(FMA) IAe 27 Pulqui I @·AIRCRAFTUBE

  • FMA IAe 27 Pulqui I FMA IAe 27 Pulqui I
    FMA IAe 27 Pulqui I
  • 1951 flight testing 1951 flight testing
    1951 flight testing
  • At the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica (Morón) At the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica (Morón)
    At the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica (Morón)
  • At the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica (Morón) At the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica (Morón)
    At the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica (Morón)
  • At the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica (Morón) At the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica (Morón)
    At the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica (Morón)
  • On display at Tecnópolis (Villa Martelli) On display at Tecnópolis (Villa Martelli)
    On display at Tecnópolis (Villa Martelli)
  • At the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica (Morón) At the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica (Morón)
    At the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica (Morón)
  • The cockpit The cockpit
    The cockpit
  • The Rolls-Royce Derwent turbojet The Rolls-Royce Derwent turbojet
    The Rolls-Royce Derwent turbojet

FMA I.Ae. 27 Pulqui I

The I.Ae. 27 Pulqui I was an Argentine experimental jet fighter designed in 1946 at the Instituto Aerotécnico (AeroTechnical Institute), the name then carried by the Fabrica Militar de Aviones (FMA) in Córdoba. First flown on 9 August 1947, it was the first jet aircraft designed and built in Argentina and in the whole of Latin America. Only one prototype was completed: its performance proved disappointing and the aircraft was quickly superseded by the far more advanced FMA IAe 33 Pulqui II. Its name, "Pulqui", means "arrow" in Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche people.

Design and development

After the Second World War, the government of Juan Domingo Perón wanted to give Argentina a modern aeronautical industry and recruited a number of European engineers who were no longer welcome in their own countries. In 1946 the Instituto Aerotécnico created a Special Projects Division to study high-speed aircraft. The first of these refugees was the French designer Émile Dewoitine, who had been condemned in his homeland for collaboration with the occupier. He led a team that included the Argentine engineers Juan Ignacio San Martín (a military engineer who directed the Institute), Enrique Cardeilhac, Norberto L. Morchio and Humberto Ricciardi, as well as the Italian Cesare Pallavicino, supported by some sixteen draughtsmen and forty workers.

The aircraft was designed as a single-seat interceptor. A wooden mock-up was tested in the wind tunnel, and the prototype was ready to fly about fourteen months after the start of the work. Some sources describe the design as derived from the propeller-driven Dewoitine D.520, and the tall fin, typical of Dewoitine's earlier fighters, certainly recalled them; in reality the Pulqui I was a new all-metal design with a tricycle undercarriage.

The semi-monocoque fuselage had an elliptical cross-section. The air intake was located in the nose and the ducts divided to pass on either side of the cockpit before feeding a Rolls-Royce Derwent 5 centrifugal-flow turbojet, taken from the stock of engines bought for the Gloster Meteors of the Argentine Air Force. The engine, which was very short, sat just behind the pilot in the centre of the fuselage, and a jet pipe about five metres long carried the exhaust gases to the tail, where they exited under the rudder. The lack of internal volume left no room for fuel in the fuselage: all the tanks were placed in the wings, which seriously limited the range. Underwing auxiliary tanks were studied to compensate.

The straight wing used a laminar-flow profile (I.A. 242-1) built around a single box spar. In its original form it spanned 11.25 m, with a wing area of 19.70 m² and rounded tips. The undercarriage was retracted by compressed air and lowered by gravity, and the flying controls were operated by push-pull rods rather than cables. To save time, some components were taken from other aircraft: the nosewheel reportedly came from a Junkers Ju 52, and the seat from an I.Ae. D.L. 22 trainer. There was no ejection seat. The planned armament comprised four 20 mm cannon in the nose, plus rails for rockets and racks for bombs under the wings for ground-attack missions, but none of it was ever fitted to the prototype.

Flight testing

During the first ground runs, the engine could not be started: the very long jet pipe prevented a correct airflow through the turbine. The problem was solved by adding an auxiliary intake under the belly, which was closed once the engine was running.

As the factory runway at Córdoba was too short, the prototype was taken by road to the runway of the Escuela Militar de Paracaidistas (Military Parachute School), from where it made its first flight on the afternoon of 9 August 1947, flown by First Lieutenant Edmundo Osvaldo "Pincho" Weiss. The flight lasted 28 minutes and went without a hitch. Argentina thus became one of the very first countries in the world — the eighth or ninth according to the sources — to design and fly its own jet aircraft.

The tests soon revealed that the performance fell well short of expectations. Instead of the 850 km/h or so that had been predicted, the maximum speed did not exceed about 720 km/h, and the high fuel consumption of the Derwent limited the range to 800-900 km and the endurance to about an hour and a half. The rounded wingtips were then cut off and replaced by shorter, squared tips, reducing the span to 10.50 m, which brought the speed up to about 750 km/h.

The Pulqui I was flown from Córdoba to Buenos Aires to be presented to President Perón, and was shown at an aeronautical exhibition in September 1947. Damaged in a road accident while being transported, it had to be repaired before testing could resume in Córdoba. Further public demonstrations took place in December 1947 and on 8 October 1948.

Abandonment

The Pulqui I, essentially a test bed for the new jet technology, offered performance barely better than that of the best piston-engined fighters of the Second World War, and its straight wing already looked outdated compared with the swept-wing designs then appearing. Dewoitine proposed an armed development, but it was turned down: in the meantime the German engineer Kurt Tank, the former chief designer of Focke-Wulf, had arrived in Córdoba in 1947 with part of his team and was working on a much more ambitious swept-wing fighter, the future Pulqui II, which first flew on 27 June 1950, again with Weiss at the controls. Dewoitine left Argentina, and the Pulqui I programme was abandoned. Its Derwent engine was put back into a Gloster Meteor, in which it flew for the last time, in Meteor C-051, on 29 December 1970.

Although it had no successor of its own, the Pulqui I gave the Argentine engineers their first experience of jet aircraft and paved the way for the Pulqui II.

Operators

  • Argentina : Argentine Air Force (Fuerza Aérea Argentina) — evaluation only.

Aircraft on display

After the end of the tests, the prototype, with its clipped wings, was stored in a hangar in Córdoba. In the 1960s it was transferred to the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica, then located at the Aeroparque Jorge Newbery in Buenos Aires, where it remained exposed to the weather for many years. It was restored and moved, with the rest of the collection, to the new museum at the Morón air base in Greater Buenos Aires, where it is displayed alongside a Derwent engine. It underwent a further refurbishment at the Air Force's Área de Material Río Cuarto in 2014, and has also been shown at the Tecnópolis science and technology exhibition. By Decree 899/2015 of 20 May 2015, the Pulqui I and the Pulqui II were both declared "Bienes de Interés Histórico Nacional" (items of national historic interest).

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This text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Source : Article FMA I.Ae. 27 Pulqui I of Wikipedia ( authors )

FMA I.Ae. 27 Pulqui I

  • Role : Experimental jet fighter (interceptor).
  • Manufacturer : Instituto Aerotécnico / Fabrica Militar de Aviones (FMA).
  • Designer : Émile Dewoitine.
  • First flight : 9 August 1947.
  • Status : retired (1951); preserved at the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica, Morón.
  • Primary user : Argentine Air Force (Fuerza Aérea Argentina).
  • Number built : 1 prototype.
  • Developed into :

    • Specifications

  • Crew: one.
  • Length: 9.69 m (31 ft 9 in).
  • Wingspan: 11.25 m (36 ft 11 in) (initial version, rounded wingtips) or 10.50 m (34 ft 5 in) (final version, squared wingtips).
  • Height: 3.39 m (11 ft 1 in).
  • Wing area: 19.7 m² (212 sq ft).
  • Airfoil: I.A. 242-1 (laminar flow).
  • Empty weight: 2,358 kg (5,199 lb).
  • Max takeoff weight: 3,600 kg (7,937 lb).
  • Powerplant: 1 × Rolls-Royce Derwent 5 centrifugal-flow turbojet, 16 kN (3,600 lbf) thrust.
  • Maximum speed: 720 km/h (450 mph, 390 kn); about 750 km/h after the wingtips were clipped.
  • Range: 900 km (560 mi, 490 nmi).
  • Endurance: 1 h 30 min.
  • Service ceiling: 15,500 m (50,900 ft).
  • Armament (proposed, not fitted to the prototype): 4 × 20 mm cannon, plus underwing bombs or rockets.

— — — = = — — —

This text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Source : Article FMA I.Ae. 27 Pulqui I of Wikipedia ( authors )
FMA IAe 27 Pulqui I : Your comments on this subject
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