A floatplane is a type of

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 characteri ...

with one or more slender floats mounted under the fuselage to provide

buoyancy Buoyancy (), or upthrust, is an upward force exerted by a fluid that opposes the weight of a partially or fully immersed object. In a column of fluid, pressure increases with depth as a result of the weight of the overlying fluid. Thus the ...

. By contrast, a

flying boat A flying boat is a type of fixed-winged seaplane with a hull, allowing it to land on water. It differs from a floatplane in that a flying boat's fuselage is purpose-designed for floatation and contains a hull, while floatplanes rely on fuselag ...

uses its fuselage for buoyancy. Either type of seaplane may also have landing gear suitable for land, making the vehicle an

amphibious aircraft An amphibious aircraft or amphibian is an aircraft (typically fixed-wing) that can take off and land on both solid ground and water, though amphibious helicopters do exist as well. Fixed-wing amphibious aircraft are seaplanes ( flying boa ...

. British usage is to call "floatplanes" "seaplanes" rather than use the term "seaplane" to refer to both floatplanes and

Use

Since

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and the advent of helicopters, advanced

aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a ...

s and land-based aircraft, military seaplanes have stopped being used. This, coupled with the increased availability of civilian airstrips, have greatly reduced the number of flying boats being built. However, numerous modern civilian aircraft have floatplane variants, most of these are offered as third-party modifications under a supplemental type certificate (STC), although there are several aircraft manufacturers that build floatplanes from scratch. These floatplanes have found their niche as one type of

bush plane A bush airplane is a general aviation aircraft used to provide both scheduled and unscheduled passenger and flight services to remote, undeveloped areas, such as the Canadian north or bush, Alaskan tundra, the African bush, or savanna, Amazon r ...

, for light duty transportation to lakes and other remote areas, as well as to small/hilly islands without proper airstrips. They may operate on a

charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the re ...

basis (including pleasure flights), provide scheduled service, or be operated by residents of the area for private, personal use.

Design

Float planes have often been derived from land-based aircraft, with fixed floats mounted under the fuselage instead of retractable undercarriage (featuring wheels). Float planes offer several advantages since 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 t ...

is not in contact with water, which simplifies production by not having to incorporate the compromises necessary for water tightness, general impact strength and the hydroplaning characteristics needed for the aircraft to leave the water. Attaching floats to a landplane also allows for much larger production volumes to pay for the development and production of the small number of aircraft operated from the water. Additionally, on all but the largest seaplanes, floatplane wings usually offer more clearance over obstacles, such as docks, reducing the difficulty in loading while on the water. A typical single engine flying boat is unable to bring the hull alongside a dock for loading while most floatplanes are able to do so. Floats inevitably impose extra drag and weight, rendering floatplanes slower and less manoeuvrable during flight, with a slower rate of climb, relative to aircraft equipped with wheeled landing gear. Nevertheless, air races devoted to floatplanes attracted much attention during the 1920s and 1930s, most notably in the form of the Schneider Trophy, not least because water takeoffs permitted longer takeoff runs which allowed greater optimization for high speed compared to contemporary airfields. There are two basic configurations for the floats on floatplanes: * "single float" designs, in which a single large float is mounted directly underneath the fuselage, with smaller stabilizing floats underneath the wingtips, on planes like the Nakajima A6M2-N and; * "twin float" designs, with two main floats mounted side by side outboard of the fuselage. Some early twin float designs had additional wingtip stabilizing floats. The main advantage of the single float design is its capability for landings in rough water: a long central float is directly attached to the fuselage, this being the strongest part of the aircraft structure, while the smaller floats under the outer wings provide the aircraft with lateral stability. By comparison, dual floats restrict handling, often to

wave In physics, mathematics, and related fields, a wave is a propagating dynamic disturbance (change from equilibrium) of one or more quantities. Waves can be periodic, in which case those quantities oscillate repeatedly about an equilibrium (re ...

s as little as one foot (0.3 metres) in height.NASM research
However, twin float designs facilitate mooring and

boarding Boarding may refer to: *Boarding, used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals as in a: ** Boarding house **Boarding school *Boarding (horses) (also known as a livery yard, livery stable, or boarding stable), is a stable where ho ...

, and – in the case of torpedo bombers – leave the belly free to carry a

torpedo A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, ...

References

External links

"Why Seaplanes Fly With Bullet Speed", December 1931, Popular Science
excellent article on the different design features of the floats on floatplanes
"Will a Lake Be Your Postwar Landing Field?"
''Popular Science'', February 1945, pp. 134–135. {{Authority control

Use

Design

See also

References

External links