China Clipper

by Robert Gandt

  In January 1912 Curtiss enlarged the float of his seaplane to incorporate the cockpit into the hull. This two-seat, flat-bottomed machine, though underpowered and, like Triad, hampered by the “water suction” problem, thus became the first true flying boat.

  The “unsticking” problem that bedeviled every builder of floatplanes was solved in typical Curtiss fashion. Back in Hammondsport in early 1912, Curtiss and Naval Constructor Holden Richardson were experimenting with the flat-bottomed flying boat on Lake Keuka. While Curtiss followed the machine about the lake studying the action of the hull on the water, he hit upon an idea. Returning to the shop, he instructed his foreman to attach two wedge-shaped blocks to the bottom of the hull. On the next flight, the flying boat lifted easily from the water. Curtiss had invented the “step,” a feature that would be employed in every flying boat built from that day on.6

  The new aircraft, called the F-boat, achieved spectacular success. Eventually powered by the new Curtiss OXX eight-cylinder, 100-horsepower engine mounted between the wings, the aircraft had a modernistic tail assembly constructed integrally with the hull. F-boats were sold to the U.S. Navy and to the army and were built under license in Britain by the S. E. Saunders firm. The F-boat also attracted civilian buyers, mainly wealthy sportsmen undaunted by the $6,000-plus price.

  In 1912 Glenn Curtiss received his second successive Collier Trophy. Through his energies, the flying boat had become a practical flying machine. By late 1913 at least ten American and European builders, including the Wright brothers and a newcomer named Glenn L. Martin, were producing flying boats. It was time for the flying boat to graduate from a sporting vehicle to a vessel of commerce.

  * * *

  In 1913 the London Daily Mail stimulated Glenn Curtiss’s Yankee businessman’s imagination with the offer of a prize—10,000 pounds sterling (then $50,000) for the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean. The offer stipulated that the flight must be “from any point in the U.S., Canada or Newfoundland, to any point in Great Britain or Ireland, in seventy-two consecutive hours.”

  The Atlantic! It had been only a decade since the events at Kitty Hawk, scarcely three years since Hydravion’s first wobbling ascents. Flying boats and floatplanes were still capable of little more than leapfrogging from lake to pond.

  That same year the American department store tycoon, Rod Wanamaker, agreed to finance the building of a Curtiss flying boat that would capture the prize.

  The implications of an aircraft that could span oceans caught the attention of the U.S. Navy. After a study of Curtiss’s plans, the navy detailed two officers, Lieutenant John Towers and Lieutenant (j.g.) Patrick Bellinger, to the Curtiss plant in Hammondsport.*

  Wanamaker had wanted Curtiss to be the pilot of the Atlantic flight. Curtiss declined, saying that in his opinion Lieutenant Towers was the best choice for the mission. The Navy Department, however, had other plans for Towers. Their handful of qualified aviators had to be available in the event of an expected conflict in Mexico. At Wanamaker’s suggestion, a British aviator, John Cyril Porte, was recruited for the Atlantic flight.

  Porte was a former Royal Navy officer who had worked in England with Curtiss’s licensee, White and Thompson. Medically retired from the Royal Navy in 1911, Porte had learned to fly in France and was an early devotee of the flying boat. He became caught up in the adventure of Curtiss’s project, which was then called the “Transatlantic Flyer.”7 Porte’s copilot was to be George Hallett, a skilled aviator and Curtiss Company mechanic.

  The design of the Transatlantic Flyer evolved from a single-engine, tractor-driven machine to an aircraft of massive proportions. Given the name America, the flying boat’s final configuration was a biplane with a streamlined hull-fuselage, powered by two Curtiss OX-5 100-horsepower engines mounted between the wings. America’s upper wing spanned seventy-two feet and the lower forty-six feet. Her hull was thirty-eight feet long.

  By the time of the christening at Lake Keuka on 21 June 1914, America was a celebrity. During flight tests, though she performed gracefully, the flying boat could not lift as much load from the water as would be required to cross the Atlantic. Further experiments were conducted, including the addition of a third engine. Several hulls were tested. A finned hull beam was installed which, combined with the power of the third engine, allowed America to lift some 6,203 pounds from the water—the greatest load then ever taken into the air.

  Porte planned to launch the oceanic flight during the summer of 1914. His route would be a nonstop track from Trepassey Bay, Newfoundland, directly to the Bay of Horta in the Azores. Though America’s instrumentation was primitive by later standards, she was equipped with engine and flight instruments and provisions for celestial navigation, including a device donated by Lawrence Sperry for measuring drift. A wireless apparatus had been offered, but Curtiss decided to dispense with radio because of its weight. America, the world’s most advanced aircraft, would carry for primary communications a cage of carrier pigeons.8

  Curtiss’s design changes on the hull and engine configuration caused postponements. Weather further delayed the departure. Finally in midsummer America and her sister ship, which would serve as a backup, were crated and shipped from Hammondsport to St. John’s, Newfoundland. Porte announced that they would take off in early August.

  On 3 August 1914, Germany declared war on France. The following day Great Britain declared war on Germany. John Porte left to rejoin the Royal Navy. There would be no transatlantic flight.

  America and her sister ship finally made an Atlantic crossing—beneath tarpaulins on the deck of a freighter. As a squadron commander in England, John Porte had persuaded his superiors in the Royal Navy to acquire the aircraft for maritime patrol. It was designated the H-4. Sixty-two models of the America were shipped to the Royal Navy.

  Dubbed the “Small America,” the H-4 was replaced in 1916 by the larger H-12, called the “Large America.” With engines of either 275 horsepower or 375 horsepower, the H-12 had an endurance of over six hours and could carry a four-man crew, four machine guns, and 400 pounds of bombs. Just prior to the end of the war, an even larger version appeared, designated the H-16.

  Another successful flying boat that appeared near the war’s end was the HS series, built for both the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy. Smaller in scale than the “Large America,” the HS mounted a single Liberty twelve-cylinder, 400-horsepower engine and was designed to meet a requirement for a flying boat that could be stowed aboard a seaplane carrier.

  Even Curtiss’s little F-boat went to war. Versions were employed as reconnaissance aircraft, and some 150 updated models were delivered to the U.S. Navy as flying boat trainers. In 1916 the U.S. Coast Guard received its first F-boat, thus beginning the era of Coast Guard aviation.

  John Porte was posted to the Seaplane Experimental Establishment at Felixstowe, on the east coast of Britain. There he became a key figure in the development of the Curtiss designs. Porte’s redesigned hull and the addition of Rolls-Royce engines resulted in a series of British-produced Curtiss derivatives called the Felixstowe flying boats.

  The distinction of becoming the first U.S.–built aircraft to destroy an enemy aircraft fell to a Curtiss boat. On 14 May 1917, an RAF H-12 attacked the German Zeppelin L-22, riddling the airship with machine-gun fire. The Zeppelin crashed into the North Sea. In another action in June 1918, three Felixstowe flying boats and an H-12 engaged twelve German Brandenburg seaplanes. In the melee, the H-12 and one Felixstowe were downed. They had accounted for six German aircraft.9

  Curtiss’s civilian Transatlantic Flyer had metamorphosed into a weapon of war. But with its destructive power, the flying boat had acquired range and a lifting capability that was undreamed of when Curtiss built the America in 1914.

  The Atlantic, like an unclaimed trophy, waited to be crossed.

  *Bell and the AEA favored “aerodrome” to label their flying machines. Not until “aerodrome” had entered usage as the name for a flying facility did the AEA reluct
antly accept the more popular “aeroplane.” By the end of WW I “aeroplane” was supplanted by “airplane.”

  *When the designation of aviators became formalized, Ellyson was designated Naval Aviator No. 1.

  *Towers was Naval Aviator No. 3. Bellinger became No. 8.

  3

  Extended Range

  Almost from the inception of manned flight, the notion of crossing the great gulf by air had titillated the imaginations of airmen. But by man’s second decade of flight, flying the Atlantic still amounted to nothing more than a risky adventure.

  The risks were enormous, both in lives and material. Such risks required subsidy. Glenn Curtiss, a bona fide adventurer, was also a consummate capitalist who understood subsidy. He had undertaken the America venture with Rod Wanamaker’s money and the Daily Mail prize as his profit.

  And then in the fifth year of the Great War, the notion of flying over the Atlantic gained a new, noncapitalistic impetus. German U-boats had turned the ocean into a killing ground. In 1917, 2,600 vessels had been lost to a U-boat fleet of only 127.1 The submarine had evolved as a weapon of war just as dramatically as the airplane.

  Despite the strides made in range and endurance, maritime patrol aircraft were still not an effective deterrent to the U-boat menace. The British concentrated their aerial antisubmarine forces around seaplane tenders and aircraft carriers, tethering their warplanes to their mother ships. The strategy had netted only minimal success. The ships and aircraft served mainly as daytime, fair-weather convoy escorts.

  And then the United States entered the war. Rear Admiral David W. Taylor, chief of the navy’s Bureau of Construction and Repair, wrote in a memorandum: “It seems to me the submarine menace can be abated, even if not destroyed, from the air. The ideal solution would be big flying boats . . . able to fly across the Atlantic to avoid difficulties of delivery.”2

  In the summer of 1917 Taylor issued an official requirement for a new class of flying boat. This would be a flying boat that not only could remain on station for extended periods, but was specifically designed to be ferried across the ocean.

  A contract was struck with Glenn Curtiss. The new Curtiss design received the designation NC—N for navy, C for Curtiss.

  The prototype, NC-1, made her maiden flight on 4 October 1918 at Rockaway Beach, New York. With a 126-foot wingspan and an empty weight of 12,956 pounds, the huge craft drew the attention of the world. Her flight tests had barely begun, though, when history erased her mission. On 11 November 1918, the Great War ended.

  In the tumult of the next months, the plans for the NC boats went on the shelf. But in offices of the chief of naval operations aviation section, a lone voice continued to propose a mission for the NC boats. Commander John Towers, Naval Aviator Number 3 and original choice as one of the pilots on Curtiss’s transatlantic venture, was the senior aviator in the navy. Towers was proposing that the NC boats become the first aircraft in history to fly the Atlantic.

  In the climate of demilitarization, the idea might have been regarded as extravagant and ill-timed. But the navy—and the country—were changing. Fresh from a short but victorious foray into the Great War, the United States was brimming with patriotic fervor and a zeal to demonstrate American know-how. Though aviation had come of age during the war, the United States had yielded its early lead to the Europeans, who for four frenetic years spent their energies and national treasuries on instruments of war.

  There was glory to be won. The distinction of flying a nation’s flag from America to Europe would be a symbolic victory, amounting to far more than a bid for the Daily Mail prize money, still unclaimed since 1914. The Atlantic race was a contest of national prestige.

  In the spring of 1919, NC Seaplane Division One was commissioned. Assigned as commanding officer of the unit was, appropriately, John Towers. Towers recruited his crews from the best talent of 1919 naval aviation.

  In command of NC-1 was Lieutenant Commander Patrick N. L. Bellinger, Naval Aviator Number 8. Assigned as pilot of the NC-1 was Lieutenant Commander Marc A. Mitscher. The names of both officers would figure prominently in future naval history.

  Commanding NC-4 was Lieutenant Commander Albert C. Read. Read was a calm and competent officer, a naval aviator since 1915. His pilot was Lieutenant (j.g.) Walter Hinton, a skilled young aviator who would make history as a pioneer ocean pilot. The copilot was Lieutenant Elmer Stone, the Coast Guard’s first designated aviator.

  NC-3 was commanded by Towers himself, who chose as his pilot Lieutenant Commander Holden C. “Dick” Richardson, a brilliant engineer who had participated almost from the beginning in the evolution of the oceangoing flying boat. Like most of the airmen assigned to the NC Division, Richardson was a Curtiss-trained aviator.

  NC-2, originally configured as a three-engined aircraft, would not make the flight. Following a hangar fire and several engine and cockpit configuration changes, she was cannibalized to outfit her sister ships. The final versions of the NC boats were powered by four 400-horsepower Liberty engines, the two center engines mounted in tandem. This pusher-puller installation eliminated much of the power asymmetry problem in the event of an engine loss in the yaw-critical aircraft. The cockpits were relocated from the center nacelle to the more practical forward fuselage station.

  The aircraft commanders served as the navigators, an early naval practice that emphasized the role navigation was expected to play in the transatlantic endeavor. In addition to the pilot and navigator, each aircraft carried a relief pilot, a radio officer, an engineering officer and a mechanic.

  Shortly before dusk on Friday, 16 May 1919, all three NC boats thundered across the choppy surface of Trepassey Bay and became airborne. In a loose formation they turned eastward and droned into the gathering darkness, bound for the Azores.

  The Atlantic proved to be a formidable foe. Oceanic weather reporting and forecasting were a nonexistent craft in 1919. Celestial navigation, using the bubble sextant developed by a young naval officer named Richard E. Byrd, depended on a clear view of the stars and smooth air. The NC navigators depended heavily—too heavily, it turned out—on their chain of ocean-based naval vessels. The ships were supposed to emit smoke, fire star shells, train searchlights, and provide meteorological data and radio direction finding. But this method required close contact between the aircraft and their surface guardians. The primitive airborne radios had a range of only about fifteen miles.

  A full moon glinted over the Atlantic. On two occasions the lumbering flying boats nearly collided in the misty gloom as the navy airmen peered downward for signs of their oceanic checkpoints. NC-4, the fastest of the boats, gradually outdistanced her sister ships and disappeared from view.

  And then came the dawn. Gone were the moon and the smooth air. Gone, too, were the readily identifiable lights of the ocean stations. Fog blanketed the sea. Rain squalls battered the flying boats, and the air turned the planes into bucking, heaving monsters. In the open cockpits, the cold-soaked pilots battled to keep the unstable flying boats straight and level.

  Peering into the murk from the NC-3, John Towers spotted a ship that he judged to be the USS Maddox on station 15. Using the new fix, he adjusted his course accordingly. The fix turned out to be erroneous. From then onward NC-3 was off track.

  Meanwhile Pat Bellinger, in NC-1, was having troubles of his own. There had been no time to rig properly the new flying surfaces pirated from the NC-2. Now his aircraft was flying poorly. In the turbulent air the strength of two pilots was required on the controls to keep the wallowing airplane upright. With no visual reference in the turbulent clouds, the pilots were having extreme difficulty maintaining level flight.

  Finally forced down to 75 feet above the waves, flying in fog, Bellinger worried about running into the 7,600-foot-high volcanic island of Pico. He made the decision to attempt a water landing and then shut down the engines in order to obtain a fix with the radio direction finder. In the heaving seas, the NC-1 slammed into a trough and lost the lower portio
n of her tail assembly.

  For five hours Bellinger’s seasick crew bailed water and transmitted S.O.S. signals. Finally the Greek ship Ionia steamed out of the murk, rescued the fliers and attempted to take the damaged flying boat in tow. In the tossing sea, however, the tow cable snapped. Soon thereafter the NC-1 was lost to the Atlantic.

  John Towers, after fifteen hours’ flying in the NC-3, had no knowledge of the fate of NC-1. Realizing that he was now lost, and unable to obtain any further surface sightings, he reached the same decision as Bellinger. He would land on the sea and determine his position with the radio direction finder.

  But the heaving Atlantic treated NC-3 no gentler than it had the NC-1. Glancing off the crest of a huge swell, the fragile craft skipped once more, then plunged into a trough. As she shuddered to a halt, Towers already knew the worst. The hull was ruptured. The controls were gone. The center engine mount was irreparably damaged. NC-3 would fly no more.

  They were only 45 miles from Flores, but considerably off the track where ships would be searching. They could hear the destroyers chattering on the radio, but they could not break in. Towers’s immediate problem was to save his aircraft. The NC-3 was sinking under the weight of the water collecting in her wings. Emergency patchwork was accomplished. For nearly two days NC-3 sailed the Atlantic, tail first, crew members stationed on each wing to keep the precarious craft balanced. On 19 May 1919, the battered aircraft and her weary crew reached Ponta Delgada. John Towers ordered the engines started. The distress signal was lowered and the Stars and Stripes hoisted. Under her own power, NC-3 taxied into the harbor unassisted.