URL : https://www.valka.cz/Hall-PH-1-t69345#454395
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Hall PH-1
The U.S. Navy needed to replace many of its flying boats in the mid-1920s. When the Navy's Naval Aircraft Factory built a prototype PN-12 in 1928, the Navy commissioned several companies to build serial machines. A slightly different case was the Hall Aluminum Aircraft Corporation, which was commissioned to build a prototype not based on the PN-12, but based on the previous PN-11, which had a new, wide hull, different from the other Felixstowe flying boat "burials". The Hall Company was founded by American aluminium construction pioneer Charles Ward Hall in 1927, and as its name suggests, specialised in the construction of aircraft from aluminium. This is what the factory was now tasked with - to create a new aircraft based on the PN-11, constructed from aluminium. As the owner of the company was quite disappointed with the unfavorable statements made by the Air Force about the craftsmanship of its earlier machines, this prototype, the XPH-1, was constructed with great attention to precision work and to perfection of all lines. The XPH-1 had an exposed cabin, an aluminum alloy fuselage, and the construction of all other parts of the aircraft was also aluminum, covered with canvas. The engines used were Wright R-1750 Grd engines with a power of 373 kW. It first flew in December 1929 and reached a speed of only 202 km/h in tests, but its other characteristics so impressed the Navy commission that Hall received the largest order in the company's history - nine aircraft. The production machines had the new 462 kW Wright R-1820-86 engines, bonneted with a narrow ring. With this engine, the production machines were capable of 217 km/h. Further modifications were made to enlarge the wing canopy, add elevator servo control and move the rear gunner position. From 19 October to 10 December 1931, under the direction of Lt. Ofstie, rigorous tests were held, which showed, for example, that the new machine was capable of taking off in 25 seconds. The type was so favorably evaluated that it is said that only lack of funds prevented the ordering of more machines. The planes built in this way were handed over to a single squadron, the VP-8 based at Pearl Harbor, with which PH-1s flew from 1932 to 1937. They proved so successful in service that production resumed in June 1936, specifically a modified version of the PH-2 ordered by the U.S. Coast Guard.
URL : https://www.valka.cz/Hall-PH-1-t69345#244056
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