The boat, or hydro equipment, contained a bulkhead fore and aft, was twenty feet long, with an upward slope in front and a downward slope in the rear. The hydro equipment, which was more like a boat than anything yet designed, was able to withstand any wind or wave that a motor boat of similar size could weather. The aviator sat comfortably in the hull with the engine not behind him, but forward in the hull in this model.
THE "FLYING FISH"
A "No. 2 flying boat," just built by Mr. Curtiss, and successfully tested on Lake Keuka, Hammondsport, in July, 1912, is the "last word" in aviation so far. An illustration in this book, made from photographs taken in mid-July, 1912, shows fully the bullet-shape of the "flying fish."
It is a real boat, built with a fish-shaped body containing two comfortable seats for the pilot and passenger or observer, either of whom can operate the machine by a system of dual control, making it also available for teaching the art of flying.
All the controls are fastened to the rear of the boat's hull, which makes them very rigid and strong, while the boat itself, made in stream-line form, offers the least possible resistance to the air, even less than that offered by the landing gear upon a standard land machine. Above the boat are mounted the wings and aeroplane surface. In the centre of this standard biplane construction is situated the eighty horse-power motor with its propeller in the rear, thus returning to the original practice, as in the standard Curtiss machines, of having a single propeller attached direct to the motor, thus doing away with all chains and transmission gearing which might give trouble, and differing from the earlier model flying boat built in San Diego, California, last winter (1911-12), which was equipped with "tractor" propellors propellers in front driven by chains.
The new flying boat is twenty-six feet long and three feet wide. The planes are five and a half feet deep and thirty feet wide. It runs on the water at a speed of fifty miles an hour, and is driven by an eighty horse-power Curtiss motor. At a greater speed than this it cannot be kept on the water, but rises in the air and flies at from fifty to sixty miles per hour.
DIAGRAM OF THE CURTISS FLYING BOAT NO. 2.
The boat itself is provided with water-tight compartments so that if any one compartment should be damaged the flotation afforded by the other would be sufficient to keep the craft afloat. It is also provided with wheels for making a landing on the shore; these wheels fold up, thus not interfering in the slightest with its manoeuvres over the water. The boat is so strongly built that it can be readily beached even through a high surf and handled the same as a fisherman would handle his dory, or it may be housed afloat like a motor boat or anchored to a buoy like a yacht.
In rough water the spray-hood with which this type of boat is provided protects the navigators from getting wet and enables the craft to be used very much as you might use a high speed motor boat, with the added excitement of being able to rise above other crafts or fly over them if they get in the way. It looks very much like a flying fish in the air and although designed to skim close to the surface of the water at high speed it can rise to as high an altitude as the standard land machine.