AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 46 / 311

Plate 46 of 311 · Great War · Long-range patrol flying boat

Curtiss NC flying boat

NC-4 A-2294, painted as Curtiss NC-4, US Navy A-2294, the flying boat that made the first flight across the Atlantic in May 1919, via Trepassey, the Azores and Lisbon to Plymouth, and the only NC boat to survive, on loan from the Smithsonian to the National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola, Florida: a large biplane with a short single-step hull, four Liberty engines (two outboard tractors and a tandem tractor and pusher in the raised centre nacelle), king-post panels above the long upper-wing overhangs, wing-tip floats, and a biplane tail with three rudders carried on an open outrigger truss: a blue-grey hull, floats and struts, clear-doped linen wings and tail, a white ‘4’ on each side of the forward and rear hull and under the bow, and red, white and blue stripes on the centre rudder with ‘A-2294’ in black, as photographed at Pensacola (no NC boat is preserved in a UK museum; shape from a period three-view drawing checked against photographs; the museum’s beaching cradle is not modelled).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as Curtiss NC-4, US Navy A-2294, the flying boat that made the first flight across the Atlantic in May 1919, via Trepassey, the Azores and Lisbon to Plymouth, and the only NC boat to survive, on loan from the Smithsonian to the National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola, Florida: a large biplane with a short single-step hull, four Liberty engines (two outboard tractors and a tandem tractor and pusher in the raised centre nacelle), king-post panels above the long upper-wing overhangs, wing-tip floats, and a biplane tail with three rudders carried on an open outrigger truss: a blue-grey hull, floats and struts, clear-doped linen wings and tail, a white ‘4’ on each side of the forward and rear hull and under the bow, and red, white and blue stripes on the centre rudder with ‘A-2294’ in black, as photographed at Pensacola (no NC boat is preserved in a UK museum; shape from a period three-view drawing checked against photographs; the museum’s beaching cradle is not modelled). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (776 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (NC-1 to NC-4); engine, crew and dimensions are for the NC-4 A-2294 modelled here.

History

The Curtiss NC-4

In 1917 the US Navy wanted a flying boat able to cross the Atlantic under its own power, so that it could be delivered to the war in Europe without taking up room on ships and hunt U-boats when it got there. The Navy’s Bureau of Construction and Repair and Glenn Curtiss’s company designed it together, which is where the name NC, for Navy-Curtiss, comes from. To keep the hull short and light, the tail was carried well behind it on an open framework of booms, and the huge biplane wings spanned 126 feet. The first, NC-1, flew on 4 October 1918, a few weeks before the Armistice.

With the war over, the Navy set out to make the first flight across the Atlantic instead. NC-1, NC-3 and NC-4 left Rockaway, New York, on 8 May 1919, each with a crew of six and by now with four Liberty engines, two pulling and, in the centre, one pulling and one pushing. From Trepassey in Newfoundland they set off for the Azores on the evening of 16 May, guided by a chain of US warships strung across the ocean. In fog NC-1 and NC-3 came down on the sea short of the islands; NC-1 sank after its crew were rescued, and NC-3 taxied some 200 miles to Ponta Delgada on the water.

NC-4, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Albert C. Read with Lieutenants Walter Hinton and Elmer Stone of the Coast Guard as pilots, reached Horta in the Azores on 17 May and Lisbon on 27 May 1919: the first aeroplane to cross the Atlantic. It flew on to Plymouth, landing in Plymouth Sound on 31 May. Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop crossing two weeks later. Ten NC boats were built in all. NC-4 was given to the Smithsonian, and it is the only one that survives; no NC boat is in a UK museum.

This airframe

NC-4 A-2294

A-2294The airframe modelled

A-2294 was the fourth of the NC boats and the one that completed the transatlantic flight of May 1919. After a tour of the United States it was handed to the Smithsonian Institution, which restored it with the US Navy for the flight’s fiftieth anniversary in 1969. It has been on loan to the National Naval Aviation Museum at Pensacola, Florida, since the 1970s, where it stands on a beaching cradle. The model shows it as photographs of it there do: a blue-grey hull, floats and struts, clear-doped linen wings and tail, a white ‘4’ on each side of the forward and rear hull and under the bow, and red, white and blue stripes on the centre rudder with ‘A-2294’ in black. Its shape comes from a period three-view drawing checked against the photographs; the cradle is not modelled.

Where to see one

Not on charge

NC-4, the transatlantic aircraft and the only survivor, is at the National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola. None is in a UK museum.

All 311 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.