Boeing F2B

The Boeing F2B was an American biplane fighter of the United States Navy in the 1920s, remembered as the aircraft of the Three Sea Hawks aerobatic team, famous for tied-together formation flying. It began as the Boeing Model 69, inspired by tests of the FB-6, and was built around a Pratt & Whitney Wasp radial engine with the welded-tubing fuselage and wooden-frame wings of the Model 15, designed specifically for carrier operations. The prototype first flew on 3 November 1926 and reached 154 mph as the XF2B-1, and the Navy ordered 32 F2B-1s, delivered from January 1928 to squadrons aboard the carrier Saratoga. Boeing built two more as Model 69B, one exported to Brazil and one to Japan. The F2B-1 could not fly inverted without its engine quitting, so team leader Tommy Tomlinson modified the carburetors.