The Caudron C.430 Rafale was a fast, two seat France, French touring monoplane. Soon after its first flight in 1933 it set an international class speed record.

Design and development

The C.430 Rafale was a two-seat development of the single seat Caudron C.362, the winner of the 1933 Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe. Slightly larger and heavier, though with a lower wing loading, the Rafale was a low wing cantilever monoplane, wood framed and covered with a mixture of plywood and aircraft fabric covering, fabric. Its one piece, single spar (aviation), spar wing was strongly straight tapered to elliptical tips and was plywood covered with an outer layer of fabric. There were flap (aircraft), flaps inboard of the ailerons.A new light plane record, 1934, p.359la Rougery, 1934, p.114 Its fuselage was flat sided and fabric covered, with a deep, rounded decking running the full length. It had an air cooled inverted four cylinder straight engine, inline Renault 4Pei Bengali engine in the nose, driving a two blade, two position variable blade pitch, pitch propeller (aircraft), propeller. The Rafale's two seats were in tandem, one over the wing and the other behind the trailing edge, under a long (about a third of the fuselage length), narrow multi-framed canopy with a blunt, vertical windscreen and sliding access. Behind the canopy a long fairing continued its profile to the straight tapered, round tipped vertical tail, which included a balanced rudder that ended at the top of the fuselage. The tapered horizontal tail, with inset elevator (aircraft), elevators, was mounted on the top of the fuselage largely ahead of the fin. Construction of the empennage was similar to that of the wing. The Rafale had a fixed landing gear, tailskid undercarriage. Its wheels were on vertical legs from the wings and were largely enclosed within magnesium aircraft fairing, spats. The C.430 Rafale ''F-AMVB'' probably flew for the first time in the last week of March 1934, though the other example may have flown earlier. A replica of Helene Boucher's F-AMVB was built by Jean Precetti, which is now on display at the Musée de l'Air d'Angers. In 2023, Renault introduces the Renault Rafale vehicle as a tribute to the Caudron C.430 Rafale.

Operational history

On 31 March 1934, only about a week after its first flight, the C.430 ''F-AMVB'' set a new International speed record of over for aircraft with an empty weight less than . Hélène Boucher, a prominent French pilot in the mid-1930s, died in a landing approach accident in ''F-AMVB'' on 30 November 1934. Though Caudron dominated the 1935 Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe, the single seat C.430/1 Rafale, ''F-AMVA'' re-engined with a more powerful Renault 438, was outclassed by the single seat Caudron C.460, C.450 and C.460 machines and retired with engine problems after a few circuits.A Family Affair, 1935, p.1379

Variants

;C.430: As described below; two built. ;C.430/1: ''F-AMVA'' fitted with a Renault 438 engine in October 1934 for the 1935 Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe.

Specifications (C.430)

References

Citations

Bibliography

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