The Largest Biplane Ever Flown | Caproni Ca.90

the caproni ca 90 was perhaps one of the most impressive aircraft designed in the 1920s along with being one of the most obscure it represented to the culmination of gianni caproni's ambitions for building huge imposing aircraft from the day he founded his first company in 1908 caproni always leaned towards the development of large aircraft specifically bombers in world war one he developed several bomber designs the most numerous of which was the large and successful ca3 series after the war he continued to develop larger and more advanced aircraft as well as some curious oddities like the nova plano that we looked at in a previous video in the mid-1920s caproni designed the ca-79 which was a sessica plane bomber the design proved to be a success though it was not built in numbers and caproni quickly moved on to the largest escort plane designs the next being the ca-80 and the ca-85 during this period he drew up over a dozen different designs some were transports some were passenger liners and some were bomber designs as well a few of these designs were amongst the largest he had conceived up to this point and indeed a few of them were amongst some of the largest biplanes built at the time though they seemed to have been mostly forgotten by history the ca79 for example had a wingspan of 33 meters which was larger than all but two or three other designs at the time but caproni wanted to push this even further and designed the largest plane in the world the result would be the ca-90 heavy bomber design work began in the late 1920s with most of the construction being carried out in 1929 to say this was a large biplane would be an understatement in fact today it remains the largest land-based biplane ever built due to the size of the aircraft the entire framework was based on steel tubing rather than aluminium or deraluminium framing and the main joints were machined from billets of chrome nickel steel the fuselage was constructed of square sections and it also formed an integral part of the lower wing which unlike most biplane designs was seated at the top of the fuselage rather than at the middle or lower sections eight cylindrical fuel tanks were housed in this section along with 11 more in the nose and four more in a vertical arrangement behind the bombay the wings and most of the fuselage half of the cockpit were clad in fabric and the rest of the fuselage and the nose was covered by sheets of corrugated aluminium when completed the scale of caproni's latest creation ordered those who saw it in person it had a length of 26.9 meters and a height of 10.8 meters like many of caproni's recent designs it was a sesco plane with the upper wing being smaller than the lower wing that being said the upper wing was still huge having a wingspan of 34.9 meters but it was dwarfed by the lower wing that had a span of 46.6 meters the upper wing sat 5.7 meters above the lower wing and as it was not directly attached to the fuselage it was supported by an array of thick struts and wire bracing the control surfaces were equally massive the ailerons had a span of 22 meters each the horizontal stabilizer had a span of 10.2 meters and attached to it was a pair of 5 meter wide elevators and a 5 meter tall rudder as something of this size had not really been attempted before even more attention than usual was placed on the aircraft's flight handling characteristics for obvious reasons all parts of the aircraft were subjected to rigorous tests by the experimental department of the milan polytechnic institute large control servo tabs were fitted to the rudder and the ailerons which allowed the pilots to operate the controls without the effort feeling like a workout at the gym this combined with the sensible layout of the cockpit controls meant that the entire aircraft could be safely controlled by a single pilot speaking of the pilot the ca-90 had an open cockpit with the controls in a side-by-side layout this cockpit was located just before the leading edge of the lower wing and on each side of the fuselage below the cockpit was a large door that granted access to the main fuselage it is not specifically stated anywhere how many crew members it had as a bomber but the design provisioned seven gunner stations one in the nose one on the upper wing one in a ventral gondola two in the upper fuselage and one on each side of the fuselage none of the source material indicates that the defensive armament was actually fitted to the aircraft but it was expected to have between 8 and 12 machine guns some in single mounts and some in pairs had they been fitted it would have represented a significant amount of defensive firepower for this error a bit more is known about the weight and payload capacity though when empty the ca-90 had a weight of 15 tons and it could carry a useful load of a further 15 tonnes as well giving an approximate maximum weight total of 30 tonnes however depending on what safety standards were adhered to it could theoretically go up to 35 tons at a stretch the 15 tons of useful weight would be made up of fuel people and bombs all of the bombs were carried in a bombay behind the cockpit and the bomb racks could accommodate 850 500 250 and 100 kilogram bombs for a total bomb load of 8 000 kilograms now an aircraft of this size and weight needed a strong undercarriage to support it and like everything else about the ca-90 this too was massive with the four main wheels of the landing gear having a diameter of two meters the landing gear had a very wide track to facilitate landing on rough ground and the impact was absorbed by suspension mounted on two struts that connected the gear to the lower wing and another pair of struts also connected the gear to the fuselage itself the ca-90 was powered by six engines arranged in tandem pairs earlier on in his career caproni had subscribed to the idea that more engines translated to better safety but after lessons learned from his eight-engined noviplano and other designs he realized that too many engines impaired the safety and simplicity of an aircraft by increasing the difficulty of control however in 1929 he would still need more than a few to lift 30 tons of plane into the air the engine that caproni selected was the powerful 57 liter w16 isotopini aso which gave 1000 horsepower this gave the aircraft a total power output of 6000 horsepower and is why the aircraft is also sometimes known as the caproni 6000. one pair of engines was mounted on each side of the lower wing above the landing gear strut and the third was mounted in a central gondola on struts between the wings the pusher engines drove a four blade propeller and the tractor engines drove a two-blade propeller they were all water-cooled the front engines had their radiators mounted behind the propellers and the rear engines on the wing had radiators attached to the wing support struts whilst the central rear engine had its radiator suspended below the engine gondola in terms of performance the ca-90 had a documented top speed of 205 kilometers an hour a landing speed of 90 kilometers an hour and a ceiling of 4 500 meters though not the fastest aircraft in the world it was still fast for a biplane of this size and it could boast an operational range of 1400 kilometers whilst carrying an 8 000 kilo bomb load on the 13th of october 1929 caproni's giant biplane took off for the first time flown by test pilot dominico antonini it was the largest land plane in the world and almost the largest plane in general but the dornier do-10 just beat it in total wingspan antonini immediately praised the aircraft's handling claiming that the massive plane had surprisingly light and balanced controls and that it felt no more difficult to fly than an ordinary passenger aircraft he would continue to fly the ca-90 for all of its tests and had no difficulty setting multiple load altitude and endurance records perhaps the most impressive of these records was when he got the bomber to carry a 10 000 kilo load at 3 200 meters for three and a half hours the test flights also allows caproni to demonstrate the versatility of his new aircraft though nominally designed as a bomber it could easily be converted to a number of auxiliary rolls removing the bombay would allow the large fuselage to be readily adapted for commercial use as a transport for passengers freight or mail in this guys it would have an estimated range of at least 2 000 kilometers and the aircraft was expected to be capable of transatlantic flights with the provision of some additional fuel tanks this argument was also supported by the rapid advancements in engine technology caproni stated that if engines of 1500 or 2000 horsepower became readily available the aircraft would only need three or four rather than the six currently which would of course save weight and improve efficiency it was also hoped that the aircraft could cut into the flying boat market from the outset the fuselage was designed to be watertight so that it could be converted into a seaplane when needed however not enough documentation exists to expand much further on this there was a plan drawn up for the ca-91 which was a dedicated seaplane and as that design shared the same wings and engines as the ca-90 it would be safe to assume it was a direct result of that line of thinking after its first flight the aircraft was considered a technical triumph not only for italy but for the world of aviation in general since it demonstrated that even land planes could reach huge dimensions without increasing the difficulty of taking off and landing yet despite this only one would be built and it would never see production or commercial success the ca-90 was a victim of two things timing and politics the current head of the italian air ministry did not subscribe to caproni's fondness for heavy bombers in fact he was not enthused with the idea of large-scale bombing in general the idea of heavy bombing was still relatively young some people saw it as a gimmick some viewed it in the same manner as we view nuclear weapons today a weapon that should not be used and some thought that lighter bombers in larger numbers was the way of the future whatever the minister's own opinions may have been caproni knew he wouldn't be able to sell his plane as a bomber his attempts at marketing the ca-90 as a commercial venture were also a failure a proposal was made to convert it to carry up to 100 passengers over long distance international routes but the onset of the great depression put paid to any consideration of the idea in italy the same situation unfolded when an attempt was also made to market the aircraft to the united states the design was promising but the money just didn't exist and so the largest biplane ever built would remain a one-off by the time the world had recovered from the great depression and the transatlantic roots were beginning to grow aviation had moved on to all metal monoplanes and flying boats in terms of biplane design nothing of this scale would ever be attempted again and despite being the world's largest biplane the ca-90 was largely forgotten but like several other large and obscure planes of recent note it recently re-entered the public view when it was depicted in the studio ghibli film the wind rises [Music] you

Channel: Rex's Hangar

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Keywords: aviation history, civil aviation, caproni, caproni 90, caproni ca.90, giant plane, huge biplane, Largest Biplane Ever Flown, giant biplane, giant bomber, insane aircraft, aviation, history, military aviation, rex's hangar, the wind rises, interwar aviation, duraluminium, experimental aircraft, giant aircraft, biggest plane in the world, biplane bomber, Gianni Caproni, sesquiplane, biplane, aircraft design, big aircraft design, big aircraft

Id: aVnxQCa4ieM

Length: 12min 15sec (735 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 31 2022