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The Curtiss Models F made up a family of early
flying boat A flying boat is a type of seaplane with a hull, allowing it to land on water. It differs from a floatplane in having a fuselage that is purpose-designed for flotation, while floatplanes rely on fuselage-mounted floats for buoyancy. Though ...
s developed in the
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in the years leading up to
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. Widely produced, Model Fs saw service with the
United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...
under the designations C-2 through C-5, later reclassified to AB-2 through AB-5. Several examples were exported to
Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
, and the type was built under license in
Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
.


Design and development

In configuration, these were
biplane A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...
flying boats powered by a single
engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ge ...
mounted amongst the
interplane strut In aeronautics, bracing comprises additional structural members which stiffen the functional airframe to give it rigidity and strength under load. Bracing may be applied both internally and externally, and may take the form of struts, which act in ...
s and driving a
pusher propeller In aeronautical and naval engineering, pusher configuration is the term used to describe a drivetrain of air- or watercraft with propulsion device(s) after the engine(s). This is in contrast to the more conventional tractor configuration, whic ...
. The pilot and a single passenger sat side by side in an open
cockpit A cockpit or flight deck is the area, on the front part of an aircraft, spacecraft, or submersible, from which a pilot controls the vehicle. The cockpit of an aircraft contains flight instruments on an instrument panel, and the controls th ...
. The wing cellule was derived from the Model E landplane and was of two-bay, unstaggered, equal-span construction with large
aileron An aileron (French for "little wing" or "fin") is a hinged flight control surface usually forming part of the trailing edge of each wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. Ailerons are used in pairs to control the aircraft in roll (or movement aroun ...
s mounted on the interplane struts and extending past the span of the wings themselves. The earliest examples of this design were built and sold by Curtiss in 1912 without any designation applied to them; the Model F name only coming into use the following year. Confusingly, Curtiss also used the designation Model E to refer to some early machines in this family, although these were quite distinct from Curtiss landplanes that bore this same designation and all but identical to the Model Fs. Model Fs built from 1918 featured a revised, unequal-span wing that incorporated the ailerons into the upper wing and sponsons on the sides of the hull to improve the aircraft's handling in water. These were known as the Model MF (for Modernised-F), and years later as the Seagull in the postwar civil market.


Operational history

The US Navy initially purchased four of these aircraft in addition to the Freak Boat (C-1/AB-1) that it had already obtained and which was retrofitted to approximately the same design as the others. One of these, the C-2 became the first aircraft to fly under
automatic control Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machine ...
on 30 August
1913 Events January * January – Joseph Stalin travels to Vienna to research his ''Marxism and the National Question''. This means that, during this month, Stalin, Hitler, Trotsky and Tito are all living in the city. * January 3 &ndash ...
when fitted with a
gyroscopic A gyroscope (from Ancient Greek γῦρος ''gŷros'', "round" and σκοπέω ''skopéō'', "to look") is a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of rot ...
stabiliser designed by Elmer Sperry. The same aircraft (by now redesignated AB-2) then became the first aircraft to be launched by
catapult A catapult is a ballistics, ballistic device used to launch a projectile at a great distance without the aid of gunpowder or other propellants – particularly various types of ancient and medieval siege engines. A catapult uses the sudden rel ...
from a warship while underway when it took off from on 5 November
1915 Events Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January *January – British physicist Sir Joseph Larmor publishes his observations on "The Influence of Local Atmospheric Cooling on Astronomical Refraction". *January 1 * ...
, piloted by Captain Henry C. Mustin, Navy Air Pilot No.3, and Naval Aviator No. 11. Her sister, AB-3, became the first US heavier-than-air aircraft to see military action when launched from the USS Mississippi on 25 April
1914 This year saw the beginning of what became known as the First World War, after Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austrian throne was Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, assassinated by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip ...
on a scouting mission over
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during the
United States Occupation of Veracruz The Battle of Veracruz was a military conflict between the United States and Mexico that took place in the Mexican port city of Veracruz between April 21 to November 23, 1914. The incident occurred in the midst of poor diplomatic relations be ...
. The US Navy bought another eight aircraft before the end of 1916, but orders in quantity only came following the type's selection as the Navy's standard flying-boat trainer in April
1917 Events Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January * January 9 – WWI – Battle of Rafa: The last substantial Ottoman Army garrison on the Sinai Peninsula is captured by the Egyptian Expeditionary Force's ...
. An initial batch of 144 of the basic F model were ordered, followed by 22 MFs in 1918. Another 80 MFs were produced under license by the
Naval Aircraft Factory The Naval Aircraft Factory (NAF) was established by the United States Navy in 1918 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was created to help solve aircraft supply issues which the United States Department of the Navy, Navy Department faced upon the ...
. This aircraft was especially useful for training because of its favorable stall recovery, while many other aircraft of the era were likely to stall into a
spin Spin or spinning most often refers to: * Spin (physics) or particle spin, a fundamental property of elementary particles * Spin quantum number, a number which defines the value of a particle's spin * Spinning (textiles), the creation of yarn or thr ...
. A small number of Model Es and Fs were also purchased by the US Army. The Russian Navy purchased two batches of Model Fs in 1913-14 and operated them as part of the Black Sea and Baltic Sea fleets until replaced by the Model K shortly thereafter. In Italy, the Curtiss representative Enea Bossi secured rights for local license-production of the Type F by the Zari brothers, who built eight examples at their workshop in Bovisa,
Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...
. The first of these was demonstrated to the Italian Navy on
Lake Como Lake Como ( , ) also known as Lario, is a lake of glacial origin in Lombardy, Italy. It has an area of , making it the third-largest lake in Italy, after Lake Garda and Lake Maggiore. At over deep, it is one of the deepest lakes in Europe. ...
on 22 September 1914. The Model F was adopted by
Regia Marina The , ) (RM) or Royal Italian Navy was the navy of the Kingdom of Italy () from 1861 to 1946. In 1946, with the birth of the Italian Republic (''Repubblica Italiana''), the changed its name to '' Marina Militare'' ("Military Navy"). Origin ...
on the battleship ''Dante Alighieri'', cruisers ''Amalfi'' and ''San Marco'', and the
seaplane tender A seaplane tender is a boat or ship that supports the operation of seaplanes. Some of these vessels, known as seaplane carriers, could not only carry seaplanes but also provided all the facilities needed for their operation; these ships are rega ...
''Elba''. Rogers Airlines operated a postwar fleet of ten Curtiss Seagulls as late as 1927. The aircraft flew routes out of Miami and Nassau in the winter months and returned to upstate New York for maintenance and barnstorming in the summer.


Variants

;Model E :Designation sometime erroneously applied to certain early members of this family. ;Model F :Standard production model from 1912 onwards, received this designation 1914, and given numerical designation of Model 7 in 1930. ; White & Thompson 100 hp Curtiss Flying Boat :Improved version of the Model F flown in March 1913 - Curtiss inter-wing ailerons replaced by ailerons on the upper wing trailing edge. ;White & Thompson Bass-Curtiss Airboat :Major reconstruction of a Model F fitted with an Anzani engine in June 1914. ;Sperry-Curtiss :Amphibious version of Model E for
Lawrence Sperry Lawrence Burst Sperry (21 December 1892, Chicago, Illinois, United States – December 13, 1923, English Channel) was an aviation pioneer who invented the autopilot and the artificial horizon. Biography Sperry was the third son of the gyroc ...
. ;School Machine :Trainer with nose boarding ramp. ;Sport Boat :Three-seat deluxe version. ;Reid Hydroaeroplane :Custom version for Marshall Reid with shoulder-yoke aileron controls. ;Model FL :Model F fitted with wings from Curtiss Model L. Single example, also designated Model 7 built 1917. ;Model BAT :Tractor-engined prototype for MF, later designated Model 13 in Curtiss sequence. ;Model BAP :Pusher-engined prototype for MF similar to BAT, later designated Model 14 in Curtiss sequence. ;Model MF :Modernised version of 1914, production standard from 1918 onwards, later designated Model 18 ;Cox-Klemin CK-14 :Model MFs rebuilt and modified to use 180 hp Hispano Suiza engine ;Seagull :Postwar civil version of MF with two additional seats, later designated Model 25. Approximately 16 sold.Bowers 1979, p. 178 ;Crane :Amphibious version of Seagull, later designated Model 20.Bowers 1979, p. 181. ;Judson Triplane :Enlarged custom triplane version. ;McCormick Flying Boat :Enlarged, five-seat custom version for
Harold Fowler McCormick Harold Fowler McCormick (May 2, 1872 – October 16, 1941) was an American businessman. He was chairman of the board of International Harvester Company and a member of the McCormick family. Through his first wife, Edith Rockefeller, he became a ...
.


Operators

; *
Brazilian Naval Aviation The Brazilian Naval Aviation () is the air component of the Brazilian Navy, currently called ''Força Aeronaval''. Most of its air structure is subordinated to the Naval Air Force Command (''Comando da Força Aeronaval'', ComForAerNav), the milita ...
; *
Regia Marina The , ) (RM) or Royal Italian Navy was the navy of the Kingdom of Italy () from 1861 to 1946. In 1946, with the birth of the Italian Republic (''Repubblica Italiana''), the changed its name to '' Marina Militare'' ("Military Navy"). Origin ...
; * Walsh Brothers Flying School,
New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
, 5 aircraft used to train pilots for the
Royal Flying Corps The Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was the air arm of the British Army before and during the First World War until it merged with the Royal Naval Air Service on 1 April 1918 to form the Royal Air Force. During the early part of the war, the RFC sup ...
; *
Ottoman Navy The Ottoman Navy () or the Imperial Navy (), also known as the Ottoman Fleet, was the naval warfare arm of the Ottoman Empire. It was established after the Ottomans first reached the sea in 1323 by capturing Praenetos (later called Karamürsel ...
- one Model F ; *
Imperial Russian Navy The Imperial Russian Navy () operated as the navy of the Russian Tsardom and later the Russian Empire from 1696 to 1917. Formally established in 1696, it lasted until being dissolved in the wake of the February Revolution and the declaration of ...
- received two batches of Model Fs in 1913-14. ; * White and Thompson - one Model F ; *
United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...
*
United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...
*
American Trans-Oceanic Company American Trans-Oceanic Company was an airline based in the United States. History Rodman Wanamaker published a letter in 1916 stating the founding of the American Trans-Oceanic Company to capitalize on the 1914 effort to fly across the Atlan ...


Surviving aircraft

* The engine and radiator of a Model F are preserved at the
Cradle of Aviation Museum The Cradle of Aviation Museum is an aerospace museum located in the East Garden City section of Uniondale, New York on Long Island, established to commemorate Long Island's part in the history of aviation. It is located on land once part of ...
on
Long Island Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York state, extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It constitutes a significant share of the New York metropolitan area in both population and land are ...
. * Parts of Model F serial number 112, which crashed in Connecticut in 1915, were incorporated into a restoration b
Century Aviation
in Wenatchee, WA in 2016-2018. The plane took its first flight on Moses Lake in Washington on August 21, 2018. * Curtiss MF/ Seagull NC903 (ex C903, US Navy A5541) is on display at the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre, New Zealand.


Specifications (1917 Model F)


See also


References


Bibliography

* * *


Further reading

* * *


External links


Aerofiles

A Curtiss Model F in front of the Royal Palm, Miami Florida
{{Curtiss aircraft Model F 1910s United States civil utility aircraft Flying boats Single-engined pusher aircraft Biplanes Aircraft first flown in 1912 Single-engined piston aircraft