The North Island era: Birth of naval aviation

The tractor hydroplane's short life

Curtiss sitting at the controls of the tractor hydroplane he flew to the USS Pennsylvania. Note the exhaust ports on the cylinders (circled in blue).

Curtiss did not like the tractor airplane. The pictures show that there were no exhaust pipes from the eight cylinders to direct the exhaust away from the pilot. There weren’t even exhaust stacks (see exhaust ports circled in blue, at left). The pilot had to sit in the exhaust stream and in the propeller blast. 

Further, Curtiss had difficulty seeing around the large engine. 

Still further, the plane was tail-heavy with the pilot seated behind the engine. A  picture of the tractor in flight (earlier page) shows Curtiss with the control wheel pushed forward and the plane still in a nose-up attitude.

Curtiss soon converted the tractor to a pusher. Apparently, the engine had been especially built at the Curtiss’ factory to serve as a tractor. Lt. Ellyson wrote in his diary of a later failure of the shaft of this engine, a failure he blamed on the thrust bearing which was arranged to absorb the pull of the propeller of a tractor rather than the push of the propeller of a pusher, as with all the other Curtiss engines of the time.

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