Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company
5 types · 0 airframes
Pre-1950 Narrative
Narrative coming soon.
Aircraft Types
Curtiss A-8 Shrike
The Curtiss A-8 Shrike was a two-seat ground-attack aircraft built by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company for the U.S. Army Air Corps. Designed in 1930 and first flown in June 1931, it was Curtiss's first all-metal military monoplane, with full-span leading-edge slats and trailing-edge flaps, though its wing was still wire-braced and its two cockpits stood far apart. Only a prototype and thirteen service-test aircraft were built, and eleven of the test aircraft were redesignated A-8 after trials. The Army's production order for 46 A-8Bs was instead filled by the radial-engined A-12, after the YA-10 trial showed an air-cooled radial better suited to the attack role.
Curtiss BF2C Goshawk
The Curtiss BF2C Goshawk (Model 67) was a carrier-based biplane fighter-bomber built by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, developed from the F11C Goshawk as the first production Hawk with retractable landing gear. The US Navy's twenty-seven BF2C-1s entered service with VB-5B aboard USS Ranger in October 1934, but at cruising power their metal wings vibrated so badly that the aircraft were almost unflyable; attempted fixes failed, withdrawals ran from October 1935 to February 1936, and the aircraft were scrapped in 1937. The export Model 68 Hawk III, with wooden wings, avoided the fault: 137 were supplied to Argentina, China, Thailand and Turkey, Chinese aircraft fought as frontline fighters against Japan in 1937, Thailand licence-built fifty more and kept the type active until 1949, and one Thai Hawk III survives in the Royal Thai Air Force Museum.
Curtiss Condor
The Curtiss Condor of this record is the T-32 Condor II of 1933, a two-bay biplane airliner built by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company at St. Louis — not the 1929 Model 53 Condor it was derived from, nor the B-2 Condor bomber behind that. Its 21 production aircraft were fitted as 12-passenger night sleepers for American Airways and Eastern Air Transport, and American marketed them as the world's first complete sleeper-planes. The Army Air Corps and Marine Corps flew small numbers as executive transports, one aircraft surveyed Antarctica with Byrd's 1933–35 expedition, and export and freighter Condors worked in Latin America and China into the 1940s. Curtiss built 45 T-32s in all; the all-metal monoplanes overtook the type within a few years, and no intact example survives.
Curtiss F11C Goshawk
The Curtiss F11C Goshawk was a single-seat carrier fighter and dive bomber built by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company for the U.S. Navy, and the last of the Curtiss Hawk biplanes produced for the American military. In spring 1932 the Navy bought two prototypes: the Cyclone-engined XF11C-2, developed from the company's export Hawk II, and the all-metal XF11C-1. It chose the XF11C-2 and ordered twenty-eight production aircraft, which entered service with VF-1B aboard Saratoga in February 1933 and were redesignated BFC-2 in March 1934. A retractable-gear development served separately as the BF2C, while the same basic design sold widely overseas as the Hawk II.
Curtiss R3C
A single-seat racing biplane built by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company in 1925, raced as the landplane R3C-1 and the twin-float seaplane R3C-2. Three were built for the U.S. Navy and the Army Air Service; the Army aircraft won the 1925 Pulitzer Trophy as a landplane, then the Schneider Trophy and a world seaplane speed record as a floatplane, and it survives today at the National Air and Space Museum.