Savoia-Marchetti S.51
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The SIAI S.51, Savoia Marchetti S.51 or Savoia S.51 was an Italian racing
flying boat A flying boat is a type of fixed-winged seaplane with a hull, allowing it to land on water. It differs from a floatplane in that a flying boat's fuselage is purpose-designed for floatation and contains a hull, while floatplanes rely on fusela ...
built by SIAI for the 1922 Schneider Trophy race.


Design and development

The S.51 was a single-seat
sesquiplane 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 a ...
flying boat. Its 224-
kilowatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wa ...
(300- horsepower)
Hispano-Suiza 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 ...
8A V8 engine, mounted on two N struts above the
hull Hull may refer to: Structures * Chassis, of an armored fighting vehicle * Fuselage, of an aircraft * Hull (botany), the outer covering of seeds * Hull (watercraft), the body or frame of a ship * Submarine hull Mathematics * Affine hull, in affi ...
and below the upper wing, drove a two-bladed
propeller A propeller (colloquially often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon ...
in a
pusher configuration In an aircraft with a pusher configuration (as opposed to a tractor configuration), the propeller(s) are mounted behind their respective engine(s). Since a pusher propeller is mounted behind the engine, the drive shaft is in compression in nor ...
. The inclined interplane struts were mounted in a V configuration. The lower wings had small stabilizing floats mounted on inclined struts so that they hung below and outboard of the outer tips of the lower wing. SIAI later based the design of the hull of its S.58 flying boat fighter of 1924 on that of the S.51s hull.


Operational history

Italy entered the S.51 in the 1922 Schneider Trophy race along with two
Macchi M.17 The Macchi M.17 was an Italian racing flying boat built by Macchi for the 1922 Schneider Trophy race. Design and development The M.17 was the first purpose-built racing seaplane that Macchi company designer Alessandro Tonini designed. It was a s ...
flying boats in competition with a British
Supermarine Sea Lion II The Supermarine Sea Lion II was a British racing flying boat built by the Supermarine Aviation Works. Designed by Reginald Mitchell, it was a modification of Supermarine's Sea King II. Sea Lion II was powered by a Napier Lion engine. En ...
flying boat. The race was held at Naples on 12 August. The S.51 capsized in an accident during the seaworthiness trials before the race. Righted by its crew, it completed the race, piloted by Alessandro Passaleva but could only take second place, with the Sea Lion a comfortable 2 min 22 s ahead. The course required 13 laps, a total distance of , over which the S.51 averaged . On 28 December 1922 the S.51, flown again by Passaleva, set a world speed record for seaplanes of .


Operators

;


Specifications


See also


Notes


References


Schneider Trophy 6th Edition August 1922
*Green, William, and Gordon Swanborough. ''The Complete Book of Fighters: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Every Fighter Aircraft Built and Flown''. New York: SMITHMARK Publishers, 1994. . *Vašiček, Radko. "When Seaplanes Ruled the Sky." ''Aviation History'', September 2002 {{DEFAULTSORT:SIAI S.51 Flying boats Sesquiplanes Single-engined pusher aircraft 1920s Italian sport aircraft S.51 Schneider Trophy Aircraft first flown in 1922