Floatplane
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A floatplane is a type of seaplane with one or more slender floats mounted under the fuselage to provide buoyancy. By contrast, a flying boat uses its fuselage for buoyancy. Either type of seaplane may also have landing gear suitable for land, making the vehicle an amphibious aircraft.[1] British usage is to call floatplanes "seaplanes" rather than use the term "seaplane" to refer to both floatplanes and flying boats.[2]
Use
Since
Design
Floatplanes have often been derived from land-based aircraft, with fixed floats mounted under the fuselage instead of retractable undercarriage (featuring wheels). Floatplanes offer several advantages since the fuselage 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
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
- "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
See also
- List of flying boats and floatplanes
- RAPT system
References
- ^ James M. Triggs (Winter 1971). "Floatplane Flying". Air Trails: 39.
- ^ The Oxford English Dictionary defines "seaplane" as "An aeroplane designed to be able to operate from water; specifically, one with floats, in contrast to a flying boat."
- ^ NASM research Archived 2007-11-24 at the Wayback Machine
External links
- "Why Seaplanes Fly With Bullet Speed", December 1931, Popular Science 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.