Rob,
Do you have any more pictures of the Bessoneau Hangar framework? – in particular the roof trusses.
Am trying to identify what is almost certainly a WW1 hangar in Coventry and the upright A-frames look identical
http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=84728
Was there, perhaps, more than one design of Bessoneau?

Roger Smith.

Coventry

I can’t go far from home without coming across some historic aviation site. Coventry, my home city, is steeped in aeronautical history.
The city’s swimming baths cover the site where Major R.F.Moore had his Flying Fox ornithopter built in 1895.
Only a couple of hundred yards from my home is the modest terraced house where Sir Frank Whittle was born in June, 1906.
Humber Road where Humber Ltd. set up one of Britain’s first aircraft production lines in 1909/1910 to licence-build Bleriot’s (and the Anzani engines) and various other designs. The last bits of Humber’s factory complex have only recently been demolished.
Six sites where five firms (Daimler, Humber, Standard, Siddeley Deasey and Coventry Ordnance Works) built thousands of airframes and engines for the R.F.C. and R.N.A.S. during WW1. Sadly only the COW building survives. In addition there were two Aircraft Acceptance Parks during WW1 – one adjacent to Daimler at Radford and the other at Whitley.
Whitley, of course, became the home of Sir W.G.Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft in the 1920s whilst the original Siddeley Deasey site at Parkside became Armstrong Siddeley Motors. At Whitley (now a Jaguar Cars R&D centre) the Flight Shed is, I believe, the only surviving remnant of it’s aeronautical past.
A retail park commemorates Alvis who, whilst famous for their cars and military vehicles, also built the Leonides in the post-war years. Their involvement in aero-engines began in the 1930’s and the Leonides could be seen as the ultimate development of the Bristol Jupiter (via Gnome-Rhone).
With WW2 the city’s motor industry turned to aviation once again with Alvis working on Merlins; Rover, A.W.A., Standard and SS Cars (Jaguar) building airframes/major parts; Armstrong Siddeley, Humber (now under the Rootes banner) and Daimler building aero engines and a myriad of other firms (Dunlop, B.T.H., G.E.C., etc.) building specialist components.
It’s small wonder Coventry was an major target for the Luftwaffe in 1940 and 1941.
You’ll have guessed, by now, I’m a bit passionate about it – one reason I founded the Midland Aircraft Preservation Society (now the Midland Air Museum) in the city in 1967. MAM is right on my doorstep but they won’t let me go there any more :mad::mad: – but that’s another story.

Roger Smith.

Thanks J Boyle, that’s the one.

The only thing throttle movement does with the Viper is to vary the noise level, the power is constant or so JP pilots joke anyway:D

:D:D:D

Roger Smith.

That 1940s US Navy aircraft with piston engine up front and a gas turbine at rear (can’t remember it’s name)

Roger Smith

Anyone got an update on this??

Roger Smith.