Latécoère 3

The Latécoère 3 was a French two-seat biplane transport prototype built by Latécoère at the end of 1919 and shown at the Paris Aéro Salon in December of that year. Pierre-Georges Latécoère had begun his aviation career after the First World War by building passenger limousine versions of the Salmson 2 and the Breguet 14, and the Latécoère 3 was an original design of his own firm. It was a two-bay, equal-span, fabric-covered biplane with an all-metal structure, powered by a water-cooled Salmson nine-cylinder radial engine of about 190 kW. Compared with the Salmson 2 its wings were 9 percent longer in span and 24 percent larger in area, which raised both the load it could lift and the commercial load it could carry. A closed cabin for two or three passengers and mail was planned but never built, and the Salon machine had two open cockpits. It is not known whether it ever flew, and it did not enter production, because cheap surplus wartime aircraft dominated the small market for light commercial aircraft.