Bernard 60
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The Bernard 60 T and 61 T were closely similar, three engine, twelve seat passenger transports designed in
France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
between 1929 and 1933. They were not a success and only one of each was built.


Design and development

The 60 T (T for transport) was the result of a decision made in May 1929 to turn a current military transport project into a civil, passenger carrying aircraft. The resulting design also owed much to the earlier, single engine
Bernard 190 The Bernard 190 or Bernard-Hubert 190 was a French airliner of 1928. It was a high-wing cantilever monoplane of conventional configuration, based on the Bernard 18. Compared with its predecessor, it kept the same basic design but featured rede ...
civil transport, though the 60 T had three engines and a greater span. Even though it retained only the wing from the military design, construction began on 11 June and was completed on 20 August. The Bernard 60 was an all wood aircraft. Like the Barnard 190, it was a
high wing A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft A fixed-wing aircraft is a heavier-than-air aircraft, such as an airplane, which is capable of flight using aerodynamic lift. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from rotary-wing aircraft (in which a r ...
cantilever A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is unsupported at one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a cantilev ...
monoplane A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple wings. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing con ...
. In plan the thick wing was straight tapered with rounded tips. The
fuselage The fuselage (; from the French language, French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds Aircrew, crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an Aircraft engine, engine as wel ...
was flat sided with a curved underside. The crew's enclosed cabin was just ahead of the wing
leading edge The leading edge is the part of the wing that first contacts the air;Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third edition'', page 305. Aviation Supplies & Academics, 1997. alternatively it is the foremost edge of an airfoil sectio ...
and the long passenger compartment, with twelve seats in all and five windows on each side, was lower down beneath the wings. Despite the rapid build, the accommodation was heated, ventilated and sound-proofed; entry was via a port side door which included the rearmost window. The sound proofing was assisted by silencers on the engines. The
empennage The empennage ( or ), also known as the tail or tail assembly, is a structure at the rear of an aircraft that provides stability during flight, in a way similar to the feathers on an arrow.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third ed ...
of the Bernard 60 was conventional with a rounded
fin A fin is a thin component or appendage attached to a larger body or structure. Fins typically function as foils that produce lift or thrust, or provide the ability to steer or stabilize motion while traveling in water, air, or other fluids. F ...
and
rudder A rudder is a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, airship, or other vehicle that moves through a fluid medium (usually air or water). On an airplane, the rudder is used primarily to counter adverse yaw ...
and a
tailplane A tailplane, also known as a horizontal stabilizer, is a small lift (force), lifting surface located on the tail (empennage) behind the main lifting surfaces of a fixed-wing aircraft as well as other non-fixed-wing aircraft such as helicopters ...
with a swept leading edge mounted on top of the fuselage. It had a split axle
undercarriage Undercarriage is the part of a moving vehicle that is underneath the main body of the vehicle. The term originally applied to this part of a horse-drawn carriage, and usage has since broadened to include: *The landing gear of an aircraft. *The ch ...
with single mainwheels mounted on V-form struts from the lower fuselage
longerons In engineering, a longeron or stringer is a load-bearing component of a framework. The term is commonly used in connection with aircraft fuselages and automobile chassis. Longerons are used in conjunction with stringers to form structural frame ...
and landing loads taken by vertical struts to the wing just inboard of the engines, combined with a
tailskid Conventional landing gear, or tailwheel-type landing gear, is an aircraft undercarriage consisting of two main wheels forward of the center of gravity and a small wheel or skid to support the tail.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Term ...
. The
trimotor A trimotor is a propeller-driven aircraft powered by three internal combustion engines, characteristically one on the nose and one on each wing. A compromise between complexity and safety, such a configuration was typically a result of the limit ...
Bernard 60 was unusual in having different engines in the nose and on the wings. The central engine was a nine-cylinder, Gnome-Rhône 9Ady Jupiter, with five cylinder,
Gnome-Rhône 5Bc Titan The Bristol Titan was a British five-cylinder air-cooled radial engine, designed and built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company in the late 1920s. It had the same size cylinders as the earlier Bristol Mercury engine, (displacing ), and produced ...
engines on the wings. The designers would have preferred about 225 kW (300 hp) from each of three identical engines but early in 1929 there were no available homologated types of this power. The Bernard 60 flew for the first time at the end of August 1929, piloted by Antoine Paillard. Tests revealed a serious problem due to the mixture of engine powers: the Bernard 60 could fly satisfactorily with one wing motor shut down but could not reach the altitude of required for certification on the power of the two wing motors alone. So in October 1930 Bernard proposed to install three seven cylinder, Gnome-Rhône 7Kdrs Titan-Major engines. It first flew in this form in July 1931 but was seriously damaged in a night landing on 22 December 1931 and did not fly again, being scrapped in 1934. It was succeeded by the Bernard 61 T, similar but with a metal fuselage. The wing was unchanged, weights up by about and maximum speed and ceiling increased by and respectively. It was powered by three Gnome-Rhône 7Kb Titan-Major engines with the same output as those used on the 60. The 61 T flew for the first time on 28 March 1933, piloted by Jean-Charles Bernache-Assollant.


Operational history

The 60 T never received certification but the 61 T was approved after tests by the STAé in July 1933. It was registered as ''F-AKBY''; the 60 T had flown with the same letters. In May 1934 Georges Barbot tested the performance of the 61 T, now technically dated and always with poor handling characteristics and not of interest to the recently formed Air-France. It was modified again in September 1934 and delivered to CEMA in October, making its last flight the following February.


Variants

;60 T *All wood, originally powered by 2×Titans and 1×Jupiter, replaced by 3×Titan-Majors. ;61 T *Metal fuselage, 3×Titan-Majors


Specifications (61 T)


References


Bibliography

* {{Bernard aircraft 1920s French civil aircraft
060 060 may refer to: * Motorola 68060 microprocessor * 0-6-0, wheel arrangement for railway locomotives * emergency telephone number in Mexico, "060" * Bermuda, country code "060" (ISO 3166-1 numeric) * 060, the area code for Chimay in the Belgian tele ...
Trimotors High-wing aircraft