The 10 worst French aircraft

In creating features on the worst aircraft of other nations, our shortlist had to be whittled down from thirty apiece, but here we had to work a little harder. France certainly made some mediocre aeroplanes, and some flawed designs, though few compete with some of the truly nightmarish offerings of the 20th Century’s other great aviation nations. Don’t worry though, we found a bunch of wonderfully weird French losers.

After flying across the English Channel in his excellent Type XI monoplane, Louis Blériot tried and often failed to follow up that achievement with his other aeroplanes. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the series of large aircraft his company built throughout the 1920s.

As it turned out, the Blériot 125 turned out to be underpowered and exhibited severe controllability issues and one can hardly be surprised given the encumbrance of those two draggy fuselages combined with the modest power available from its two Hispano-Suiza engines plus the sheer amount of aircraft optimistically expected to be directed about the sky by its two tiny rudders.

At least with the massive side area provided by its mighty fuselages, not to mention the engine and crew pod, the 125 must have possessed impressive directional stability. The problems ultimately proved insuperable and after three years of tinkering the 125 still wouldn’t fly properly and was ignominiously scrapped having never carried a fare paying passenger.

To be fair to Blériot Aéronautique S.A. they did produce a few relatively acceptable designs, unremarkable and largely forgotten now, but Blériot’s crazed failure from a beautiful alternative future that would never come to be remains far more fascinating.

PHOTO: Blériot 125 at the 1930 Paris air show

In designing an aircraft easy for non-pilots to fly, Henri Mignet’s aircraft was genuinely revolutionary. The Pou-de Ciel had no ailerons, lateral control deriving from the rudder and its interaction with the pivoting front wing. The only controls were the throttle and the stick, which operated the pivoting wing and rudder and flying the Pou proved easy and intuitive.

The future appeared bright for Mignet’s machine, especially after he and his wife flew their Pou-de-Ciel’s over the English channel to Britain (where it was dubbed the Flying Flea) and there began a short-lived craze for building and flying Mignet’s creation. Unfortunately, the phrase ‘short-lived’ would prove all too accurate in a rather more literal sense.

Between August 1935 and May 1936 seven H.M.14s were lost in inexplicable fatal accidents and the authorities in both France and the UK grounded all Flying Fleas. Wind tunnel tests were undertaken in both nations and it was discovered that the overall design of the machine made it very easy to stall – a situation that non-pilots were badly equipped to deal with.

If the Pou-de-Ciel entered a 15 degree dive, recovery was impossible and the luckless pilot was carried into the ground in the appropriately coffin-shaped fuselage; both the French and British governments immediately banned the unfortunate aircraft.

When NATO issued Basic Military Requirement No. 3 in the early 1960s aircraft manufacturers swarmed around like wasps to ice cream. NATO wanted a common supersonic fighter capable of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL). If World War III kicked off, the type would be based in austere locations away from known airfields, and drop retaliatory tactical nuclear weapons on the invading Soviet hordes.

The fact that at the time of the brief there wasn’t even a subsonic jet VTOL fighter didn’t stop this ambitious concept. Dassault responded with a submission based on the Mirage III.

The planned fighter, the III-V was to be large (around the length of a Super Hornet), but a smaller testbed – the Balzac – was modified from a Mirage III prototype. One lethal crash later many were questioning the sense of the project. It had many problems, including instability, stall-inducing exhaust re-ingestion and debris-sucking, a troublesome main engine and underpowered lift engines.

Even if all of these were solved (and some were in its later big brother the Mirage III-V) there were still the unsolvable issues of the terrible payload, short range and horrendous maintenance requirements of multiple engines. When the large Mirage III-V crashed in 1966, it was time to knock the whole thing on the head.

A ‘Sesquiplane’ is neither a monoplane or a biplane, as it has ‘one-and-a-half-wings’. These made great fighters in World War One, so Delage kept going with the concept for his post-war racers. He flirted with pure biplanes with the Nieuport-Delage NiD 29V which smashed the world speed record in 1920 at an impressive 194.4 mph, but returned to his 1½ obsession with the Nieuport-Delage Sesquiplane.

The following year the new aircraft bettered the ’29V by clocking 205.23 mph. At the Coupe Deutsch race this same racer crashed for reasons unclear.

In 1922 Delage came out with an even faster Sesquiplane, the NiD 37 Type Course. The ’37 looked, and was, weird: it had a broad aile inférieure (the wing-like shoe for the main landing gear or half-wing that defines the sesquiplane), minute wings and a streamlined fuselage that resembled a bomb painted red and white (the radiator hung under the nose in a ‘lobster-pot’).

On the day of the first flight attempt the test pilot sat astride the engine (with the pedals attached to the back of the 407 hp motor) ready for the type’s first flight. At full throttle the machine raced across the airfield displaying no intention whatsoever to leave the ground. The pilot tried repeatedly until the carburettor burst into flames and burnt his feet.

René Arnoux had pioneered tailless flying wings, designing his first as early as 1909. When he put his mind to creating the fastest possible racer he retained his disdain for the tail, seeing a potential weight and drag saving. The racer, which was powered by the 320 hp Hispano-Suiza engine, was built to win the Coupe-Deutsch race of 1922.

It was to be flown by the national hero Georges Madon, a fighter ace in the First World War. The resulting aircraft, the Simplex-Arnoux, was tiny- the fuselage being essentially an aerodynamic fairing that covered the engine – and lethal.

Interwar racing pilots were used to limited views from the cockpit and vicious handling characteristics, but even by these standards the Simplex-Arnoux was a nasty aeroplane. The enormously broad-chorded wing obscured the view down, the barrel radiator obscured the view ahead (and blasted the unfortunate pilot with scorching hot air).

It had also had appalling control authority as Madon found on a pre-race trial flight. The Simplex-Arnoux was too much to handle, even for a pilot with 41 confirmed victories, and the resultant crash caused Madon severe injuries.

In the very early days of aviation the ‘Antoinette’ monoplane was massively successful, a supremely elegant machine when compared to the Wrights, Farmans and Voisins that were its contemporaries. At its heart was the world’s first V8 engine, patented by Léon Levavasseur, intended for speedboats, and named Antoinette after the daughter of his financier Jules Gastimbide.

And what an engine it was, boasting (for its time) exceptional smoothness and refinement, its power to weight ratio was not surpassed for 25 years and it is hardly surprising that early aviation pioneers beat a path to Levavasseur’s door to obtain an example of his brilliant engine.

Thus the utter and complete failure of the Antoinette Monobloc was tragic indeed. The aircraft was years ahead of its time, the world’s first cantilever monoplane wings, fully faired undercarriage in huge spats and a beautifully streamlined fuselage. For 1911 this was futuristic indeed.

Unfortunately, it couldn’t fly. The Monobloc was (under)powered by the 50 hp V-8 engine that had propelled its immediate predecessor, the Antoinette VII which had weighed 590kg and could hurtle to a maximum speed of 70 km/h. All the fascinating features of the Monobloc had pushed its weight up to 935kg and 70 km/h (or indeed any speed at all) would remain an unattainable dream. Within a year the Antoinette company was liquidated.

The design was a cruelly logical response to the problem of firing a machine gun through the airscrew arc of a conventional tractor aircraft. If you can’t shoot through the propeller, just attach the gun in front of the propeller – and the gunner to fire it. The idea was not unique either, the Royal Aircraft Factory in the UK built the experimental B.E.9 with the same layout, however the British machine was wisely discarded but the SPAD S.A. went into service.

It was not popular. As well as the obvious inherent horror of the design the gunner’s perilous nacelle was prone to extreme vibration and on several occasions detached from the rest of the aircraft with lethal consequences.

Communication between the crew was impossible, and in the event of the aircraft tipping onto its nose (a common occurrence at the time) the observer would be crushed. A British evaluation of the type came to the chillingly sardonic conclusion that “it would be expensive in observers if flown by indifferent pilots”. Contemporary French reports suggest the S.A was little used and many were offloaded onto the Russians as soon as possible.

In Russian service the S.A was similarly unpopular and its only effect on Russian servicemen was to prove their Imperialist masters really did have it in for them and hasten the revolution. It also didn’t help that the acronym SPAD phonetically translates as ‘plummet’ in Russian.

By 1935 it was a fair bet that any new conventional aircraft built by an experienced design team would be able to fly. However, every now and then a machine unable to leave the ground would emerge to challenge such assumptions and the Bloch MB. 150 fighter was just such an aircraft. Attempts to get the new fighter off the ground were abandoned in 1936.

As well as being embarrassing, the ensuing delay as the aircraft was redesigned cost precious months and meant that, when the Bloch fighter was most desperately needed it was not available in sufficient numbers. It is probably an exaggeration to claim that the failure of the original MB. 150 to fly cost France victory in the air but it certainly didn’t help.

Even once the Bloch had been developed into an aeroplane that could actually fly it wasn’t exactly a stellar performer. With its wonky nose (the engine was pointed slightly to the left to counteract airscrew torque), slab sided fuselage, apparently undersized wings, cumbersome tail unit and crudely massive gun barrels it could hardly be described as a looker either.

It was, at least, incredibly strong and able to survive remarkable levels of combat damage, which was lucky given its lack of speed or agility and the MB. 150 and its slightly improved M.B.151 and 152 variants served valiantly but not particularly effectively throughout the Battle of France in 1940.

During the 1930s most of the world’s major air forces flirted with the idea of twin-engined ‘heavy’ fighters. These shared a common concept that a larger fighter aircraft could effectively escort bombers deep into enemy territory, making up for any deficiency in agility deriving from their size, when compared with opposing single-engined fighters, with heavier firepower and speed.

Second World War era twin engine fighters were never a match for their single engine counterparts as the debacle of the Messerschmitt Bf 110 in the Battle of Britain serves to demonstrate.

The fighter variant never had sufficiently powerful engines to propel it to a decent speed and proved to be slower than many of the German bombers that it was supposed to be shooting down. Against modern fighters it had no chance at all. The aforementioned Messerschmitt 110 with an extra 750 hp on tap was a full 120 km/h faster and unfortunately for the Potez, from most angles it looked very similar indeed to the German fighter.

It is not known how many ‘friendly-fire’ incidents resulted in losses but there are many documented instances. Pity the poor Potez pilot – strapped into an aircraft with inadequate performance, expected to chase down bombers that he is unable to catch, and shot at by friend and foe alike in invariably superior aircraft.

With a wingspan of 34 metres - as great as a modern Airbus A320 airliner - the rather gawky Loire 102 flying boat (an aircraft that can operate on water on its hull) was an imposing design. The reason for its substantial size was the range required for intended role of delivering between West Africa and Brazil.

Loire was an experienced company having already created two long-range flying boats, the Loire 60 of 1932 and Loire 70 in the following year. But the rather more ambitious 102 would prove a nightmare.

The 102 prototype (registered F-AOVV and named Bretagne took to the air for the first time on May 12 1936 and showed itself to be a turkey. Part of the problem was the engine location, the four Hispano-Suiza 12Xirs V12 engines shared two over-wing pods. One tractor (in aviation this refers to the convention propeller arrangement with the propeller in front) engine shared each pod with a pusher engine which contributed to the large vibration issues.

There was also directional stability issues caused by insufficiently large fins and rudders. The issues proved insurmountable, and the type was forgotten in 1938 after failing to enter service.

The full Hush-Kit article this is based on can be viewed here. Joe Coles is the author of The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes Vol 1, Vol 2 and Vol 3