Aviation history takes flight on Moses Lake

MOSES LAKE — It was quite a little gathering along the North Shore of Moses Lake Tuesday morning to see — or at least hopefully see — a piece of history take to the air.

“There should be no excitement,” said Bruce Brown, an East Wenatchee native. “It should be nice and calm and maybe even a little boring.”

“It won’t be boring,” his wife Janet responded. “It’ll be awesome if they can get it up and fly it.”

If. While everyone was hopeful that this 104-year-old restored airplane could fly, no one was entirely should it would.

The plane at the center of attention was a Curtiss Flying Boat Model F, originally built for the U.S. Navy in the run-up to the First World War. While the Navy eventually passed on the plane, over 300 were built and sold to the Brazilian, Italian, and Russian Imperial navies.

Curtiss, which still exists as Curtis-Wright Aviation (though the company no longer builds aircraft), is best known for the JN-4, the “Jenny,” a ubiquitous biplane that rolled off assembly lines in the thousands during WWI and was the mainstay of many barnstorming aerial acts during the 1920s.

The Model F being slowly towed into Moses Lake is the last of its kind still operating in the world, according to Century Aviation, an East Wenatchee company specializing in airplane restoration.

“It crashed in 1915 in East Haven, Conn., and was dragged out and put into a barn and just left there,” said Bill Nutt, the plane’s owner. “They thought that they would restore it, but they never did.”

Nutt has restored a number of old aircraft, including a 1909 Curtiss Pusher, which is currently in the possession of the Collings Foundation, which preserves and restores old aircraft and then shows them off in air shows.

According to Century Aviation’s website, the fuselage and wings on the flying boat were newly fabricated, but Nutt said the plane contains about 400 original parts, including the engine.

The flying boat will also find its way into the Collings Foundation’s collection after a stop at the Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, N.Y.

“They want all their aircraft to be flyable, but I want to fly it just to fly it,” Nutt said. “It’s fun. I’ve spent four years waiting for this.”

It took some work, however, for test pilot Rob Kinyoun, who also flies for Jet Blue, and the ground crew to get the Model F airborne. The old engine was fussy, and even though it started up on the first attempt, various little problems kept the plane on the water and out the air for much of the day before this little piece of aviation history was airborne in mid-afternoon.

“I’ll fly up 10 feet, or maybe 50 feet, depending on how it feels,” Kinyoun said earlier in the morning. “A little higher is actually safer. It gives you more time to think.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com