Adaro 1.E-7 Chirta: 1st in Beauty.

The Chirta was one of the three contenders -with the Gil Pazo GP-1 and the Hispano HS-34- that took part in the Spanish Aeronáutica Militar’s 1934 Concurso de Aviones de Escuela /Training Aircraft Contest. Designed by former Dewoitine engineer and pilot Julio Adaro, the Chirta was a little sesquiplane built with classic construction methods and materials powered by a Czechoslovakian Walter Junior. During its test flights the Chirta showed good manners specially in acrobatics. It wasn’t enough, the 1.E-7 came third in the contest -the GP-1 won. The military coup d’état of 1936 and the subsequent Civil War put an end to further development or production plans. The start of the war caught the Chirta in the Republican Cuatro Vientos airport so it was employed by the Loyalist AF during the war. At war end the Chirta was captured by the Nationalists, the trail went cold after that.

Photo: Juan Arráez Cerdá’s archives.