Curtiss Fledgling

The Curtiss Fledgling, internally the Model 48 and Model 51 and known to the United States Navy as the N2C, was a biplane trainer developed in the late 1920s. It answered a 1927 Navy requirement for a primary trainer and beat fourteen other entries. A conventional two-bay staggered-wing biplane with pilot and instructor in tandem open cockpits, it could swap its tailskid undercarriage for a central pontoon and outrigger floats. The Navy ordered two batches with different Wright Whirlwind engines, while Curtiss built the civil Model 51 with a Curtiss Challenger engine and used 109 in its own Curtiss Flying Service air taxi operation. Kits also went to Turkey, where the aircraft trained pilots until 1945.