Pusher configuration
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
An aircraft constructed with a pusher configuration has the engine mounted with the propeller facing backwards such that the aircraft is "pushed" through the air, as opposed to the tractor configuration in which the aircraft is "pulled" through the air.
Many early aircraft were pushers including the Wright Flyer. In the early years of the First World War pushers were favoured by the British because they enabled a forward-firing gun to be used without being obstructed by the arc of the propeller. Such aircraft included the Vickers F.B.5 Gunbus, the Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2 and the Airco DH.2. (Germany did not have the same requirement due to the early development of Fokker's interrupter gear.)
Single-engine pushers usually had the engine mounted on the centreline at the rear of the aircraft's nacelle. Such aircraft had no fuselage, the tail section being mounted on a framework that cleared the propeller.
With the widespread adoption of interrupter gear, the benefits of the pusher configuration were lost and the tractor configuration was favoured. Pushers did not become extinct after the war but were a minority of new aircraft designs. The 1930s Supermarine Walrus was a seaplane with a single pusher engine. Large multi-engine aircraft, such as the Short Singapore, continued to be built with a push-pull configuration, combining the tractor and pusher configuration. Possibly the most extreme example of the type is the Convair B-36, the largest bomber ever operated by the United States, which wing-mounted six 3,800 hp Pratt & Whitney Wasp Major radial engines in a pusher configuration, augmented in the B36D by four General Electric J47 turbojets.
