Mailplanes and an airline

Harold Pitcairn, youngest son of a founder of what became PPG Industries, learned to fly at Curtiss and began with a flying school and passenger service in 1924. In 1926 he set up Pitcairn Aircraft to build planes for his own airmail routes, and his designer Agnew Larsen produced the PA-5 Mailwing of 1927, a robust steel-tube biplane that 13 other operators bought. In 1929 Pitcairn’s airline was sold for $2.5 million; renamed Eastern Air Transport, it grew into Eastern Air Lines.

Betting on the windmill

From then on Pitcairn put his money into rotors. In 1928 he paid Juan de la Cierva $300,000 for a C.8W and the American rights to his autogiro designs. The PCA-2 of 1931 was the first autogiro sold in quantity in America. The Detroit News bought one as the ancestor of today’s news helicopters, a PCA-2 landed on the White House lawn, the US Navy landed one on USS Langley, the first rotary-wing landing on a ship at sea, and Amelia Earhart set a women’s autogiro altitude record of 18,415 ft in one. Pitcairn and his team received the Collier Trophy.

The patent war

The helicopter overtook the autogiro, and in 1942 the government condemned Pitcairn’s Willow Grove airfield to create a naval air station. Pressured to cut royalties on his rotor patents during the war, Pitcairn saw helicopter makers use them freely afterwards. The company was dissolved in 1948, but he kept suing; in 1977 the courts awarded his estate $32 million.

Factories

• Pitcairn Field · Willow Grove (Horsham Township), Pennsylvania — Condemned in 1942 to form NAS Willow Grove
• Bryn Athyn field · Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania — Where the first PA-1 was built

People

• Harold F. Pitcairn · founder — Collier Trophy recipient
• Agnew E. Larsen · designer — Joined from Thomas-Morse in 1927
• Amelia Earhart · pilot — Set a women’s autogiro altitude record in a PCA-2
• Juan de la Cierva · autogiro inventor — Sold US rights to Pitcairn in 1928

Records and firsts

• First rotary-wing landing on a ship at sea, PCA-2 on USS Langley, 1931
• Women’s autogiro altitude record of 18,415 ft, Amelia Earhart in a PCA-2
• Collier Trophy for autogiro development