Nice Czech Viper!
Good evening, guys!
Some American and British airplanes of the interwar years, and a couple of Frenh "mistakes".
The Curtiss Kingbird was a twin engined high wing monoplane, with the blunt nose behind the closely placed radials, in case of one engine failure this arrengement will be more stable than a conventional layout.
The last big Douglas observation airplane, the parasol winged O-46, despite being largely unknown, was the backbone of the observation squadrons of the Air National Guard in the late 1930s.
Fairchild 45 was a low wing, single engined monoplane, with a modern look, despite being constructed in a conventional way of an airframe of welded steel tubes, covered with canvas in the cabin and aft fuselage, and sheets of aluminium alloy in the nose. The sole airplane bought by the Navy and named JK-1 in 1936, was the personal aircraft of Rear-Admiral E. King in the late 1930s.
A little known American ab initio naval trainer of WW2 was the Timm Tutor, over 200 were made and was largely overshadowed by the Stearman (and in a lesser way, by the N3N). The Tutor was made of glued wood, and was designed not to be a long lasting aircraft. Today only one survives in an airworthy condition.
The Curtiss-Wright CW-14 Osprey was the backbone of the Bolivian Air Force during the cruel Chaco War, and was the author of the first "kill" in South American skies. It was a rather little biplane with an equally rather underpowered 300 hp Whirlwind radial engine, a fixed machine gun in the nose, and a pintle one for self-defense, and able to carry up to 100 kgs in bombs, it was a reasonalbe useful airplane (with a favorable price) for the region and the era.
Despite the small size, the British Comper Swift was a capable aircraft: being able to made a very long voyage from Madrid to Manila, flying over vast extensions of desert and open sea, and a notable feat for the small but reliable and quiet 75 HP Pobjoy Niagara 7-cylinder radial, with a patognomonic reduction gear and the propeller shaft in an excentric position.
Another aircraft motorized by the Pobjoy Niagara was also from Great Britain, the low wing monoplane BA (British Aircraft) Swallow II, itself an evolution (slight evolution indeed) of the German Klemm 25. Was a popular touring and training airplane in the 1930s.
The French "mistake": I tought that the good looking Morane Saulnier MS 472 Vanneau was a prewar aircraft variant of the MS 406 but equiped with a radial engine, but in fact, it was a postwar developement. It was the main basic trainer of the AdA and Aeronavale in the late 40s and early 50s, but were used until the 1960s and saw action in the Algeria Independence War. Equiped with a 570 hp Gnome-Rhône 14M, it was comparable in power and function to the North American Texan/Harvard. I realized my error when the drawing was in an advanced stage: the aircraft that I was looking for was the MS. 430 with a much less powerful Salmson radial.
Finally, not a mistake, but an aircraft of the early 1950s built with the experience of a recently fought world war: Max Holste`s Broussard. A STOL model, was the French army`s cooperation airplane par excellence: with an useful load, being able to made laisson and observation missions (with the handicap of being very noisy), as well as being a forward artillery spotter or being a Medevac aircraft. It had the sobriquet "the French Beaver" (for the DHC-2).
Cheers.