Wright Model L

History of Wright Model L

The last aircraft the Wright Company produced was the Wright "Model L". The aircraft was designed and developed on the basis of a fast military reconnaissance platform (then called a "reconnaissance plane"), following the conventional thinking of 1916, with a biplane wing layout, open cockpit and fixed wheeled landing gear parallel struts fastened together and wiring helps to control the new plane.

This product was the last aircraft to receive input from a famous brother.

As speed is key to the design, great attention was paid to achieving the most streamlined shape possible, which resulted in a relatively clean, long, flat fuselage, with a nose-mounted engine as usual, and driving the A two-blade wooden propeller. The rear of the plane is dominated by a rather large and unsightly fin assembly - the horizontal plane follows the fin's side profile nicely, but with a decent amount of surface area. Instead, the single vertical stabilizer is small and rounded to improve aerodynamic efficiency.

There are no foot-operated rudder controls installed in the cockpit - instead, the controls are controlled by a handle on the right side of the steering wheel-like control yoke. The engines powering the aircraft are internally mounted Wright 6-60 series.

In testing, the Model L proved to be no faster than competing designs at the time - reaching about 80 mph at its base load due to excessive drag created by the large horizontal stabilizer surface. This ultimately resulted in little interest from militaries around the world, including the U.S. Army Air Service.

Having failed to gain domestic approval, the product has attracted less interest abroad - even in the midst of a world war raging in Europe.

As such, the Wright Model L proved to be a market failure for the company, forcing it to focus on the design and development of aircraft and automotive engines for the foreseeable future. This opened a new chapter for the company, as Wright became associated with many of the engines installed on various aircraft that would emerge over the next few decadesall the way up to World War II.

The Wright company name eventually merged with the well-known Glenn L. Martin Company to form the Wright-Martin Aircraft Corporation. Martin himself resigned shortly thereafter, and the company became Wright Aeronautical in 1919 and then merged into Curtiss-Wright Corporation in 1929.

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