Wright Model L

The Wright Model L was a single-seat, high-speed reconnaissance prototype built by the Wright Company in 1916 to a U.S. military specification, and the last aircraft the company built, as well as the last Wright aircraft built at Dayton. By the time it reached the market Orville Wright had left the company, and it bore no resemblance to earlier Wright designs. It was a two-bay unstaggered biplane with a six-cylinder 60 horsepower Wright engine in the nose turning a tractor propeller directly, with no chain drive, a conventional tail, a tailskid undercarriage and ailerons. The aviation historian Richard Hallion called it the antithesis of established Wright design. It was already obsolete beside contemporary European military aircraft and attracted no orders, so only the single prototype was built before the company merged with the Glenn L. Martin Company.