Belgiium maybe a small country, but a lot of pioneer aviation effort was done before 1914. Due to the German invasion in August 1914 aviation devlopment was halted completely, with as a result that the country lagged behind in aviation development and that the memory of the pre-1914 development was mostly erased.

The card shows one of the Belgian early aviation inventors, count Adhémar de la Hault. He was both extremely wealthy and very focused on flying already before 1900. In 1901 he founded with others the Aéroclub de Belgique. In 1904 he founded the aviation magazine 'La conquête de l'Air.

de la Vault was focused on natural means of flying and started with an early (bee-like) construction, which remained a paper only project. In 1908 he started with this 'Orthoptère', which had (invisible here) two bee-like wings, rotaring and driven by an engine of 100 hp (no less !). The engine was specially built by the car manufacturer Julius Miesse. This picture was taken in the workshop (Atelier) of Miesse in Brussels. The construction of this engine was a clever bit of engineering. Consisting of 8 cylinders (two circles of four) they lay flat around a central shaft which went up to the horizontal tube holding the two bee-like 'wings'. Finally via a series of cogs a sort of rowing motion of the bee-like wings were produced. A highly complex construction.

Test showed the feasability of the construction, but in the end the construction did not leave the ground. On the basis of the work done with this design de la Hault continued with another Orthoptère. This one and still another one were interesting designs, but not able to fly.

Tags:   1908 Belgium Miesse de la Hault Ornithopter

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Belgian pioneer aviation before 1914 flourished but was cut down completely after the occupation by Germany. After the liberation it was difficult to (re)start an aviation business again. As a side effect most of the early aviation activities in Belgium has been difficult to track down in history.
The scene on this picture card is July 1911 when a demenstration flight was made with this tractor biplane to the military camp de Beverloo. This biplane - a de Brouckère trainer was a product of Léon de Brouckère a Belgian engineer who had a small firm till the outbreak of the war.
The text should be interpreted with some caution as this card exists with several texts for the same picture. Here it reads that the biplane is mounted by general Buck, but other texts give a different name.
Incidentally I could not find any reference to a general Buck in Belgium around 1911.

Tags:   1911 Belgium Beverloo de Brouckère

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The twenties and the thirties were crowded by small firms who built light planes, mostly for sporting activity. One of these was the Belgian firm Orta Saint-Hubert who built this parasol wing monoplane, identified as the G.1. From this machine six samples were built of which this one OO-ALL (Begian civil registration) became famous by a courageous act of long distance flying.
On 29 October 1932 the crew consisting of Albert Maréchal and Géo Clavier flew from the airfield Evere (Belgium) to Persia (now Iran). Stops were made in Frankfurt, Vienna, Belgrado, Bucarest,Istanbul,Konya,Aleppo (Syria) and Bagdad (Iraq). A great feat done with this 85 hp powered light plane and with relatively few problems.

Tags:   1932 G.1 OO-ALL Orta Saint-Hubert

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Félix Henri Villard [1869-1916] of French nationality worked first in France on the design and testing of vertical take-off machines. In 1902 he already experimented in Paris with a one man carrying rotor aircraft. Later he moved to Belgium, where he worked together with other early aviators. Finally he concentrated on his own designs. In all he produced three helicopter designs, which were identified as Ornis 1, 2 and 3.
The picture - showing the Ornis 2 of 1913/1914 - gives the genenral configuration. The engine - an Anzani drives the big horizontally mounted propeller ('rotor'). The rest of the construction consists of a single high wing and a tail section, all connected by light metal tubes. The landing gear is a sort of tripod.
As the Ornis 1 was too heavy to lift, the Ornis 2 stripped everything of weight that could be done effectively.
The machine was ready in the autumn of 1913 and was built by the Société Avia in Berchem-Saint-Agathe (one of the departments of Brussels). During tests the machine would not lift off the ground, the reason therefore was analyzed that the Anzani engine was too weak. It never left the ground.
The third design - Ornis 3 - was a 'real' helicopter, that is no wings were added. As King Albert I stifted a 100 hp Anzani engine hopes were high for a successful lift-off, but the German invasion halted further experiments.
It is reported that the German invaders saw after inspection no use for the machine and scrapped it.

Tags:   Avia Belgium Helicopter Ornis Villard

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The reverse side of the card showing the Debongnie monoplane (version 1910). It seems that the writer of the card hints at life in the trenches [....la vie de tranchée ....] what hints that the card was actually written and posten during WW. I was unable to decipher a full dateon the stamp.
It seems that the writer used whatever card he had to write a text to his acquaintance. The Debongnie Monoplane (version 1910) was of course long gone at the time of WW1 and also long forgotten.
It is a nice idea that the card was preaserved in some way till at least the 21st century, as it landed safely in my collection.

Tags:   Debongnie reverse side

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