I remember the plane as being more complete, although my memory may be wrong. I removed the bank turn indicator, which I have to this day and am looking at as I write this. I can distinctly remember the boxes of ammunition stored near the upper machine gun. When opened, the ammunition was almost like new, the brass cartridges still shiny although they quickly tarnished after some months’ exposure. The shells had different painted points (red, black and blue).

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Aviation History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

In 1984 a group of Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) crewmen, together with an employee from the hotel where they were staying in Madang, stopped by. The employee had recollected that I had walked to the plane in the early ’70s and said that the RAAF team was in fact looking for this same airplane but did not want to have to do an extensive airsearch. The RAAF leader showed me a map on which I indicated where I thought it was. I did have a number of photographs taken that day, but those have been lost over the years.

Robert Wilson
Kalgoorlie, Australia

Blériot Confusion

I would like to add a follow-on to Sanford Solarz’s letter in the September 2000 issue of Aviation History concerning confusion between the Blériot XI and XII. In Solarz’s letter he states that, to the best of his knowledge, the Blériot XII was only flown by one person, Louis Blériot himself. While I don’t want to flog this horse to death, this isn’t quite true.

Joshua Stoff, in his Picture History of Early Aviation, 1903-1913, states that a Blériot XII was the first airplane owned by the English sporting pilot, Claude Graham-White. On page 31 of the same book Graham-White is seen leaning against an airplane that certainly looks like a Blériot XII; just as clearly, it is not the Blériot XII usually shown in photographs. In Contact!, Henry Villard writes that Graham-White was one of Blériot’s first pupils, and was taught to fly at Issy in a duplicate of Blériot’s model XII. Graham-White then took his Blériot XII from Issy to Pau.

Wallace, in his Flying Witness, agrees that Graham-White managed to convince Blériot to build for him a duplicate of Blériot’s “big 60-hp monoplane.” He then adds that, on the day Graham-White was to take delivery (of the Blériot XII) at Issy, Blériot was detained elsewhere.

Growing impatient, Graham-White essentially taught himself to fly in his machine on the way to Pau. It was there in Pau that the machine crashed with Blériot at the controls and Graham-White as a passenger. After that, Blériot decided that the XII was not worthy of further development, and he gave Graham-White two Blériot XI airplanes as compensation for his lost model XII.

I hope this fleshes out one more of those interesting footnotes in early aviation history.

Colin Green
via e-mail

Send letters to: Aviation History Editor, PRIMEDIA History Group, 741 Miller Drive., Suite D-2, Leesburg, VA 20175, or e-mail to AviationHistory@thehistorynet.com. Please include your name, address and daytime telephone number. Letters may be edited.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to