Consolidated NY-2
The Consolidated NY-2 was the most numerous variant of the US Navy's NY trainer family, a longer-span development of the NY-1 with a 220 hp Wright J-5 engine, of which 181 were built for Navy and Marine training. One specially instrumented NY-2, flown by the Daniel Guggenheim Fund's Full Flight Laboratory at Mitchel Field, carried Jimmy Doolittle on the first blind flight on 24 September 1929: a takeoff, circuit and landing made entirely on instruments.
Why It Mattered
The NY-2 was the most numerous version of the Consolidated NY, the United States Navy's trainer family of the later 1920s, and 181 were built. In 1929 more than a hundred NY-2s and NY-3s were still in front-line service. Its fame rests on a single aircraft, a specially instrumented NY-2 used by the Daniel Guggenheim Fund's Full Flight Laboratory at Mitchel Field, New York. On 24 September 1929 Jimmy Doolittle took the Guggenheim Fund's NY-2 up from Mitchel Field, flew a short circuit, and landed again, his cockpit covered by a fabric hood that shut out any view of the world outside. Air & Space Forces Magazine identifies it as the first flight ever made from takeoff to landing entirely on instruments and radio.
Design Notes
The NY-2 shared the NY family's naval trainer layout: an undercarriage interchangeable between wheels and a single large float with wingtip stabilisers. Its own changes were a longer wing of 40 ft span, fitted to reduce the wing loading of the seaplane version, and a more powerful 220 hp Wright J-5 engine in place of the NY-1's 200 hp Wright J-4. The float cost performance: the float-equipped NY-2 reached 90 mph, where the PT-3 on the same engine managed 105 mph. The laboratory's aircraft was fitted very differently: Doolittle relied entirely on a directional gyro, an artificial horizon, a sensitive altimeter and radio navigation. The Air Force Historical Foundation describes that NY-2 as the world's most instrumented aircraft then engaged in blind-flying research, its rear cockpit holding the blind-flying displays.
Operational History
The NY-2 first flew in October 1926. The Navy's orders produced 181 aircraft, and from 1929 it also received twenty-five NY-2A gunnery trainers. In 1929 over a hundred NY-2s and NY-3s remained in front-line service, with thirty-five more assigned to reserve units. Wikipedia also lists the Brazilian Naval Aviation as an operator of the type, where the NY-2 carried the designation D1C. In the Full Flight Laboratory's trials, Doolittle, with Lieutenant Ben Kelsey as safety pilot, had made over a hundred hooded practice flights and landings in its NY-2. On the morning of 24 September 1929 thick fog engulfed Mitchel Field, and Doolittle made an actual instrument flight in the aircraft, alone. Later that day he flew the circuit a second time, hooded, while Kelsey rode in the front cockpit as safety pilot with both hands raised in the slipstream where everyone could see them. The Air Force Historical Foundation records the demonstration as a fifteen-minute, twenty-mile flight, landed without Doolittle ever seeing the ground. The NY series then dwindled: fifteen aircraft remained in service in 1937 and only one in 1939.
Afterlife
Doolittle's own verdict was modest: so far as he knew, no aeroplane had ever before completed a whole flight — takeoff, a set course, and a landing — on instruments alone. Air & Space Forces Magazine judges that the feat marked the beginning of a new era for aviation. The Engineering and Technology History Wiki credits the work with paving the way to the all-weather microwave landing systems in use today. In 2014 the IEEE marked the flight with a Milestone plaque at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, New York, close to Mitchel Field. None of the sources consulted for this record reports a surviving NY-2; the family's service had ended with a single aircraft in 1939.