1914 Breguet U1 'affine', Scratch-Built In 1/72

[Old Man]

Even by the standards of pioneer flight, M. Breguet's tractor biplanes were exceedingly odd ducks, and must be ranked as some of the oddest looking things ever to take flight.



The basic design appeared in 1910, and featured wings with a single spar of steel tube, with camber adjustable by rotating the spar within a central sleeve, a cruciform tail that moved as a unit on a ball-joint at the tip of a conical rear fuselage, and a 'perambulator' style under-carriage, intricately involved with the center-section of the lower wing and mid-gap position of the fuselage. Through numerous models and variations over the next several years, employing a variety of motors and dimensions, these basic elements remained unchanged.





These machines were renowned for their ability to get a good deal of weight into the air, and an early version supplied to the French Army for overseas trials made use of this by conducting the first leaflet drop, showering the area around Fez and Tetuan with copies of a proclaimation during a period of unrest in Morocco. M. Breguet's entry in a 1911 Army competition took second place, netting the company a production contract for eight machines. The production version differed from the contest entry, employing a water-cooled Canton-Unne radial rather than a twin-row Gnome rotary, and being fitted to seat two men instead of three. These machines were used to equip a new escadrille, BR 17, at Dijon, in 1913.

The 'affine' ('refined') version was the final development of the type, featuring some attempt at stream-lining by cowling the motor, providing a 'cone de penetration' at the nose, and rounding out the section of the forrward fuselage. It also employed wings of longer span but narrower chord, and a new shape to the leading edge of the vertical tail surfaces. BR 17 went to war in August of 1914 with a mix of the original and the 'affine' models, as part of the First Army in the drive into Alsace-Lorraine.



The recorded history of these machines in war-time service consists mostly of the bitter complaints of their unsuitability for it made by the men who flew them, seconded and passed on by First Army headquarters. Landing was particularly tricky, and required a long run of golf-course smoothness, as the machine had to be flown in tail up. Performance was sluggish, with one pilot reporting it took an hour and a quarter to reach a thousand meters, which meant a great deal of the machine's possible time aloft was expended without even putting the aeroplane out of reach of effective small arms fire. Sergeant France Vauren, who flew machine BR 49, was decorated on September 24, 1914 with the Medal Militaire for undertaking 'many hazardous reconnaisance flights', and it would seem just about any flight undertaken over enemy positions in these machines could be fairly called a hazardous one. They were withdrawn from service in October, and BR 17 was reconstituted as VB 3, equipped with Voisin pushers as part of the first unit dedicated to strategic bombing.



The build took the better part of a year, includng some false starts and a couple of breaks. You can find an account of how it was built, including a method for making curved section fuselage pieces without wood carving or vacuu forming, in the A.R.C. Classic Aviation forum, here:

http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index....howtopic=111648

I want especially to thank Mr. Gilles, Mr. Bailey, and Mr. Ocsi of this forum, for providing me references without which building this would not have been possible.