Too early and too radical |
1920 This monoplane made by Loening was a daring innovation for its time, since most aircrafts at this time were biplanes. Grover C. Loening worked for the Wright Brothers before he founded his own company in 1918. At this time he received the contract for a two-seater fighter plane which should outperform the than famous British Bristol Fighter. Loening came up with a pretty radical design in form of a monoplane which featured some very unusual ideas which found their way to other high performance fighters in the post war years. The M-8Shortly after the war Loening received an order for 46 production models which were designated M-8-0 and a further six which carried the designation M-8-1. One of these was later modified to be used as a racer in the 1920 Pulitzer air races but failed to finished cause of a radiator leak. After this Loening had to fall back to built biplanes in order to win significant orders. It lasted decades until he was able to introduce another monoplane. Manufacturer: Loening Aeronautical Engineering Company, New York. Crew 2. Power plant: 1x Hispano-Suiza 300hp. Wingspan: 32ft 9in. Length: 24ft. Height: 6ft 7in. Wing area: 229 sq ft.Weights: Empty: 1.623 lbs; gross:2.068 lbs. Maximum speed: 145 mph. Climb 10 min to 13.900 ft. Service ceiling: 22.000 ft. Endurance: 5,5 hrs. Armament: Two flexible 0,30 Lewis machine guns. USN 89 René Hieronymus Scale 1:72 Building time: approx. 20 hrs. |