The Gourdou-Leseurre GL-832 HY was a 1930s French light shipboard reconnaissance floatplane designed and built by

Gourdou-Leseurre Gourdou-Leseurre was a French aircraft manufacturer whose founders were Charles Edouard Pierre Gourdou and Jean Adolphe Leseurre. History Engineers Jean Leseurre and his brother-in-law Charles Gourdou founded the ''Établissements Gourdou-Leseur ...

for the

French Navy The French Navy (french: Marine nationale, lit=National Navy), informally , is the maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the five military service branches of France. It is among the largest and most powerful naval forces in t ...

Development

In 1930 the French Navy issued a requirement for a light coastal patrol seaplane mainly for use in the French colonies. Gourdou-Leseurre built and designed a prototype GL-831 HY which was a modification of the companies earlier GL-830 HY with a smaller Hispano-Suiza radial engine. The GL-831 HY first flew on 23 December 1931. In 1933 the French Navy ordered 22 aircraft designated GL-832 HY, this had a less powerful engine than the prototype. The GL-832 HY was a metal construction low-wing

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 planes. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing confi ...

with fabric covered wings and twin floats. The aircraft had a large wing to take the stresses of a catapult launch, the wings also folded to allow stowage on board a ship. Unusually the braced-horizontal

tailplane A tailplane, also known as a horizontal stabiliser, is a small 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 and gyroplane ...

was attached to the underside of the rear fuselage. Two open cockpits in tandem were provided for the two crew, each cockpit having a windscreen. The first production aircraft flew on 17 December 1934 and the last on 12 February 1936.

Operational history

The French Navy used the GL-832 HY on second-line cruisers like the ''

Emile Bertin Emil or Emile may refer to: Literature *''Emile, or On Education'' (1762), a treatise on education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau * ''Émile'' (novel) (1827), an autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life *''Emil and the Detective ...

'' and '' Primauguet'' and on smaller colonial

sloops A sloop is a sailboat with a single mast typically having only one headsail in front of the mast and one mainsail aft of (behind) the mast. Such an arrangement is called a fore-and-aft rig, and can be rigged as a Bermuda rig with triangular sa ...

. The smaller sloops did not have a catapult and the aircraft were lowered into the sea using a crane. The aircraft were still operational at the start of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and were not retired until 1941.

Variants

;GL-830 HY :Prototype with one 350hp (261 kW)

Hispano-Suiza 9Qdr The Wright R-975 Whirlwind was a series of nine-cylinder air-cooled radial aircraft engines built by the Wright Aeronautical division of Curtiss-Wright. These engines had a displacement of about and power ratings of . They were the largest mem ...

radial engine, one built. ;GL-831 HY :Prototype with one 250 hp (186 kW)

Hispano-Suiza 9Qa The Wright R-975 Whirlwind was a series of nine-cylinder air-cooled radial aircraft engines built by the Wright Aeronautical division of Curtiss-Wright. These engines had a displacement of about and power ratings of . They were the largest mem ...

radial engine, one built. ;GL-832 HY :Production version with one 230 hp (171 kW)

Hispano-Suiza 9Qb The Wright R-975 Whirlwind was a series of nine-cylinder air-cooled radial aircraft engines built by the Wright Aeronautical division of Curtiss-Wright. These engines had a displacement of about and power ratings of . They were the largest mem ...

radial engine, 22 built.

Operators

; *

Specifications (GL-832 HY)

References