Curtiss Twin JN Prototype, 1916

When I promised "some" photos of the Curtiss Twin JN in my last post, I honestly thought I had five or six photos to share with you.  I'm sorry to say these three were the only ones I found.  It is possible that there are more in another album, but I haven't had time to dig the next one out.  I have a substantial number of photos yet to publish from the first aviation scrapbook, too.

Anyway, the Curtiss Twin, as Ivan titled it, didn't meet with the success that the rest of the JN models did.  You'll see in the next photo that float models of it were tested as well.  The following photo also seems to be from a parade in which Curtiss displayed some aircraft.  I'll have more photos of that parade in a future post.

I'm afraid that last photo wasn't developed with much care.  Despite that, I find the horizontal strut leading to the aft end of the engine mounts pretty curious.  Your comments are welcome!  I would love to hear from anyone with more knowledge of these old planes.  I think I have the blog settings set so that anyone may comment, but they will be moderated first.

For the next post, I believe I'll post some crash photos. There's no shortage of crashed JNs in the collection! Earlier, I had learned that Steve MacGordon was involved with a crash resulting in a fire, and that he had died in the hospital as a result of his burns.  I believe many of these photos are from that crash.  Jennies don't take well to bad landings, and most of the crash scenes in the collection are just various nose-overs, but others are a bit scarier.

Until then, thanks for viewing; and if you're enjoying the collection, please give a Share or a +1 on Google, if you'd be so kind.

-kpw

Curtiss Speed Scout

This post is focused on the obscure little Curtiss Speed Scout, or Baby Scout, model S-1.  There is very little information floating around the Net on this model, so I don't have a lot of narrative, but I do have a few photographic gems.  This first photo is fairly well-distributed on the Net.  It could be that Ivan shared the photo, or that some other collection kept a print of Frank Conway's photo.  I've theorized before that Mr. Conway not only got paid by Glenn Curtiss for his photographic work, but also made prints on the side for students and others at the school, and I don't think I'm far off.

Speaking of Frank Conway prints, you'll see this next photo at the link I placed above as well.  I think this print is several orders of magnitude better, if I may say so, however.  Victor Carlstrom is at the controls.

I don't think I've ever seen another photo of this little bird in flight, so I was particularly happy to find this photo in the collection!

Finally, there is an original photo of some damage to the plane.  I wish I had some information about the nature of the incident, but anything I add would be conjecture beyond noticing that the flying wires are slack,  the prop is broken, and the engine seems to have been shoved to the left.

I have a lot more photos from the Curtiss School, and I'll be organizing them around aircraft type, people and events, so stay tuned!  As usual, I'll continue to ask for +1's and Shares in an effort to widen the reach of the collection, with my thanks in advance!

-kpw