The Flying Flea. ('Le Pou-du-Ciel'). How to build and fly it
London, Sampson Low, Marston, [1934? - second impression, the first impression of 6000 copies having sold out in less than a month].
Octavo, xviii, 269 pages with 70 illustrations plus a frontispiece plate.
Cloth a little marked and flecked, with the bottom portion of the spine sunned; ownership details; a very good copy with the dustwrapper chipped and torn with some loss (notably the bottom third of the spine) and indifferently repaired with clear tape (now staining the paper).
Translated from the French by the Air League of the British Empire. One of the Aviation for the Amateur series - how to built the original ultra-light. Offered together with a leaflet commemorating 'The First Officially Observed Flight of a Flying Flea in Australia. Constructed by the Litchfield Enginering Co., Limited, from the design of the Frenchman, M. Henri Mignet and test flown by Pilot W. Scott Maddocks at Parafield Aerodrome, on July 16th., 1936' (255 x 180 mm, 4 pages, with an illustration of the aircraft on the front page). Apart from giving the dimensions, the engine and its performance capabilities at the foot of the front page, the Flea is not mentioned again - the rest of the leaflet extolls the virtues of Litchfield's Hardened & Tempered Cylinder Liners (complete with illustrations of three of them). Parnell and Boughton, in their superb book 'Flypast. A Record of Aviation in Australia' devote half a page to 'homebuilt[s] of the Flying Flea type' (see the entry for 30 January 1936); it is not exactly a good advertisement for the object. The section of the article devoted to this machine is perhaps the most encouraging, so we quote it in full: '26 [sic] Jul 1936 a Flying Flea was successfully flown at Parafield SA by W.S. Maddocks; built by Keith Litchfield and assistants, the first two flights were hops across the airfield; the third was a wide circuit, but it had engine trouble and force-landed about a mile away'. John Winchester's book, 'The World's Worst Aircraft' (2005) pulls fewer punches about the 'Sky Louse ... A series of fatal crashes in 1936 finally warranted a wind-tunnel investigation of the Flea, proving that if the nose was lowered below 15 degrees there was insufficient pitching moment to raise the nose and a crash was inevitable. The Flea was banned in 1939'.
Item #71292
Price (AUD):
$450.00