Wright-Bellanca WB-1

WB-1
Role Cabin monoplane
National origin United States
Manufacturer Wright-Bellanca[1]
Designer Giuseppe Mario Bellanca
First flight September 1925
Number built 1

The Wright-Bellanca WB-1 was designed by Giuseppe Mario Bellanca for the Wright Aeronautical corporation for use in record-breaking flights.[2]

Development

The WB-1 was a high-winged monoplane with conventional landing gear and all-wood construction. The landing gear fairings were constructed to extend into wheel pants.[3][4]

Operational history

The WB-1 was demonstrated at the 1925 Pulitzer Prize Air Races in New York. In the first day's flights, the WB-1 clocked in 121.8 mph in a closed course race. On day two, the WB-1 won in a payload versus hp and speed efficiency contest, beating a Curtiss Oriole and Sikorsky S-31. In 1926, pilot Fred Becker crashed the overloaded aircraft in a world-record endurance attempt. The aircraft cartwheeled and broke up on a landing attempt.[5][6]

Specifications (WB-1)

Data from Air and Space, Air Pictorial 1975

General characteristics

Performance

See also

Related development


References

  1. "Air and Space Guseppe M. Bellanca Collection". Retrieved 29 September 2013.
  2. Joe Jackson. Atlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the Atlantic. p. 127.
  3. AOPA Pilot Volume 13, Part 1: 35. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  4. Ross Smyth. The Lindbergh of Canada: The Erroll Boyd Story. p. 63.
  5. Michael Gough. The Pulitzer Air Races: American Aviation and Speed Supremacy, 1920-1925. p. 175.
  6. Jay P. Spenser. Bellanca C.F.the emergence of the cabin monoplane in the United States. p. 45.

External links