Felixstowe F.2

<!-- , no longer correct... wrong Dec 2009--->The Felixstowe F.2 was a 1917 British flying boat class designed and developed by Lieutenant Commander John Cyril Porte of the Royal Navy at the Seaplane Experimental Station, Felixstowe during the First World War adapting a larger version of his superior Felixstowe F.1 hull design married with the larger Curtiss H12 flying boat. The Felixstowe hull had superior water contacting attributes and became a key base technology in most seaplane designs thereafter.

Design and development

Before the war Porte had worked with American aircraft designer Glenn Curtiss on a flying boat, the "America" in which they intended to cross the Atlantic in order to win the £10,000 prize offered by the British Daily Mail newspaper for the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic. Following the outbreak of war in Europe, Porte returned to England and rejoined the Royal Navy, becoming commander of the naval air base at Felixstowe where he recommended the purchase from Curtiss of an improved version of the "America" flying boat on which he had worked, the Curtiss H-4 type,Bruce Flight 2 December 1955, pp. 843–844.

The Curtiss H-4s were found to have a number of problems, being underpowered with its hull too weak for sustained...
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