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CURTISS JN-4D JENNY
POLIKARPOV U-2 (PO-2) LIGHT NIGHT BOMBER
The Curtiss JN-4D Jenny is the oldest plane at the FHC. The aircraft served both in military and civilian service in southern California. Wrecked many times over its long flying career, the Jenny was always valuable enough to be rebuilt to fly again.
All that it took was the threat of a world-sized war to free Glenn Curtiss from the Wright Brothers’ lawyers. Since 1909, innovation in the field of aviation in the United States had been seriously hindered by the Wright Brothers’ attempts to control the construction of flying machines. But with the nations of Europe on the verge of conflict, the US
government became impatient with the petty fighting and patent litigation among aircraft builders. America needed warplanes and the government cleared the way for talented men like Curtiss to help.
The US military wanted tractor planes, aircraft with the engine and propeller up front.
Curtiss had little experience with the type. His early planes were pushers, with the engine mounted behind the pilot. Unfortunately, when a pusher aircraft hit something, most often the ground, the hot engine and the immovable earth smashed together, often catching what the military considered the plane’s most valuable item—a trained pilot—in between.
Curtiss turned to talent in England to help him with new aircraft. He hired a designer from Sopwith named B. Douglas Thomas, who designed the Curtiss Models J and N, both
tractor aircraft. Still later, the best traits of each plane were combined into the model JN.
Pilots most often prefer to fly the Jenny from the back seat. The balance feels better and a flyer can see more of his surroundings too. Cutouts in the top and bottom wings allow the flyer to peek in directions that would be blocked from the front seat.
This image shows a row of Jenny aircraft equipped with gunner’s rings in the aft cockpit. True to its training roots, the mounts appear to be equipped with cameras instead of guns in order to record student’s skills at “shooting” from a moving plane.
The definitive version of the JN was the JN-4. The plane got its nickname from its
coding, which looked a little like the name “Jenny.” In the strictest sense, JNs were not combat planes. America’s promise to “blacken the skies” over Germany with thousands of combat aircraft never came true. US combat flyers used French or English machines to
“fight it out with the Hun over the trenches.” However, those airmen needed to be trained, and some 95 percent of American and Canadian World War I combat pilots flew a Jenny
when they learned to fly.
The Jenny’s engine was not particularly powerful, so the plane was big. The machine
needed every bit of the ninety horsepower produced by its OX-5 engine to pull two
aviators (and occasionally machine guns, practice bombs, or a camera) into the skies. It was the opinion of some pilots that the JN-4D, with an upper wing spanning more than
forty-three feet, was more of a motorized box kite than an aircraft.
To keep them light, aircraft of the day were covered in fabric. Though canvas was
strong and readily available, airplane builders knew it was much too heavy to use as a covering. Silk, cotton, and linen—which weighed just three to six ounces per square yard
—were popular choices.
The Jenny’s rudder is blue, white, and red (front to back), similar to French World War I combat aircraft. British warplanes of the era had the same colors, but in the opposite order. To confuse the issue, stateside, Jenny trainers received rudders painted in both styles.
The fabric was sealed for strength and durability, and to create a waterproof barrier to protect the airplane’s interior structure. Early on, fabric coverings were sealed with a variety of substances, including rubber, linseed oil, banana oil, collodion, celluloid, and varnishes. Since many of the chemicals contained in these mixtures were quite toxic,
airplane makers quickly began to call the sealers “dope,” because breathing the fumes
made them feel lightheaded, sick, or drunk.
Some areas on the aircraft were covered with other materials. Near the hot-running
engine, fabric gave way to sheet metal. Any areas that were going to get extra wear were reinforced. The upper part of the cockpit and the “turtle back” area immediately behind it were sometimes strengthened with heavier fabric or a thin veneer of wood or metal to
reinforce the places where the pilot climbed in and out.
The Jenny’s underlying skeleton was primarily wood—ash, spruce, and birch were
most common. The wooden components made up the ribs, spars, and stringers in the
wings and longerons and frames in the fuselage. These were braced with thousands of feet of low tensile strength flexible steel wire (about 660 pounds of it). The complex web of wires gave the wooden structure nearly all of its strength and rigidity.
At the center of this mass of wood, wire, and fabric sat a pair of flyers; commonly a
student up front and an instructor in the rear. Often, the novice pilot wore a helmet
equipped with Gosport tubes, which ran from each ear hole to a funnel in the instructor’s compartment, allowing the student to receive immediate and deafening orders. There was no way for a pupil to talk back, nor any need.
The Jenny has handles on its bottom wing. Crewman used the handles to hold onto the big training airplane before the pilot was ready for takeoff. And, when the Jenny comes in for a landing, ground crews can catch the delicate aircraft by its wings and point it back toward the hangars.
The Jenny has a wooden propeller sheathed in copper to protect it from damage. Operating from fields, a stray rock or dirt clod could initiate a crack or chip in the Jenny’s prop that could grow into a real problem once the plane was in the air.
The wooden parts of the Jenny are made from hard and light wood varieties such as ash, spruce, and birch. When the plane lands in the grass, the plane’s wooden skid (lined with a metal shoe) acts as a brake. Moving the Jenny into the FHC’s concrete-floored hangar requires lifting the tail of the plane and placing the skid onto a small wheeled dolly.
During a Fly Day performance, the Curtiss JN-4 Jenny cruises over the crowd. Pilots say the antique plane is easy to fly but tricky to land. Unlike the heavier, faster aircraft, the aircraft is much more susceptible to sudden gusts of wind.
The Jenny’s cockpit was a bit of a luxury. Early aircraft models left the pilot flying through the elements without protection and dangerously exposed in even the smallest of accidents. Flyers joked that, at least in a Jenny, you could hunker down below the rim of the cockpit and pretend you weren’t about to crash.
This plane was also made to operate in the most primitive conditions. At the time, an
airfield was truly a field. A flyer simply pointed his nose into the wind and “gave it the gun.” The Jenny’s wooden propeller was sheathed in copper to protect it from rocks and dirt clods as the plane roared to takeoff speed.
Landing on the grass was a bit dicier. Bamboo skids on the bottom wings protected the
big plane should it start to go over, or ground loop. The plane had no brakes, so a metal shoe on the end of the wooden tailskid sliced through the grass, dirt, and mud, eventually stopping forward motion.
The Jenny was equipped with a simple bungee system to absorb some of the shock of
landing. The plane’s axle sat right above the lower union of its fore and aft landing gear struts. The stretchy chord holding the two parts together allowed the axle and wheels to bounce up and down. In fact, the axle would be caught and held in place by a metal
bracket should the bungee snap during an extra-hard landing.
Hard landings were commonplace. Young flyers’ inexperience, combined with a
notoriously unreliable and underpowered engine, led to hundreds of Jenny “crack-ups.”
One of the only differences between the FHC’s aircraft and a completely original World War I-era Jenny is the plane’s engine. The collection’s aircraft is fitted with an OXX6
power plant, a former blimp engine, which has a fraction more power, improved rocker
arms, and a back-up ignition system for a bit of extra protection.
And, there were plenty of Jennys to crash. Curtiss Aeroplane Company of
Hammondsport, New York, and six other firms, including a Canadian subsidiary, made
6,070 Jennys of all types. The plane is considered America’s first truly mass-produced aircraft.
Sadly, just as the Wright versus Curtiss battles before World War I retarded the growth of America’s aviation industry, the availability of “still new-in-the-box” Jennys made postwar innovation slow going in the United States. Why buy a new airplane when you
could get an existing Jenny for as little as fifty dollars?
WAS THE FHC’S JENNY A FAMOUS
“BARNSTORMER?”
A detective would have a field day with one part of the story of the FHC’s Jenny. The
“never been cracked” aircraft fell into the hands of Earl Kampschmidt in 1925, and he
kept the plane at Burdette Airport, the home of the famous 13 Black Cats, a company
of flamboyant stunt pilots “who defied both superstition and the odds on survival” in
the late 1920s. They often flew surplus Jenny aircraft in their wild barnstorming acts.
The Cats’ menu of tricks was vast, including “parachute jumps, ship changes,
upside down flying, delayed opening jumps, ocean landings, rope ladder, and wing
walking.” For many of their eye-popping, and often illegal stunts, the 13 Black Cats
preferred to use battered Jennys, which they could beg or borrow from members,
friends, and colleagues.
There is no direct evidence that Kampschmidt had anything to do with these hell-
raisers, but soon after he arrived at Burdette, his plane encountered a string of bad
luck. He wrote the Department of Commerce, “The propeller, landing gear, and left
lower [wing] were replaced after a stall close to the ground.” Then after he had rebuilt the plane from that accident, he described another incident: “A strong wind, one night, turned the ship over on its back, breaking the front beam in the left upper wing near
the tip.”
Luckily no one was hurt in these many accidents. As Cats member Reginald Denny
wrote, “Defying superstition, daring fate, that’s what it was. A black cat has ever been regarded as the harbinger of disaster.”
As one of the boys gives the propeller a whirl, everyone else hangs on. With no brakes, it was important to keep the Jenny under control until the pilot is ready to go.
The Jenny’s OX-5-type engine was not what you’d call overly powerful or particularly dependable. It requires constant attention before and after flights, and Curtiss recommended that it be overhauled often. Luckily, the FHC’s aircraft only takes short hops during the summer and is treated with kid gloves.
The rear cockpit of the Curtiss Jenny carries a full but basic complement of flight instruments including a clock, altimeter, oil pressure gauge, RPM, water temperature, and a compass. The control stick looks very similar to the handle of a vintage baseball bat.
After military service, many of the trainer planes found a new career in barnstorming.
Ex-army aviators traveled the country, introducing the masses to aviation. Secondhand, often modified, Jennys became synonymous with the swashbuckling aviators of the “air
circus” who sold rides and participated in risky, outlandish stunts.
The FHC’s Curtiss JN-4D Jenny, serial 3712, flew in both worlds—military and
civilian. It was one of 252 JN planes built at Curtiss in May 1918. Each plane, without engine, cost the government an average of $3,155.24.
The Jenny’s tail skid is fine in the grass, but airports are paved these days. Mechanics have created a special cradle to bring the World War I-era plane back home to the FHC’s hangar.
The plane was crated and delivered to March Field near Riverside, California, by June
1918 where it was used to train army flyers. Second Lieutenant Topliff Olin Paine learned to fly at March Field while the FHC’s Jenny was there. Today, the Jenny resides at Paine Field, named after the late military and airmail pilot.
In late 1918, March Field had ninety-nine Jenny training aircraft in service with more in reserve. The FHC’s Jenny was rated “good” in the spring of 1919 by army inspectors
and had logged “253:48 hours” of operating time. It was sold back to Curtiss on May 6, 1919, in order to be refurbished for civilian sale.
By 1925, the plane was back in Southern California. Licensing paperwork reveals that
the plane, which had “never been cracked” according to the owner, was purchased by Earl Kampschmidt, who wrecked it twice soon after.
The plane stayed a wreck until 1937. Undaunted by the letter from the Department of
Commerce warning him that the Jenny was old, had terrible spin characteristics, and
should be thoroughly inspected, Ross Hadley enlisted a mechanic and a class at a junior college to put the plane back in the air. He was flying by late 1939.
By 1940, the Jenny was on its third engine and was prohibited from “intentional
aerobatics,” according to an inspection report. The airworthiness certificate expired in October 1941. When the CAA requested information on the aircraft in 1947, they were
notified that the airplane had been destroyed in a hangar fire at Van Nuys Airport in
October 1943.
However, like the phoenix, the Jenny would rise again. What remained of the aircraft
was sold (for one dollar) to Sammy Mason of the Hollywood Hawks. He wrote that the
plane would “be used for movie and airshow purposes for wing walking and aerobatics. It will be flown cross country to and from airshows but will not be flown over populated
areas.”
After two more accidents, in 1947 and 1948, the plane ended up in the hands of a scrap dealer in Rosemead, California. Jack Hardwick made his living selling parts from World War II surplus military planes. Dismantled, what was left of the Jenny remained in storage until the mid-1970s.
Ray Folsom had always wanted a Jenny. His father had flown in World War I and had
owned a surplus JN-4D when Ray was a young boy. Folsom rented other aircraft he
owned to movie and TV companies, including a Standard J-1 trainer that appeared in the movie The Great Waldo Pepper.
Folsom did not find his Jenny until an acquaintance purchased a large collection of
antique aircraft and parts, which included what became the FHC’s aircraft. The plane was
“essentially intact, which was unusual for so old a machine.” Folsom spent about five
years restoring the airplane and then put it to work in Hollywood.
In early 1999, the FHC purchased the nearly complete Jenny from Folsom. The plane
was moved to Vintage Aviation Services in Kingsbury, Texas for restoration in accordance to the collection’s strict standards.
Beyond a general overhaul, some damaged structural areas were rebuilt and items that
were determined inauthentic were restored. Flight testing on the rebuilt Jenny began in late 2001. The plane was eventually shipped to Washington and is currently on display at the collection’s facility in Everett. The plane takes to the air regularly during Fly Days in the summer, flying off the grass at Paine Field.
The Jenny never went to war, but another aircraft that began its life as a training plane saw plenty of action during World War II and beyond. On the other side of the globe, the Soviet government tasked aircraft designer Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov with creating a replacement for the U-1, a rudimentary two-seat trainer.
His 1927 prototype, designated the U-2, was too simple, too weighty, and could barely
get off the ground.
An improved version built the following year retained some of the best features of the original. Those at the airfield, watching the little plane putter into the skies, would have been astonished to know that there was going to be thirty-three thousand more built over three decades.
Sunlight passes through the Jenny’s skin, revealing the wood structure underneath. One of the lightest planes in the FHC
collection, the Jenny weighs about 1,920 pounds loaded. By comparison, a standard Honda automobile weighs 1,000 pounds more.
The FHC’s Po-2 is equipped with Venturi tubes on either side of the cockpit. As air passes through the funnel-shaped constriction, its velocity increases while pressure decreases. The suction system was a cheap and simple way to power the plane’s vacuum-driven gyroscope.
In a moment of downtime, female Soviet combat flyers discuss the night’s actions while one of their trusty Po-2 bombers awaits another mission over enemy lines.
The Po-2 was often equipped with six small bomb racks to carry light bombs. Often, the plane’s gunner carried more explosives in her lap, tossing them out as the plane conducted its diving bomb run on enemy troops.
In many ways, the U-2 was quite similar to the Jenny from ten years before; a two-
place biplane with fixed gear. However, the Russian-built version incorporated various improvements.
The radial engine was slightly more powerful and much more dependable than the OX-
5. It allowed the airframe to be more compact than the “box kite” Curtiss aircraft. The U-2
wings were a bit more complex and compressed, but their construction was similar to that of the Jenny—a wooden skeleton covered in fabric. The majority of the fuselage on the U-2 was skinned with metal or plywood, making the plane more durable and allowing the
structure to carry less load. Some portions of the aircraft used metal entirely, including the undercarriage and several bracing components.
Outwardly, the U-2 was similar to many inexpensive and simple aircraft of the time—
fixed gear, tail skid, open cockpits, and wooden propeller. Russia’s military and civilian organizations adopted the U-2 to teach young flyers the basics of aviation.
As with many successful aircraft, it didn’t take long to dream up a multitude of new
uses for the U-2. The little plane’s resume soon expanded to include crop duster,
ambulance, scout aircraft, liaison plane, patrol machine, passenger plane, and photography platform. In the wilds of Russia, flyers often affixed floats or skis in the place of its tires.
The military, too, figured that the plane could do more than train pilots. A machine gun synched to fire through the propeller arc was added on the left side of the fuselage. Two-
hundred-kilogram bomb racks were fitted under the wings, and a 7.62mm machine gun
cropped up near the back seat for protection.
The Po-2’s simple five-cylinder engine roars to life at the beginning of a Fly Day performance at the FHC. The plane’s Shvetsov engine has a distinct buzz, which American servicemen likened to the sound of a sewing machine.
The FHC’s Po-2 can be equipped with a tail wheel or a tail skid, allowing the plane to be flown from Paine Field’s nine-thousand-foot paved runway or from a simple grass field.
Like many successful combat aircraft, the Polikarpov was drafted into completing a multitude of aerial tasks. Here, a Po-2’s flight crew drops propaganda leaflets over the front lines.
Of course, when Hitler’s Germany invaded Russia in 1941, both civilian and military
U-2s were enlisted to help the massive war effort. Fragile and vulnerable to gunfire, U-2s were also ridiculously slow, which actually allowed a skilled pilot to avoid becoming prey to a fast-flying Messerschmitt fighter. Hard turns and ground-hugging swerves at well
below the speedy attacker’s stall speed gave a German flyer only a split second to line up a clean shot.
Tricks aside, the U-2 was most useful in the dark. The plane is perhaps most famous as an LNB—light night bomber. Many U-2 units were “manned” almost entirely by female
combat pilots. Inflicting around-the-clock harassment and psychological warfare was at the heart of this endeavor. U-2 flyers would cruise over enemy lines, searching for
German activity below. In the cold Russian wilderness, small fires often gave invaders away.
The pilot would cut the engine to idle and glide. The U-2 could coast “downhill” as
steady as a rock, a useful trait from its training days. At the right moment, the pilot would spring the bombs free from their racks. Her companion, in the back cockpit, might toss out a few small bombs or grenades herself. Then, as the spotlights came on and the antiaircraft shells started flying, the U-2 pilot would gun her engine and make a quick escape.
The German soldiers, up all night to the sounds of gunfire, bombs, and the putter of
that sewing machine five-cylinder engine, called the intruders Nächthexen—“Night Witches.”
The FHC’s pair of Polikarpov-designed aircraft fly in formation in this rare photo. Though built for completely different tasks, both aircraft saw extensive service with the Soviet Air Forces during combat on the Eastern Front.
At a landing speed of about 67 kilometres per hour (42 mph), the Po-2 prepares to touch down on Paine Field’s runway 34L
during a photo session.
The flyers had a wicked job. The U-2 was agonizingly slow, painfully delicate, and
horrifically flammable. Putting all those terrifying traits aside, the pilot and gunner in a U-2 were also, nearly always, unfathomably cold. Russia, while geographically diverse, isn’t exactly known for its balmy evenings. Flying the U-2 was like driving in a convertible at eighty miles an hour in a snowstorm. And the plane could not carry much weight, so these women braved the enemy and the cold as many as eight or nine times a night.
The Po-2’s dual cockpit allowed for two flyers—a pilot in front and a gunner behind. The crew climbed into the aircraft using the reinforced wooden walkway built over the plane’s delicate fabric-covered wing.
When designer Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov died in July 1944, the U-2 was
redesignated to honor him. The scrappy little plane became known as the Polikarpov Po-2.
The FHC’s Po-2 was built in Russia that same year. Little is known about the history of this aircraft during World War II. Presumably it was used by the Soviet Air Force on the Eastern Front, then abandoned after being damaged beyond economical repair in an
accident or in combat.
The aircraft was located in the area of Belarus in the Soviet Union, east of Poland,
which became a sovereign nation in 1990. The wreck was retrieved and restored by
members of the Polish Aero Club, a large association of sportsmen and recreational flyers based in Warsaw, in 1995.
A warbird specialist familiar with Po-2 aircraft will note the use of some materials in the restored aircraft are most often seen in Polish versions of the Po-2 (designated CSS-13s), including metal struts in place of the original tube and wood braces. As well, an up-rated Polish version of the M-11 engine, produced in 1954, has been substituted for the World War II-era Shvetsov motor. M-11 engines, as well as Po-2 type aircraft, were made under license in Poland for many years.
The FHC acquired the Po-2 in 2000. Today, the plane is painted to represent loosely the scheme of a 46th Guards Bomber Regiment aircraft. The 46th was the only all-woman
Red Army regiment during World War II and had a total cadre of over two hundred. The
roughly thirty aircrews flew over twenty-four thousand combat missions over 1,100 nights during the war.
A Soviet flyer hand-props the Po-2’s engine at the start of a long, cold bombing mission against German invaders during combat on the Eastern Front.
The front cockpit of the FHC’s World War II-era Po-2 has a mount for a modern hand-held radio affixed near the right hand of the pilot.
The plane’s paint scheme includes the number “23” on the tail. Some thirty women
flyers in the Soviet Air Force earned the Hero of the Soviet Union medal by the end of World War II, “the highest distinction in the Soviet Union awarded personally or
collectively for heroic feats in service to the Soviet state and society.” Of these thirty,
twenty-three of them were Night Witches of the famous 46th Guards Bomber Regiment,
with five awarded posthumously. A twenty-fourth woman flyer was awarded the medal
posthumously in 1995.
The words painted in Russian Cyrillic letters on the port side of the Po-2 can be
translated roughly as “Revenge for Dusya,” a reference to Dusya Nosal, a Russian female aviator considered the “best pilot” in the 46th by her fellow flyers. She was killed in combat while flying a Po-2 when a Focke-Wulf fighter pounced on her aircraft.
The legacy of the Po-2 lasted far beyond World War II. Thousands of the planes were
built through 1952 in the Soviet Union, and even longer in Poland. United Nations
servicemen in Korea found that the Night Witch routine worked as well in the 1950s as it had during the earlier conflict. North Korean Po-2s, supplied by the Soviet Union, often buzzed American bases at night during the Korean War, and became known as “Bed
Check Charlies” by the servicemen.
Solving the issue of a small, slow intruder was perhaps even harder for the Americans
with their high-tech weapons than it was for the Germans. Radar-equipped fighters often scrambled to chase these shadows in the night but more often than not, they came home
empty-handed. The bombings continued, and the last American military men killed
overseas in an enemy aerial attack were bombed by a Bed Check Charlie at the base on the island of Cho-do, off the Korean coast, on April 15, 1953.
Over Puget Sound, FHC pilot “Bud” Granley slides the Polikarpov Po-2 into formation for a quick photograph during a test flight.
The exhaust valves in the bottom cylinders of the Po-2’s radial engine are known to seep oil. Here, mechanics use stove pipes over the lower exhaust stacks to guide the oily smoke away from the plane’s fuselage at startup.