An Unlikely Warbird; Caudron G.III
At the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns fell silent. The Armistice was signed and the fighting ceased - the Great War had come to an end, one hundred years ago today. On this historic day I felt it important to mark the occasion with a walkaround of a genuine Great War veteran, a Caudron G.III built and used during that conflict, although its exact service use is to this day unknown. Presumed to have served with the Belgian armed forces, since known records for G.III Construction Number 7487 began in Belgium three years after the Armistice in civilian hands. It remained as an airworthy curio in Belgium until 1936, when its owner, one M. Jean Leduc gave permission to Chief Flying Instructor for the Brooklands School of Flying, Ken Waller to operate it in the United Kingdom. Following a cross-channel flight, a daunting prospect in such a machine by Waller to Brooklands, it spent a busy summer being demonstrated to eager crowds at flying events, including at the RAF Pageant at Hendon in June. That year sometime, it was sold to Mr Richard G.J. Nash, of the International Horseless Carriage Corporation, joining a number of vintage flying machines in his possession. Remaining in a dismantled state during World War Two, the Caudron re-emerged statically complete at Hendon again in 1951 during the Daily Express 50 Years of Flying display in July that year. Two years later, the Nash collection of historic aircraft became the property of the Royal Aeronautical Society and it was moved from place to place until the society gifted its aircraft holdings to the RAF Air Historic Branch and in 1966 it moved to what became the storehouse for the future RAF Museum collection at RAF Henlow. With the opening of the museum in 1972, the Caudron was on display and there it remains, today in the Graeme White hangar surrounded by Great War ephemera.
The ultimate expression of Gaston and René Caudron's pre-war line of peculiar tractor biplanes bearing a pusher configuration, the G.III first flew in May 1914 and saw extensive use during the Great War, despite its decidedly passé appearance. Click on the image below to go to the Caudron G.III page.
