pursuit

Maughan's Curtiss Pursuit plane (LOC)

from The Library of Congress

• Richard Norton said:

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Maughan

• John Guarino said:

  I like that R-6 racer. It looks a lot like the P-5 Superhawk from a few years later.

• TVL1970 said:

  This is a Curtiss XPW-8 Hawk pursuit aircraft. A prototype of the (as noted) same type (PW-8) flown by Lt. Russell Maughan during his "Dawn-to-Dusk" transcontinental flight in June 1924. Given the January 1923 ("1-19-23") date inscribed on the bottom of the print, this particular aircraft is almost certainly the first XPW-8 built. It would officially be acquired by the US Army Air Service in April of that year and assigned the serial number A.S. 23-1201, and the McCook Field project number P-295. It would later be modified with a second cockpit added and the aircraft given the designation of Corps Observation Experimental (CO-X). See: www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/curtiss-pw-8-hawk/

  23 June 1924: Lieutenant Russell Lowell Maughan, Air Service, United States Army, took off from Mitchel Field, Long Island, New York, at 3:58 a.m., Eastern Time, and flew across the country to land at Crissy Field, at the Presidio of San Francisco, California at 9:46 p.m., Pacific Time. He covered a distance of 2,670 miles (4,297 kilometers) in 21 hours, 47 minutes. Maughan’s actual flight time was 20 hours, 48 minutes. He averaged 128.37 miles per hour (206.59 kilometers per hour). His Dawn-To-Dusk transcontinental flight took place on a mid-summer day in order to take advantage of the longer hours of daylight, and he flew from East to West, to follow the advancing Sun across the sky.

  Here's a seeming contemporaneous photo (note the prop position, wheel and skid tracks, the aircraft has been manhandled and turned presumably to capture the best light for the photo) of the very same aircraft from the rear quarter. It is posted by at the San Diego Air & Space Museum (SDASM) Archives here in the Flickr Commons, as part of their Ray Wagner Collection: www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/16438572488/ See also: www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_curtiss_PW-8.html www.joebaugher.com/usaf_serials/1922.html

• John Guarino said:

  TVL1970 Thanks for the great info!