Latécoère 5

The Latécoère 5 was a French three-engined biplane night bomber prototype of the early 1920s, developed by Latécoère from its Latécoère 4 passenger aircraft for the BN4 programme, which called for a bomb load of 1,500 kg. The design was registered in January 1921, but a dispute between the State and the company over engines delayed the first flight to 18 February 1924: the State wanted more powerful Renault engines that were not available, while Latécoère preferred Lorraine engines for their better power-to-weight ratio. It had fabric-covered wooden wings and a metal-framed fuselage, three water-cooled Lorraine 12D V-12 engines of about 275 kW each, and the pilot and co-pilot sat side by side ahead of the wing. Its span was 2 m greater than that of the Latécoère 4 and its fuselage 3.3 m longer. It went to Villacoublay for official testing in the late summer of 1924, only one was built, and its later fate is not known.