page_title: Société pour l'aviation et ses dérivés
section_title: SPAD
hierarchical_section_title: Société pour l'aviation et ses dérivés / SPAD
caption_attribution_description: General William Mitchell's personal Spad XVI, Headquarters, Chief of Air Service, AEF
context_page_description: SPAD was a French aircraft manufacturer active between 1911 and 1921. Its SPAD S.XIII biplane was the most produced French fighter airplane of the First World War.
context_section_description: After Armand Deperdussin's bankruptcy in 1913 the company went into administration and the name was changed to Société Provisoire des Aéroplanes Deperdussin, the first use of the SPAD acronym. With Deperdussin's disgrace financing stopped and the future of the SPAD company was endangered. A consortium led by Louis Blériot bought the company's assets in 1913 and reorganized it as the Société Pour L'Aviation et ses Dérivés, retaining the SPAD acronym.
  The first Béchereau-SPAD designs were unusual two-seat biplanes which attempted to provide a forward-firing machine gun in a tractor configuration aircraft. The pilot sat behind the wings, as in a conventional design, while the observer/gunner was seated in a nacelle, or pulpit, in front of the propeller, attached precariously to the landing gear. These designs, the SPAD A-series of models S.A.1, S.A.2, S.A.3, and S.A.4, were built in small numbers, around sixty each for French (mostly S.A.2) and Russian air forces (mostly S.A.4), and were neither popular nor successful. The availability of the Nieuport 11 and subsequent development of an effective machine gun synchronizer by the French rendered this unusual configuration obsolete.
  Other early Béchereau designs for SPAD were less successful. The SE, a large twin-engine biplane bomber, performed well on trials, but it was not ordered.
  Béchereau's first real success was the SPAD S.VII, which superficially resembled a smaller, neater A.2, without the forward gunner's nacelle. Developed from the SPAD V, of which 268 were ordered but none built as SPAD Vs, the SPAD S.VII was a single-seat tractor biplane fighter of simple and robust design powered by the new Hispano-Suiza water-cooled V-8 engine. Compared to earlier fighters, when the SPAD VII appeared in 1916 it was a heavy and unmanoeuvrable aircraft, but pilots learned to take advantage of its speed and strength. Some 3,500 SPAD S.VIIs were built in France, 120 in Britain, and 100 in Russia before their capitulation, although many more had been ordered from a new factory in Yaroslavl, which was not completed until after the Russian Civil War.
  Béchereau's subsequent wartime designs followed the basic outline of the SPAD S.VII. The two-seaters, the SPAD XI and SPAD XVI, were built in moderate numbers, around 1,000 of each type, but two-seater SPADs were much less successful than the rival Breguet 14 (5,500 built) and Salmson 2 (3,200 built). Single-seat developments of the SPAD VII were more successful. The SPAD XII was a minor variant, the first to use the geared Hispano-Suiza V-8 engine, which allowed it to be armed with a 37 mm (1.46 in) single-shot Hotchkiss cannon (moteur-canon) firing through the propeller hub. Tested successfully by ace Georges Guynemer, the conclusion was that only very skilled pilots could exploit its powerful armament. Accordingly, although 300 were ordered, most were completed as normal SPAD fighters, with one (flown by Charles J. Biddle while with the USAAS' 13th Aero Squadron) and two may have served with the US Air Service in France.
  The SPAD S.XIII was essentially an enlarged SPAD S.VII redesigned around a more powerful geared drive Hispano-Suiza engine, as used on the SPAD XII. This was produced in much greater numbers: the exact total is uncertain, with figures from 7,300 to 8,472 being quoted by different sources. Single-seat SPADs were flown by many ace pilots, including Italy's Count Francesco Baracca and the United States Army Air Service's Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, with 34 and 26 victories respectively. Georges Guynemer was, as has already been noted, highly successful with the SPAD S.XII, as well as the SPAD S.VII and SPAD S.XIII. At the end of the First World War, all 1,152 single-seat fighters on the strength of French front line air units were SPAD 13s. Nearly 900 SPAD XIII fighters were reported as being used in American service.
  Although SPAD had been successful, they were unable to keep up with demand and production of their later fighters was spread out among other aircraft manufacturers, including both direct competitors, as well as
caption: SPAD S.XVI two seater
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