Wright Model C

The Wright Model C was a two-seat pusher biplane that the Wright Company built from 1912 as a more powerful development of the Model B, designed to give the U.S. Army Signal Corps a long-range scouting aircraft. A 75 horsepower six-cylinder engine, the first six-cylinder motor the Wrights fitted to an aeroplane, gave it an endurance of about four hours, and a complete second set of controls let either crew member fly it. The small finlets of the Model B undercarriage were replaced by two vertical vanes at the front of the skids. Of the eight aircraft that went through Army acceptance flights, six crashed between July 1913 and February 1914, nearly all of them fatally. Orville Wright blamed pilots who were unfamiliar with the extra power, while factory manager Grover Loening judged the design defective. An Army board found the type dynamically unsuited for flying, and the surviving machines were grounded in 1914. A floatplane variant, the Model C-H, was built for the U.S. Navy.