabre beam, and other engineering and business pursuits. He led a long
and honored life and was still seen rowing
on in the harbor of Marseilles as late as 1971.
He died on June 30, 1983 at the age of 101, the last of the original aviation pioneers.
As for the Hydravion, its parts were salvaged after its last
flight. Eventually it was re-assembled
and restored. It is now on
display at the Musée de l'Air
in Paris.
No comments:
Post a Comment