Louis de Monge (Vicomte Pierre Louis de Monge de Franeau) (1890–New York, 25 July 1977) was a notable Belgian

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

. He is mainly remembered as the designer of the Bugatti Model 100 racing aircraft.

Career

He was interested in aircraft from his childhood and by 1907 had begun to explore ways of automatically stabilizing aircraft. These studies culminated in 1914 with the construction of such a machine, which flew successfully in turbulent conditions on 15 June 1914. In 1915 he produced another autostabilized aircraft, a

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 ...

with a propeller in the centre of its fuselage. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

he was granted patents for methods of in-flight disposal of burning fuel, of metal propellers and for bomb releases. Towards the end of the war he flew with the Belgian Air Force and completed a series of calculations over propeller efficiency. The rights to use these designs was bought by La Maison Lumière and at the end of the war de Monge helped to set up S.A. Establissements Lumière and became its Administrator-Delegate. The company employed

Sébastienne Guyot Sébastienne Marie Henriette Guyot (26 April 1896 – 21 August 1941) was a French engineer who specialized in aerodynamic flying. She was born in Pont l'Abbé in the Finistère. A teacher, Guyot resigned in 1917 to prepare for the competit ...

, an early woman aeronautical engineer. It was in their workshops that his first post-war aircraft, the

Lumière-de Monge racer The Lumière-de Monge racer was built specifically to compete in the 1921 Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe and was flown at Etampes on 1 October 1921. In addition to its speed, it was unusual in being a high wing monoplane which could be rapidly conve ...

, sometimes referred to as the ''Lumière-de Monge 5/1''. de Monge was then hired by Buscaylet Père et Fils-Bobin, building a fighter version of the racer, the Buscaylet-de Monge 5/2. Later, he designed twin-engined, twin boomed, lifting body aircraft with the experimental

Buscaylet-de Monge 7-4 The Buscaylet-de Monge 7-4 was a small, French, twin-boom aircraft without a fuselage, built in the mid-1920s to explore the characteristics of a proposed larger machine. Design and development The de Monge 7-4 was designed and built to provid ...

and its development the 7-5 as small scale aerodynamic models of the proposed, three times larger, de Monge 72. The rights to these were acquired by

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture ...

shipbuilders Dyle et Bacalan who wanted to develop transatlantic airliners from them. They built a series of military prototypes, starting with the Dyle et Bacalan DB-10 heavy bomber of 1926. In 1925, de Monge joined car and motorcycle makers Impéria at Liège as chief research engineer. Some of his work there included

torsion bar suspension A torsion bar suspension, also known as a torsion spring suspension, is any vehicle suspension that uses a torsion bar as its main weight-bearing spring. One end of a long metal bar is attached firmly to the vehicle chassis; the opposite end term ...

and automatic transmissions. de Monge left Impéria in 1937 to join Ettore Bugatti, where he designed the Bugatti Model 100 racing aircraft. This had been almost completed in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...

in 1940 but when France was occupied by Germany it was moved to the French countryside, where it was hidden for the next thirty years. It eventually went to the US and is now in the

EAA AirVenture Museum The EAA Aviation Museum, formerly the EAA AirVenture Museum (or Air Adventure Museum), is a museum dedicated to the preservation and display of historic and experimental aircraft as well as antiques, classics, and warbirds. The museum is ...

References

* Miniatures Bugattistes Association Bulletin Vol.5, N°2, On the Bugatti Aeroplane. * Miniatures Bugattistes Association Bulletin Vol.5, N°3, Bugatti Blue and one more 100 Airplane Model; The Other Airplane Engine. * Miniatures Bugattistes Association Bulletin Vol.5, N°3, Model 100, also one of kind.

External links

* http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation%20history/flying%20wings/early%20US%20flying%20wings.htm * http://www.bugattirevue.com/revue3/rev3-4.htm shows a model and 3-view of the 7.5 * http://www.bugattiaircraft.com/kalempa.htm please reference this article for more information on the 100P plane * http://www.airventuremuseum.org/collection/aircraft/Bugatti%20Model%20100%20Racer.asp * https://web.archive.org/web/20131203111459/http://www.bugatti100p.com/index.php?p=1_11_Bugatti-100p {{DEFAULTSORT:Monge, Louis D. de Belgian aerospace engineers 1977 deaths 1890 births