[MOC] Schneider Trophy - Supermarine Sea Lion II (Naples 1922)

Hod Carrier · April 10

<-- Macchi M.7bis (Venice 1921)

With two wins already secured, victory for Italy at Naples in 1922 would see them retain the Schneider Trophy for good. They came well-prepared and with a strong entry, expecting to win. However, there would be no easy “fly over,” as this year there were entries from France and Britain intent on making a contest of it.

The Italians once again fielded a full team comprising three different aircraft. There were two Macchis; an M.7, similar to the previous year’s winning entry, and an M.17, and the fast and highly fancied Savoia S.51. While the Macchis were modified versions of existing designs, the Savoia was a purpose-built racer. As a consequence, the Savoia was the fastest of the three and Italy’s best hope for victory. The French brought a pair of very pretty CAMS 36 flying boats adapted for racing.

The sole British entry came in the rather workmanlike shape of the Supermarine Sea Lion II flying boat. Supermarine had used the same formula they had employed with the original Sea Lion of 1919, taking an existing aircraft and garnishing it with a 450hp Napier Lion 12-cylinder “broad arrow” engine. In this case, the aircraft in question was Supermarine’s Sea King II amphibian, an already very stable and aerobatic design. Luckily these characteristics were carried forward to its new more powerful guise, something that pilot Henri Biard was probably quite thankful for when he overflew the crater of Mount Vesuvius in an attempt to look inside and was caught in a powerful thermal that lifted the aircraft a further 2,000 feet above its previous level.

The contest was conducted in an atmosphere of distrust, as each team attempted to find out the capabilities of their competitors while hiding their own from each other. Biard, knowing already that the Sea Lion II was capable of speeds in excess of 150mph, never flew at full power if he suspected that he might be observed, only doing so when far out to sea beyond prying eyes, and never showed any expertise in rounding the turn markers. So successful was he in disguising the potential of the aircraft that the Italians publicly declared that the British entry was slower than both the M.17 and the S.51.

It was the French team who were the first to show their hand. When one of their CAMS 36s capsized during preliminary trials the team decided to withdraw both aircraft. Controversially, the Savoia S.51 also capsized during the six-hour mooring-out trial but was righted by the Italian team in contravention of the rules. In spite of this, no protests were lodged and the S.51 was not excluded from the race.

Biard in the Sea Lion II would be the first pilot to take the race start, and he opted to fly flat out. By the time all four competitors had completed the first lap it was clear that Biard was the fastest with Alessandro Passaleva in the Savoia S.51 second. Without the speed to challenge the Sea Lion II directly, the Italian pilots resorted to bunching up at the turns to try and slow the British aircraft, but Biard was able to nullify this by using his speed advantage to leapfrog over them before diving for the turn.

After half distance, Biard decided to ease back on the throttle to take some of the strain from the engine, but in doing so this allowed Passaleva in the S.51 to reduce the lead he had built up. Slowly the Savoia inched closer to the Sea Lion II before Passaleva himself was forced to reduce his pace due to a vibration, and the pursuit was over. Although the capsizing of his aircraft had not resulted in its disqualification, the soaking it received meant that the laminations in the wooden propellor were starting to fail, which is what slowed his progress. Ultimately Biard won by two minutes ahead of Passaleva and Italy was denied the chance to claim permanent ownership of the Schneider Trophy.