Farman Blanchard

The Farman Blanchard was a prototype naval torpedo bomber built in France in the early 1920s but not selected for production. It is designated the Farman F.450 Torp in at least one source, and was designed by Maurice Blanchard, after whom it was named. It was a two-bay unstaggered equal-span wooden biplane with the pilot and observer in tandem open cockpits, a piston engine in the nose driving a tractor propeller, fixed tailskid undercarriage and a torpedo carried semi-recessed under the fuselage, and it was meant to operate from land or from aircraft carriers. It was shown at the 1921 Paris Aero Show, first flew in 1923 and lost out to the Levasseur PL.2, and no further examples were built. A Renault twelve-cylinder V engine of 340 kilowatts gave 145 kilometres per hour.