The Loening C-2 Air Yacht was an amphibious airliner produced in the United States at the end of the 1920s, developed from the OL observation aircraft the firm was producing for the US military."The Loening Cabin Amphibian", 415

Design and development

The C-2 was a two-bay biplane of unconventional design, with a tall, narrow fuselage that nearly filled the interplane gap. The pilot (and sometimes one passenger) sat in an open cockpit at the top of the fuselage, with the engine mounted in front of them. Underneath the fuselage was a long "shoehorn"-style float, that extended forward underneath the engine and propeller. Four to six passengers could be accommodated in a fully enclosed cabin within the fuselage. The main units of the undercarriage retracted into wells in the sides of the fuselage. Stabilising floats were fitted against the undersides of the lower wing. The C-2 was produced in two versions, the C-2C with a

Wright Cyclone Wright Cyclone was the name given to a family of air-cooled radial piston engines designed by the Wright Aeronautical Corporation and used in numerous American aircraft in the 1930s and 1940s. Background The Wright Aeronautical Corporation was f ...

engine and the C-2H with a

Pratt & Whitney Hornet The Pratt & Whitney R-1690 Hornet was a widely used American aircraft engine. Developed by Pratt & Whitney, 2,944 were produced from 1926 through 1942. It first flew in 1927. It was a single-row, 9-cylinder air-cooled radial design. Displacemen ...

.Aerofiles Two examples of this latter version were evaluated by the

USMC The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through co ...

as air ambulances under the designation XHL-1.

Operational history

One C-2C, modified from an OL, was flown from

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Bergen Bergen (), historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway. , its population is roughly 285,900. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway. The municipality covers and is on the peninsula of ...

by Thor Solberg in 1935, the first flight from the United States to Norway."Highlights from the exhibitions in The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology, Oslo" Solberg christened the aircraft '' Leiv Eiriksson'' and used it to roughly re-trace its namesake's journey across the Atlantic (albeit from West-to-East, and by air) via Greenland, Iceland, and the

Faroe Islands The Faroe Islands ( ), or simply the Faroes ( fo, Føroyar ; da, Færøerne ), are a North Atlantic island group and an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. They are located north-northwest of Scotland, and about halfway bet ...

. This aircraft is now preserved in the

Norsk Teknisk Museum The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology ( no, Norsk Teknisk Museum) is located in Oslo, Norway. The museum is an anchor point on the European Route of Industrial Heritage. History The museum as an institution was founded in 1914 as a ...

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

. Two C-2Hs were also used by the firm ''Air Ferries'' in the 1930s before the

San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, known locally as the Bay Bridge, is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. As part of Interstate 80 in California, Interstate 80 and the direct road between San Francisco and Oakland ...

was completed to transport passengers between Oakland and San Francisco, cutting a normal forty-minute ferry boat ride to just six minutes. The first commercial flights in

Aruba Aruba ( , , ), officially the Country of Aruba ( nl, Land Aruba; pap, Pais Aruba) is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands physically located in the mid-south of the Caribbean Sea, about north of the Venezuela peninsula of ...

were made in 1934 using a C-2H which had been purchased from

Standard Oil Standard Oil Company, Inc., was an American oil production, transportation, refining, and marketing company that operated from 1870 to 1911. At its height, Standard Oil was the largest petroleum company in the world, and its success made its co-f ...

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

Variants

* C-2C -

-powered version (23 built) * C-2H - (USN designation XHL)

-powered version (13 built, plus one converted from C-2C.

Operators

Civilian operators

*Kohler Aviation Corporation *Air Ferries Ltd

Military operators

; *

United States Marine Corps The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combi ...

Specifications (C-2H)

Loening_C-1W_Amphibian_3-view_Aero_Digest_April_1928

References

External links

* * * (This article actually describes the C-2's immediate predecessor, the Wasp-engined

Loening C-1 The Loening C-1 Air Yacht was an amphibious airliner produced in the United States at the end of the 1920s. Design The Loening C-1 was based on the OL observation aircraft being developed from the United States Navy (USN)."The Loening Cabin Am ...

.) {{USN hospital aircraft C-2 1920s United States airliners Floatplanes Single-engined tractor aircraft Biplanes Aircraft first flown in 1928