| Model C | |
|---|---|
| |
| Wright Model C-H | |
| Role | Scout
Type of aircraft
|
| Manufacturer | Wright Company |
| Designer | Orville Wright |
| First flight | 1912 |
| Introduction | 1912 |
| Retired | 1914 |
| Primary user | Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps |
| Number built | 8 |
The Wright Model C "Speed Scout" was an early military aircraft produced in the United States and which first flew in 1912. It was a development of the Model B but was specifically designed to offer the Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps a long-range scouting aircraft. It featured a more powerful engine over its predecessor, and an endurance of around four hours. Still a two-seater, it added a complete second set of controls, meaning that either crew member could operate the aircraft. On some, the lever controls were replaced with two wheels mounted on a single yoke.[1] Aerodynamically, the small finlets ("blinkers" in the Wrights' terminology) that had been used on the Model B's undercarriage were replaced by two vertical vanes attached to the forward end of the skids.
The increase in power was to meet Army specifications that the aircraft have a 200 foot per second rate of climb, a fuel capacity for a four-hour flight, and carry a weight of 450 pounds including crew. Its simplified twin-lever control system was confusing to operate and proved difficult for novice pilots to master, while the plane itself was tail heavy and unstable.
Seven Model Cs were used by the Aeronautical Division: S.C. 10-14, S.C. 16, and S.C. 5, a Burgess Model F rebuilt to Wright C standards. An eighth Aircraft (S.C. 18), a Burgess Model J delivered in January 1913, was a Wright C built under license by the Burgess Company and Curtis. The aircraft were delivered between May 1912 and January 1913 and were subject to approval of flight tests by the Army before acceptance. The first delivered, to have been S.C. 10, crashed on June 11, 1912, killing Wright Company pilot Arthur L. Welsh and Lt. Leighton W. Hazlehurst, and was replaced in October by another Wright C, itself destroyed in a fatal crash on February 8, 1914.
TheModel Cs quickly earned an unenviable reputation when six of the eight crashed between July 8, 1913, and February 9, 1914, five of the crashes involving more fatalities. After the fifth crash on November 24, 1913, killing the Army's chief instructor and a new pilot, Grover Loening, the Wright Company factory manager, concluded that the Wright C was flawed by a design defect. Orville Wright disagreed, maintaining that pilot error was to blame, specifically unfamiliarity with the more powerful engine. He theorized that pilots stalled the aircraft by applying full power that in level flight made angle of attack critical. He proposed that full power be used only to climb and invented an angle-of-incidence indicator sensitive enough to warn a pilot that his climb or dive was too steep. he also invented an autopilot that he patented in october 1913 and successfully tested in December, but a gyroscope patented by Sperry proved more immediately practical and became standard.
An Army board of investigation concluded that the elevator was "too weak" and that the Model C itself was "dynamically unsuited for flying," despite testimony from Wright's chief instructor that poor maintenance played a key role in the fatalities. The Aeronautical Division hired Loening as an engineer to review the airworthiness of its airplanes, and the surviving Model Cs, S.C.s 16 (which had a lesspowerful Model B engine) and 5, were grounded permanently on February 24, 1914, when on Loening's recommendation the Army de-commissioned all seven of its remaining "pusher" airplanes as a matter of policy.
United StatesGeneral characteristics
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