The Levasseur PL.2 was a French

biplane A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...

torpedo bomber A torpedo bomber is a military aircraft designed primarily to attack ships with aerial torpedoes. Torpedo bombers came into existence just before the World War I, First World War almost as soon as aircraft were built that were capable of carryin ...

French Navy The French Navy (, , ), informally (, ), is the Navy, maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the four military service branches of History of France, France. It is among the largest and most powerful List of navies, naval forces i ...

Design and development

The second design of Pierre Levasseur was the PL.2, a single-seat unequal-span biplane inspired by designs from

Blackburn Aircraft Blackburn Aircraft Limited was a British aircraft manufacturer from 1914 to 1963 that concentrated mainly on naval and maritime aircraft. History Blackburn Aircraft was founded by Robert Blackburn (aviation pioneer), Robert Blackburn and Jessy ...

. It had a fixed tailskid

landing gear Landing gear is the undercarriage of an aircraft or spacecraft that is used for taxiing, takeoff or landing. For aircraft, it is generally needed for all three of these. It was also formerly called ''alighting gear'' by some manufacturers, s ...

and was powered by a nose-mounted

Renault Renault S.A., commonly referred to as Groupe Renault ( , , , also known as the Renault Group in English), is a French Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automobile manufacturer established in 1899. The company curr ...

engine. The first of two prototypes first flew in November 1922. The second aircraft had a four-bladed

propeller A propeller (often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon a working flu ...

and other powerplant improvements. Nine production aircraft were built in 1923, these were fitted with

ballonet A ballonet is an inflatable bag inside the outer envelope of an airship which, when inflated, reduces the volume available for the lifting gas, making it more dense. Because air is also denser than the lifting gas, inflating the ballonet reduces ...

s and jettisonable landing gear for operations at sea.Taylor and Alexander 1969, pp. 102-103.

Operational history

The aircraft entered service in 1926 aboard the French

aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and hangar facilities for supporting, arming, deploying and recovering carrier-based aircraft, shipborne aircraft. Typically it is the ...

Béarn Béarn (; ; or ''Biarn''; or ''Biarno''; or ''Bearnia'') is one of the traditional provinces of France, located in the Pyrenees mountains and in the plain at their feet, in Southwestern France. Along with the three Northern Basque Country, ...

'' and continued in use until they were scrapped in 1932.

Variants

*PL 2 AT-01 : First torpedo-bomber prototype. *PL 2 AT-02 : Second prototype, equipped with a four-blade propeller. *PL.2 : Single-seat torpedo-bomber aircraft, nine built for the French Navy.

Operators

; *

Escadrille 7B2 A flight is a small military unit within the larger structure of an air force, naval air service, or army air corps; and is usually subordinate to a larger squadron. A military aircraft flight is typically composed of four aircraft, though ...

Specifications

References

Notes

Bibliography

*Taylor, John W. R. and Jean Alexander. ''Combat Aircraft of the World.'' New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1969. . *Taylor, Michael J. H. ''Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation''. London: Studio Editions, 1989. . {{Levasseur aircraft Levasseur PL.02 Carrier-based aircraft Levasseur aircraft Biplanes Single-engined tractor aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1922