Curtiss-Wright "Model 24" (actually P-240), a four-engine "Commando"

[Mark Nankivil]

Greetings All -

A few drawings of the proposed Curtiss-Wright Model 24 4 engined transport, courtesy of the Greater St. Louis Air & Space Museum Archives.

Enjoy the Day! Mark

 

[toura]

HI ALL

Justo Miranda show us on january 2009 a 3 view of the
CW 20
is not the same ?
Bye

 

[Stargazer]

Interesting that this derivative of the CW-20 Commando should be called the "Model 24". We all know that the Curtiss CW-24 was none other than the XP-55 Ascender canard fighter. Why reuse the same designation? That makes no sense to me!

 

[memaerobilia]

Hello Stargazer;
It is always risky (for me) to make assumptions. But it appears they RE-Used the Model 24 designation, after cancelling the first version-of a completely unrelated design.
Actually not "Model 24" but CW DESIGN # 24, in the company charts

Trying to clarify...Chart reads:
1. Design number 24/ Pursuit/ Alternate MODEL designation-XP-55/ 1942-44/ Quantity-3/ Customer-Army/ Model Spec 24-Z51/ St. Louis/ Allison/ V-1710-F23R

But THEN in the optional "Description" column, it says:
"Originally designated P-249C (At one time a proposal for a 4 engined transport was inadvertantly designated as the Model 24, but this has been corrected to P-240) Tail first pusher type with swept back wings."

I have copied it Exactly as it is charted.

So you can see the Model 24 designation was "inadvertant" and of course the "Tail first pusher type with swept back wings" description, refers to the XP-55

 

[memaerobilia]

While taking a quick look at all the various Condor designations and modifications, sonething else caught my attention. YOU may have this all sorted out, but, it is a new puzzle to me in the CW designations.
Tha Many various Model designations/variations of Curtiss Condor are listed as DESIGN # 4, and 4G etc, which I am sure is no surprise. I have not looked at other pages. But JUST below that CW Design # listing is CW design number CW-5, with just the bare infromation "Freighter, Primary Model Designation-Pegasus, (proposed)" I wonder if there was any relation to above? I want to check all the listings that have references to Proposals and proposal numbers, but they are scattered about in various other columns.
Try to search for Curtiss Wright Pegasus, and you get some very bizarre information about a modern Project Pegasus with time-travel portals at Curtiss Wright!

 

[lark]

In fact the CW-24 designation was used three times by Curtiss.

1: the CW-24B lightweight Menasco powered prototype of the XP-56 Ascender
2: the four engined variant of the CW-20/C-46.This design had a twin fin tail like the CW-20 prototype
3: an attackbomber with buried engines and pusher contra-rotating props.(St.Louis Airplane Division)

source : SkyWays No.37 Jan.1996.

 

[Stargazer]

Hello Stargazer;
It is always risky (for me) to make assumptions. But it appears they RE-Used the Model 24 designation, after cancelling the first version-of a completely unrelated design.
Actually not "Model 24" but CW DESIGN # 24, in the company charts

Trying to clarify...Chart reads:
1. Design number 24/ Pursuit/ Alternate MODEL designation-XP-55/ 1942-44/ Quantity-3/ Customer-Army/ Model Spec 24-Z51/ St. Louis/ Allison/ V-1710-F23R

But THEN in the optional "Description" column, it says:
"Originally designated P-249C (At one time a proposal for a 4 engined transport was inadvertantly designated as the Model 24, but this has been corrected to P-240) Tail first pusher type with swept back wings."

I have copied it Exactly as it is charted.

So you can see the Model 24 designation was "inadvertant" and of course the "Tail first pusher type with swept back wings" description, refers to the XP-55

Once again, Joe, you provide us with some most precious data from the Curtiss-Wright charts, for which I thank you! It appears that there was not a real difference at C-W between "Design #24" and "Model 24" or "CW-24." This is confirmed in the information you provided below:

While taking a quick look at all the various Condor designations and modifications, sonething else caught my attention. YOU may have this all sorted out, but, it is a new puzzle to me in the CW designations.
Tha Many various Model designations/variations of Curtiss Condor are listed as DESIGN # 4, and 4G etc, which I am sure is no surprise. I have not looked at other pages. But JUST below that CW Design # listing is CW design number CW-5, with just the bare infromation "Freighter, Primary Model Designation-Pegasus, (proposed)" I wonder if there was any relation to above? I want to check all the listings that have references to Proposals and proposal numbers, but they are scattered about in various other columns.
Try to search for Curtiss Wright Pegasus, and you get some very bizarre information about a modern Project Pegasus with time-travel portals at Curtiss Wright!

CW-4 was the inhouse designation for the second Condor transport, otherwise known as the "T-32." Here it is called "Design #4," which goes to show that CW-4, Design #4 or Model 4 were the same thing. The tricky thing here is that normally the Curtiss-Wright designations are supposed to have taken over from the old Travel Air ones, but in fact this is only true of the designs that were carried through at Curtiss-Wright.

• The Travel Air 1000 to 3000 models were never marketed by Curtiss-Wright, so the CW-1 to CW-3 designators were completely different types.
• The CW-4 designation was initially assigned to the Travel Air 4000, but for some reason it was reused for the Condor.
• For the CW-5, there seems to have been at least two proposals. One was called the Junior Transport, a trimotor with three Anzani engines; the other was simply called the Freighter, or the Pegasus in Curtiss-Wright records.
• The CW-6, CW-7, CW-8 and CW-9 were the Travel Air 6000, 7000, 8000 and 9000.
• The CW-10 and CW-11 were better known as the Travel Air 10 and Travel Air 11.
• Later developments of the Travel Air biplanes were designated CW-12 to CW-16.

The reason why Beechcraft designations began with the Model 17 was simply because it was the first design developed after the Travel Air era (a logic that was shattered when Beechcraft developed a "Model 16" in 1970), while the CW- series continued from CW-17 onwards as well.

Anyway, back to your question... The CW-5 project (for which there is no evidence that any airframe was ever built) was developed circa 1928, which makes the connection with the much-later "Model 24" totally out of the question.

 

[Stargazer]

The 1945-46 list from Curtiss-Wright states the interesting piece of information, which solves the mystery and closes the case for good:

"At one time a proposal for a 4 engined transport was inadvertantly designated as the Model 24, but this has been corrected to P-240"