AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 11 / 213

Plate 11 of 213 · Pioneers · Single-seat racing monoplane

Blériot XXVII

Blériot XXVII (1911), painted as 433 (BAPC.107), the only Blériot XXVII, at the RAF Museum London, Hendon: Louis Blériot’s 1911 single-seat racing monoplane, a wire-braced monoplane with a small wing warped for roll control, a slim, fully covered fuselage tapering to a knife-edge tail, a 50 hp Gnome Omega rotary under a long aluminium hood sweeping into the wing roots, a pyramid pylon carrying the landing wires, a balanced comma-shaped rudder and the Blériot cradle chassis of ash posts and bungee-sprung castoring wheels, shown standing tail-down on its wheels and cane skid as displayed: chrome-yellow fuselage, hood decking, rudder and elevator, paler straw-yellow doped wings with rib tapes, an engine-turned aluminium visor, orange varnished ash chassis with red collars and braided bungee, black steel pylon and forks and a mahogany propeller, with no serial or lettering on the airframe (no three-view of the type is known, so the shape was measured from photographs of 433 at the published 8.9 m span and the museum’s 6.5 m length).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as 433 (BAPC.107), the only Blériot XXVII, at the RAF Museum London, Hendon: Louis Blériot’s 1911 single-seat racing monoplane, a wire-braced monoplane with a small wing warped for roll control, a slim, fully covered fuselage tapering to a knife-edge tail, a 50 hp Gnome Omega rotary under a long aluminium hood sweeping into the wing roots, a pyramid pylon carrying the landing wires, a balanced comma-shaped rudder and the Blériot cradle chassis of ash posts and bungee-sprung castoring wheels, shown standing tail-down on its wheels and cane skid as displayed: chrome-yellow fuselage, hood decking, rudder and elevator, paler straw-yellow doped wings with rib tapes, an engine-turned aluminium visor, orange varnished ash chassis with red collars and braided bungee, black steel pylon and forks and a mahogany propeller, with no serial or lettering on the airframe (no three-view of the type is known, so the shape was measured from photographs of 433 at the published 8.9 m span and the museum’s 6.5 m length). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (543 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Blériot XXVII (1911) modelled here.

History

The Blériot XXVII

By 1911 the Blériot XI that had crossed the Channel two years earlier was the most widely built aeroplane in the world, and Louis Blériot’s works turned out a stream of variants on the same pattern. Racing was where the speed of a design was proved and sold, and that year Blériot built a series of faster single-seaters for the great contests. The XXVII was one of them: a small, clean monoplane with a wing of only 12 square metres, warped for roll control, and a fuselage that was not an open girder but a slim, fully covered body, boxy and panelled at the front and tapering to a knife-edge at the tail.

The engine was a 50 hp Gnome Omega rotary, half enclosed by a long aluminium hood that swept back into the wing roots, and the pilot sat close behind it under a pyramid pylon that carried the landing wires. The chassis was the familiar Blériot cradle of ash posts and steel tubes, with the wheels free to castor on bungee-sprung shock legs, and a balanced, comma-shaped rudder sat on the tail with a cane skid beneath. The XXVII was reported to have flown in September 1911 and was shown at the Paris Aero Salon that December. It was unofficially timed at 130 km/h (81 mph), very fast for 50 hp.

Only one was built. Its history before 1936 is obscure: in that year the collector Richard Nash found it crated at Le Havre and brought it to England. For years it was said to be the Blériot that raced for the 1911 Gordon Bennett Cup, but the RAF Museum has shown that it was not. Nash crashed it at Brooklands in June 1936 and rebuilt it before the Second World War. The Royal Aeronautical Society took over the Nash collection in 1953, and the Ministry of Defence later bought it for the RAF, who restored the Blériot several times before it reached the RAF Museum.

This airframe

Blériot XXVII 433 (BAPC.107)

433The airframe modelled

The Blériot XXVII at the RAF Museum London carries the number 433, its constructor’s number, and is also registered as BAPC.107; it was given the RAF instructional serial 9202M. It stands in Hangar 2 at Hendon, among the pioneer aircraft. The model shows it as displayed: a chrome-yellow fuselage, hood decking, rudder and elevator, paler straw-yellow wings with rib tapes, an engine-turned aluminium visor over the Gnome, orange varnished ash chassis posts with red collars and braided bungee, black steel pylon and forks, a mahogany propeller and a cane tail skid, with no serial or lettering on the airframe. No three-view drawing of the XXVII is known, so the shape was measured from photographs of 433, scaled to the published 8.9 m span and the 6.5 m length on the museum’s own placard.

See it at Royal Air Force Museum London

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Blériot XXVII in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 213 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.