Navy-Wright NW

The Navy-Wright NW series, also called the Mystery Racer, was a pair of racing aircraft built by Wright Aeronautical Corporation at the request of the US Navy. The Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics designed the airframe around the new Wright T-2 twelve cylinder water cooled engine, and the first aircraft, the NW-1, was designed and built in three months. A streamlined sesquiplane with its wheels faired into the lower wing, it first flew on 11 October 1922, days before the Pulitzer race at Selfridge Field, where its engine overheated and it ditched in Lake St. Clair. The second airframe was rebuilt as the NW-2, a biplane floatplane with a 700 hp Wright T-3 engine, for the 1923 Schneider Trophy at Cowes, but a propeller failure holed its floats in pre-race testing and it sank. The Navy abandoned the series afterwards.