Bleriot Bleriot-75 Mammoth

Flight, January 1920

The Paris Aero Show 1919

Louis Bleriot

Although the Bleriot and Spad machines are shown on the same stand, we prefer to deal with them under separate headings as the Spads and Bleriot machines are in reality totally different although built by the same company. Of Bleriots there is only one machine, the Mammouth. Photographs of this giant have already been published in Flight, and we have mentioned that we are not particularly enamoured of the design. The distribution of the engines so far apart cannot but have an evil influence on the controllability when one or more engines are switched off, and in this respect the Mammouth is a good deal reminiscent of the ill-fated Tarrant triplane.
The Mammoth carries 26 passengers in addition to the pilot and engineer. The passenger cabin is arranged in two stories, a sort of first and second class in fact. Access to the cabin is through a trap door in the floor, the trap door carrying a ladder which, when the door is closed forms a sort of reinforcement of the fuselage floor. In section the body is very unusual and may, perhaps, best be described by saying that its section is reminiscent of the shape of an ordinary key hole. The reason for this section is apparent on viewing the machine from in front. By keeping the lower part of the body comparatively narrow the propeller tips have sufficient clearance without the necessity of spacing the engines too far apart laterally. Above the engines the bod y is then made wider, as it is not in the way of the airscrews, and more space is thus provided. The idea of the engine arrangement is, we believe, that in case of flying with something under full load, it is possible to fly on two engines: the upper engine on one side and the lower engine on the other. In theory this may be quite possible, but in case of the upper or the lower engines both being out of commission the trim of the machine would, one imagines, be seriously upset. The wing bracing is of the type which formed such a prominent feature of the Spad machines during the War, and although for the small Spad biplanes it was quite satisfactory one does not altogether like it for a machine of the size of the Mammouth.