01/31/2015. Remarks by Kees Kort: "During 1910 a French biplane appeared which had several novel features. It was named 'Le Danton' as written large at the side of the fuselage, where on the rudder it says F. Danton constructeur (constructor). In this case the designer was the very gifted François-Victor Denhaut (1877-1952), but as he could not finance the building of the plane himself he needed a financer to realize the machine. The man with the finances was Frédéric Danton, a wealthy industrial who manufactured carpets. As he paid for the development and building, the name of Danton was all over the plane.

The novel construction of the biplane shows in the negative stagger of the wings, the top wing was displaced backwards, an aerodynamic novelty which was patented by Danton. As the machine was intended to perform the first flight from Nice to Corsica the fuselage was in the form of a canoe. The idea was that when a ditch into the Mediterranean Sea would happen the 'boat' plane would float on the water.

The Danton biplane flew already in 1910 at the Juvisy airfield in France, powered by a 35 hp Lemasson engine. The crossing from Nice to Corsica was never made with this machine. The first example of the Danton was sold and two more samples were built, but after that Denhaut went his own way. Unfortunately for Denhaut, one of the brilliant flying boat designers in France at that time, he never got much of his name on his actually built designs. The closest he came was during WW1 with the Donnet-Denhaut firm (D.D.) which produced many designs of Denhaut in large quantity."