The Naval Aircraft Factory N3N was an American tandem-seat, open cockpit, primary training

biplane A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. Whil ...

aircraft built by the

Naval Aircraft Factory The Naval Aircraft Factory (NAF) was established by the United States Navy in 1918 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was created to help solve aircraft supply issues which faced the Navy Department upon the entry of the U.S. into World War I. ...

(NAF) in

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Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, during the 1930s and early 1940s.

Development and design

Built to replace the Consolidated NY-2 and NY-3, the N3N was successfully tested as both a conventional airplane and a

seaplane A seaplane is a powered fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing (alighting) on water.Gunston, "The Cambridge Aerospace Dictionary", 2009. Seaplanes are usually divided into two categories based on their technological characteris ...

. The seaplane used a single float under the

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraft ...

and floats under the outer tips of the lower wing. The conventional airplane used a fixed landing gear. The prototype XN3N-1 was powered by a

Wright J-5 The Wright R-790 Whirlwind was a series of nine-cylinder air-cooled radial aircraft engines built by Wright Aeronautical Corporation, with a total displacement of about and around . These engines were the earliest members of the Wright Whirlwin ...

radial engine The radial engine is a reciprocating type internal combustion engine configuration in which the cylinders "radiate" outward from a central crankcase like the spokes of a wheel. It resembles a stylized star when viewed from the front, and is ...

. An order for 179 production aircraft was received. Near the end of the first production run the engine was replaced with the

Wright R-760 The Wright R-760 Whirlwind was a series of seven-cylinder air-cooled radial aircraft engines built by the Wright Aeronautical division of Curtiss-Wright. These engines had a displacement of 756 in³ (12.4 L) and power ratings of 225-35 ...

-2 Whirlwind radial. The aircraft is constructed using

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extruded Extrusion is a process used to create objects of a fixed cross-sectional profile by pushing material through a die of the desired cross-section. Its two main advantages over other manufacturing processes are its ability to create very complex ...

aluminum Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It has ...

, with bolts and rivets, rather than the more common welded steel tubing fuselages. Early production models used aluminum stringers formed for cancelled airship construction orders.

Operational history

The N.A.F. built 997 N3N aircraft beginning in 1935. They included 179 N3N-1s and 816 N3N-3s, plus their prototypes. Production ended in 1942, but the type remained in use through the rest of World War II. The N3N was the last biplane in US military service - the last (used by the U.S. Naval Academy for aviation familiarization) were retired in 1959. The N3N was also unique in that it was an aircraft designed and manufactured by an aviation firm wholly owned and operated by the U.S. government (the Navy, in this case) as opposed to private industry. For this purpose, the U.S. Navy bought the rights and the tooling for the

series engine and produced their own engines. These Navy-built engines were installed on Navy-built

airframe The mechanical structure of an aircraft is known as the airframe. This structure is typically considered to include the fuselage, undercarriage, empennage and wings, and excludes the propulsion system. Airframe design is a field of aerosp ...

s. According to Trimble, "The N3N-3, sometimes known as the Yellow Bird for its distinctive, high-visibility paint scheme, or less kindly, Yellow Peril for the jeopardy in which student aviators often found themselves, showed itself to be rugged, reliable, and generally forgiving to student pilots." Four N3N-3s were delivered to the

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in 1941. Postwar, many surviving aircraft were sold on the US civil aircraft market and bought for operation by agricultural aerial spraying firms and private pilot owners. A number are still (as of 2014) active in the USA.

Variants

;XN3N-1 :First prototype aircraft, Bureau of Aeronautics number 9991. ;N3N-1 :Two-seat primary trainer biplane, powered by a 220-hp (164-kW)

radial piston engine. 179 were built. ;XN3N-2 :One prototype only (Bureau number 0265) powered by a 240-hp (179-kW) Wright R-760-96 radial piston engine. ;XN3N-3 :One production N3N-1 (0020) converted into a 'dash three' prototype. ;N3N-3 :Two-seat primary trainer biplane, powered by a 235-hp (175-kW) Wright R-760-2 Whirlwind 7 radial piston engine. 816 built.

Operators

; *

U.S. Marines 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 ...

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

* Chilean Naval Airforce 4 N3N-1 received by Lend-Lease Program * Cuban Naval Airforce 5 N3N-1s received by Lend-Lease Program.

Surviving aircraft

* 0719 – On display at the Museo Nacional Aeronáutico y del Espacio in

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, wh ...

. * 1918 – On display at the Warhawk Air Museum in

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. * 2582 – On display at the

Western Antique Aeroplane & Automobile Museum The Western Antique Aeroplane and Automobile Museum (WAAAM) is located in Hood River, Oregon, United States, adjacent to the Ken Jernstedt Memorial Airport. WAAAM is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization committed to the preservation of, and educatio ...

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. * 2621 – On display at the

Yanks Air Museum The Yanks Air Museum is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization and museum dedicated to exhibiting, preserving and restoring American aircraft and artifacts in order to show the evolution of American aviation, located at Chino Airport in Chino, Calif ...

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. * 2693 – On display at the

National Museum of Naval Aviation The National Naval Aviation Museum, formerly known as the National Museum of Naval Aviation and the Naval Aviation Museum, is a military and aerospace museum located at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida. Founded in 1962 and moved to its cur ...

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. * 2733 – Airworthy with the High Sierra Squadron of the

Commemorative Air Force The Commemorative Air Force (CAF), formerly known as the Confederate Air Force, is an American non-profit organization based in Dallas, Texas, that preserves and shows historical aircraft at airshows, primarily in the U.S. and Canada. The CAF h ...

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. * 2782 – On display at the

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Reading, Pennsylvania Reading ( ; Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Reddin'') is a city in and the county seat of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city had a population of 95,112 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census and is ...

. * 2827 – On display at the Yanks Air Museum in Chino, California. * 2831 – On display at the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in

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. * 2892 – On display at the

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. * 2951 – On display at the Kalamazoo Aviation History Museum in

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. * 2959 – On display at the USS Lexington Museum in

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. * 3022 – On display at the

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's Udvar Hazy Center in

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. * 3046 – On display at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida. * 4402 - Airworthy with Joe McBryan (Buffalo Airways) in

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. * 4406 – Airworthy with Bernie Air Services in Sandown, Isle of Wight. * 4480 – On display at the Yanks Air Museum in Chino, California. * 4497 – On display at the

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Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

Specifications (N3N-3)

Naval Aircraft Factory N3N-3 3-view line drawing

Communications were done by the instructor through a

speaking tube A speaking tube or voicepipe is a device based on two cones connected by an air pipe through which speech can be transmitted over an extended distance. Use of pipes was suggested by Francis Bacon in the ''New Atlantis'' (1672). The usage for te ...

to the student in the front cockpit. Communications back were agreed-upon gestures.

References

Citations

Bibliography

* * *

External links

"NAVAL AIRCRAFT FACTORY N3N YELLOW PERIL"
by Jack McKillop, provides a detailed description of the N3N and its development. {{USN trainer aircraft

N3N The Naval Aircraft Factory N3N was an American tandem-seat, open cockpit, primary training biplane aircraft built by the Naval Aircraft Factory (NAF) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the 1930s and early 1940s. Development and design Built t ...

1930s United States military trainer aircraft Single-engined tractor aircraft Biplanes Carrier-based aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1935