GIN119 Naval Fighter #119 - Curtiss XF15C-1 Stingaree

36 b&w pages with color covers, 87 b&w and 4 color photos. By Steve Ginter.

During WWII, the Navy ordered two carrier capable composite powered fighters (each equiped with one prop and one jet engine) to counter the land based all jet aircraft being developed by the Germans. The first was the small Ryan FR-1 “Fireball” followed by the much larger Curtiss XF15C-1 “Stingaree” heavy fighter. Three XF15C-1s, BuNos 01213-01215 and a static airframe were ordered on 7 April 1944. They were powered by a Pratt & Whitney R-2800-34W prop engine of 2,100 hp in the nose and an Allis-Chalmers H-1B (J36) (British “Goblin’) jet engine of 2,700 lbs thrust in the tail. Ship one’s first flight was made on 27 February 1945. All three ships were completed with a conventional tail group. During flight testing of ship one it was decided to retrofit ships two and three with “T”-tails to improve overall performance and to increase the number of aircraft that could be spotted on the carrier’s deck and hangar deck. The first aircraft was lost to fuel starvation caused by a faulty gage. The other two XF15C-1s were delivered to the Naval Air Test Center where they were flown until the program was cancelled in October 1946 by which time the Navy decided to go with the all-jet FD/FH-1 Phantom.