Vintage Wings - Gakkel III - 1910

*** Vintage Wings ***

Gakkel III - 1910

Yakov Gakkel (1874-1945), an engineer and designer born in Irkutsk, was one of the founders of the St. Petersburg's tram system and builder of some of the first Russian power lines.
Like many talented engineers of the time, Gakkel was attracted to the then fashionable hobby of flight.
His first design (Gakkel I, 1909), a bamboo built tractor biplane with an Anzani engine powering two propellers through a belt-drive system, was destroyed before the first flying attempt when the engine caught fire.
Next year his second design was ready to be tested but the Antoinette engine proved to be underpowered for the weight of the aircraft, and this was never able to leave the ground.
The success would come later in the same year, with the Gakkel III. The plane had several innovations, like no wing struts (unusual for a biplane) and a very efficient landing gear design.
Originally powered by an Antoinette engine, was soon changed to an Argus and later an Anzani, that was the final choice.
The aircraft was completed in May 1910, and the 24 of that month in the Gatchina airfield, the aeroclub commision officially registered the first flight of an entirely designed and built russian airplane.