On this day in aviation history, February 3, 1928, the Boeing F3B, made its first flight. This was a fighter bomber that the US Navy employed during the at 1920s and early 1930s, an era that was marked by rapid advancements in the field of aviation. As such, the Boeing F3B did not have a lengthy service life, but was still part of the interwar generation of US naval aircraft that would build a basis for the US Navy’s carrier operations in WWII.
By the mid-1920s, the Boeing Aircraft Company of Seattle, Washington, had gained a reputation for its work in producing fighters for the US Navy, such as the FB Hawk series (also flown in the Army Air Corps as the Boeing PW-9), and the F2B. Both the FB and F2B fighters had served on the flight deck of the US Navy’s first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley (CV-1) built on the hull of the collier USS Jupiter. Now, the US Navy had introduced two new aircraft carriers that were much larger and faster than the Langly, the USS Lexington (CV-2) and the USS Saratoga (CV-3), which had been intended to be battlecruisers but due to the limitations of the Washington Naval Treaty, a provision was made to convert the then incomplete Lexington and Saratoga into carriers.
With limited funds for aircraft companies, manufacturers often built prototypes at their own expense, hoping for the design to be satisfactory enough to warrant a production order from the US government (in this case the Navy Department). Such was the case when Boeing built the Model 74 (construction number 878), a prototype that could be fitted with both fixed landing gear and a center-mounted pontoon float with two stabilizing floats fitted to the bottom set of wings. This aircraft made its first flight on March 4, 1927. The US Navy in turn designated the Boeing Model 74 the XF3B-1, and the Bureau of Aeronautics gave it the Bureau Number A-7674. Satisfied with the XF3B-1, which was powered by the same Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Wasp radial engine of the F2B, the aircraft was modified as the first production example, receiving the company designator Model 77, and was designated by the USN as the F3B-1, making its first flight under this configuration on February 3, 1928.
By August 1928, the Boeing F3B had completed its qualification trials and was introduced into service with US Navy fighter squadrons on both the decks of the three carriers and at Naval Air Stations across the US. Their armament was a pair of Browning M1919 .30 caliber machine guns synchronized with the propeller, and five 25 lb. bombs fitted to racks on the fuselage and bottom wings. The F3Bs became a common sight in the skies above San Diego, home of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet, as well as being neatly parked wingtip to wingtip at Naval Air Station North Island.
By the time the Boeing F3B began entering service, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and the British National Physical Laboratory (NPL) had demonstrated the streamlining value of cowling rings around the cylinders of air-cooled radial engines. As such, many of the Boeing F3Bs were fitted with the new Townend rings (developed by NPL engineer Dr. Hubert Townend). Additionally, some streamlined was made to the landing gear.
As the 1920s came to a close and the 1930s began, the onset of the Great Depression may have shrunk some of the already-tight funds for the peacetime Navy, but innovation in new fighter designs continued. Eventually, Boeing devised what would turn out to be its last biplane fighter for the US Navy, the F4B (a naval development of the Army’s Boeing P-12 fighter). The F4B would eventually replace both the F2B and the F3B, with the F3Bs being retired from frontline carrier squadrons in 1932, though they remained in the fleet as utility aircraft for commanding officers.
Today, there are no surviving examples of the 74 Boeing F3Bs built, but their contributions to naval aviation have not been forgotten by historians of US carrier aviation. The prewar exercises on Langley, Lexington, and Saratoga, in which the Boeing F3Bs were involved from 1928 to 1932, would start to show to the US Navy that the aircraft carrier was not just a means to scout ahead for the battleships, but would supersede them as the dominant naval vessels on the world’s oceans, a fact that would be decisively proved ten years after the retirement of the Boeing F3B.
Today in Aviation History is a series highlighting the achievements, innovations, and milestones that have shaped the skies. All the previous anniversaries are available HERE