The last aircraft designed by S.F.Cody. While flying it with a wheel undercarriage on 7 August 1913 it crashed, killing Cody and his passenger.

Using personal funds and a borrowed airship shed, Cody built a huge sturdy pusher biplane of 52 foot span, weighing 1,200 pounds. Size and strength were Cody trademarks; he was observed tying knots in bracing wires with his bare hands and was the only one able to spin the biplane’s 50 hp V8 to life. A reporter took one look and dubbed it “the Flying Cathedral.” The nickname stuck.
While he had seen pictures of American and French machines, Cody saw no reason to alter his kite with an engine concept, which, by the way, he carried entirely in his head. There were no blueprints or lists of materials because Cody had never learned to read and write. (He eventually mastered a huge “S.F. Cody” for official paperwork, holding the pen like a trowel.)
The finished product included a shock-mounted landing gear with steerable tailwheel, ground adjustable wing camber and propeller pitch plus ailerons, this being the first aircraft to use separate surfaces for banking. Cody did not invent ailerons, but he was the first to make practical use of them. Oddly enough, he abandoned them later in favor of wing warping.
In the summer of 1908, Cody’s aircraft was towed to Laffan’s Plain, a rough, rolling pasture surrounded by trees. One up¬hill run to test the controls left a 234 foot gap in the tire tracks, a greater distance than the Wright’s first hop, but Cody dismissed it as “just a jump.”
On October 16, with reporters watching, he gave it full throttle, rose quickly to 40 feet and flew 1,390 feet, crashing when he dragged a wingtip in an attempt to avoid some trees. The big man emerged from the pile of bamboo and linen bruised but smiling. The illiterate genius had become the first man to fly an airplane in England.

Winner of the 1912 War Office military trials at Salisbury Plain was Cody’s Cathedral, which collected a total of £5,000 prize money, but was clearly of no use to the newly formed Royal Flying Corps and was not put into production.

One example, built in 1912 at Farnbough, was similar in configuration to the 1911 Biplane and was again evaluated for military application. It was evaluated by the Army at Cambridge in September 192 and subsequently purchased. The Army number 304 was allocated.

It was little flown and passed to the Science Museum in 1913.

Engine: Austro-Daimler, 120 hp.
Span 43 ft
Length 34 ft. 4 in
Wing chord 5 ft. 6 in
Wing area 430 sq. ft
Weight, empty about 1,900 lb
Weight loaded 2,680 lb
Max. speed 73 mph.
Stalling speed 48.5 mph
Take off run 960 ft
Range 336 miles.

Army 304
Engine: Austro-Daimler, 120 hp.
Span 52 ft
Length 44 ft
Weight loaded 2,900 lb
Max. speed 65 mph.

The next step was to build a full size piloted version of the glider. In December 1907, Cody began to build his first biplane at Farnborough, and since Nulli Secundus was rebuilding (to emerge as Nulli Secundus II the following summer) he was allowed to use her 50 h.p. Antoinette engine to power the machine of bamboo and wire. He arranged it to drive two pusher propellers; the result looked something like the Wright biplane.

It was in this aircraft that Cody made his first hops in May, 1908, on Laffan’s Plain. On October 5 or 16th 1908 he made the first official flight in a piloted aeroplane in Great Britain a measured distance of 496 yards at a height of 50-60 ft over Laffan’s Plain (it lasted 37 seconds), Farnborough, and this was the first powered aeroplane flight in Britain; but Cody was American at the time, and did not take out naturalisation papers until 1909.

Cody 1 – Initial Prototype; fitted with Antoinette 50 hp. Later, with ailerons
Cody 2 – Revised Cody 1 airframe
Cody 3 – Cody 2 prototype fitted with ENV Type F engine of 60 horsepower.

The Cody II was a Michelin Cup machine in which he flew 4 3/4 hours on December 31, 1910 to win the trophy. Clear differences to the earlier machine were the one large propeller installed at the rear in place of the two forward propellers and a 60 hp Green engine fitted in place of the ENV.

The Michelin Cup machine in which he flew 4 3/4 hours on December 31, 1910 to win the trophy. Clear differences to the earlier machine were the one large propeller installed at the rear in place of the two forward propellers and a 60 hp Green engine fitted in place of the ENV.

Gallery

Engine: 1 x Antoinette, 50 hp
Length: 38.48ft (11.73m)
Wingspan: 52.00 ft (15.85m)
Height: 13 ft (3.96m)
Maximum Take-Off Weight: 2,950lbs (1,338kg)
Maximum Speed: 65mph (105kmh; 57kts)
Accommodation: 1

1910 Cody No. II
Span: 46′
Length: 38’6″

Mario Cobianchi was a Bolognese designer and draftsman, who had Sicilian-born engineer Franz Miller build his 1909 Brescia biplane, powered by a 100 hp Miller engine. It was originally intended to have both a helicopter-like propeller on the top wing and a pusher propeller in the rear.

Even after being modified several times, it never did get off the ground except for a few brief hops. After being strengthened and modified from its original state, it was entered in the Circuito Aereo Internazionale di Brescia, Brescia, Italy, September 8th – 20th 1909, but it still didn’t fly.