Rocket Plane Powered by 86 Gun Barrels of 1929

hesham

hesham

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Hi,

here is a new idea of 1929,invented by Maurice Poirier,for a rocket plane,to be powered by a
86 gun barrels.
 

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The Poirier Radio-guided rocket plane "Spirit of night" 1933, is a standard type aircraft that has been transformed into a rocket-powered machine equipped with a cannon. This radio guided aircraft is the invention of Maurice Poirier from Burbank, California.French born Maurice Poirier , then naturalized American, watchmaker and inventor passionate about rockets. Nicknamed "the man with Ten Ideas Per Minute !" His plane used ordinary gasoline engines in addition to rockets.There are 86 ordinary powder rocket tubes of two different sizes attached to the fuselage of the plane, providing its propulsion and the concussion resulting from the explosions in the tubes should give the plane a speed of 400 miles per hour. 1.jpg
 

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klem said:
His plane used ordinary gasoline engines in addition to rockets.There are 86 ordinary powder rocket tubes of two different sizes attached to the fuselage of the plane, providing its propulsion and the concussion resulting from the explosions in the tubes should give the plane a speed of 400 miles per hour.
Click to expand...
Did he actually test it?

Also, what kind of radio control did he used?
 
Dilandu said:
klem said:
His plane used ordinary gasoline engines in addition to rockets.There are 86 ordinary powder rocket tubes of two different sizes attached to the fuselage of the plane, providing its propulsion and the concussion resulting from the explosions in the tubes should give the plane a speed of 400 miles per hour.
Click to expand...
Did he actually test it?

Also, what kind of radio control did he used?
Click to expand...
No, I don't think this project has been tested. I haven't found any specific confirmation, maybe there is something in the A.R. Weyl-Guided Missiles book, but it seems that Poirier was considering two versions of this aircraft: one radio controlled as quoted by Weyl and another with 4 passengers according to an article in Popular Aviation in August 1930. I think it's crazy to be encircled by rockets filled with gunpowder in a plane full of gasoline.
 
klem said:
Dilandu said:
klem said:
His plane used ordinary gasoline engines in addition to rockets.There are 86 ordinary powder rocket tubes of two different sizes attached to the fuselage of the plane, providing its propulsion and the concussion resulting from the explosions in the tubes should give the plane a speed of 400 miles per hour.
Click to expand...
Did he actually test it?

Also, what kind of radio control did he used?
Click to expand...
No, I don't think this project has been tested. I haven't found any specific confirmation, maybe there is something in the A.R. Weyl-Guided Missiles book, but it seems that Poirier was considering two versions of this aircraft: one radio controlled as quoted by Weyl and another with 4 passengers according to an article in Popular Aviation in August 1930. I think it's crazy to be encircled by rockets filled with gunpowder in a plane full of gasoline.
Click to expand...

Hence my (lame) joke about Wile E. Coyote. It really looks like the kind of contraption the poor animal would invent to catch the roadrunner...
More seriously, as you said, no way it would end well.

They say Poirier was from Burbank, California ? (the land of Lockheed !)

I wish to know more about the man, he could be of extreme interest to "France fights on". I already wrote the adventures of Jean Jacques Barré and Leduc, in the Sahara desert not too far from Hammaguir...
 
Archibald said:
klem said:
Dilandu said:
klem said:
His plane used ordinary gasoline engines in addition to rockets.There are 86 ordinary powder rocket tubes of two different sizes attached to the fuselage of the plane, providing its propulsion and the concussion resulting from the explosions in the tubes should give the plane a speed of 400 miles per hour.
Click to expand...
Did he actually test it?

Also, what kind of radio control did he used?
Click to expand...
No, I don't think this project has been tested. I haven't found any specific confirmation, maybe there is something in the A.R. Weyl-Guided Missiles book, but it seems that Poirier was considering two versions of this aircraft: one radio controlled as quoted by Weyl and another with 4 passengers according to an article in Popular Aviation in August 1930. I think it's crazy to be encircled by rockets filled with gunpowder in a plane full of gasoline.
Click to expand...

Hence my (lame) joke about Wile E. Coyote. It really looks like the kind of contraption the poor animal would invent to catch the roadrunner...
More seriously, as you said, no way it would end well.

They say Poirier was from Burbank, California ? (the land of Lockheed !)

I wish to know more about the man, he could be of extreme interest to "France fights on". I already wrote the adventures of Jean Jacques Barré and Leduc, in the Sahara desert not too far from Hammaguir...
Click to expand...
Interesting, the space adventure of France, especially the CIEES, where the greatest progress in the matter was made and I believe that Eugen Saenger was also there, it was really the take-off and the launching of the will not to remain behind. Let's get back to Poirier, I've looked through the few pages that are on the net and there isn't much, a few sites with newspaper cuttings, no biography as such, I don't know what the universities are doing, I haven't looked into it, but I'm receptive, just let me know.Thanks
 
Wow, Poirier's notion makes the mid-30s BIS Moon Mission design with its zillion solid-fuel rockets seem remarkably benign...

( IIRC, after they saw newspaper pics of first V2's liquid-fuelled wreckage, took them but a long weekend to re-design thus... )
 

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From Aerroplane 1948,

was it a real project ?.
 

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The picture is in all certainties that of a scale model, probably in a studio.

There is no way that amount of thick steel would have been carried aloft by such a plane... Nor that such structure could have absorbed the recoil (even without firing a shell).
 
klem said:
The Poirier Radio-guided rocket plane "Spirit of night" 1933, is a standard type aircraft that has been transformed into a rocket-powered machine equipped with a cannon. This radio guided aircraft is the invention of Maurice Poirier from Burbank, California.French born Maurice Alfrède Paul Poirier 18 Sep 1866 in Saint-Georges-d'Oléron,île d'Oléron,Charente-Maritime., then naturalized American, watchmaker and inventor passionate about rockets. Nicknamed "the man with Ten Ideas Per Minute !" His plane used ordinary gasoline engines in addition to rockets.There are 86 ordinary powder rocket tubes of two different sizes attached to the fuselage of the plane, providing its propulsion and the concussion resulting from the explosions in the tubes should give the plane a speed of 400 miles per hour.View attachment 669407
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Given how Poirier looked in the 1920s and 30s, he might have been born much later than 1866.

Cover illustration of 7 May 1939 issue of Jeunesse Magazine
 

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