14 Dec 06
Renault
Renault is said to have been the first car-maker to branch out into aviation, producing its first eight-cylinder aircraft engines as early as 1907. According to online resource Katriina's Renault Center, two years later Maurice Farman set a distance record in his Renault-engined bi-plane by flying for over an hour between Buc and Chartres, and in 1910 a Farman plane crossed the Pyrenees from Biarritz to San Sebastian to win the Brodsky Cup. The records continued: in 1911, a Farman F.11 with a 70hp Renault engine, flew 720km (450 miles) in 11 hours and one minute, setting a record for both time and distance, and a Renault-engined Voisin biplane reached an altitude of 2,460m. In 1912, another Farman flew 11,017km (6,850 miles) in 13 hours 22 minutes, and in 1913 a Farman seaplane won the Deauville Endurance Grand Prix. The Farman MF7 Longhorn was supplied to the French military from 1912, and was used in many civil and military flying schools as well as for reconnaissance duties. Its successor, the MF11 Shorthorn was produced on a wider scale (with a choice of Renault or De Dion engines) in France, Italy and the UK; in WWI it served on the Western Front and in the Dardanelles and Mesopotamia, and the Russian airforce used the MF11H, a seaplane variant.
Renault then decided to start development of its own complete planes, as well as supplying engines - just in time to make aircraft for World War I. In 1916, it opened its factory at Boulogne-Billancourt to build the Type AR. Besides making military trucks, guns, artillery equipment, tractors and tanks, Renault was turning out up to 100 planes a month, as well as up to 600 of its 450bhp aero engines and a variety of other aero engines from 80bhp upwards for supply to other plane-makers in Belgium, the UK, Russia and elsewhere in Europe. These were used in planes including the Breguet 14 A2 biplane bomber, which saw service on the Western Front and in Serbia, Morocco, Macedonia and Greece.
Farman F60
In 1917, Renault was Europe's largest producer of aircraft engines - used by manufacturers including Hanriot, Morane-Saulnier and Fougas - and its dominance of the industry continued post-war as the demand grew for civil aircraft. Renault engines powered planes including the Farman F60 Goliath, used on the first regular passenger service between Paris and Brussels and able to seat up to 16. Besides service with the Polish, Czech, Brazilian, Danish and other airforces, the Renault-engined Breguet 14 formed the basis of the Compagnie des Messageries Aeriennes, Louis Breguet's mail-delivery firm operating between Paris, Brussels and London, and was the first plane to fly over the Sahara desert. Later versions of this plane were used by the Latecoere airline between Toulouse and Dakar, and between Natal and Santiago di Chile, linking up parts of the French colonies, as well as by the military as an air ambulance in Morocco and Syria in the 1920s.
Renault continued to chart new territory: its 480bhp engine powered a Breguet 19 which flew for over 24 hours between Etampes and Rio Oro, West Africa in 1925, and a Latecoere 25 flew over the Andes. Further 'firsts' included a 12-hour run between Dakar and Natal, and a 96 hour, 32-minute flight by a Caudron-Renault Simoun between Paris and Saigon; the Renault-engined Latecoere L28 monoplane (1930) went on to fly various routes through Africa and South America for the Aeropostale service, carrying mail and up to eight passengers. Further expansion came in the 1930s, with Renault offering a huge range of engines from 100bhp to 2,000bhp, as well as supplying propellers and other components. It returned to full plane manufacturing in 1933, by purchasing the Caudron company, and in 1938 set up a separate aviation division, SMRA (Societe des Moteurs Renault pour l'Avation). The Caudron-Renault CR714 was supplied to the Finnish and Yugoslavian airforces in the run-up to World War II, but rejected by the French.
Latecoere L28
Under German occupation, Renault was assigned tank-making duties (though Peugeot produced fuselages and landing gear) and the war effectively put an end to Renault's aircraft-making. Louis Renault, the last of the three Renault brothers, died in Nazi custody after his arrest for 'trading with the enemy', and after the war Renault was nationalised and its various divisions split up.
Renault made a return to aviation in 1997, however, when its RenaultSport subsidiary formed an alliance with Aerospatiale (including Matra) to develop and market a series of piston engines for light aircraft. The Societe de Motorisations Aeronautiques (SMA) aimed to use RenaultSport's F1 expertise to develop a range of engines from 180bhp to 300bhp for use in planes for private pilots, flying schools and so on, to be built by Aerospatiale's subsidiary Socata. SMA was part owned by the SNECMA Group, Renault and the EADS corporation, and also incorporated Morane-Saulnier, but when Renault hit financial difficulties Socata was absorbed into EADS (it currently uses Lycoming or Pratt-Whitney engines) and SMA was bought out by SNECMA, now part of the SAFRAN Group, in March 2005. It has developed a four-stroke, fuel-injected diesel engine which completed its first transatlantic flight in 2005; this is now approved for fitment in the Cessna 182, and may now be supplied to numerous other light aircraft manufacturers.
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