Wright Model C

Model C
Wright Model C-H
Role	Scout
Manufacturer	Wright Company
Designer	Orville Wright
First flight	1912
Introduction	May 18, 1912
Retired	February 24, 1914
Primary user	Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps
Number built	8

The Wright Model C "Speed Scout" was an early military aircraft produced in the United States and which first flew in 1912. It was a development of the Model B but was specifically designed to offer the Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps a long-range scouting aircraft.

It featured a more powerful engine over the Wright B, and an endurance of around four hours. Still a two-seater, it added a complete second set of controls, meaning that either crew member could operate the aircraft. On some, the lever controls were replaced with two wheels mounted on a single yoke. Aerodynamically, the small finlets ("blinkers" in the Wrights' terminology) that had been used on the Model B's undercarriage were replaced by two vertical vanes attached to the forward end of the skids.

The aircraft had a short service life, from 1912 to 1914, because of a series of fatal crashes that destroyed six of the eight aircraft manufactured for the Army.

The increase in power was to meet Army specifications that the aircraft have a rate of climb of 200 feet per minute (1 m/s), a fuel capacity for a four-hour flight, and carry a weight of 450 pounds including crew. Its simplified twin-lever control system was confusing to operate and proved difficult for novice pilots to master, while the plane itself was tail heavy and unstable.

Seven Model Cs were used by the Aeronautical Division: S.C. 10-14, S.C. 16, and S.C. 5, a Burgess Model F rebuilt to Wright C standards. Five new Wright Scouts were delivered to the Aviation School at College Park, Maryland; one to the provisional 1st Aero Squadron at Texas City, Texas; and the last shipped to the Philippines. An eighth Aircraft (S.C. 18), a Burgess Model J delivered in January 1913, was a Wright C built under license by the Burgess Company and Curtis.

The aircraft were delivered between May 1912 and January 1913 and were subject to approval of ten flight tests by the Army before acceptance. The first delivered, to have been S.C. 10, crashed during its climbing test on June 11, 1912, killing Wright Company pilot Arthur L. Welsh and Lt. Leighton W. Hazlehurst, and was replaced in October by another Wright C, itself destroyed in the last fatal crash on February 8, 1914. The crash involving Welsh was found by the Army's board of inquiry to have been pilot error by Welsh, who had intentionally placed the aircraft 45 degrees nose down prior to the test to build momentum. Deliveries of the plane continued, although the statement of one eyewitness led to speculation that the elevator had not responded to inputs to pull out of the dive.

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