The French Connection

 
    As our readers know, the distinguished career of Dr. Filippo Zappata (1894-1994) also included a brief period in France.

    The aircraft on the cover is a Blériot 110 (in its final configuration with a four-blade propeller), which was a record airplane designed by Zappata during his stay in France. The B. 110 is the subject of this translation, nonetheless the post is an opportunity to explore, albeit not much in depth, the connection between the famous French aviator and his company and the "ingénieur italien." 

    Zappata l’italien

    By Giulio Cesare Valdonio

    Translated by L. Pavese 


    As our readers know, the distinguished career of Dr. Filippo Zappata (1894-1994) also included a brief period in France.

    The level of contacts that Dr. Zappata had established in France is unknown, but they were high enough that he was invited with the crème of the French aeronautical set to the May 27, 1927 grand gala in honor of American aviator Charles Lindbergh. Sure is that the young Italian engineer worked hard in France, relying also on the help of the Swiss-Italian Lorenzo Santoni (one of the founders of SIAI and the French company CAMS), with whom Zappata also filed several patents.

 

Filippo Zappata

 

 But Zappata’s course also crossed the path of Louis Blériot, the famous pilot who had been the first to cross the English Channel (in 1909) and had become an important aviation entrepreneur in France. From their meeting there stemmed a warm friendship and the opportunity for new aviation endeavors. The collaboration started towards the end of 1927 and Zappata began working right away.

     

 

 

   For Blériot’s company that was a hard time: Blériot Aeronautique had built more than fifty prototypes in ten years, of which only one, the mediocre B. 127 bomber, had been built in a small series. A boost was necessary. The French company managed to stay afloat thanks to its subcontracting activity, the profitable business of the company by the same name which built automotive lights and accessories and the work of the sister company SPAD. Blériot was the largest shareholder of SPAD, because he had bought the shares of Armand Deperdussin who had committed suicide in 1924, after being involved in shady enterprises.

    An important contest for a long range aircraft capable of flying over 7000 kilometers (3780 Nautical Miles) was announced in 1929, and it offered the opportunity to present a design by Filippo Zappata (his wife said that Zappata had designed the airplane during their honeymoon), which was accepted along its competitors, the Bernard 80 and the Dewoitine D.33, The three designs were very different: the D.33 was entirely metallic and the Bernard 90 was of wooden construction and had a cantilever wing. On a side note: all these aircraft competed during the following years to beat the world distance record set by the Italian S.64.

The competitors

  The construction of the Zappata design began immediately. The aircraft, originally designated BZ 3 and redesignated B. 110, was ready to fly on May 16, 1930. Filippo Zappata was on board, inaugurating his unshakable practice, but the flight ended with an off-airfield landing due to a fuel flow problem. The airplane however exhibited good flying characteristics, and the B. 110 received its airworthiness certificate on the following August 30. 

 

Filippo Zappata and Lucien Bossoutrot 

prima del primo volo col B.110

 

 

   The B. 110 was optimized without compromises for long range flying, and it used some unusual (some would say extreme), structural solutions. The wing with a great wingspan (87 feet) and high aspect ratio (8.67) had a two-spar wooden structure with unstressed metal covering. Its low torsional rigidity required bracing that Zappata provided with cables instead of rigid struts. According to the technical data, the total weight of the wing bracing was only 211 lbs., against the estimated 530 lbs. that a rigid bracing would have weighed. However, Zappata’s bracing required the use of two upper cables, anchored to a cabane affixed to the top of the fuselage.

 

The B.110

 

 

 

    The wooden fuselage had a pisciform shape, with the cockpit situated behind the large fuselage-mounted fuel tanks (like in Lindbergh’s Ryan Spirit of St. Louis, T/N) and devoid of any forward visibility, except the view afforded by retractable mirrors of dubious utility. 

 

 

  

 

 

    The pilots sat in tandem, and behind them there was a berth that should have allowed them to take turns resting, which was never taken because the conduct of the airplane was very demanding.

 

 

The cockpit of the B.110

 
    The 591 hp Hispano Suiza 12 Lb engine did not use a propeller rpm reduction gear (which Blériot deemed heavy and unreliable), and rotated a two-blade, wooden, fixed pitch propeller. Behind it, there was a large coolant radiator, with a large frontal air intake. The deflux of the air was entrusted to several vents in the nose of the aircraft. The design of the B. 110 achieved a very low empty weight, and it attracted great interest, to the point that even the U.S. N.A.C.A. (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) published a detailed report about it (N.A.C.A. AC-138, March 1938).

    Even though the wing loading of the B. 110, at maximum take-off weight, was low (22.2 lbs./ft² or kg/m² 108,5), the take-off roll to an airspeed of 140 km/h (86 mph) without flaps was painfully long, and the aircraft climbed at only 260 feet per minute. On the other hand, at the end of the flight, with its fuel tanks almost empty, the wing loading decreased to kg/m² 36 (7.4 lbs./ft²) and the aircraft became a big butterfly that stalled at km/h 50 (31 mph).

    This is not the place for a detailed description of the flights of Blériot B. 110, entrusted to the pilots Lucien Bossoutrot, Paul Codos and Maurice Rossi, which culminated with a distance straight line 9104,7 km (4916 Nautical Miles) world record flight between New York and Rayak, Syria, completed on August 5, 1933. 

 

The B.110, christened Joseph Le Brix, in its final configuration

 

    But the cost of record flights had almost depleted the financial resources of the company and, after an unsuccessful attempt to fly from Istres to Santiago, Chile, the aircraft that had been modified to fly 13,000 km (7000 Nautical Miles) was grounded and inexplicably demolished.

    It is interesting to point out that Filippo Zappata also thought about some possible derivatives of the B. 110, notwithstanding the fact that its structure, optimized for record flights, was not very suitable for utility operational flights.

 

 

The envisioned derivatives of the B.110

 
    The first derivative was the 1929 BZ 4, a long range postal airplane with a m² 65 (700 ft²) wing area and a payload of about 2000 kilograms (4400 lbs.); followed by the reconnaissance BZ 5 aircraft and finally by the Bléeriot 230 bomber, which were not developed further. Lastly, there was the Blériot 260 transport airplane with a vaguely elliptic wing planform and a landing gear defined as relevable, which probably meant partially retractable. 

 

This post is a translation of an excerpt from an article published on the n. 146 issue of the Italian aviation magazine Ali Antiche, which is plublished by G.A.V.S. (Gruppo Amici Velivoli Storici), an Italian organization devoted to the preservation of Italian Aviation heritage.

 

All your comments will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

L. Pavese