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.
Why It Mattered
In the mid-1920s, air racing's two most coveted prizes were the Pulitzer Trophy for landplanes and the Schneider Cup for seaplanes. In 1925 the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy each ordered racers from Curtiss to a broadly shared design, and between them those machines won both trophies in a single season. One of them then set a world straight-line speed record for seaplanes the day after its Schneider victory. A single Army airframe did much of the winning: it took the Pulitzer as a landplane and the Schneider as a floatplane.
Design Notes
The R3C-1 was a single-seat, single-bay biplane with wire bracing, similar in dimensions and layout to the R2C-1 of 1923. Its wings were a box structure planked in thin spruce, which did away with internal bracing. Corrugated brass sheeting spread thinly across both wings served as the engine's radiators, keeping drag low. The fuselage was a streamlined monocoque, its shell built from two layers of spruce over birch plywood bulkheads tied together by ash longerons. Power was a Curtiss V-1400 V-12 rated at 610 hp, raised to 665 hp for the 1926 racer. On floats, as the R3C-2, fuel capacity rose from 27 gallons to 60, with tanks inside the floats themselves.
Operational History
Three R3Cs were built in all: two for the U.S. Navy and one for the Army Air Service. The Army machine, serial A7054, won the Pulitzer Trophy Race on 12 October 1925 with Lt. Cyrus Bettis at the controls, at 248.9 mph. Refitted with streamlined single-step wooden floats and redesignated R3C-2, it raced in the Schneider Cup at Bay Shore Park, Baltimore. On 26 October 1925, Lt. James H. Doolittle flew it to victory there, averaging 232.57 mph. The two Navy R3C-2s, flown by George Cuddihy and Ralph Oftsie, failed to finish. The following day Doolittle took the same aircraft over a straight course and set a world record of 245.7 mph. A year later, on 13 November 1926, the same airplane returned to the Schneider Trophy with an improved engine, and Lt. Christian F. Schilt, USMC, flew it to second place at 231.4 mph.
Afterlife
Following the 1926 race, the U.S. War Department donated A7054 to the Smithsonian Institution. The racer was later loaned for several years to the Air Force Museum, whose personnel restored it. It now hangs at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., in the Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight gallery, still carrying its number 3 from the 1925 Schneider race. Of the three R3Cs built, it is the only one recorded as surviving. A replica of the R3C-2 is displayed at the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino, California.