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Framed picture
KeystoneB-6A
by Tony White
The ultimate in the light bomber biplane, the Keystone B-6A was also the last two motor biplane purchased by the Army Air Corps for the Bombardment Groups - and with it passed the name of Keystone which had taken over the leadership role when the Martin MB-2/NBS-1s were phased out.
Like the NBS-1s before them, the B-6As were at hand to help bring relief when natural disasters such as floods hit parts of the nation. In itself, there was nothing really outstanding in the Keystone B-6A. The construction was conventional enough - welded steel tube and fabric covering - but the company produced a reliable, low cost aircraft at a time when money for the Bombardment Groups of the Army was in short supply. What money there was seemed to be going to the pursuits and the observation aircraft.
So it is credit to Keystone, and the Huff-Daland company from which it was constituted in 1927, that the Army persevered with what now strikes any newcomer to the lore of the late 1920s and early 1930s - the years of the Great Depression - as a confusing list of Huff-Daland and Keystone inspired designations. Yet when the total is made, these two companies secured contracts for no fewer than 19 different models and from 1928 to 1932 delivered over 200 bombers.
What adds now to the complexity is that in 1930 the LB -Light Bombardment category (which had taken over from the Type XI Day Bombardment numbered categories system of 1919) was simplified to single letters; in this case B - Bombardment.
Thus, the B-6A stems back to the single-engine (800 hp. Packard 1A-2540) Huff-Daland XLB-1 three-seat biplane with the impressive span of 66 ft. 6 in. This appeared on the scene in October 1925 having been approved two years earlier and was unusual in that the ten production-designated LB-1s ordered in 1926 had internal stowage for bombs of various sizes up to 2,750 Ib. total weight. What followed was the logical outcome of the conventional approach to the need for adequate defensive firepower.
Two engines were installed in LB-5 and LB-5A (respectively 10 and 25 examples ordered in 1927 and 1928) and also a multiplicity of tails - two, sometimes three - until the formula of the single tail righted itself with the advent of the big production 63 LB-10As ordered in 1930.
Thereafter, and with engine changes converting the LBs into Keystone B-3As, the final run was established with single-tail B-6As of 1932 (39 ordered), being developed LB-13s. These were built at the same time as 25 Keystone B-4As which differed little except in having 575 hp. Pratt & Whitney R-1860-7 radials in place of the B-6A's Wright R-1820s of the same power output.
Technical data Keystone B-6A
- Light bomber
- Crew of five
- Powerplant (B-6A): Two 575 hp. Wright R-1820-1 (Cyclone 9) air-cooled 9 cylinder radial engines driving 3-blade metal propellers
- Span: 74 ft. 9 in.
- Length: 48 ft. 10 in.
- Loaded weight: 13,375 lb.
- Maximum speed: 121 mph. at sea-level
- Service ceiling: 14,100 ft.
- Normal range: 365 miles
- Armament: Single 0.30 in. Browning machine-guns, flexibly-mounted in the nose and amidships (one firing from a ventral position). Internal bomb load up to 2,500 lb.
Superpicture framed in a30 x 24 cm (12 x 10 inch) size clipframe.
The picture offered does NOT have the "SAMPLE" watermark!!
