Curtiss Model S

Today we start this pre-Christmas week with a new American airplane. One of the first designs (albeit unsuccessful) of the Curtiss company.

The Curtiss Model S was the first attempt of the Curtiss airplane company at a fast and maneouvrable single-seat fighter.

The very first model, S-1 Speed Scout, was designed under the parameters of what the European manufacturers had called a Scout back in 1914. This concept was simply to design a tractor airplane capable of just scouting enemy activities and, it wasn't considered the need to be armed. However the war soon showed that they needed to be armed, even if they retained the term Scout. Curtiss developed several Curtiss S models during 1916-1917 but succeeded in selling only a few ones to the US Army and Navy.
The inadequacy of these airplanes cannot be blamed on the lack of skill of Curtiss designers, but on how far the American airplane had fallen behind the European one, which was operating under the requeriments of the Great War. American designers were cut-off from the latest European technological advances and had to progress from the 1914 designs on their own without the estimulus of the war.

Many models were made:

• S-1, AKA Speed Scout, AKA Baby Scout. The original design, it was the smallest airplane that Curtiss could build to fit the 90hp OX engine. The design was very conventional for the time, but the wingspan was very inadequate. It didn't sell and Curtiss company kept the prototype for themselves
• S-2 Wireless: It was basically a modified S-1 fitted with new wings that eliminated the need for bracing wires. It had some shocking problems when landed which were solved by fitting new Ackermann spring wheels. However these wheel system didn't have resistance to side loads and wasn't widely employed.
• S-3 (Model 10): The only production model was the triplane variant, which four of them were sold to the US Army early in 1917. These used the basic fuselage engine and tail of the previous models. Those 4 airplanes were the first single-seat scouts of the US Army even if, in terms of technology they were one or two years behind their European equivalents.
• S-4 (Model 10A): A seaplane version of the S-3. It was intended to be a scout airplane for the US Navy. The wingspan was increased in order to carry the extra weight of the twin central floaters. The front struts collapsed during 1918 and the aircraft was struck off.
• S-5 (Model 10B): A modified version of the S-4 featuring a single floater and two small-ones under the wings. It struck-off on August 1919.
• S-6 (Model 10C): An improved version of the S-3 and the first Scout armed with twin forward-firing gas operated Lewis machine-guns. The Army ordered 12 of them in 1917 but only one was delivered.