Hanriot (aircraft company)

Aéroplanes Hanriot et Cie. or simply 'Hanriot' was a French aircraft manufacturer with roots going back to the beginning of aviation. Founded by René Hanriot in 1910 as The Monoplans Hanriot Company Ltd. the company survived in different forms until 1916 when it established itself with the Hanriot-Dupont (HD.) fighters and observation aircraft. The company lasted through several takeovers and structural changes until in 1936 it merged with Farman to become the Société Nationale de Constructions Aéronautiques du Centre (SNCAC). 'Central Air Works' consortium.

Hanriot aeroplanes included pre-war monoplanes with boat-like fuselages, the HD.1 and 2 World War I biplane fighters, the HD.14 trainer, and the H.220 series of twin-engined heavy fighters that eventually evolved in the SNCAC 600 fighter just before World War II.

The company's main bases of operations were Bétheny (a suburb of Reims) Boulogne-Billancourt, Carrières-sur-Seine and Bourges.

History

René Hanriot, a builder and racer of motor boats and a race car driver for the Darracq motor company, built his first aircraft in 1907, although it did not fly until late 1909. It was a monoplane with a wire-braced wooden fuselage resembling the Blériot XI but was almost immediately superseded by a series of similar monoplanes, which were exhibited at the Brussels Salon d'Automobiles, d'Aeronautique, du Cycles et dus Sports in January 1910. These featured a slender wooden monocoque fuselage and were powered by a 20 hp Darracq and a 40 hp Gyp. and a handful were built. Together with Darracq racing colleague Louis Wagner, Hanriot started a flying school at Bétheny near Reims, where the Hanriot factory was located. Unusually, Hanriot tested new design features using a flying model powered by a 2 kW (3 hp) Duthiel-Chalmers.

Hanriot (disambiguation)

Hanriot Aircraft Company

Hanriot may also refer to:

Hanriot LH.10

The Lorraine-Hanriot LH.10 was a family of training monoplanes built in France in the early 1930s, the most widely-produced and well-known member of which was the LH.16, later known simply as the Hanriot H.16. It was a conventional parasol-wing monoplane with fixed tailskid undercarriage, the main units of which were mounted on outriggers attached to the wing struts. The pilot and instructor sat in tandem open cockpits.

Early members of the family all had radial engines, but the definitive LH.16 of 1933 had an inline engine within a neat cowling. This type was evaluated by the Armée de l'Air and an initial order for 60 machines was placed. This was soon amended to just 15 in the original trainer configuration, plus another 29 modified as observation aircraft with a mounting for a trainable machine gun in the rear cockpit. Following a brief career in military service, the H.16s were turned over to the Aviation Populaire for use as trainers.

Variants