Latécoère 15

The Latécoère 15 was a French airliner built in 1925 for the airline that Latécoère itself ran between France and Morocco. It was a parasol-wing monoplane with two engines mounted on the wing bracing struts, an enclosed cabin for six passengers and an open cockpit for the pilot at the nose. The aircraft was badly underpowered: it struggled to take off with its full intended load and could not keep flying on one engine, and the pilot Didier Daurat refused to fly it on the planned desert extension toward Dakar. The ten built served on the Oran to Casablanca route and short feeder lines until they were withdrawn between 1926 and 1929. A seaplane trial version, the 15H, and a bomber prototype, the Latécoère 19, were developed from it.