L.Opdyke French Aeroplanes Before the Great War (Schiffer)
Deleted by request of (c)Schiffer Publishing
Detable et Tabary
Pierre Detable and his son worked with Tabary on the design and construction of several gliders, beginning in 1892. Most of them were models, but at least one them spanned 6.5 m with a wing area of 36 sqm, and was fitted with a 2 hp Herdtle-Bruneau engine in 1908; it was said to lack both tail and controls.
In 1912 the Detables planned an automatically stable aircraft, but lack of funds apparently prevented its completion. But a Detable was entered in the 1914 Concours de Securite as an "apparatus with stability-correcting planes." Available photos show a short-span tractor biplane with top-wing overhangs, side-curtains, a long uncovered fuselage. The "tailplane" was the full span of the lower wing and ran along the underside of the fuselage to the tail, where small elevators were mounted one on each side: a small rudder was fitted on top. But the odd feature of the Detable was the 2 fuselage-length half-conical surfaces set on each side of the long tailplane, with the points forward and the rear semicircular ends open. The pilot sat underneath the fuselage behind the axle.