Restoration project – XP-55

Thought this might be interesting gen. An e-quaintence of mine is a “Docent” at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo and has sent me a couple of photos of the restoration in progress on this remarkable canard aircraft.

The CURTISS XP-55 Ascender has a welded steel fuselage covered with fabric and sports wooden wings. It has a fixed undercarriage and is powered by 275 Menasco engine in pusher configuration. The wings are swept back at 45 deg with stabilizers/rudders at the tips, “tailerons” mounted outboard of rudders and a set of canards on the nose mounting the elevators. No1 was flown on 19th July 1943 but, on 15 Nov, the aircraft flipped over and crashed destroying it completely. No3 was also destroyed in crash. Pictures show No2.

Seems the name of aircraft was result of a joke. The Curtiss engineer joked that its name should be ASCENDER because “its tail is first then the rest of the plane!”

I’ll leave it to the experts on the forum to show pics of the XP-55 in it’s day. :rolleyes:

Strange looking beast, but then, during that period of aviation history there were a lot of “strange” looking aircraft designed.