After publishing our book, many people came forward with stories of their own. This platform serves to preserve them. Note, that while we meticulously researched our book, we do not fact-check or validate this content. Please accept these personal remembrances in the generous spirit in which they are given.
During the hot, Kansas summer of 1925, Lloyd C. Stearman needed another engineer to assist with design work at the infant Travel Air Manufacturing Company in the prairie city of Wichita. He contacted his old friend from college who hailed from Salina, Kansas, and asked him to accept the position. His name was Mac Van […]
During my eight years working for the Beech Aircraft Corporation in Wichita, Kansas, a majority of that time was spent teaching pilots and mechanics the airframe and engine systems of the Beechcraft Super King Air 200 turboprop business aircraft. The classes typically included people from many different countries and nationalities, and language barriers occasionally caused […]
The wild and reckless stock market boom of the “Roarin’ Twenties,” coupled with the solo transatlantic flight of Charles A. Lindbergh in 1927, gave rise to an explosion of public interest and corporate investment in commercial aviation. By 1929, under the leadership of financier Clement Keys, the Curtiss-Wright Corporation had become one of America’s largest […]
…Louise McPhetridge von Thaden! She was photographed in the cockpit of her Travel Air Type D4000 after placing first in the 1929 Women’s Air Derby. What makes this photograph even more interesting, however, is the presence of Walter Beech, president of the Travel Air Company, standing next to the airplane preparing to congratulate Louise on […]
In the summer of 1927 four ladies posed for the camera on the running board and rear bumper of a gentleman’s roadster. The candid photograph was taken behind the south corner of the new Building “A” that housed company offices on the first floor and engineering on the second floor, with the majority of the […]
The accompanying photograph, taken late in 1929, shows the manufacturing campus of the Travel Air Company as it appeared at that time. The four additional buildings had been completed and the latest in woodworking and welding equipment had been installed. A water tower had been added and across East Central Avenue a small hotel for […]
The time: August 1929. The place: Travel Air factory in Wichita, Kansas. The occasion: Women’s Air Derby. The photographer posed three ladies with a Type B4000 Travel Air biplane shortly before the race. The competition between female aviators covered 2,800 miles from Santa Monica, California, to Cleveland, Ohio. It would be a grueling test of […]
Walter H. Beech loved a good fight, and he was a frequent visitor to the boxing matches held in downtown Wichita, Kansas. On September 23, 1926, Beech was listening to radio station KFH as it broadcasted the heavyweight bout between Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey. Tunney whipped Dempsey in the early rounds, but Walter knew […]
Robert S. Fogg was a well known and highly successful businessman in New Hampshire during the 1920s and 1930s. He operated a flying service in Concord, N.H., that included seaplane operations on the many lakes and rivers that dotted New Hampshire’s landscape. One of his workhorse airplanes was a Travel Air S6000B (serial number 999 […]
Central Air Lines was a small regional airline that operated for only a few years across the runway from the Travel Air factory on East Central Avenue. The fleet of airplanes included a Type A6000 that is shown parked in front of the main hangar as passengers prepare to board the monoplane. A large sedan, […]
Clarence E. Clark was born and raised in Garnett, Kansas, a quiet, rural town not far from the bustling city of Wichita. He learned to fly in 1923 under the capable tutelage of Harry Kruetzer – a former pilot and flight instructor in the United States Army Air Service during World War I. Clark earned […]
In 1936 veteran Stearman engineer Wayne Dalrymple designed and built a diminutive racing monoplane in his spare time. The airplane’s empty weight was only 260 pounds with a maximum weight of 450 pounds. The tiny ship had a wingspan of 20 feet four inches and a length of 14 feet. Total wing area was a […]
As the end of 1925 approached, the Travel Air Manufacturing Company’s order book was fat but its factory space in the Kansas Planing Mill had become so skinny that a frantic search was underway to secure larger quarters. More floor space was desperately needed to meet growing demand for the company’s Model “A” biplanes. Fortunately, […]
As the year 1924 faded into history, the city of Wichita, Kansas, could boast of only one business producing aircraft – the Swallow Airplane Manufacturing Company. That changed in December when Walter H. Beech and Lloyd C. Stearman quit working at Swallow and joined forces with Clyde V. Cessna and local businessmen Walter P. Innes, […]
In October 1923 after the sudden departure of E.M. “Matty” Laird from the Wichita Laird Airplane Corporation, his business associate Jacob M. Moelledick took the reins of quickly transformed the organization in to the Swallow Airplane Manufacturing Company. Sales of Laird’s original “Swallow” biplane were suffering amid the rising tide of competition from other airframe […]
In 1930 aviator Frank Monroe Hawks was ranked as one of America’s most prestigious airmen. He was hired by The Texas Company in 1928 to fly the oil company’s aging but reliable Ford Trimotor passenger airliner, but Frank got his “big break” when he flew a Lockheed “Air Express” from Los Angeles to New York […]
In the wake of E.M. Laird’s sudden departure from Wichita in October 1923, Jacob M. Moellendick swiftly took the reins of the Wichita Laird Airplane Corporation and renamed it the Swallow Airplane Manufacturing Company. Next, he promoted Lloyd C. Stearman to chief engineer and elevated Walter H. Beech to chief pilot and general manager of […]
On January 11, 1944, General of the Army Air Corps, Henry H. Arnold, visited the massive Plant II manufacturing complex in Wichita, Kansas, to check on production of the new Boeing B-29A “Superfortress” heavy bomber. He told Julius E. Schaefer, general manager of the Boeing-Wichita facilities, that he specifically wanted to see one particular airplane […]
In 1921, Wichita, Kansas, was still coming to grips with an economic recession that had swept across the nation following the end of World War I. Although not severe, the downturn did affect many of America’s mainstream industries but had relatively little impact on the fledgling aviation business. There was essentially no interest in new […]
In December 1919, aviator E.M. “Matty” Laird was ready to start building airplanes in downtown Wichita, Kansas. He left his hometown of Chicago, Illinois, to join forces with Jacob Melvin Moellendick in the E.M. Laird Company Partnership. His latest design, known as the “Laird Wichita Tractor,” was a three-place, open-cockpit biplane powered by a Curtiss […]
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