Bellamy

Monsieur Bellamy was a flamboyant Frenchman who had experimented in France and Italy in 1906 and claimed a flight of 500m at Modane in France on the biplane which he showed at a Milan exhibition, where it was suspended below a balloon. He arrived in England in December 1906 with a dismantled 'aeroplane', which he stated had been damaged in transit and established himself at Brooklands on the uncompleted site of the Railway Straight. His original experiments in France and Italy are believed to have made use of the Voisin-Archdeacon glider on floats much modified by Bellamy. The machine was described at the time in the Auto and ten years later in Flight and was quite different from that which Bellamy erected at Brooklands.

His arrival at Brooklands followed the offer of a prize by the Brooklands Automobile Racing Club of £2500 for the first aviator to fly a circuit of the track. Preparatory to attempting flight Bellamy carried out experiments with propellers on a catamaran on the lake in Mr. Locke-King's grounds (Sir Hugh Fortescue Locke-King, the entrepreneur who founded and financed the creation of the Brooklands motor racing circuit).

However, at Brooklands, the Bellamy aircraft was constructed on the site, largely from bamboo, and was fitted with a Panhard engine driving a pusher propeller direct on the crankshaft and a tractor propeller on an extension shaft. The machine had a front mounted cruciform fin and horizontal plane, both of triangular shape, and a large flexible tailplane, serving as an elevator control, mounted midway between the top and bottom longerons of the rear structure. The whole machine looked extremely flimsy and unlikely to achieve sustained flight, which in the event it did not.

Monsieur Bellamy's second known attempt at flight was with a single-seat tailless tractor monoplane on 18 August 1908. This is almost certainly the machine which was reported to be under construction at Old Oak Farm, Shepherds Bush, London in February 1908. The trials were carried out on Petersham Meadows, below the 'Star and Garter Hotel', Richmond, and although the machine taxied well, it failed to take off. The wing span was reported as 14ft which seems unlikely. Weight empty was 700lb and the engine was 30hp of unknown make.

In the summer of 1908 Bellamy was involved in a scheme to advertise a newspaper by a balloon flight across the Channel to France which did not transpire. In March 1909 he was again experimenting with a catamaran to test improved propellers, this time on the Thames at Hammersmith.