The Ford Company involvement in the aviation industry had some bizarre, lesser known sides that are probably much more interesting than the Fokker-like proverbial three-motor.
Of this obscure past almost
nothing exists now, as if a stealthy hand had erased the trail of some strange
ventures.
Among those ventures are the
Stout Dragonfly (a tandem amphibian design) and the subject of this article:
the Ford 15P flying wing. These designs followed the same pattern of the
Ford Flivver, aiming to provide an affordable ride to every-day people and in doing
so supposedly replicate the success of the Ford automobile.
Not many photos exist to
document the 15P. There was a mock-up with a faked registration and then the
real thing. The lines were very attractive; the engine was behind the two-seat
side-by-side cockpit and transmitted power to the tractor propeller via a
shaft. And in case you are asking yourself yes, the engine was indeed a Ford
V-8 engine.
For 1932 the design does
really look futuristic, with those curvaceous, trousered landing gear legs and
the tear-drop blended fuselage. The 15P flew quietly into oblivion, though.
The model consists basically of one upper and one lower vacformed shells with the addition of wrap-around style
styrene sheet wings. A succinct interior was provided and a few external
details added. The gear legs, given its complex curvatures, provoked a bit of
head-scratching during the construction process. The issue was finally solved
using several pieces of styrene to determine the general shapes and then
“rounding” with Milliput. MV Products lenses were used as landing lights. The
originals look a lot like car headlights.
Finally, the chubby although
somehow racy shape of the 15P came to light and surely Humpty-Dumpty would not
have been uncomfortable flying this plane and, like the character, it just
makes you smile, doesn’t it?
-I would like to thank Mike
Fletcher and Jim Schubert for their help with this project.
Sometimes this plane is represented in modern (not original) drawings as not having the wings in an arrow configuration, so here is a Ford document published in the great magazine Skyways (#45 January 2005) and a photo of the mock-up:
So here is this strange -and very unusual for the time- little plane:
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