The Yellow Peril
When discussing historic aircraft, one usually mentions fighters, bombers, and even cargo planes. But in some accounts training aircraft are equally or even more important. One such trainer—the Navy N3N “Yellow Peril”—was used to school tens of thousands of naval aviators and U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen for World War II and the Cold War.
The N3N had its origins in a 1934 design for a primary trainer for the Navy, a successor to the Consolidated NY-series biplanes then in naval service. The new aircraft was to be produced by the Naval Aircraft Factory (NAF) in Philadelphia. (Thus the first “N” indicated trainer [“T” already being used for torpedo planes], the “3” indicated the third NAF design, and the final “N” was for Naval Aircraft Factory.)
The plane would have all-metal wings and fuselage structure, with fabric covering. A significant feature would be removable side panels for ease of inspection and maintenance, an important factor for aircraft that would be flown at a high tempo and abused, as trainers were.
The aircraft also would be “convertible,” able to be fitted with floats or wheels. As a seaplane, a single large centerline float was provided along with twin underwing stabilizing floats. In its primary training role the aircraft used wheels. The landing gear was narrow, providing limited lateral stability at touchdown. This led many students to ground loop the aircraft when landing. With trainers then painted yellow, the N3N was quickly given the nickname Yellow Peril.
An inertia starter powered by a removable hand crank was used to start the engine. Taxiing required a series of “S” turns because, when on the ground, visibility from the open cockpits was partially blocked by the engine. Takeoff required about 600 feet of runway with minimum wind.
Once aloft, according to retired Rear Admiral James L. “Doc” Abbot Jr., the N3N was easy to fly: “I certainly loved flying it. Oh, yes, I looped it many times, and virtually all other aerobatics as well. Wingovers, Immelmans, snap rolls, slow rolls, as well as stalls and spins.”1
Following its first flight on 26 October 1936, the prototype XN3N-1 was flight-tested with both wheels and floats at Philadelphia and Anacostia (Washington, D.C.). The design was considered successful and ordered into production at NAF, with the first of 179 N3N-1s being delivered in June 1936. A single XN3N-2 was ordered, and the fourth N3N-1 was modified to serve as the XN3N-3 prototype. These aircraft had minor changes and a slightly more powerful engine.
The last N3N-1 was produced in 1938 and followed by 816 definitive N3N-3 aircraft. Improvements included revising the vertical tail, modifying the landing gear, and deleting the N3N-1’s anti-drag ring from the engine cowling. (The last feature was subsequently deleted from the N3N-1s.)
In 1941 four N3N-3s were transferred to the Coast Guard, and although several aircraft were seen in Marine Corps livery, they were not actually “owned” by the Corps.
The Yellow Peril served as the primary trainer for U.S. naval aviation during World War II. Its role was important, but received little publicity or attention outside of the training community. However, one widely displayed war poster did show an aviation cadet looking skyward, toward his future as a naval aviator in front of a Yellow Peril.
The aircraft was declared surplus after the war and quickly discarded, with many being taken up by civilian aviators. The Navy retained several that—fitted with floats—were employed for aviation orientation at the Naval Academy, arriving at the school in June 1946. Floatplanes were required because of the lack of an airstrip at the Academy or even an airfield in Annapolis. On sunny days the Yellow Perils could be seen taxiing on the Severn River, at times avoiding pleasure boats and the Navy’s own sail-training craft. Aviation historians Gordon Swanborough and Peter M. Bowers wrote:
The use of open cockpit biplanes, and seaplanes at that, since the fleet no longer used float seaplanes, was not quite the anachronism one might imagine. The Navy still taught its midshipmen to handle sail in the dawn of the nuclear-powered ship, so the use of obsolete propeller-driven biplanes in the jet age was understandable.2
Although sail training is still taught at the Naval Academy, the Yellow Perils are long gone. The last N3N was retired in 1961. It was the final biplane in U.S. military service, as the Air Force had disposed of its last Stearman biplane trainers in 1948.
1. RADM Abbot e-mail to N. Polmar, 16 February 2011.
2. Gordon Swanborough and Peter M. Bowers, United States Navy Aircraft since 1911 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1968), pp. 339–40.
The Naval Aircraft Factory
Of the scores of U.S. firms producing aircraft during the past century, the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia was unique. It was the only government-operated aircraft production facility in the country.
When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, the Army ordered thousands of aircraft from the existing manufacturers. Those firms had little interest in building the relatively small numbers of specialized aircraft that the Navy required. Accordingly, in 1918 the Navy established its own aircraft factory at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Thus the Navy would build its own planes. The facility, however, soon gained value by being able to produce very small numbers of experimental or highly specialized aircraft, and to provide comparative cost data for use in dealing with commercial aircraft manufacturers.
Beyond producing one-of-a-kind designs for the Navy—such as the N3N Yellow Peril—the factory also undertook limited production runs of aircraft being built by other firms. Thus the Navy factory built 155 PBN Nomad flying boats, a variant of the Consolidated PBY Catalina.
The Naval Aircraft Factory operated through most of World War II. It ended aircraft production in early 1945, bringing to an end an often-overlooked chapter in U.S. aviation history.