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The
LUSAC-11
(Lepère
United
States
Army
Combat)
was an early American two-seat
fighter aircraft. It was a French
design, commissioned and built in
the United States during World War I
and ordered in large numbers by the
United States Army Air Corps, but
these were cancelled at the end of
the war and only thirty were built.
The type was used for experimental
purposes, setting several altitude
records during the 1920s.
Designed
in 1917 by Capt. Georges LePere, a French aeronautical
engineer working for the U.S. Army Air Service, the
LUSAC 11 was the result of efforts to get an American
built fighter into combat as soon as possible. The
acronym "LUSAC" stood for LePere United States Army
Combat. LePere designed the LUSAC 11 to be a combination
fighter, light bomber and reconnaissance aircraft that
carried a pilot and an observer/gunner.
Capt. LePere, along with
several other French aviation engineers, worked on the
design at the Packard Motor Car Co. of Detroit, Mich.
Packard provided design and fabrication space and
additional engineers, and the first prototype was
completed in April 1918. After the three prototypes
received generally favorable reviews from test pilots at
Wilbur Wright Field, Ohio, the Bureau of Aircraft
Production planned to order as many as 3,525 LUSAC 11s.
At war's end in November 1918,
however, the Bureau cancelled its contracts, and only 28
production aircraft were built (with only seven of these
built before the Armistice, none saw combat). The
aircraft continued to fly in the Air Service, and
specially modified LUSAC 11 became famous by setting a
number of altitude records at Wright Field in the early
1920s.
The
aircraft on display, the only LUSAC 11 in existence,
originally went to France just before the end of the
war. In 1989 the museum acquired it from the
Musee
de l'Air in Paris, France. After extensive
restoration by museum personnel, it went on display in
1992. It is marked as it appeared while at the Allied
test facility in Orly, France, in late 1918. |
