Vought VE-7 Bluebird

The Lewis & Vought (just Vought from 1922) VE-7 Bluebird was designed as a trainer for the Army near the end of WW1. It was adopted by the Navy and produced in multiple variations as a utility plane, scout, catapult-launched floatplane and single seat fighter. This project includes single-seat and two-seat landplanes and a two-seat floatplane, all with or without VC, and seventeen authentic paint schemes. By Tom Wintrow, David Wooster & Mick Morrissey.

- The instruments don't fit VC panels properly because of oval holes in the panels.

- The instruments are non-functional in the VC of the single seat fighter. The VC in that model wasn't completed to the point that gauges could be added. All we could do was paint static instruments onto the panel.

- The VC panel for the VE-7S scout is the wrong shape. It is actually the rear-seat panel of the basic VE-7, since the dedicated VE-7S model wasn't completed. The two variants were externally almost identical, so we've assigned the paints for the scout to the basic VE-7 model. However, the pilot sat in the front cockpit of the scout, leaving the rear cockpit for an observer. The front pit's panel didn't have the curved section at the top center for the oversized airspeed indicator; it had the same panel as the single seat fighter. To avoid a jarring shape change when switching between the 2D and 3D panels, we've assigned the standard VE-7 2D panel to the VC version of the VE-7S scout. The non-VC version uses the more correct panel from the single-seat fighter.

- Instead of the wood grain panel background of the other versions, the floatplane's VC panel is gray. This is due to a texture mapping glitch.

- The single seat fighter's gun is untextured. We colored the model material a dark gray to give the gun something like the proper appearance, and the result is that a few other untextured bits, like the landing gear cross axle, are too dark.

- Four little untextured bits on top of the floatplanes upper wing center section can't be painted.

- A mapping glitch on the floatplane makes it impossible to paint the upper and lower surfaces of the tailplane different colors. That only affects one paint, the Marine Corps plane, which should have yellow stabilizer and elevator tops. All the other floatplane paints depict an earlier time period when those surfaces were silver, like the bottom surfaces. We kept the Marine paint because it's the only Marine Corps VE-7 floatplane livery we could find. Also, if the Corps owned the plane a year or so before the photographed we found was taken, then it must have looked like it's depicted in our paint, and had the yellow stabilizer and elevator tops added later.

Add the VE-7 cab file to your main FS9 or FSGW3 Gauges folder. (Or if you prefer, copy it into each of the panel folders in the two aircraft folders.)

The VE-7 will show up on your Select Aircraft menu as two different aircraft. Under Manufacturer: Vought you'll find "VE-7 Bluebird with VC" and "VE-7 Bluebird no VC." Each of these aircraft will have both landplane and floatplane variants listed under Variations.

The Bluebird first flew late in 1917 and its service testing in 1918 was a resounding success. General Billy Mitchell was so impressed that he recommended that the plane be procured as soon as possible as both a trainer and a fighter. He thought the plane should be used for basic and advanced training as well as combat, eliminating the need for type conversion as a pilot progressed from cadet to combat. He held that the Bluebird was superior to the contemporary SPAD, Nieuport and SE.5A fighters then in use by the Allied air arms. Officers of the English, French, and Italian Aviation Missions agreed with his appraisal.

Only twenty or so Bluebirds were delivered to the Army before the war ended, and a similar number after the Armistice. With the loss of wartime funding the Army quickly lost interest in the VE-7. It had a vast fleet of Curtiss Jenny trainers that didn't perform nearly as well as the Vought product, but had the advantage of being bought and paid for. Procurement officers also saw that they could stretch their limited budgets further by having Eberhardt rebuild SE-5As into SE-5Es to serve the Army's pursuit needs until newer designs from Thomas Morse could be produced. Though the Army's interest in the VE-7 faded after the Armistice, Billy Mitchell's did not. He obtained a Bluebird for his personal use and he flew it in a distinctive non-standard livery.

As the Army's interest in the Bluebird waned the Navy became interested. That service lacked the Army's vast supply of surplus small aircraft and it had several missions that the VE-7 could handle. With a fleet of Jenny landplanes and Burgess N-9 floatplanes, the Navy didn't need trainers any more than the Army did, so the Bluebird never found work in the role it was designed for. But in Navy and Marine Corps service it became a versatile multi-role aircraft. VE-7 two seaters with the pilot in the rear cockpit served as utility and liaison planes. The VE-7S, with the pilot moved up front and a gunner or observer in the rear pit, fulfilled the land-based scouting role. The VE-7SF became the Navy's first American-designed single seat fighter. The VE-7H was a catapult-launched scouting and observation floatplane that served aboard the battleships and cruisers of the fleet. For a time in the 1920s various versions of the VE-7 equipped the scouting and fighting squadrons aboard the Navy's only carrier, the U.S.S. Langley, as well as the observation units on the gunnery ships.

When the Bluebird left Navy and Marine Corps service late in the 1920s it was replaced by newer Vought products, the UO-1, FU-1 and O2U/O3U Corsair series. While other manufacturers would win portions of the Navy's airplane business, Vought aircraft would continue to play a major role in American Naval Aviation until the retirement of the last A-7 Corsairs in the 1990s.

No Bluebird is known to survive but in 2007, volunteers of the Vought Aircraft Heritage Foundation built a scratch-built replica.

Adding to the confusion is the VE-8, a different aircraft but one that was derived from the VE-7. Intended as a single-seat fighter for the Army, the VE-8 had significantly altered dimensions, was substantially heavier and had a much more powerful engine. It's performance was disappointing and it lacked the excellent handling of the VE-7, and it was not put into production. The VE-8 should not be confused with the single-seat VE-7SF fighter that was produced later for the Navy.

Variants:

With uncertainty prevailing about basic type designations, it should come as no surprise that confusion reigns about the proper designations of the Bluebird's many variants. These are, as best we can determine, the variants represented in this package:

VE-7: This was the basic two-seat trainer developed for the Army and procured by the Navy for use as a light utility plane. The pilot sat in the rear cockpit. We have not been able to determine whether the trainer's front cockpit flight controls were retained in Navy VE-7s.

VE-7S: This was a two-seat scout with the pilot seated in the front cockpit and the rear pit occupied by an observer or gunner. The VE-7S could be armed with a flexible machine gun in the rear cockpit, but photos seldom show the gun or its mount installed. We intended a dedicated VE-7F model but the FSDS files were lost before it could be built. Since the only external differences between the VE-7 and the VE-7S were the presence or absence of the raised semi-conical fairing over the outsized airspeed indicator in the VE-7's rear cockpit and the rear gun, which usually wasn't installed anyway, we decided to assign the paints intended for the VE-7S to the straight VE-7 model. That fairing in front of the rear pit isn't very noticeable in external view, but it's quite obvious in the VC. To avoid a jarring transition between the 2D panel and the VC, we've assigned the straight VE-7's panel to the VC version of the VE-7S, but the more correct front pit panel (without that big fairing and the oversized ASI) to the non-VC version.

VE-7SF: This was the single-seat fighter version produced for the Navy.

VE-7G: This was a single-seat VE-7SF fighter with its fabric fuselage covering replaced by mahogany plywood.

VE-7H: This was a two-seat catapult-launched observation floatplane for use aboard battleships and cruisers. One might expect that the observer sat in back with a machine gun, with the pilot up front. But we've seen no indication of a gun or gun mount in any photos and drawings; instead they show a headrest fairing behind the rear cockpit, which seems to imply that there were no provisions for a gun. We placed the pilot in the rear cockpit of our VE-7H, leaving the front pit for the observer and his radio equipment. By the late 1920s the scouts and observation planes that the Navy used aboard the gunnery ships would feature convertible undercarriages that could be easily switched between wheels and floats, but the Bluebird lacked that capability. The VE-7H had no provisions for being mounted on wheels, and the other Bluebird variants had no capability to be mounted on floats.

The confusion about variant designations is compounded by differences between individual aircraft that sometimes make the photographic record tricky to interpret. For example, there were no standard dimensions and no mold for the semi-conical plywood headrest fairing behind the rear cockpit. Each fairing was hand-made and they varied considerably in height and length. The vertical tails used on the VE-7H and VE-9H floatplanes provide another example. Three different fin and rudder combinations were used, and some writers have interpreted them as indicating different variants in the Bluebird series. In fact, a VE-7H or a VE-9H could have the original vertical tail seen on our landplane models, the larger tail used on our floatplane model, or the fin and rudder from the later UO-1. All of our floatplane paints happen to be for planes that had the same tail used on our VH-7H model.

Crew: two

Length: 24 ft 5.375 in (7.45 m)

Wingspan: 34 ft 4 in (10.47 m)

Height: 8 ft 7.5 in (2.63 m)

Wing area: 284.5 ft2 (26.43 m2)

Empty weight: 1,392 lb. (631 kg)

Loaded weight: 1,937 lb. (879 kg)

Powerplant: 1× Wright-Hispano E-3 two bladed 8 ft 8 in (2.64 m) diameter propeller, 180 hp (134 kW)

Maximum speed: 106 mph (171 km/h)

Range: 290 miles (467 km)

Service ceiling: 15,000 ft (4,600 m)

Rate of climb: 738 ft/min (225 m/min)

Armament: (VE-7SF) one Vickers .30 in (7.62 mm) machine gun synchronize to fire through the propeller

These files may not be distributed to or by AvSim, FSPlanet, Simviation, or SimNetwork.

These files are released without warranty of any kind. By downloading them you accept full responsibility for any consequences resulting from their use. The authors accept no responsibility whatsoever.

VC panels by Tom Wintrow & David Wooster

2D panels by Tom Wintrow, David Wooster & Mick Morrissey

Gauge package by Tom Wintrow

Flight model by David Wooster

Textures by Mick Morrissey

Sounds by Tom Wintrow & David Wooster

Research by Mick Morrissey & Tom Wintrow

Documentation by Mick Morrissey

"Uncredit:" Note that the spinning prop texture is NOT from Oscar Fischer's Jungmeister, only the file name is. Tom used Oscar's texture to begin with, and the FSDS files were lost before the name could be changed in the model's mapping scheme. The final texture was adapted by Mick from the stock FS9 Spirit of St. Louis.