Yokosuka E1Y
| E1Y | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Role | Reconnaissance floatplane |
| National origin | Japan |
| Manufacturer | Yokosuka |
| First flight | 1923 |
| Introduction | 1926 |
| Primary user | Imperial Japanese Navy |
| Number built | 320 |
The Yokosuka E1Y was a Japanese floatplane of the 1920s. A single-engined biplane that was designed and developed by the Yokosuka Naval Air Technical Arsenal as a reconnaissance aircraft for the Imperial Japanese Navy, 320 were built as the Type 14 Reconnaissance Seaplane, entering service in 1925 and remained in operational service until 1932.
In 1921, the Japanese Naval Arsenal at Yokosuka started design of a single-engined reconnaissance floatplane to replace the Navy's Yokosuka Ro-go Ko-gata floatplanes. The resulting aircraft, the Type 10 Reconnaissance Seaplane was designed by a team led by a member of a visiting delegation from Short Brothers of the United Kingdom. It was a single-engined two-bay, two-seat biplane powered by a 400 hp (298 kW) Lorraine-Dietrich engine. Two were completed in 1923, but showed poor performance due to being overweight. A modified aircraft, the Type 10 Model A flew in 1924, showing only slight improvement, while a further revised prototype, the Model B flew in 1925, this curing the aircraft's weight problems while demonstrating better stability and control. As a result, several pre-production Type Bs were built.
Although the Type 10 was not adopted by the Japanese Navy, it was again redesigned, reducing the wingspan from 16.16 m (53 ft 0¼ in) to 13.99 m (45 ft 11 in) and reducing the empty weight from 1,912 kg (4,215 lb) to 1,660 kg (3,659 lb). In this form, the revised design was accepted in January 1926 as the Type 14 Reconnaissance Seaplane, later receiving the short designation E1Y.
Two versions entered service in 1926, a two-seater powered by a 400 hp (300 kW) Lorraine-Dietrich 1 V-12 engine, the Type 14-1 or E1Y1, and a three-seater with all-metal floats and a more powerful Lorraine-Dietrich 2 W engine. In 1928, the Type 14-2 was used as the basis for the Type 90-3 Reconnaissance Seaplane, of which about 20 were built as the Yokosuka E5Y1 and Kawanishi E5K1.
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