-
There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.
If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.
Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.
The Staff of SOH
The Ongoing Mystery Aircraft Thread Part Deux.
- Thread starter Ferry_vO
- Start date
Hurricane91
SOH-CM-2023
Hurricane91
SOH-CM-2023
It's in the appendix along with the prototype.
Hurricane91
SOH-CM-2023
.........Right again - it is a picture of the Renard R-35 prototype (and sole airframe) OO-ARM, during one of its engine runs.
Alfred Renard, born April 21 1895, was an aircraft designer, who had previously worked at the Stampe-Vertongen works, where he had designed the RSV series of biplanes, the fore-runners of the SV-4. In 1925, he founded his own company which built both engines and aircraft.
The R-35 was one of his most ambitious projects, a passenger plane with a pressure cabin, the first such aircraft ever built. It was designed to carry 20 passengers and a crew of 3, and according to the calculations, its three Rhone-Gnome engines would allow the aircraft to fly 1800 km at a cruising speed of 250 km/h with its full cargo. The aircraft also had a maximum speed of 435 km/h, and could climb to 30000 ft. Naturally, Renard hoped Sabena would purchase his design.
However, it remained with calculations: during what should have been a fast taxi run on April 1st 1938, test pilot George Van Damme, a stunt pilot and instructor with the Antwerp Aviation Club, decided to try and fly the aircraft instead. It is unclear what happened next - it is thought he retracted the flaps too soon - but the aircraft stalled moments after becoming airborne and crashed, killing the test-pilot. Whatever the case, it is clear that Van Damme did not have permission to take the aircraft to the air, as not all design calculations had been completed yet.
The crash ended Renard's ambitious project. Instead, he tried to concentrate on his military projects, the R-36 and R-38 fighters. The R-36 (roughly equivalent to the Hawker Hurricane) was cancelled in turn after a fatal crash in 1939 after which the Belgian Military Aviation purchased licence rights for the Hurricane, while the sole R-38 prototype was captured by the Germans after the invasion in 1940. After the War, Renard rejoined his former colleague Stampe to set up the Stampe-Renard factories: together they built the post-war SV-4 trainers, its intended SR-7 replacement (one built - preserved at the Brussels Air Museum), and components for the Belgian Air Force's CF-100 and F-104G. Another attempt of Renard to design a pressurised airliner for Sabena, the SR-45 with interchangable passenger/cargo cabin module, never left the drawing board, the airline purchasing the DC-4 instead.
Alfred Renard died on June 20th 1988 at the age of 93, as a result of fatal injuries incurred in a traffic accident 10 days earlier.
was 
, so 