The Tommy Scout: From war to sport flying

The Thomas-Morse company made several aircraft types for the Army and Navy from World War I into the 1920s. Some were prosaic biplanes, some were inelegant looking, but one stood out as an aesthetically proportioned single-seater: The Thomas-Morse S-4 Scout.

In the familiarity so often assigned to airplanes, the S-4 sometimes was nicknamed the Tommy Morse Scout or simply the Tommy.

Bookended by a round-cowled rotary engine at the nose and a pleasingly curved fin and rudder at the tail, the Tommy Morse Scout was only 19 feet, 10 inches long. It spanned 26-and-a-half feet. Ailerons were on the top wing, taking up about half the trailing edge in span.

Construction was typical of the day, with wire-braced wooden members framing the fuselage, which was covered in fabric. Wooden wing spars and ribs were connected with a single bay of slightly splayed wooden struts. The upper wing lacked dihedral; the lower wing was built with dihedral.

The T-M Scout project began in 1916, when British designer B. Douglas Thomas (no relation to the Thomas-Morse company name) created a lightweight scout proposal. The U.S. Army turned it down in favor of other available types, but the expanding need for trainers led to orders of the S-4 in 1917. The company built 100 S-4Bs, with the fuselage markedly shorter than that of the prototype.

The improved S-4C introduced a straight wing trailing edge. A contract for more than 1,000 -4Cs was terminated with peace in 1918. C-model production totaled 497 Scouts.

The U.S. Navy procured 10 S-4Bs and four S-4Cs for fighter pilot training.

In 1917 the Navy also took delivery of six S-5 Scout seaplanes. These were basically S-4Bs with floats instead of wheels.

The Navy lost interest in single-seat scout seaplanes, and the few S-5s were not followed by larger orders.

The S-4’s engine started out as the 100-horsepower Gnome rotary. During S-4C production, a switch was made to the 80-horsepower Le Rhone rotary engine, which had not been available when Scout production began. The Le Rhone pulled the S-4C at a top speed of 97 miles an hour.

With peace, hundreds of Thomas-Morse S-4 Scouts were surplus to the needs of the Army, and the diminutive fighter-like biplane became a popular sport aircraft.

Some went to Hollywood to participate in motion picture epics about the Great War.

Historians have compared the aesthetics of the S-4 Scout to the trim lines of Nieuport and Sopwith biplanes of the war. That aesthetic sensibility served the Tommy well in Hollywood. A photogenic stand-in for a stereotypical World War I fighter, the Thomas-Morse Scout performed in front of the cameras for a number of films, including “Dawn Patrol.”

Some of the civilian Tommy-Morse Scouts flew for decades. In the Pacific Northwest, Skeeter Carlson’s re-engined S-4 was a popular sight at airshows in Washington and British Columbia, sometimes doing mock battle with Dave Gauthier’s scaled-down Fokker Triplane replica.

Carlson said his Tommy Morse flew a bit tail heavy with its seven-cylinder Ken-Royce radial engine of 120 horsepower, and this may have been a complaint about original Tommies as well. Forward stick was called for — the Scout as designed had no pitch trim.

Quirkily, some S-4s were modified by civilian owners to use a Curtiss OX-5 engine, and to carry a passenger in a second cockpit. The re-engined S-4 Scouts attest to the limits of the aircraft’s original reliance on a type of powerplant, the rotary, that enjoyed brief popularity in the World War I era and then quickly faded as different engine styles set the pace.

Today, examples of the aesthetically pleasing Thomas-Morse S-4 may be seen in a number of museums and collections, reminders of the intersection between Great War aircraft development and Roaring Twenties sport flying.