Nieuport-Delage Sesquiplan

The Nieuport-Delage Sesquiplan was a series of French racing monoplanes of the 1920s built by Nieuport-Delage, and the first aircraft recorded as reaching 200 miles per hour in level flight. It first appeared in 1921 as a development of the Nieuport 31 fighter, a sleek shoulder-wing braced monoplane with a supercharged eight-cylinder Hispano-Suiza 8Fb engine of 224 kilowatts. The name came from an additional aerofoil attached to the axle of its fixed landing gear. Two were built and entered in the Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe at Etampes in October 1921, where the example flown by Georges Kirsch won at 278 kilometres per hour after the other, flown by Sadi-Lecointe, crashed. In 1922 a Sesquiplan set a world speed record of 325 kilometres per hour over 100 kilometres, and in 1923 a surviving machine with a Wright-Hispano engine reached 375 kilometres per hour at Istres. The last racing Sesquiplan, the NiD 42 S, won the Coupe Beaumont in June 1924.