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Curtiss
R2C-1
The national and international air races helped stimulate and
maintain public interest and support for aviation during the years
immediately following World War I. The races also provided a focus for
the development of new, high-performance aircraft. Many of these special
aircraft were government sponsored. The Army and the Navy sponsored such
developments in the United States, as did the air forces of France,
Great Britain, and Italy in Europe. The most successful of these
aircraft were highly developed forms of the biplane configuration.
Typical of such aircraft is the 1923 Curtiss R2C-I racer shown in figure
3.4. Standing beside the aircraft is Navy Lieutenant Alford J. Williams
who flew it to first place in the 1923 Pulitzer race.
The aircraft is
seen to be extremely clean aerodynamically and had a phenomenally low
zero-lift drag coefficient, The aircraft
achieved a maximum speed of 267 miles per hour with a liquid
cooled engine of about 500 horsepower. Some of the features that
accounted for the low drag coefficient and consequent high speed are the
minimization of the number of wires and struts to support the wings, the
smooth, highly streamlined semi-monocoque
wooden construction of the fuselage, the all-metal Curtiss Reed
propeller, and the very interesting skin-type radiators that were used
to provide heat exchange surface for the water-cooled engine. The
external surfaces of these radiators, which formed a part of the surface
of the wing, were of corrugated skin with the corrugations aligned with
the direction of air flow. The remainder of the wing surface was covered
with plywood.
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