Heller 80389 Liore&Oliver LEO 451

The Liore-Olivier LeO 451 is a French low-wing metal twin-engine bomber from the beginning of World War II. The first serial LeO 451 aircraft was completed in the fall of 1938 and exhibited at the Paris Air Show. It was first flashed in March 1939, although production was already in progress at plants in Clichy and Levellois, and final assembly was carried out by plants in Villacoublay. Due to the threat of war, the military aviation ordered 100 machines in February 1939. In March, this order increased by another 502 items. An order for 20 items was also placed by Greece, but due to the war, none of them reached the recipient. Due to the irregular supply of engines, orders were placed for airplanes of various versions with English or American engines. At the beginning of 1940, the French air force ordered another 150 machines, and a little later another 358, but in the LeO 458 version. During the entire production, the plane was subject to constant modifications. The serial copy had 14-cylinder Gnome Rhone 14N 38/39 engines, air-cooled in a double star system, with a power of 1155 HP. The vertical tail fins were more rounded than the prototype. Its armament consisted of a fixed 7.5 mm MAC wz.34 machine gun in the lower part of the fuselage on the right side and operated by a bombardier-navigator. The same machine gun was also in the lower part of the fuselage at the front in a retractable position. At the rear of the hull, at the top, a 20 mm Hispano Suiza 404 cannon with 60-round drum trays was installed. In later series, the 20 mm cannon was complemented by 2 coupled 7.5 mm machine guns. The bomb chamber held 5 bombs of 200 kg, and the containers in the wings - 2 bombs of 500 kg. The plane also had a Smith-Jaeger automatic pilot. The first planes reached the units only in July 1939, and when the war broke out, the air force had only 10 of them! The reason for such a slow delivery of aircraft to the recipient was the shortage of various components (propellers, engines, weapons) delivered to the factory by small manufacturers and it contributed to the overall mess. In addition, there was no time to properly train the pilots and convince them to the new machine. By the end of hostilities in 1940, 452 planes had been produced. After the capitulation, with the consent of the Germans, the production was resumed with some changes regarding the vertical stabilizers and weapons. As a standard, special containers that allow you to bomb from a gliding flight were also introduced. After these changes, in August 1941, 225 more aircraft were commissioned, and by November 1942, 102 were produced. After the war, these planes were used for various purposes: as flying laboratories, for rocket and unmanned aerial tests. The last planes of this type flew in 1957. Technical data: length: 17.17 m, wingspan: 22.52 m, height: 5.24 m, maximum speed: 495 km / h, maximum range: 2900 km, maximum ceiling 9000 m.