Few
people know that the very first air meeting was held in the city of
Tournai from September 5 to 14, 1909 on the "Plaine des Manœuvres"
(army training field)
A local writer,
Jacques De Ceuninck
has published a book (in
french) about that "aviation week".
<<<>>>
Another document dedicated to the photographer
René Desclée
displays several pictures
of the planes and pilots including a triplane aicraft built by a
local engineer :
Walther Bulot.
With the next two years, Bulot built four other planes : Bulot 1909 Biplane, Bulot 1911 Biplane la Mouette, Bulot 1911 Monoplane,
Bulot 1911 Monoplane la Mouette. (la mouette = the gull)
(source :
http://siris-thesauri.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?uri=full=3100001~!1264!0#focus
)
Above pictures from Desclée's site
One of the
Bulot biplane at the Paris 1911(?) "Salon de l'Aviation"
( © photo
http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/ courtesy Russell Naughton)
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Another local pilot,
Henri Crombez
joined the meeting and tried unsuccessfully to take off on the first
monoplane built by Debongnies, following a landing of the French
pilot Paulhan and his "Octavie III" on the lawn of Crombez's
father castle in Taintignies, a nearby village. These facts are narrated
in a page of the BAMRS site dedicated to a third regional airman :
César Bataille
from Basècles.
That page
http://www.earlyaviators.com/ecrombez.htm shows more details about
Henri Crombez http://www.earlyaviators.com
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