Sikorsky S-43

Sikorsky S-43
Sikorsky S-43
Type:	Amphibious aircraft
Design country:	United States
Manufacturer:	Sikorsky Aircraft
First flight:	June 1935
Number of pieces:	53

The Sikorsky S-43 was a twin-engine amphibious aircraft produced by the US manufacturer Sikorsky Aircraft .

history

The aircraft, flown for the first time in 1935, was designed by Michael Gluhareff . Pan Am planned the aircraft to replace the Consolidated Commodore for use on subordinate routes in South America, where scheduled flights of the larger Sikorsky S-42 Clipper were not worthwhile. The machine represented a two-engine, but otherwise scaled down version of the four-engine S-42, from which the additional name Baby Clipper was derived.

A total of 22 machines were produced as S-43, one as S-43-A and three more with minor modifications as S-43-B. According to special customer requests, Sikorsky also built an S-43 each for Howard Hughes (S-43H) and Harold Vanderbilt . Three machines delivered to Iloilo-Negros Air Express as island feeders in 1937/38 had a 30 cm longer fuselage and cyclone engines. They carried the factory designation S-43-W, while another machine of the company, which only operated as a flying boat, carried the designation S-43-WB.

Today (2017) there are still two complete S-43s. A JRS-1 in the Pima Air Museum in Tucson and the former Howard Hughes S-43H , which is said to be still in an airworthy condition. In 2013, Kermit Weeks acquired this aircraft for his Fantasy of Flight museum .

construction

The S-43 was an all-metal construction with a simply stepped hull. The wings of the high-wing aircraft sat on a central pylon and were braced against the fuselage with N-stems. The 48% of the span ranging flaps decreased the stall -Speed to 104 km / h could be so operated by smaller water bodies.

use

Civil

Pan Am ordered 13 machines in September 1935, which were delivered between January and December 1936. The subsidiaries Panair do Brasil and Panagra received seven and two copies respectively. The others flew for Pan Am on routes in the Caribbean. Contrary to the usual practice at Pan Am, the aircraft were not given any official names. Pan Am used one of their S-43s in 1938 for reconnaissance flights in Alaska as part of planned route extensions.

The S-43 of the Norwegian DNL

Sikorsky sold four S-43s to Inter-Island Airways of Hawaii , the French Aéromaritime procured four in West Africa and one went to the Norwegian DNL . Other users were probably companies from Chile , the People's Republic of China and Russia .

Military

The Bureau of Aeronautics ordered the first of 17 aircraft in 1937, which were taken over under the designation JRS-1 over the next two years. "JR" was the US Navy's task identifier for "Utility Transport" , which was valid from 1935 to 1955 . The VJ-1 squadron in San Diego received 8 of the 17 machines, while the others were distributed to different bases (e.g. one each in San Diego at VMJ-1 and in Quantico at VMJ-2). When the United States entered World War II, there were four JRS-1 in the US Navy and one in the Marine Corps. The latter is the only specimen that survived the war.

Of the total of 22 S-43s produced for military use, 5 went to the US Army Air Corps . These were initially called Y1OA-8, later OA-8 (OA for observation, amphibian). In July 1941, the civilian S-43H was also requisitioned under the designation OA-11. The machine originally procured by Howard Hughes for an orbit around the world was used with the USAAC serial number 42-1 by the Army Corps of Engineers (North Atlantic Division) . In a landing accident, however, it had the "wrong" registration number 74327.

Technical specifications

Parameter	Sikorsky S-43
crew	2
Passengers	15-19
length	15.60 m
span	26.23 m
Max. Takeoff mass	8670 kg
Engines	two R-1690 SIE-G Hornet , 559 kW (750 PS)
Top speed	310 km / h
Range	1250 km

Incidents

In the entire period of use of this type of aircraft, there were 10 accidents with 55 fatalities. The 2 most serious were the crash on August 2, 1937 west of Cristóbal , Panama with 14 deaths and 14 survivors, and the crash one kilometer north of the Rio de Janeiro-Santos Dumont airport on August 13, 1939 due to bad weather conditions with 14 deaths and one Survivors.

literature

• REG Davies: PAN AM An Airline and its Aircraft , Hamlyn, 1987, ISBN 0-600-55671-9 , p. 51.
• Susan Harris: Encyclopedia of Aircraft - Technology, Models, Data , Weltbild Verlag GmbH, Augsburg 1994, p. 383, ISBN 3-89350-055-3 .
• ER Johnson: American Flying Boats and Amphibious Aircraft , McFarland and Co., 2009, ISBN 978-0-7864-3974-4 , pp. 200-202.
• ER Johnson: American Military Transport Aircraft , McFarland and Co., 2013, ISBN 978-0-7864-3974-4 , pp. 261 f.

Web links

Commons : Sikorsky S-43  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ ER Johnson: American Flying Boats and Amphibious Aircraft , McFarland and Co., 2009, p. 200
2. ↑ Youtube video for Howard Hughes' S-43
3. ↑ Kermit Weeks acquires Howard Hughes Sikorsky S-43
4. ^ John M. Andrade: US Military Aircraft Designations and Serials since 1909 , 1979, p. 141
5. ↑ History of the S-43H by Howard Hughes