Farman F.1010

The Farman F.1010 was a small French experimental aircraft built to carry a large cannon in flight. The government of France ordered it in 1931 to test a slow-firing 33 mm gun made by the Atelier de Puteaux, which was fitted between the cylinder banks of Farman's own 350 horsepower water-cooled inverted V-8 engine so that it fired through the propeller. The single-seat, low-wing monoplane was a distant relative of the Farman F.230 touring and postal series, though with a longer wingspan and a deep, round-chinned cowling for the big engine. Lucien Coupet flew it first in August 1932, and a military pilot began trials at Villacoublay that December. He found it heavy and hard to manoeuvre, so a second horizontal tail surface was braced above the fin, the radiators were moved into the wings and a four-bladed metal propeller replaced the original two-bladed one. Firing tests followed at Cazaux, and only one aircraft was built.