Curtiss Wright

On July 5th, 1929, the documents were finalized and 12 companies were now all merged into one uniting name. Many of them were smaller divisions of Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, some of them were smaller divisions of Wright Aeronautical. This was the largest conglomeration of American power houses of its time. The merger rivals something like Stellantis today. This super company would be the core of America's fighter fleet for the foreseeable future, everything from the airframes and the engines that drove them, the parts manufacturing, the testing, the flying, everything now under one name,under new management.

There were three main divisions at Curtiss-Wright: Curtiss-Wright Airplane Division, which manufactured airframes; Wright Aeronautical, which produced aircraft engines; and Curtiss-Wright Propeller Division, which produced Propellers. To ease any potential confusion all engines produced under this company name were known as "Wrights". All airframe designs produced before the merger were separated but everything after the merger were known as Curtiss-Wright or shortened to Curtiss. There are exceptions to everything, like location or who literally had their paws on the design work but for the most part everything typed is true.

In the 1930s Curtiss-Wright had time, time to innovate, time to experiment, time to churn as much money as possible. With the death of Glenn Curtiss, founding member and the name of the company, a board of directors took place. Each member was appointed from the smaller companies to represent them. Even with this board of directors each business innovated in their own time. Wright Aeronautical developed the Cyclone engine a few years prior to the merger but didn't hit their home run until the R-1820. The R-1820 Cyclone would go on to be one of the most prolific radial engines not only of the war, but in the export market and civilian market; many of these engines are still flying to this day. Nearly every single American aviation company has used the R-1820 at some point in their history; Boeing, Brewster, Curtiss, Douglas, Grumman, Lockheed, Martin, North American and Northrup were just the biggest names that used this engine in the mid 30’s. It was extremely popular in Russia as the Shvetsov M-25 and would go on to be the basis for all future Shvetsov engines. Needless to say this engine and its derivatives were collectively made in the tens of thousands from 1930 to 1950.

While Curtiss was cooking up airframes, Wright building the most prolific radials of its era, Curtiss Propeller division were busy defining and refining the most important part of the airplane, its propeller. Up through the 1930s Curtiss Propeller Division were hard at work experimenting with a plethora of new ideas; new alloys, new spinner technology, counter rotating blades, hollow blades, and variable pitch. Competing with other manufacturing giants Curtiss-Wright was the first company to develop and manufacture an electric variable pitch propeller. The benefit of an electric system over a hydraulic system, unlike the first produced constant speed propellers manufactured by Hamilton Standard, the engine did not need any special modifications done to the engine. Instead a robust electrical system was used instead, and aircraft manufacturers were well on their way to making that standard anyways.

In war Curtiss-Wright was second to only one, they beat out manufacturing of every single company in the country except for General Motors. They employed nearly 200,000 workers building all manner of army fighters, navy dive bombers, and transport planes. Every division kept innovating and refining their products until their dying end. In total Curtiss’ propeller division made 104,054 propellers; Wright manufactured 368,744 engines; and Curtiss produced 29,413 completed airplanes. These numbers extend past WW2 and encompass the entirety of Curtiss-Wright Production.

What ultimately killed Curtiss-Wright's presence in the aviation space was its inability to change. Once they made the R-1300 Cyclone it was difficult for them to design a new engine from the ground up. For example the cyclone isn't one engine rather its a series of engines that all share the same design principle. The R-1300 is a 7 cylinder radial, a new spec comes in and they make the R-1820; which is the same design but with an extra 2 cylinders in the engine block. The R-2600 is essentially just two R-1300 engines sharing the same crankshaft. Likewise the R-3350 is just two R-1820’s sharing the same crank shaft. Yes there was great research and development that went into these engines and every single one did make great strides in perfecting efficiency and performance but this ultimately made the company stale; and they struggled to pivot to new technologies. This sort of pattern can be seen in other divisions of the company. Curtiss aircraft were all variations on the same platform and its derivatives can be seen all the way from the first success. The P-36 Hawk was revolutionary for its time, it was quick, had the maneuvering performance to evade and fight other nations front line fighters, and had the firepower to keep them at bay. But instead of ditching the hawk when it became obsolete they continued to try and keep the same airframe in service. They made the YP-37, which was mostly the same airframe just now modified to hold the Allison V-1710 V-12 engine. While this aircraft was technically faster it failed to provide good altitude performance and had poor visibility over the nose. A whole new redesign was in order in order to stay afloat. So Curtiss made two innovations on the previous theme; the P-40 and the XP-42. The P-40 retained most of the design elements from the P-36; it was just now better suited to handle the Allison V-1710 engine and was thus a little bit larger and a little bit heavier. The P-40 was a fine aircraft for two years and then became obsolete, the country is at war now and it lacks the range to escort bombers, the performance to attack Japanese fighters at altitude, and the ability to stay relevant; other fighters are quickly adopted to replace the P-40. The XP-42 was a P-36 that was adapted to use the larger, more powerful Pratt & Whitney R-1830. While it did perform better than its predecessor it was not any better than the P-40 and so Curtiss elected to continue with the Warhawk.

Curtiss was failing to secure new contracts and so in a rushed attempt to innovate further on the P-40 they examined European designs and attempted to incorporate their best features into a new Curtiss aircraft. So the XP-46 is born; in one of the reference links in this article is a link to a Life Magazine article talking about Curtiss-Wright's production prowess and its larger factory expansions; on page 53 of that article the author writes about the same problems I am here. They go on to say, "The advantage of gradually modifying a good basic plane is changes can be made without seriously disrupting quantity production" (Life magazine p53). In theory this is a sound argument, after all if production lines had to rapidly re-tool the entire line in the event of a brand new aircraft then production would slow down exponentially as new jigs, forms, and personnel are redistributed around the factories to support the new design. However if the corporation can't compete with other companies, who are all vying for the same contract, then they'll get pushed out. It's a miracle that the P-40 was in production for as long as it was. It has variations all the way out to Q, how many planes have that?

After the XP-46 was rejected, the XP-60 was being tested; a viewer can see the same basic layout and principle of the P-36 in this new design. In other words it's just a fat P-36 with a larger engine and counter rotating propellers. It was the innovation that Curtiss aircraft needed in order to succeed however other designs by other companies did the same thing but better. No amount of "we’ll just make it bigger" will save the Cutriss-Wright company from its fatal flaw, its failure to reproduce new designs.

All of this negativity aside, it's easy to critique a company's downfall through the eyes of a modern essayist. It's important to try and put yourself in the shoes of a company exec and try and think as they would. So yes it's a good argument to just improve a previous design further and further, it would make the production lines less upset when the plane would be accepted into service. However if someone were instead to put themselves in the head space of an Army Air Corp spec sheet then why would they ever select an aircraft that has little to no improvements over the previous problems of an airframe. Why would the powers at be select an airframe that only barely reaches the specification when they could instead go to another company that claims that they are going to surpass it with flying colors. Every company the US had access to did something great, something they were known for. For Curtiss-Wright they were just not particularly known for their airframes, rather they are remembered for their engines.

It's not all doom and gloom for Curtiss-Wright as an aircraft manufacturer, they did try to invent some ideas. The XP-55 for example is a radical departure from standard aircraft design. It takes the typical fighter layout and flips it around, giving the pilot better visibility and firepower. But this ultimately never went anywhere. They also threw their hat in the ring of "mixed propulsion" aircraft with the X15C, but the Ryan FR Fireball was chosen instead.

The most notable Curtiss aircraft outside of its fighter program is the C-46 Commando, a competitor to the C-47. With its twin 2,000 horse power engines and greater payload capacity it was the correct choice for many squadrons, flying in the hundreds of thousands of miles of cargo and troop transport missions in all theaters of war. Post war its high operating costs in comparison to the C-47 relegated it as a transport option only for many cargo and airline services around the world. It played a small part in Israel’s war of independence, flying in S-199 airframes to the fledgling nation. But overall the Commando was superseded in all aspects by the more famous C-47 and DC-3.

Curtiss-Wright is still around to this day, however they are no longer producing aircraft. After several failed attempts to pivot to more advanced aircraft they threw in the towel in 1948. The Wright engine division however was still going strong, they licensed the Sapphire jet engine from Armstrong-Sidley and produced it as the Wright J65, that engine was used to power the B-57’s in American service. Likewise the Wright T49 is a further development on this engine but rather as a turbo-prop than a standalone jet engine. Same thing with the J67 and T47, the J67 is a license produced Rolls-Royce Olympus and after further in house development it transformed into the turbo prop T47. Today Curtiss-Wright is a parts manufacturer with fingers in every military industry, they build and supply pumps and valves for nuclear subs, build black boxes for nearly every aircraft and customer, build and furnish sensor suites for modern fighters.

Sources:

    Wright R-1820 Cyclone By Kimble D. McCutcheon.
    Varible Pitch Propellers and their history.
    Manual on the Curtis Electric Propeller.
    Life Magazine September 15th, 1941; Talks in great detail about Curtiss-Wrights expansion and touches on the XP-46. 
    Production # of aircraft throughout the companies history.
    Propeller Production #'s by Bill Lewis
    Wright Engine shipments by year. 1920-1959
    Curtiss-Wright's website.