Amiot-S.E.C.M. 110

We switch the USSR and the mystery of the Alter A.1 for France in order to bring you another drawing of a French interwar fighter.

The Amiot-S.E.C.M. (French acronym meaning Société d'Emboutissage et de Constructions Mécaniques - Society for Pressing and Mechanical Constructions) 110 was a French interceptor prototype designed and built in 1928.

It was designed by M. Detartre and built by Amiot-S.E.C.M. and was designed in order to win the "Jockey" lightweight interceptor contest, in which it competed against other 9 airplanes. It was made out of all-metal with fabric wing skinning in parasol-type monoplane configuration. It had a jettisonable aerofoil-section fuel tank inserted in the fuselage at the aft of the main undercarriage.

It was powered by a 500hp Hispano-Suiza liquid cooled 12-cylinder engine and was going to be armed with a pair of 0.303 Vickers machine guns, however it's believed that the weaponry was never installed.

It made its' maiden flight on June 1928, and it seemed a serious candidate to win the "Jockey" contest, but when it crashed in July 1929, killing the pilot because of many loose rivets and integrity flaws, and therefore the production stopped after a second prototype was built but was considered highly inferior to the Nieuport-Delage NiD. 62.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiot_110
2. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters

SPAD SA Series - Domestic Users

We finish with this unorthodox design covering it's domestic users and prototypes.

The SPAD SA was designed in 1915 by Louis Béchereau, the same designer who designed the SPAD S.VII. In order to achieve a forward-firing system it adopted an original solution. Instead of placing the machine-gun over the top wing, it placed a nacelle in front of the engine with a gunner operating it.

This system proved to be problematic because it made the communication between the pilot and the gunner difficult, if not impossible. The nacelle vibrated very badly and some times it tend to part company from the airplane in the middle of the flight. Even a mild-crash or nose-over could hurt badly or even kill the gunner. It was much better the other two systems, the pusher configuration, like the Airco DH.2 had or the machine-gun mounted over the top wing like the nieuport 11 had.

Some variants tried to fix the aforementioned problems and therefore it saw several variants:

• SPAD SA.1: The prototype
• SPAD SA.2: Main production variant. Some small improvements
• SPAD SA.3: Gunner trainer variant with a complex system that allowed the pilot to fire a rear-firing machine gun from the cockpit.
• SPAD SA.4: Improved version of the SA.2
• SPAD S.D.: Three seater version
• SPAD S.G.: Single seater fighter version. The nacelle was still present but without the gunner.
• SPAD S.H.: Prototype for the SPAD S.V which was the prototype for the SPAD S.VII

Given it's riskiness it wasn't very like by the French pilots and was quickly replaced, in fact only 107 were manufactured, and it never equipped an entire squadron.