The Dewoitine D.480 was a French single engine side-by-side sports and

training aircraft A trainer is a class of aircraft designed specifically to facilitate flight training of pilots and aircrews. The use of a dedicated trainer aircraft with additional safety features—such as tandem flight controls, forgiving flight characteristic ...

built in the early 1930s. Two were completed and flew with several different

radial engine The radial engine is a reciprocating engine, reciprocating type internal combustion engine, internal combustion engine configuration in which the cylinder (engine), cylinders "radiate" outward from a central crankcase like the spokes of a wheel. ...

s. One remained active through the 1950s.

Design

The D.480 was designed to a government programme for a side-by-side trainer for

flying school Flight training is a course of study used when learning to pilot an aircraft. The overall purpose of primary and intermediate flight training is the acquisition and honing of basic airmanship skills. Flight training can be conducted under a str ...

s. It was of mixed construction, with a wooden wing and metal

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 ...

. Its one-piece

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 ...

low wing 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 config ...

was

trapezoidal In geometry, a trapezoid () in North American English, or trapezium () in British English, is a quadrilateral that has at least one pair of parallel sides. The parallel sides are called the ''bases'' of the trapezoid. The other two sides are ...

out to elliptical tips, tapered strongly in thickness from root to tip and had significant dihedral. The wing was built around a single

spruce A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' ( ), a genus of about 40 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal ecosystem, boreal (taiga) regions of the Northern hemisphere. ''Picea'' ...

and

plywood Plywood is a composite material manufactured from thin layers, or "plies", of wood veneer that have been stacked and glued together. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured boards, which include plywood, medium-density fibreboa ...

spar and entirely ply skinned. High

aspect ratio The aspect ratio of a geometry, geometric shape is the ratio of its sizes in different dimensions. For example, the aspect ratio of a rectangle is the ratio of its longer side to its shorter side—the ratio of width to height, when the rectangl ...

aileron An aileron (French for "little wing" or "fin") is a hinged flight control surface usually forming part of the trailing edge of each wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. Ailerons are used in pairs to control the aircraft in roll (or movement aroun ...

s filled over half the

trailing edge The trailing edge of an aerodynamic surface such as a wing is its rear edge, where the airflow separated by the leading edge meets.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third edition'', page 521. Aviation Supplies & Academics, 1997. ...

s, with ground-adjustable trimming

flap Flap may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Flap'' (film), a 1970 American film * Flap, a boss character in the arcade game '' Gaiapolis'' * Flap, a minor character in the film '' Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland'' Biology and h ...

s near the roots. The metal-skinned fuselage was based on four

longeron 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 fram ...

s, giving it a slightly rounded square cross-section. It was always intended that the D.48 series should be able to accommodate a variety of radial engines in the range and the first prototype, type D.480, had a Salmson 7Ac seven cylinder engine in the nose, enclosed in a

cowling A cowling (or cowl) is the removable covering of a vehicle's engine, most often found on automobiles, motorcycles, airplanes, and on outboard boat motors. On airplanes, cowlings are used to reduce drag and to cool the engine. On boats, cowlings ...

which exposed its cylinder heads for cooling. A second example, designated D.481, was built at the same time as the first and was identical apart from its

Lorraine 5Pa The Lorraine 5P, also called the Lorraine 100CV, Lorraine 110CV and Lorraine 120CV, was a family of five-cylinder air-cooled radial engines designed and built in France by Lorraine-Dietrich during the 1920s and 1930s. Nominal engine powers were ...

radial, similarly cowled. Pilot and pupil sat side by side with dual controls in an open

cockpit A cockpit or flight deck is the area, on the front part of an aircraft, spacecraft, or submersible, from which a pilot controls the vehicle. The cockpit of an aircraft contains flight instruments on an instrument panel, and the controls th ...

close to 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 ...

. Behind them the fuselage tapered to a convention tail. The horizontal tail was roughly elliptical in plan and mounted on top of the fuselage, far enough forward to need only a small space between the

elevator An elevator (American English) or lift (Commonwealth English) is a machine that vertically transports people or freight between levels. They are typically powered by electric motors that drive traction cables and counterweight systems suc ...

s for

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 ...

movement. Its deep, full rudder was hinged on a blunted triangular

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 ...

. The D.480 had a fixed, conventional undercarriage with a track of . Each mainwheel was mounted on a stub axle at the vertex of a V-strut hinged on the lower fuselage longeron, with a near-vertical sprung leg, with an

oleo strut An oleo strut is a pneumatic air–oil hydraulic shock absorber used on the landing gear of most large aircraft and many smaller ones. This design cushions the impacts of landing and damps out vertical oscillations. It is undesirable for an air ...

shock absorber A shock absorber or damper is a mechanical or hydraulics, hydraulic device designed to absorb and Damping ratio, damp shock (mechanics), shock impulses. It does this by converting the kinetic energy of the shock into another form of energy (typic ...

, to the wing spar. The tailwheel was on a long, hinged leg close to the rear fuselage with a short, vertical shock absorber.

Development

Both examples had official pre-flight structural checks made in January 1932; the D.481 at least flew that same month. They were registered as ''F-AKFF'' and ''F-AKFG''. One of the pair was displayed at the December 1932 Paris Aero Salon after receiving a

Salmson 9NC Between 1920 and 1951 the Société des Moteurs Salmson in France developed and built a series of widely used air-cooled aircraft engines.Gunston 1986, p. 158. Design and development After their successful water-cooled radial engines, developed ...

nine-cylinder radial, housed under a long-chord,

NACA The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a United States federal agency that was founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved and its ...

-style

. The type number of this variant is not known for certain but recreated French civil aircraft registers show that both spent part of the lives as D.482s. The register also indicates that one flew for a time as a military aircraft; Dewoitine had argued that it would make a good introductory trainer. It returned to the civil register as ''F-AQMO'' in May 1938, operated by an aero club near

Toulouse Toulouse (, ; ; ) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Haute-Garonne department and of the Occitania (administrative region), Occitania region. The city is on the banks of the Garonne, River Garonne, from ...

. It survived

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

and in the 1950s, its engine uncowled, carried advertising material for a biscuit manufacturer. ''F-AKFG'' eventually became a type D.483, though little is known about this variant.

Variants

;Dewoitine D.480: Salmson 7Ac powered, as described. Registered as ''F-AKFF''. ;Dewoitine D.481:

five cylinder radial engine with three blade propeller. Registered as ''F-AKFG''. ;Dewoitine D.482: D.480 and D.481 re-designated. ;Dewoitine D.483: Second D.482 re-designated.

Specifications (D.480)

References

{{Dewoitine aircraft D.480 1930s French aircraft Single-engined tractor aircraft Low-wing aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1932