Elegant EAGLE

Air Classics, Aug 2006

BUILT IN ANTICIPATION OF A MARKET THAT DID NOT DEVELOP, THIS CURTISS DESIGN WAS AMERICA'S FIRST TRI-MOTOR AIRLINER

During the Great War, the Curtiss Aeroplane Company enjoyed a great success building a variety of aircraft and engines tor the American and British military air arms. Reasoning that aviation was here to stay, the management at Curtiss started to plan for a huge upsurge in private and commercial aviation after the end of the war.

In anticipation of military pilots returning home and taking up private flying, Curtiss produced the Model 17 Oriole, which was also the first Curtiss aircraft to carry a bird name rather than just a model number, the start of a long tradition. A biplane that could carry two passengers and a pilot in a relatively sleek laminated wood veneer fuselage supported by two-bay wings with a thin airfoil, the craft was designed by William Gilmore and was originally powered by surplus Curtiss OX-5 engines, hut this was soon changed to the more powerful Curtiss K-6.

Using the structural design principles of the Oriole, Gilmore created the Model 19 Eagle, which was designed for a commercial airliner market. A hit unusual in appearance, the Eagle could carry six or eight passengers in relative comfort inside a cabin that was also built from laminated wood veneer and featured large windows and reasonable ventilation. The landing gear was also unusual and featured two sets of tandem wheels encased in streamlined fairings. The gear would take some of the humps out of the primitive landing fields of the time and the craft was a big improvement over converted military aircraft used for the same task. Power came from three Curtiss K-6 engines of 150-hp each. Power was later upgraded to the C-6 of 160-hp each.

With the Oriole, Curtiss found that the design, even though it offered very good performance, could not compete with surplus military craft like the Jenny. The original price of $9850 was quickly cut to $3000 for Orioles with OX-5 engines and $4800 with the C-6. Since licenses were not required until 1927, it is unclear how many Orioles were built.

However, one Eagle did find a market, albeit brief, with the California Aerial Transport Company formed by Ross Gardner and Charles Pond, who were described in publications of the time as "two Stockton, California, airport operators." The pair used the Eagle to inaugurate a scheduled, and pioneering, airline service between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The Eagle, fitted with ten seats, was purchased from the Sy Chaplin (brother of actor Charlie) Aircraft Company. The first inaugural flight was made from San Francisco to Los Angeles and returned during April 1920 - a truly pioneering event - with Pond and Gardner as pilots along with four Bakersfield, California, businessmen as passengers. The first scheduled flight was made on 20 May 1920 from Chaplin Field in Los Angeles (on the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax - today a hub of the movie industry). The Eagle rumbled north to Concord, which was somewhat near San Francisco (one must remember that airports virtually did not exist at this time). A few months later, the Eagle was heavily damaged at Bakersfield in an accident on which we can not find much information. The airframe was trucked to the Waterman Aircraft Company in the seaside city of Venice where Waldo Waterman had set up shop. Waterman, a pilot and designer of basic skills, was, as with most aviators of the time, a bit of a scam artist. Waterman had gotten a supply of supremely heavy Liberty V-12s from WWI surplus and modified the craft with two engines instead of the original three Curtiss powerplants. Waterman wanted to start an airline to San Diego, but this did not happen, and the fate of the Eagle, at least to this writer, is unknown.

With the Eagle, Curtiss found that the airline market simply did not exist. Once again, it is unclear how many tri-motor Eagles were built. A twin-engine Eagle was built with two 400-hp Curtiss C-12s, but after the first flight it was concluded that this was way too much horsepower for the design. A single-engine Eagle with a surplus 400-hp Liherty found a bit of success when three were purchased by the Army Air Service for use as personnel transports and aerial ambulances.