The Hydro-Glider (1931)

The first Hydro-glider in Europe is featured in this story.
Various shots of the aircraft being prepared for flight. Two men attend to the wings and add parts to the aircraft. Shot of the plane in flight. It crash lands into a river, turning upside down. M/S of the plane being towed through the water by a barge. M/S of the plane being brought into shore.
Was an item in Pathe Pictorial issue number 702.
FILM ID:914.19
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British Pathé also represents the Reuters historical collection, which includes more than 136,000 items from the news agencies Gaumont Graphic (1910-1932), Empire News Bulletin (1926-1930), British Paramount (1931-1957), and Gaumont British (1934-1959), as well as Visnews content from 1957 to the end of 1984. All footage can be viewed on the British Pathé website. www.britishpat...

[@johntreble6049]

It’s not the first ‘hydroglider’ in Europe. That honour surely belongs to the Voisin-Archdeacon which was towed for about 600m along the Seine more than 20 years before the aerial parts of this video was shot on December 7, 1931. The plane shown is the sole British Aircraft Company Model VIII on its maiden flight from the River Medway. The man with the hammer, who is also seen scrambling from the wreckage towards the end, is CH Lowe Wylde who was something of a prodigy as an aircraft engineer, and began producing aircraft to his own designs commercially in 1929. He was a great advocate of autotowing and in this respect one of history’s losers, but his firm was the only British commercial producer of gliders for two or three years until Slingsby started production under license from German constructors. The firm’s most successful glider was the Model VII which formed the basis of the waterglider seen here, as well as a motorised version - the which went on to be developed into the BAC (later Kronfeld) Drone. Lowe Wylde’s career ended in 1933 during a demonstration of the during which he seems to have been taken ill and crashed.
The Model VIII had a second, more successful, day out at Welsh Harp a few weeks after Pathé shot this. You can see a video of the one of 12 flights made that day by Googling ‘The first waterglider in the World’, a claim which is no more true than the one made here. Also: Lowe Wylde speaks!

[@humbertomonteiro6742]

Cross wind landing??

[@planespeaking]

Stalled the wing causing a ground(water) loop.