The Muniz M-5 was the first of Antônio Guedes Muniz's aircraft designs to fly; soon afterwards he became the first Brazilian to design an aircraft which reached series production. The sole example of the M-5, built while he was a student in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

Caudron The Société des Avions Caudron was a French aircraft company founded in 1909 as the Association Aéroplanes Caudron Frères by brothers Gaston and René Caudron. It was one of the earliest aircraft manufacturers in France and produced planes for ...

, was a

low wing 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 ...

cabin tourer or military

liaison aircraft A liaison aircraft (also called an army cooperation aircraft) is a small, usually unarmed aircraft primarily used by military forces for artillery observation or transporting commanders and messages. The concept developed before World War II and ...

Design and development

Antônio Guedes Muniz was a pioneer of the Brazilian aviation industry but he produced his first designs while at the French ''Ecole Supérieure de Aéronautique''. Several studies remained unbuilt before he had the M-5, a two- or three-seat

cantilever A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is supported at only one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a canti ...

low wing cabin tourer, built by the Caudron company. Its wing was straight-tapered in plan out to rounded tips and had an aspect ratio of 8.0, quite high for the time. It had a reflex (double-curved underside) section, 2° of dihedral and thinned continuously to the tips. The wing was built in three parts, with a short, rectangular inner section within the fuselage and two dominant, tapering outer panels. Each outer panel was built around a

spruce A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' (), a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal (taiga) regions of the Earth. ''Picea'' is the sole genus in the subfami ...

box

spar SPAR, originally DESPAR, styled as DE SPAR, is a Dutch multinational that provides branding, supplies and support services for independently owned and operated food retail stores. It was founded in the Netherlands in 1932, by Adriaan van Well, ...

and the wing surface ahead of it was

plywood Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...

, forming a torsion resisting D-box. Behind the spar the wing had fabric covering. The M-5's

ailerons An aileron (French for "little wing" or "fin") is a hinged flight control surface usually forming part of the trailing edge of each wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. Ailerons are used in pairs to control the aircraft in Flight dynamics, roll (or ...

were long and narrow. Its rectangular section fuselage was entirely wooden, with spruce

longeron In engineering, a longeron and stringer is the load-bearing component of a framework. The term is commonly used in connection with aircraft fuselages and automobile chassis. Longerons are used in conjunction with stringers to form structural ...

s and thick plywood covering. The engine was a water-cooled, six cylinder

Hispano-Suiza 6Pa Hispano-Suiza () is a Spanish automotive–engineering company. It was founded in 1904 by Marc Birkigt and Damian Mateu as an automobile manufacturer and eventually had several factories in Spain and France that produced luxury cars, aircraft en ...

with its fuel tanks between the wing spar of the central section, within the lower fuselage. Behind the engine was a multi-windowed cabin with two seats in

tandem Tandem, or in tandem, is an arrangement in which a team of machines, animals or people are lined up one behind another, all facing in the same direction. The original use of the term in English was in ''tandem harness'', which is used for two ...

and fitted with dual controls; without dual control a third tandem seat could be added. The

empennage The empennage ( or ), also known as the tail or tail assembly, is a structure at the rear of an aircraft that provides stability during flight, in a way similar to the feathers on an arrow.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third ed ...

was also wood-framed, with ply-covered fixed surfaces and fabric-covered control surfaces. Like the wings, the tail surfaces were straight-tapered to rounded tips. The

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 mounted on top of the fuselage and the

elevator An elevator or lift is a wire rope, cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or deck (building), decks of a building, watercraft, ...

s were split to allow

rudder A rudder is a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft, or other vehicle that moves through a fluid medium (generally aircraft, air or watercraft, water). On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to ...

movement. The M-5's fixed, tailskid

undercarriage Undercarriage is the part of a moving vehicle that is underneath the main body of the vehicle. The term originally applied to this part of a horse-drawn carriage, and usage has since broadened to include: *The landing gear of an aircraft. *The ch ...

had a track of . Its mainwheels were on cranked steel axles hinged on the lower fuselage longerons which also mounted oblique drag struts, forming a V. Vertical legs from the axle ends operated rubber shock absorbers within the wing

leading edge The leading edge of an airfoil surface such as a wing is its foremost edge and is therefore the part which first meets the oncoming air.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third edition'', page 305. Aviation Supplies & Academics, ...

, like those used by

Klemm The Klemm Leichtflugzeugbau GmbH ("Klemm Light Aircraft Company") was a German aircraft manufacturer noteworthy for sports and touring planes of the 1930s. The company was founded in Böblingen in 1926 by Dr. Hanns Klemm, who had previously work ...

light aircraft. Muniz had hoped that the aircraft would be ready for the August 1929 International Lightplane Tour of Europe but, though in that month the M-5 was reported as "nearly ready", the first flight was not made for almost another year, when it was flown from

Issy-les-Moulineaux Issy-les-Moulineaux () is a commune in the southwestern suburban area of Paris, France, lying on the left bank of the river Seine. Its citizens are called ''Isséens'' in French. It is one of Paris' entrances and is located from Notre-Dame Cath ...

on 10 July 1930, piloted by Delmotte. Two days later he flew it to Villacoublay, where five days later Muniz displayed it to the

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

ian community. There were several senior military officers there, as the M-5 could be used as a liaison aircraft. After more flights into early August, the initial report was that the M-5 was stable, fast and landed slowly. It was still undergoing trials at Villacoublay at the start of 1931. Fifteen months later Muniz had returned to Brazil where he went on to design successful trainers like the Muniz M-7 and M-9; it is not known if the M-5 returned with him.

Specifications

References

{{Muniz aircraft 1930s Brazilian civil aircraft 1930s Brazilian civil utility aircraft Muniz aircraft