Praga E.51

Designed as a three seat reconnaissance aircraft, it was originally planned to have G & R 14M Mars engines, but in prototype form had to make do with 2 x 473 h.p. Walter Sagitta 1 MR water cooled engines. The war intervened and the one and only E.51 was taken by the Nazis for evaluation with them deciding that the F.W.189 was a better option - oh really!

Span 51'2" Length 38'4" Height 11'5" Wing area 382 sq ft
Empty weight 6,840 lb Take off weight 9,083 lb
Maximum speed 236 mph Cruising speed 205 mph Range 560 mi
Service ceiling 23,000 ft
Armament 1 x 7.92 mm machine gun in wing root, 1 x 7.92 mm machine gun on a flexible mount.
1 x 200 kg bomb or 6 x 50 kg bomb. If bombs were not carried there was an option to mount a 20 mm cannon.

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The late 30's and early 40's appeared to be the "Golden Age" of the twin engine, twin boom aircraft; Lockheed P38, Savoia-Marchetti S.M.91, Fokker G1, Focke-Wulf Fw 189, Arado Ar 232, and the Fairchild C-82 Packet, Northrop P-61 just to name a few.

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First flight 26 /5 /1938, all wood construction, too heavy for the 2x550HP (4100kg), fixed landing gear, no armor protection, too slow (380km /h /optimal altitude), weak armament. Had some potential though. Maybe with Walter Mars (G-R Mars built in licence) and retractable landing gear it would have been a useful aircraft.

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This would be a great subject for Free-flight scale rubber power model

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Praga flew first time in 1936..before G I

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the wings are elliptical like Heinkel 70, vertical fin curved too. Engines inline inverted, maybe walter sagitta. G1 wings and tail straight taper, engines radial Gnome-leRhone. Still, they look similar.

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No it didn't. It was completly original Tchech project. It's true is similar to Fokker's plane but in 30th years last century many planes were built in "tailboom" configuration, for exaple: P-38, P-61, Fw-189, Bv-138 et al. Simply, this configuration was "stylish" in this time (i think):-)

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is dit geen fokker G1 in lisensie?

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