The Airplane - Jay Spenser [95]
These experiments demonstrated the potential for airplanes to play a role at sea. Naval aviation was born and began working out the mechanics for shipboard use. After World War I, Congress appropriated funds allowing a coal-carrying vessel to be converted into the USS Langley, the first U.S. aircraft carrier. Named after Samuel Langley, the ship was launched in 1922.
In the meantime, naval planners had defined the requirements for the service’s aircraft. Because they would go to sea aboard aircraft carriers and space was at a premium aboard those vessels, these airplanes had to be dimensionally compact. And since space for stowing spare parts and performing maintenance would be constrained, they should also be as simple and reliable as possible.
These factors all favored air-cooled radial engines, which dispense with radiators and associated plumbing. That meant lighter weight, less required maintenance, fewer things to go wrong, and fewer spares to keep on hand. Better still, since radial engines are shorter than liquid-cooled engines, the airplanes themselves would also be shorter, allowing more of them to occupy crowded hangars and flight decks.
With this in mind, the Navy got in touch with the Lawrance Aero Engine Company of New York City in February 1920. Lawrance, tiny and virtually unknown, was then the only U.S. firm marketing an air-cooled radial engine.
Charles Lanier Lawrance, born in Massachusetts in 1882, was the scion of an affluent New England family. After attending Yale University, he sailed off to Paris in 1906 to pursue graduate studies in architecture. More than just a world center for art, literature, and music, the French capital was also belle époque Europe’s epicenter for new technologies. The excitement must have rubbed off on the young New Englander. Returning home three years later, he abandoned his plans for a career as an architect to pursue a growing fascination with gasoline engines.
By the time the United States entered World War I, Charles Lawrance had developed a number of engines for race cars. Following the war, his interests focused on air-cooled radial engines for the emerging aviation market. There would be demand for the power plants he visualized, and he meant to meet it.
Air-cooled radials already had a small foothold in flight. Louis Blériot had crossed the English Channel in 1909 on one built by Alessandro Anzani, an Italian bicycle racer living in Paris who specialized in lightweight motorcycle engines. Blériot’s three-cylinder, 25-hp Anzani ran continuously for thirty-seven minutes, although it threw out copious quantities of oil.
It must be said that no air-cooled radial engine was anywhere near reliable in 1920. That included Lawrance Aero Engine’s initial product offering, a forgotten three-cylinder model producing 60 hp, as well as a nine-cylinder experimental radial it had just developed for the Power Plant Section of the U.S. Army Air Service’s Engineering Division at McCook Field. The Army too was showing interest in radials.
One can imagine Charles Lawrance’s surprise when the Navy came calling for an engine producing 200 hp. Setting to work, he and his team defined another nine-cylinder radial design. The Navy purchased an initial fifty.
It concerned the Navy that Lawrance Aero Engine might not be able to meet its production commitments. While the company had engineering and drafting facilities, it lacked a true factory and instead procured all parts externally. Navy officials approached the nation’s two premier engine manufacturers to inquire whether they too would develop air-cooled radials.
Neither the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company nor the Wright Aeronautical Company—founded by the Wright brothers