Dayton-Wright XPS-1
The Dayton-Wright XPS-1 was an American single-seat fighter interceptor aircraft built by the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company.
Design and development
In response to a United States Army Air Service Pursuit Alert requirement for an interceptor aircraft, Dayton-Wright Airplane Company designed an aircraft with the Army designation PS-1. Using many of the same advanced features of the earlier Dayton-Wright RB-1 Racer developed for the 1920 Gordon Bennett race. The racing aircraft had a pilot cockpit entirely enclosed in the streamlined fuselage. Construction consisted of a wooden semimonocoque fuselage with the cantilever wing constructed entirely of wood and fitted with leading- and trailing-edge flaps.The XPS-1 differed from its predecessor in having a parasol monoplane configuration with wooden flying surfaces whose fuselage was a fabric-covered steel-tube structure. The main design feature retained from the RB Racer was its retractable undercarriage. The unusual design for the time was a tailskid undercarriage with the main units designed to retract into the lower fuselage sides. The landing gear was hand-operated using a chain-and-sprocket system. It could be raised in 10 seconds and lowered in six seconds.
Three aircraft were ordered as the XPS-1, one was used for ground tests while the remainder were slated for flight trials.