A flying boat is a fixed-winged seaplane with a hull , allowing it to land on water, that usually has no type of landing gear to allow operation on land. Flying boats may be stabilized by under-wing floats or by wing-like projections called sponsons from the fuselage. Ascending into common use during the First World War , flying boats rapidly grew in both scale and capability during the Interwar period , during which time numerous operators found commercial success with the type.
Flying boats were some of the largest aircraft of the first half of the 20th century, exceeded in size only by bombers developed during the Second World War. Their advantage lay in using water instead of expensive land-based runways, making them the basis for international airlines in the interwar period.
They were also commonly used as maritime patrol aircraft and air-sea rescue , particularly during times of conflict. The popularity of flying boats gradually trailed off during the Cold War era, partially because of the investments in airports during the conflict that eased the introduction of larger, and faster, land-based airliners.
In the 21st century, flying boats maintain a few niche uses, such as dropping water on forest fires, air transport around archipelagos, and access to undeveloped areas.
Many modern seaplane variants, whether float or flying boat types, are convertible amphibious aircraft where either landing gear or flotation modes may be used to land and take off. On 6 June , Gabriel Voisin took off and landed on the River Seine with a towed kite glider on floats. The first of his unpowered flights was yards. On 28 March , Frenchman Henri Fabre flew the first successful powered seaplane, the Gnome Omega �powered hydravion , a trimaran floatplane.
The first hydro-aeroplane competition was held in Monaco in March , featuring aircraft using floats from Fabre, Curtiss, Tellier and Farman. This led to the first scheduled seaplane passenger services at Aix-les-Bains , using a five-seat Sanchez-Besa from 1 August Its first successful flight was on 13 April Combining floats with wheels, he made the first amphibian flights in February and was awarded the first Collier Trophy for US flight achievement.
From his experiments with a hulled seaplane resulted in the Model E and Model F , which he called "flying-boats". In Britain, Captain Edward Wakefield and Oscar Gnosspelius began to explore the feasibility of flight from water in They decided to make use of Windermere in the Lake District , England's largest lake.
The latter's first attempts to fly attracted large crowds, though the aircraft failed to take off and required a re-design of the floats incorporating features of Borwick's successful speed-boat hulls. Meanwhile, Wakefield ordered a floatplane similar to the design of the Fabre Hydravion. By November , both Gnosspelius and Wakefield had aircraft capable of flight from water and awaited suitable weather conditions.
Gnosspelius's flight was short-lived as the aircraft crashed into the lake. Wakefield's pilot however, taking advantage of a light northerly wind, successfully took off and flew at a height of 50 feet to Ferry Nab, where he made a wide turn and returned for a perfect landing on the lake's surface.
A seaplane was used during the Balkan Wars in , when a Greek "Astra Hydravion" did a reconnaissance of the Turkish fleet and dropped four bombs. American businessman Rodman Wanamaker became determined that the prize should go to an American aircraft and commissioned the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company to design and build an aircraft capable of making the flight.
Curtiss' development of the Flying Fish flying boat in brought him into contact with John Cyril Porte , a retired Royal Navy lieutenant, aircraft designer and test pilot who was to become an influential British aviation pioneer.
Recognising that many of the early accidents were attributable to a poor understanding of handling while in contact with the water, the pair's efforts went into developing practical hull designs to make the transatlantic crossing possible. At the same time the British boat building firm J. Samuel White of Cowes on the Isle of Wight set up a new aircraft division and produced a flying boat in the United Kingdom.
This was displayed at the London Air Show at Olympia in Saunders boatyard of East Cowes and the Sopwith Aviation Company produced the "Bat Boat", an aircraft with a consuta laminated hull that could operate from land or on water, which today we call an amphibious aircraft.
In the U. Wanamaker's commission built on Glen Curtiss' previous development and experience with the Model F [8] for the U. Navy which rapidly resulted in the America , designed under Porte's supervision following his study and rearrangement of the flight plan; the aircraft was a conventional biplane design with two-bay, unstaggered wings of unequal span with two pusher inline engines mounted side-by-side above the fuselage in the interplane gap.
Wingtip pontoons were attached directly below the lower wings near their tips. The design later developed into the Model H , resembled Curtiss' earlier flying boats, but was built considerably larger so it could carry enough fuel to cover 1, mi 1, km. The three crew members were accommodated in a fully enclosed cabin.
Trials of the America began on 23 June with Porte also as Chief Test Pilot; testing soon revealed serious shortcomings in the design; it was under-powered, so the engines were replaced with more powerful engines mounted in a tractor configuration.
There was also a tendency for the nose of the aircraft to try to submerge as engine power increased while taxiing on water. In order to counteract this effect, Curtiss fitted fins to Boat Building Companies In Durban Job the sides of the bow to add hydrodynamic lift, but soon replaced these with sponsons , a type of underwater pontoon mounted in pairs on either side of a hull.
These sponsons or their engineering equivalents and the flared, notched hull would remain a prominent feature of flying boat hull design in the decades to follow. With the problem resolved, preparations for the crossing resumed.
While the craft was found to handle "heavily" on takeoff, and required rather longer take-off distances than expected, the full moon on 5 August was selected for the trans-Atlantic flight; Porte was to pilot the America with George Hallett as co-pilot and mechanic.
Curtiss and Porte's plans were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. Appointed Squadron Commander of Royal Navy Air Station Hendon , he soon convinced the Admiralty of the potential of flying boats and was put in charge of the naval air station at Felixstowe in Porte persuaded the Admiralty to commandeer and later, purchase the America and a sister craft from Curtiss.
This was followed by an order for 12 more similar aircraft, one Model H-2 and the remaining as Model H-4 's. Four examples of the latter were assembled in the UK by Saunders. All of these were similar to the design of the America and, indeed, were all referred to as America s in Royal Navy service. The engines, however, were changed from the under-powered hp Curtiss engines to hp Rolls-Royce Falcon engines.
The initial batch was followed by an order for 50 more totalling 64 Americas overall during the war. The Curtiss H-4s were soon found to have a number of problems; they were underpowered, their hulls were too weak for sustained operations and they had poor handling characteristics when afloat or taking off.
At Felixstowe, Porte made advances in flying boat design and developed a practical hull design with the distinctive "Felixstowe notch". Porte modified an H-4 with a new hull whose improved hydrodynamic qualities made taxiing, take-off and landing much more practical, and called it the Felixstowe F.
Porte's innovation of the "Felixstowe notch" enabled the craft to overcome suction from the water more quickly and break free for flight much more easily.
This made operating the craft far safer and more reliable. The "notch" breakthrough would soon after evolve into a "step", with the rear section of the lower hull sharply recessed above the forward lower hull section, and that characteristic became a feature of both flying boat hulls and seaplane floats.
The resulting aircraft would be large enough to carry sufficient fuel to fly long distances and could berth alongside ships to take on more fuel.
Porte then designed a similar hull for the larger Curtiss H flying boat which, while larger and more capable than the H-4s, shared failings of a weak hull and poor water handling. The combination of the new Porte-designed hull, this time fitted with two steps, with the wings of the H and a new tail, and powered by two Rolls-Royce Eagle engines, was named the Felixstowe F.
It was used as the basis for all future designs. Another seventy were built, and these were followed by two F. In February , the first prototype of the Felixstowe F. It was larger and heavier than the F. Approximately Felixstowe F. The Felixstowe F. The prototype showed superior qualities to its predecessors but, to ease production, the production version was modified to make extensive use of components from the F.
In they were towed on lighters towards the northern German ports to extend their range; on 4 June this resulted in three F. Curtiss among others also built the Felixstowe F. Smaller than the Felixstowes, several thousand FBAs served with almost all of the Allied forces as reconnaissance craft, patrolling the North Sea, Atlantic and Mediterranean oceans. In Italy, several seaplanes were developed, starting with the L series, and progressing with the M series.
The Macchi M. The Austro-Hungarian firm, Lohner-Werke began building flying boats, starting with the Lohner E in and the later influential Lohner L version.
In September , British company Supermarine started operating the first flying boat service in the world, from Woolston to Le Havre in France , but it was short-lived. Of the four that made the attempt, only one completed the flight. In , the first successful commercial flying boat service was introduced with flights to and from the Channel Islands.
The British aviation industry was experiencing rapid growth. The Government decided that nationalization was necessary and ordered five aviation companies to merge to form the state-owned Imperial Airways of London IAL. IAL became the international flag-carrying British airline, providing flying boat passenger and mail transport links between Britain and South Africa using aircraft such as the Short S. Perhaps the most notable of these flights was a 43, km 27, mi expedition conducted during and ; it was carried out by four Southamptons of the Far East Flight , setting out from Felixstowe via the Mediterranean and India to Singapore.
In the s, flying boats made it possible to have regular air transport between the U. Foynes , Ireland and Botwood , Newfoundland and Labrador were the termini for many early transatlantic flights. In areas where there were no airfields for land-based aircraft, flying boats could stop at small island, river, lake or coastal stations to refuel and resupply.
The Pan Am Boeing "Clipper" planes brought exotic destinations like the Far East within reach of air travelers and came to represent the romance of flight. By , mail from Australia was reaching Britain in just 16 days � less than half the time taken by sea. In that year, government tenders on both sides of the world invited applications to run new passenger and mail services between the ends of the British Empire , and Qantas and IAL were successful with a joint bid.
A company under combined ownership was then formed, Qantas Empire Airways. The new ten-day service between Rose Bay, New South Wales near Sydney and Southampton was such a success with letter-writers that before long the volume of mail was exceeding aircraft storage space. A better solution to the problem was sought by the British government during the early s, who released a specification calling for a new large aircraft capable of carrying up to 24 passengers in spacious comfort along with adequate room for airmail or freight while simultaneously being capable of a cruising speed of MPH and a range of at least miles; the capacity for an extended range of 2, miles to serve the North Atlantic route was also stipulated.
Being ordered from aviation manufacturer Short Brothers , the Empire was reportedly hailed Boat Building Companies In Durban Visual as being "one of the world's boldest experiments in aviation", while early sceptics referred to the order less favourably as being a 'gamble'. Delivering the mail as quickly as possible generated a lot of competition and some innovative designs. One variant of the Short Empire flying boats was the strange-looking " Maia and Mercury ". It was a four-engined floatplane "Mercury" the winged messenger fixed on top of "Maia", a heavily modified Short Empire flying boat.
This allowed the Mercury to carry sufficient fuel for a direct trans-Atlantic flight with the mail. The Mercury did set a number of distance records before in-flight refuelling was adopted. Sir Alan Cobham devised a method of in-flight refuelling in the s. In the air, the Short Empire could be loaded with more fuel than it could take off with.
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