Photo Farman

[Stig Jarlevik]

That was a difficult one Clint

Must be an early Farman (or Farman copy) and possibly Russian.
I checked a number of photos of Bulgarian officers, but none really matches the uniform shown here.

No I have not gone through my Russian books....
Someone else who is interested in uniforms can do that....

Cheers
Stig

[musec04]

Hello,


Currently on ebay is a photo album containing two,alas small, photos of a Russian Henri Farman aircraft at:


https://www.ebay.de/itm/Fotoalbum-Er...EAAOSwz7Jf1K7a


Regards,


Clint

[musec04]

Hello,


Currently on ebay is a photo of aircraft MF.1722 which I believe may be a licence built SIA 5 :


https://www.ebay.it/itm/WWI-FOTO-ORI...AAAOSwLAtf5PC5


Regards,


Clint

[Stig Jarlevik]

Hi Clint

May I ask why you believe this one to be built by Fiat (SIA)?
I have basically no tie-ups between manufacturers and serial numbers

Cheers
Stig

[musec04]

Hi Stig,


Sure. Gentilli and Varriale in I Reparti.. have a photo on page 434 captioned as a Farman Fiat with serial MF.1711. I have assumed,always a risk I know, but seems logical that therefore all of the batch beginning MF.1707 or earlier and ending MF.1734 or possibly significantly later are Farman Fiats aka SIA 5.


Regards,


Clint

[Stig Jarlevik]

Fair enough Clint

No objections from my side.
Alegi says Fiat (SIA) got an order for 90 MF.14 (Fiat or SIA 5b) and if I interpret his Italian correct (better say Mea Culpa already here...) the first one made its ff at Mirafiori in October 1915 piloted by Francesco Brach-Papa.

Unfortunately his "big book" about Italian Military aircraft contains no serial number batches....

Cheers
Stig

[musec04]

Hi Stig,


Your question has caused me to do an image search and I rather wonder if more italian built Farman were not SIA 5 rather than MF.14. Have you anything which sheds any further light on this?


With no guarantee that this is correct, it looks like the batch commencing MF.515 were SIA 5 and the large batch beginning MF.756 or earlier also. I don't have any serial that is not a Farman variant until at least MF.1017. A very large order, if all one batch and one type. I'll have to check to see if any in the latter are definitely known to be MF.14.



Regards,


Clint

[Stig Jarlevik]

Hello again Clint

Translating Italian via google doesn't work at least not the way I try it.
To translate each word would mean you would have an answer next year, and me gone nuts in the process.

So here is my interpretation....
It seems the Italians got 14 MF.11 from France.
The first batch was ordered from Savoia in 1915 (150)
Macchi built 2 in 1915 and 48 in 1916
A company called Zari built 181 (out of an order for 220) and repaired/overhauled 262, all between 1916 - 1918
Another company, Calore di Padova built 50 in 1916 - 1917
Istituto Industriale Rossi di Vicenza built 10 in 1917 and as mentioned above
Fiat (SIA) built 90

After that it becomes very complicated, but I think he says that
Savoia got further orders and built 247 in 1916, 196 in 1917 and 8 in 1918.

A company called Officine Ferroviarie Meridionali di Napoli built 69 (out of an order for 100), construction actually taking place with Vickers-Tarni at La Spezia in 1917-18

All this would mean the Italians built some 1050 MF 14s

I don't even dare to have an opinion where all these aircraft would fit into the Italian system....

Cheers
Stig

[musec04]

Hi Stig,


Thanks for your efforts typing all that information and putting it through a translator,what a lot of work.So if I understand correctly Alegi states that only 90 SIA 5 were built in total which I thought at first seemed rather low, but if correct would appear to reflect the number of machines in the two batches MF5xx and MF17xx, so circumstantially quite strong.


However, I note that one of the italian Farman images I posted earlier from the MF.4** batch,MF.459 is captioned as a Farman B-5, I've also seen MF.914 captioned as a Farman Fiat on the net at https://www.cultura.trentino.it/Foto...IAT-6-C.100-HP I am reluctant at this stage to accept either as definitive identifications pending further information on the type of Farmans produced in these two batches. I guess I'll have to rexamine photos and see if any can be definitively identified as Fiat engined.


Regards,


Clint

[Stig Jarlevik]

Ehhhh Clint

I didn't! It is my own "translated effort". Sorry.

No idea how anyone can read 914 on that lousy picture and btw they only say it has a Fiat engine, not actually built by Fiat as such.

I don't think I have a single photo where you can ID the manufacturer from the actual photo itself. All I am prepared to say, this is tricky, very tricky....

Cheers
Stig