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The Villiers IV or Villiers 4bis was a French two seat naval floatplane. Only one was built and was later modified into the Villiers XI by replacing the Type IV's twin floats with a single, central one. ==Design== As a shipboard aircraft the Villier IV was required to have, in addition to the normal equipment of a two seat military machine, folding wings and tow and hoist points. It also had to be well provided with navigation, radio and visual signalling equipment.〔 It was a single bay sesquiplane. Like most Villiers aircraft, the wingplans were strictly rectangular in plan apart from a shallow cut-out over the forward cockpit; the upper wings had three times the area of the lower. They were built around spruce box spars, fabric covered and braced together by an outward and forward leaning interplane strut on each side. The lower wings were attached to the lower fuselage longerons and braced to the upper longerons with single struts leaning inwards at about 45°. The upper wing was held over the fuselage by a fore and aft pair of W-form struts, one to each of its two spars. Wing folding was achieved with hinges on the rear longerons, immediately outside of the centre section to fuselage struts. There were full span ailerons, fitted only on the upper wing. A pair of upper wing hoisting points enabled the Villier IV to be lifted back on board its ship by a crane.〔 The fuselage of the Type IV was built around six spruce longerons with stringers, formers and poplar plywood skinning but no internal cross-bracing producing a semi-monocoque structure. Its engine was a Lorraine-Dietrich water-cooled W-12 with a Lamblin radiator mounted transversely under it. Aft, the pilot's cockpit was largely under the wing despite the trailing edge cut-out to improve the field of fire from the gunner's cockpit behind him. The gunner had a pair of Lewis guns on a flexible mount and the pilot controlled a fixed pair of synchronised Vickers machine guns firing through the propeller arc. At the rear both fin and tailplane were triangular; the later, placed at the top of the fuselage could be adjusted on the ground. The rudder was curved, broad and reached down to the keel. The elevators were balanced, curved edged and had a cut-out for rudder movement.〔 The Type IV had a pair of floats, about and apart, single stepped, round topped in cross-section and with hard chine but almost flat bottoms. These were mounted on an axle just forward of the wing leading edge, supported at its centre by a V-strut from the lower fuselage longerons and at its extremities by struts at about 45° to the same points. Under the trailing edge a W-form strut linked the longerons and floats, allowing passage for bombs released from the central fuselage underside. Vertical legs transmitted landing forces to the lower wing just inboard of the folding line. The floats were made of spruce and ply covered; on the planing bottoms the ply was thick.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Villiers IV」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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