Designed by the US Army Engineering Division as a specialised single-seat night fighter, two prototypes of the PN-1 were built by Curtiss, powered by the 220hp Liberty L-825 six-cylinder water-cooled engine. Optimised for docile handling characteristics at the lower end of the speed range in order to ease operation from small blacked-out fields, the PN-1 was completed without interplane struts, but steel-tube N-type struts were introduced to improve torsional stiffness before any attempt to fly the first prototype. In the event, only this one PN-1 was completed, and the results of any flight testing are not on record. It is known, however, that the sole prototype was used for static tests at McCook Field during 1921.