Jetrader - November/December 2011 - 36

Curtiss NC seaplane. Plane No. four of four built, named NC-4, sometime after the translatlantic test ﬂight, 1919. Visible is the fourth pusher engine which was added for that ﬂight. make space for engine and airframe production in Hammondsport; however, they soon ran out of space and picked Buffalo for his next factories. Its skilled labor force, hydroelectric power from Niagara Falls, and location as a major transport and ocean shipping hub made it an ideal area. The three factories, including the world’s largest aircraft plant of 71 acres at that time, had 18,000 employees; Hammondsport, with most roads unpaved, had some 1,000 inhabitants yet employed more than 2,000 at the factory. The British and U.S. Navy maintained missions there, with one ofﬁcer bringing his wife, the future Duchess of Windsor. Curtiss sold his ﬁrst airplane only ﬁve years before the start of World War I. Now he was a major developer and producer of both land and 1,000 seaplanes together with their engines. In 1917, Curtiss created a new facility for research, design and prototype testing in Garden City, Long Island, with more than 800 employees and scientists; it was here with its three wind tunnels the Navy’s NC ﬂying boats would be built in an attempt to win the £10,000 prize offered by Lord Northcliffe for the ﬁrst transatlantic crossing by an aircraft. There were no restrictions on the number of stops, but it had to be completed within 72 hours. Four ships were built with short hulls. The tails were mounted on long booms, and they handled perfectly on their test ﬂights; with four water cooled V12 engines of 400 hp they had a crew of six. NC-2 was cannibalized for parts, and NC-3 would be commanded by John Henry Towers. On 8 May 1919, the three ﬂying boats (ships in naval parlance) departed from Rockaway on Curtiss Engineering Corporation in Garden City, Long Island and arrived in Long Island. 36 The ofﬁcial publication of the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading Curtiss was an astute businessman and soon concluded that if his ﬁrm was to produce aircraft and their engines in quantity, there had to be trained pilots to ﬂy them, so he founded ﬂight schools across America; today, many of them, such as Miami and San Diego, are major commercial airports. John Henry Towers of the U.S. Navy was one such graduate and awarded Naval Aviator No. 3; he can truly be called the father of U.S. Navy Aviation. By World War II, he had built its air service into a major arm with a Paciﬁc ﬂeet of 11 carriers and as Admiral Chester Nimitz’s chief advisor and his Deputy Commander-in-Chief, developed the strategy that eventually destroyed the Japanese ﬂeet as an effective ﬁghting force. By 1912, with the aid of a former Sopworth engineer imported from Britain, a number of two-tandem seat biplanes were produced, the most famous being the model JN known as the Curtiss Jenny. Besides the ﬂying schools, both the army and navy bought it as a trainer and by the end of World War I, more than 7,000 had been produced with Britain purchasing 250 plus all of his new ﬂying boats. Meanwhile Curtiss spun off the motorcycle business to a new subsidiary to

Newfoundland on 15 May, departing on the 16th. For the crossing to the Azores, 22 destroyers were deployed at intervals for navigation illuminated by searchlights, but heavy fog rendered them invisible forcing NC-1 and NC-3 to land in the ocean. NC-1 was taken in tow but was damaged and had to be sunk; NC-3, commanded by Powers taxied more than 200 miles to Ponta Delgada in the Azores and was forbidden to continue by Navy Secretary Daniels. After an air turn back, NC-4 commanded by Albert Cushing Read, took off again after repairs on 27 May and guided by 13 ships arrived in Lisbon 9 hours, 43 minutes later. It was the ﬁrst transatlantic crossing by air. Continuing on via Ferrol in Spain and with 10 more navy ships to guide them, NC-4 arrived in Plymouth on 31 May, for a total elapsed time of 23 days. On 14-15 of June, Alcock and Brown ﬂew nonstop from Newfoundland to Ireland in 16 hours and 27 minutes, thus gaining the prize. Although the Curtiss Engineering Corporation in Garden City was his main base, it was Florida that attracted Curtiss and while he remained on the board of his companies, he moved South. After founding a new community called Brighton by Lake Okechobee, he went on to found the towns of Hialeah and Miami Springs with a number of wealthy partners. Meanwhile in 1929, after long negotiations, the Curtiss ﬁrms merged with Wright Aeronautical to form the CurtissWright Corporation, where he served on the board and headed its technical committee. On 23 July 1930 at the age of 52, Curtiss collapsed and died while recovering from a successful appendicitis operation in Buffalo; the caused was a pulmonary embolism. The funeral service was held in Hammondsport, the home of his ﬁrst enterprises in aviation.

References:
Hell-Rider to King of the Air; by Kirk W. House; published by Society of Automotive Engineers, 2003 Wikipedia.0rg/wiki/Glen_Curtiss Wikipedia.0rg/wiki/The_Wright_brothers_patent _war Wikipedia.0rg/wiki/NC-4 Numerous others for cross checks Bill Bath is Appraiser Fellow-Administrative Director, ISTAT International Appraisers’ Program.

http://www.naylornetwork.com/ist-nxt/

Jetrader - November/December 2011

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