Bedelia Flying Boat

Maveric

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Hi all,

can anybody id this early bird. The only I know, its a french aircraft.
 

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Hi Maveric, I think it is the Bedelia Flying Boat. Picture from "French Aeroplanes Before The Great War - Leonard E Opdycke - Schiffer.

Regards Bailey.
 

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From Contact!: The Story of the Early Aviators by Henry Villard:

Other amphibians to appear in 1912 were a two-seater naval "motovoiturette"—the small, robust Bedelia biplane, with chain-driven propeller in front, a four-cylinder Clerget motor in the metal hull, two wheels, and skids (...)


From the Flying Machines website:

The firm Bedelia (B + D + lia) founded by Bourbeau and Devaux was known for its small 2-seater automobiles known as voiturettes. Although reported to have been working on flying boats since 1908, their first and only design appeared first at the 1912 Salon de la Locomotion Aérienne. It was ambitious and unsuccessful, a small-span all-steel biplane with a short wide teardrop-shaped hull of rectangular section, on top of which was mounted the biplane cellule. The 2 wings were supported on 4 vertical struts, almost side-curtains, with interplane ailerons, Curtiss-style, mounted behind the outermost struts. The large tailplane was mounted on 2 similar struts, with the rudder between them. A 4-cylinder uncowled 50 hp Clerget sat next to the pilot in the hull, driving an overhead shaft which ran between the upper wing and the tailplane, with the pusher propeller just forward of the tailplane leading edge. On occasion the Bedelia appeared fitted with wheels and 2 long skids reaching far ahead of the hull.
Bourbeau and Devaux founded a hydroplane center on the coast of Picardy, without much success; at the time, they modified the Bedelia with a tractor propeller, smaller struts without the side-curtains, twin tail-booms and twin rudders.
 
Two better quality scans of the pictures shown in the first post:
 

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The primary hydrodynamic problem is the lack of a "step" to break suction.
 

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