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The Ongoing Mystery Aircraft Thread Part Deux.

When you said, Mike, that this is 'something of a similar vintage', I took that as a reference to Robert Fleury's 1948 RF.10 and thus assumed that this machine dated from the post-WW2 period? I think that, in consequence, I have been on a wild goose chase because, now, I think this machine to be the sole Farman F-355 F-ALME - dating from 1931!
 
It's my own fault. Apart from the date error (all my own work), I ignored the golden rule - 'Enter the world of French Aviation at your peril'.

My source (L'Aviation Civile Francaise) has this pic with a story about F-ALME, the Farman 351 belonging to M Roger Savarit.

The same description is in 1000aircraftphotos, by Nico Braas.

A check on Aviafrance reveals the registration as 'Farman F-231 puis Farman F-351'.

I shall award your glass of a suitable digestif and pass the whole messy affair back to France and our resident expert to unravel .:very_drunk:
 
Now what, Mike, did your fellow Scotsman, Sir Walter Scott, say? Oh yes:

'Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!'

Clearly aviafrance deceived me by putting up of photograph of F-ALME and describing it as the sole Farman F-355 (q.v. https://www.aviafrance.com/farman-f-355-aviation-france-6447.htm). Thus I did not look further. Had I, instead, consulted the copy of Pascal Brugier's Registre France, which was sitting on my desk, I would have seen that F-ALME initially was a Farman F-231 and subsequently was a F-351. Thus having made an error of omission, I feel that I ought to resile from posting the next challenge and declare open house. However as lacunae rarely seem to benefit this thread, hopefully I will be forgiven for grasping the nettle and taking us away from France with this .....



And finally, what does the Farman F-355 look like? According to someone offering for sale on eBay, at an exhorbitant price, a wooden model of it, it is a high wing monoplane powered by a single Salmson radial engine. But this model carries the registration mark F-AJJB which, according to Pascal Brugier, is a Farman 192! The reality appears to be that the F-351 and the F-355 either were very similar or the same, judging by what appears to be a contemporary captioned photograph (q.v. https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/farman-and-sncac-projects.5969/page-3, post #84 - the source of which, unfortunately, is not given) of the F-355. Unfortunately the machine in that photograph does not have a registration mark evident.
 
Yes and if you were to stretch a point .....

There's a sad tale of how its co-designer/builder came upon it in flames beside a road during a war.
 
Thanks Mike. Onward with a big brute.

lni8wmS.jpg
 
And not a Brit either !
After some fruitless research, decided that the hatted gentlemen had a colonial air about them, and lo! all was revealed.
This machine is the AAEC B.1 designed by Harry Broadsmith in Mascot, NSW :australia:
 
Now try this strange skinny effort - no - I haven't photoshopped the image ! (other than to remove the reg)
 

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Not going to let this one drag along any further. It's the Schleicher Rhönlerche II Storch, from :germany:

Please proceed, gentlemen...
 
I found it in 1000AircraftPhotos - but reckoned it was fair game for the mystery as it didn't really look like the average motor glider !
 
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