LOIRE NIEUPORT LN 42

The Loire-Nieuport LN-42 was a prototype French dive bomber from the interwar period, World War II and the post-war period. The prototype flight took place in 1941, but the machine never entered mass production. The drive was provided by a single Hispano-Suiza 12Y-51 engine with 1100 hp. The machine was approx. 9.9-10 m long with a wingspan of 13 m. The maximum speed was up to 462 km / h. Design work on the Loire-Nieuport LN-42 began in 1939 with the aim of developing a new dive bomber that could also function as an attack aircraft. In order to shorten the research work, a large number of elements from the LN-411 machine were used, which made the new plane a very far-reaching modification of the latter model. However, it differed from it in a different power unit and a different aerodynamic system of the wings. The machine was ready for its first flight in June 1940, but the surrender of France thwarted these plans. The flight of the machine took place only in 1942 in Vichy France. A copy of the plane luckily survived until the liberation of French lands by the Allies and its test flights continued after 1945. However, when the machine had an accident in 1947, further work on it was stopped.