![]() Helicopters were faster and had the range to get troops from the base to the front line. Any extra sound insulation meant more weight, which would slow down the Air Car even more. Imagine sitting a couple of feet away from an unmuffled helicopter engine. The Curtiss-Wright Air Car couldn’t tackle anything beyond a 6% grade (a slope that rises 6 feet every 100 feet). You see, while the air-cushion idea worked well on smooth ground, and on water, it faced severe problems on inclines. We can imagine why - The inherent problems of ground-effect mobility came back to haunt them. Army tested the hell out of the two production examples and deemed them unsatisfactory for Army use. There was a coupe-style design, too, called the ‘Bee’.īy the 1960s, the U.S. There was a commercial model, which had a wider bed and could be considered an air-truck. Army’s Transport Research Command ordered two examples. There was the base model, which had the Lycoming engines, and could seat two. The Model 2500 came in a variety of configurations. The air, operating under the ground effect theory, supports the entire weight of the hovercraft.Ĭurtiss-Wright built the Model 2500 Air Car using this idea - in 1959. It has a fan run off the engine that creates a cushion of air. According to this concept, the closer a rotor is to the ground, the lower the drag, and the higher the lift. This time, instead of using rotors for full-fledged flight, they utilized something called the ‘ground effect’. It was an embarrassment, sure, but the Curtiss-Wright Corporation learned from their mistakes and went back to the design shop. Army received so many complaints from test pilots, engineers, and people living near test bases that the VZ-7 was sent back to the factory. The engine was so loud that you could hear it from miles away. The pilots were completely unprotected, and flying it in severe weather was impossible. It had a blistering top speed of 32 mph, and a service height of 200 ft. ![]() And they were quite exposed, which made the VZ-7 very easy to shoot down. The four rotors ran off a French turboshaft engine that developed 425 horsepower. It was to be a flying Jeep - a go-anywhere weapons platform that could seat four best suited for reconnaissance.īut, there were problems - and very serious ones. Surprised Curtiss-Wright management agreed, and thus, the first concept, the VZ-7 was shown to them. When they heard that the veteran plane builder had a few short-takeoff-landing (STOL) designs in the works, they asked to come over. Army sat up and took notice whenever a new Curtiss-Wright took to the air. They had built legendary warbirds like the P-40 and the SB2C Helldiver. Curtiss-Wright, but, was one of the largest plane builders in the U.S.
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