from wikipedia

The Bernard H.V.40, H.V. 41 and H.V.42 were racing seaplanes designed by Société des Avions Bernard for the French government to compete in the Schneider Trophy Races.

The H.V.40 was designed by Georges Bruner and was similar to the Bernard 20 landplane fighter. It was a streamlined single-seat cantilever monoplane and had two metal floats attached underneath the fuselage on inverted vee-struts. The H.V.40 was to powered by a Gnome-Rhône 9Kfr Mistral radial engine. The aircraft was ready for testing by May 1929 but due to delays with the engine it did not fly and the French government withdrew the team from the 1929 race.

Originally designed to produce 1,000 hp (746 kW) the Mistral never achieved the required power output and the H.V.40 did not fly until July 1931. The first flight was from Lake Berre the base of the French team for the 1931 race. The H.V.40 flew well but had poor high-speed performance and was only used for a number of training flights.










General characteristics H.V. 40

Crew: 1
Length: 7.41 m (24 ft 3¾ in)
Wingspan: 8.70 m (28 ft 6½ in)
Height: 3.60 m (11 ft 9¾ in)
Wing area: 10.00 m2 (107.64 ft2)
Powerplant: 1 × Gnome-Rhône 9Kfr Mistral radial piston engine, 597 kW (800 hp)

Performance

Maximum speed: 420 km/h (261 (estimated) mph)

Bernard 20 for reference:

The H.V.41 was one of two designs ordered for use by the French team in the 1929 Schneider Trophy. Although the H.V.40 was to be powered by a radial engine, the H.V.41 was to use a new liquid-cooled Hispano-Suiza 12Ns Special. It was a streamlined single-seat cantilever monoplane and had two metal floats attached underneath the fuselage on inverted vee-struts. The H.V.41 was ready for testing by July 1929 but due to delays with the engine it did not fly until August and the French government withdrew the team from the 1929 race. The aircraft was then used for training by the French Schneider Trophy team.

Bernard H.V. 42

from wikipedia

Three H.V.42s were ordered by the French government for use as trainers for the French Schneider Trophy team at Lake Berre. Similar to the earlier H.V.41 they were streamlined single-seat cantilever monoplanes with twin floats. The first H.V.42 flew in March 1931 and was soon joined by the other two. Marked as "1" "2" and "3" they were used during the summer of 1931 to train the French team for the 1931 race.

Drawings for these are VERY hard to find. I will keep up my search and update as can. If you have some, please share.

Hi there,

I´m new on this forum but for those whom are interested, I added some animations links of my last 3D model of Bernard HV40 (based on Docavia published drawings) :

Bernard HV40 Hangar Fugue2 (0 min 52 sec)

Bernard HV40 crossing 01 (0 min 26 sec)

HV40 09 01 (0 min 33 sec)

Hey bsequane, great model, would you share it ?
Here's my models so far..

Those Schneider racers sure are thrilling!

Thank you PB4 for sharing your 3D work, good job ! It's a lot of work and iterative design loops to reach some shape as close as possible to the original ! I have actually updated it a bit since my last post. Unfortunately except the famous drawing from Kavelaars (attached), the original prints might be stored somewhere in some archive area (Musée de l'Air near Paris ? Musée de l'hydraviation in Biscarosse ?) Pictures of the Bernard HV40 are not nemourous or hard to find. A fair source anyway is the book "Les avions Bernard" by Jean Liron published in the "Docavia Editions Lariviere" N°31.

thanks bsequane, it is a great model you have, I have been to the archives of Le Musee de l'Air in Le Bourget and asked for everything they had on the HV-40 but got nothing more than what's already out there. Few reports on the 120 220 and 320 including floats tests and some wing profile test etc that are nice to see but nothing on the 40.
I've queried Biscarosse as well, they are very approachable, but nothing came out, private collections/archives was mentioned as a potential source but that can't be easily researched.
I've tried to follow the company's history in hope to find descendants with a castle and a cave full of bottle of wines and test reports to no avail.. it failed so long ago...
I like your engine detail work !

I obviously asked where was that wooden model but nobody knows...

The wooden reduced scale model can be a wind tunnel aerodynamics test model of 1929... Interesting picture ! The fairings of the engine have obviously been redesigned since. Was it tested at Eiffel Tower wind tunnel or at Bernard test facilities ?

No info about the wind tunnel, but yes Eiffel would make sense.. interesting looking at the exhaust pipes.. you can see on my first and last picture above what looks like an exhaust pipe below the engine, It doesn't look like it has a collector and a single exhaust though, your model is probably very accurate, how did you determined the exhaust pipes geometry/position ?
Cowling of the 40 can be seen on the right of the photo bellow, on the other one you can see the HV-40 in the background with the engine on but no cowlings..
You've obviously seem the cowling wooden metal forming frame in my previous pics.. lots of good stuff to find in the backgrounds

Edit : added framed picture with the details of interest

Hi PB4,
Thank you for those good pics ! Good remark about exhaust pipes appearing in my HV40 3D model : The engine shown is not the original Gnome & Rhône one but a RC model (EVO radial 9 cyl. 99cc) I redrew for a potential integration into a future flying model... The original, a Gnome-Rhône Mistral 9K fr (see pictures below) shows exhaust pipes turned with outlet up, it is the same layout on the HV40 according to the picture of the nose.

awesome details on that nose cowling picture, where is that from ?

It's a picture published in the french periodic magazine"Le Fanatique de l'Aviation" #81 from 1976 (probably available on eBay). You may also find some pictures not easy to find anywhere else.