Packard-Le Père LUSAC-11

The Packard-Le Père LUSAC-11, short for Lepère United States Army Combat, was an early American two-seat fighter aircraft. It was a French design by Georges Lepère, a member of the French Aeronautical Mission to the United States, commissioned and built in the United States during the First World War. The two-bay biplane had wings of equal span with forward stagger, wood and fabric construction and a 425 horsepower Liberty L-12 engine cooled by a radiator faired into the upper wing. Orders for 3,525 were placed with Packard, Brewster and the Fisher Body Corporation, but the first prototype only flew at McCook Field, Dayton, on 15 May 1918 and mass cancellations followed the Armistice, so about 30 were built. It saw no squadron service and was used for trials and liaison, and one fitted with an early turbocharger set world altitude records in 1920 and 1921. Three further aircraft with Bugatti 16-cylinder engines were completed as LUSAC-21s. A single LUSAC-11 survives.