Curtiss SOC Seamew - Royal Navy Users

As the Curtiss SO3C had a very short operational history with the US Navy, the British Royal Navy was its main user.
Some SO3C-1s with a fixed wheeled undercarriage, were ordered by the Fleet Air Arm (the aeronautical branch of the Royal Navy) under the terms of the Lend-Lease. In the Fleet Air Arm it was known as the "Seamew", name that would later be reused for the Short Seamew, in the 1950s. However, in the field it was nicknamed as the "Sea Cow" by the crews.
According to Lettice Curtiss, in spite of the 300gl (1364L) fuel tank, it would only take off with the eighty gallons fixed as the maximum by the Air Transport Auxiliary Trips (the authority for auxiliary aircrafts during wartime). Furthermore, the tail needed to be raised to become airborne as it was possible to take-off in an attitude from which it was both impossible to recover and in which there was no aileron control. She stated also that it was hard to imagine how, in wartime, such aircraft was accepted from the factory and given valuable cargo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
Initially, the first batch delivered to the Royal Navy, was going to feature a centreline bomb rack and arrestor gear, however, as later versions (known as the Seamew Mk.I) were based on the SO3C-2, no armed versions served with the Royal Navy. Two-hundred fifty of them were allocated for Lend-Lease and eventually on-hundred of them were delivered as the last batch was refused in favour of the Vought Kingfisher which was substantially better. The first batch was delivered in January 1944 and by September was already declared obsolete and completely removed from service by 1945. The target drone version, the SO3C-1K was going to serve in the Royal Navy, under the name of Queen Seamew, but the order of 30 was cancelled. The 100 that were delivered served with the 744 Naval Air Squadron and 745 Naval Air Squadron, both of them based at RCAF Yarmouth in Nova Scotia, Canada and some few of them with the 755 Naval Air Squadron, based in Hampshire, in the United Kingdom.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_SO3C_Seamew
2. https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.asp?aircraft_id=797
3. http://www.aviastar.org/air/usa/curtiss_model82.php

Curtiss SO3C Seamew

The Curtiss SO3C Seamew was an American observation seaplane that was developed by Curtiss-Wright as a replacement for the Curtiss SOC Seagull which was the standard American floatplane of the United States Navy. It was named Seamew by Curtiss, but the US Navy called it Seagull, causing that way confusion with the model it was intended to replace to.
One of the US Navy's requirements was that the Seagull's replacement had to be able to operate both from ocean vessels with a big single central float and two smaller ones in the tip of the wings, and from land bases with the float being replaced by wheeled gear.
Since the SO3C entered into service, it had to cope against two serious flaws: inflight stability problems and problems with the Ranger air-cooled inverted V-shape inline engine.
In order to solve stability problem, upturned wingtips were introduced and a larger rear tail surface that extended over the rear observer's cockpit which was attached to the rear observer's sliding canopy and pilots claimed that there were still stability problems when the canopy was open. It was usually open because the main role of the aircraft was spotting. Eventually, the stability problems were addressed, although not fully solved.
However, the engine it was equipped with, the Ranger XV-770-8 inline air-cooled which delivered 600hp (447Kw) of power, proved to be an utter failure, even after many modifications were made to fix it. Due to that problem, combined with bad maintenance records, led to the type being withdrawn from the frontlines by 1944 and forcing the older but more trustable SOC Seagull (which had also been relegated into training role) into frontlines until the end of the war. Until then, it served with the US Navy in many secondary observation roles, mainly on board of light cruisers and escort carriers, with added tailhook. Some of them were used after 1944 as target drones and were known as SO3C-1K and were completely painted in yellow.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_SO3C_Seamew
2. http://www.aviastar.org/air/usa/curtiss_model82.php