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"Like a Wooden Shoe"

Exhibits & Collections > "Like a Wooden Shoe" > "Like a Wooden Shoe"

The aircraft evaluated by the Trial Board was one of six MF Boats built by Curtiss, which followed them up with production of sixteen others that were originally part of a forty-seven plane order, the bulk of which was cancelled after the signing of the Armistice ending World War I. Instead, the Navy turned to its own Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia to construct MF Boats, the total eventually reaching eighty, the first one being the aircraft now on display in the museum. Though most aircraft were outfitted with the 100 horsepower Curtiss OXX3 engine, experiments were made operating the aircraft with 150 horsepower Wright-Hispano and Curtiss K-6 engines in order to compensate for the increased weight of a Lewis machine gun and bombs, magazines, and gun mount so that the aircraft could be employed as a gunnery and bombing trainer, a step that was never taken. MFs served in a variety of roles, supporting the operations of the newly formed Fleet Air Detachment during operations in the Atlantic Ocean, and operating at most of the Navy’s air stations in the immediate postwar years.

Even though Curtiss had ceased production of the MF Boat for the Navy in the months following World War I, the company had not given up on the design, marketing it as the Seagull and offering it to civilian buyers beginning in March 1919. With the successful flight of the NC-4 across the Atlantic two months later igniting an interest in seaplanes, Curtiss even began to market the Seagull as a way for people to have an NC of their own! Ironically, the NC-4’s co-pilot, Lieutenant (junior grade) Walter Hinton was one of the customers who operated a Seagull, flying one christened Eleanor III during the Rice Expedition of 1924–1925, logging 12,000 miles in a harsh jungle environment in the survey of the headwaters of the Amazon River. A number of Seagulls operated as some of the first commercial passenger aircraft, providing service between Catalina Island and Los Angeles and over Atlantic City. It was in the latter skies that we pick-up the museum aircraft’s story.

By the early 1920s the MF Boats had outlived their useful service lives in the Navy, signaling not the end of the line, but only the beginning of a new phase of service in civil aviation. As noted above, the MF Boat currently on display in the museum was the first of eighty aircraft of its type produced at the Naval Aircraft Factory. Assigned Bureau Number A-5483, it operated in Navy colors until 1922, when its history card states that it was sold to Harry Dallas of Auburn, Mass, one of a number of surplus Navy MF Boats that entered private hands and joined Curtiss Seagulls already flying. In 1923 the aircraft was acquired by Euplio Andreatto, who soon began operating it out of the Philadelphia Seaplane Base in Essington, Penn., which had been established in 1915 by banker Robert Glendenning after he purchased a Curtiss flying boat and hired a mechanic named Frank Mills to maintain it. Soon some of Glendenning’s friends based their own flying boats at his base, starting a flying school in 1916 that offered free lessons to those who promised to volunteer for military service in the event the United States entered World War I. Taken over by the Army during the Great War, the base reopened following the end of hostilities with Frank Mills as the new proprietor.

From 1923 to 1933, Andreatto, who had served in the Italian air force during World War I, flew the museum’s aircraft in the skies over Atlantic City during the summer tourist season, charging $5 a ride for those willing to climb aboard and get a view of the area from the open cockpit of the flying boat. After the summer season, he returned the aircraft to Essington, where it was serviced and occasionally taken on hops. In fact, when it made its last flight in 1936, Frank Mills joined Albert Sidlow, another civilian pilot, at the controls.

Following its last flight, the aircraft remained in storage for nearly a quarter century until purchased by George S. Waltman, who in September 1963, sent a letter to the fledgling Naval Aviation Museum, its doors open only a few months, inquiring whether the Navy would be interested in financially supporting a restoration of the aircraft to flying condition. Subsequent correspondence between Waltman and CAPT James McCurtain, the museum director, turned to the idea of the Navy purchasing the aircraft. Following approval by the chain of command and inspection of the aircraft by personnel from NAS Floyd Bennett Field, N.Y., the MF Boat was sold to the Navy for the sum of $5,000, $821 less than its original cost less the engine. Ironically, the aircraft’s next stop was the Naval Air Engineering Center at Philadelphia, site of the former Naval Air Factory where the MF Boat has taken shape. There, it underwent an extensive restoration before transport to Pensacola in 1968, though the public would have to wait until the opening of the museum’s new structure in 1975 for its first opportunity to see the vintage aircraft. Over the years it has been displayed on the museum floor and for a time, suspended in the Quarterdeck above the Spirit of Naval Aviation statues, it was the first plane most people saw when they walked through the front doors. Now visitors can once again get a closer look at the craftsmanship that marked aircraft of the MF Boat’s generation amidst surroundings that certainly make it feel right at home. 

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