AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 09 / 210

Plate 09 of 210 · Pioneers · Single-seat monoplane

Deperdussin Type A

1910 monoplane (Anzani), painted as G-AANH, The Shuttleworth Collection’s Deperdussin monoplane, built in France in 1910 and believed to be the 43rd Deperdussin made, among the oldest aeroplanes in the world still flying: Louis Béchereau’s wire-braced single-seat tractor monoplane, with a slightly tapered wing warped for roll control from a wheel on an inverted U-shaped yoke, a slender box-girder fuselage covered in linen with a varnished wooden shell under the nose, a swept tailplane with elevators, a low fin and a square rudder, a three-cylinder Anzani Y engine driving a two-bladed propeller, a brass fuel tank under a wooden pylon that carries the bracing wires, and a chassis of upturned wooden skids with two spoked wheels, shown standing tail-down: clear-doped cream linen with the ribs and girder showing through, orange varnished ash skids, legs and pylon, a mahogany propeller, aluminium panels round the engine bay, a black steel engine plate and no markings on the airframe, as it is flown from Old Warden (the span and length are the Collection’s figures; the fuselage follows a period three-view and the undercarriage, pylon and tail follow photographs of G-AANH, since the drawing shows a different variant; the height is estimated from photographs).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as G-AANH, The Shuttleworth Collection’s Deperdussin monoplane, built in France in 1910 and believed to be the 43rd Deperdussin made, among the oldest aeroplanes in the world still flying: Louis Béchereau’s wire-braced single-seat tractor monoplane, with a slightly tapered wing warped for roll control from a wheel on an inverted U-shaped yoke, a slender box-girder fuselage covered in linen with a varnished wooden shell under the nose, a swept tailplane with elevators, a low fin and a square rudder, a three-cylinder Anzani Y engine driving a two-bladed propeller, a brass fuel tank under a wooden pylon that carries the bracing wires, and a chassis of upturned wooden skids with two spoked wheels, shown standing tail-down: clear-doped cream linen with the ribs and girder showing through, orange varnished ash skids, legs and pylon, a mahogany propeller, aluminium panels round the engine bay, a black steel engine plate and no markings on the airframe, as it is flown from Old Warden (the span and length are the Collection’s figures; the fuselage follows a period three-view and the undercarriage, pylon and tail follow photographs of G-AANH, since the drawing shows a different variant; the height is estimated from photographs). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (350 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the 1910 monoplane (Anzani) modelled here.

History

The Deperdussin

Armand Deperdussin was a Paris silk merchant with a taste for spending, and in 1909 he put some of his money into aeroplanes, with the engineer Louis Béchereau as his technical director. Their first design, a canard, was a failure. The second was a wire-braced tractor monoplane in the manner of the Blériot, but cleaner: a slender box-girder fuselage that tapered to a vertical knife-edge at the tail, a slightly tapered wing warped for roll control, and a tall pylon over the cockpit to carry the upper bracing wires. Guillaume Busson first flew it at Issy-les-Moulineaux in October 1910, with a water-cooled Clerget engine. The pilot steered with a wheel mounted on an inverted U-shaped yoke: pushing and pulling the yoke worked the elevators, turning the wheel warped the wings, and pedals moved the rudder.

The design was built in several versions, which a 1911 catalogue called Types A to E, although the letters were little used at the time: single-seat school machines with a three-cylinder Anzani, and military single-seaters and two-seaters with Gnome rotaries. In February and March 1911 Busson set speed records carrying one, three and four passengers, and later that year Deperdussins took third place in the Circuit of Europe and in the Daily Mail Circuit of Britain. The company ran flying schools at Étampes, Pau and Bétheny in France and at Brooklands in England, where many of the first generation of pilots learned, and the Australian government bought two for its Central Flying School at Point Cook.

Béchereau went on to build the streamlined Deperdussin Monocoque racers, whose moulded wooden fuselages were far ahead of their time. Jules Védrines won the 1912 Gordon Bennett race in Chicago in one, and in 1913 Maurice Prévost won the first Schneider Trophy contest at Monaco and the Gordon Bennett race at Reims, where he passed 200 km/h. That August Deperdussin was arrested for fraud: much of the money behind his aeroplanes had been raised dishonestly. Louis Blériot took over the firm and renamed it the Société Pour L’Aviation et ses Dérivés, keeping the initials SPAD, and Béchereau stayed on to design the SPAD fighters of the First World War.

This airframe

Deperdussin G-AANH

G-AANHThe airframe modelled

G-AANH, also recorded as BAPC.4, is believed to be the 43rd Deperdussin built, in 1910, and it is among the oldest aeroplanes in the world still able to fly. It was used at Hendon until 1914, when it was sold damaged to A.E. Grimmer, who repaired it and flew it from the polo ground near Bedford. Richard Shuttleworth acquired it in poor condition in 1936; it was restored at Old Warden and flew again in 1937, was stored through the Second World War, and is still flown on display days in calm weather, usually in short straight hops. The model shows it as photographed at Old Warden, standing tail-down: clear-doped cream linen with the ribs and girder showing through, a varnished wooden shell under the nose, orange varnished ash skids, legs and pylon, a mahogany propeller, a brass fuel tank, aluminium panels round the engine bay, a black steel engine plate and its three-cylinder Anzani, with no markings on the airframe. The span and length are the Collection’s figures; the fuselage follows a period three-view drawing, but the undercarriage, pylon and tail follow photographs of G-AANH, as the drawing shows a different variant, and the height is estimated from photographs.

See it at The Shuttleworth Collection

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

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

Every airframe and serial All 210 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.