Gliders in the family barn

Paul, William and Ernest Schweizer built their first glider, the SGP 1-1, in 1930, in their father’s barn, with friends from the Mercury Glider Club. When they needed more room but had no money, a local attorney, Bob McDowell, persuaded Elmira Industries to give them space on the second floor of the Elmira Knitting Mill in return for shares. In 1939 the Schweizer Metal Aircraft Company became the Schweizer Aircraft Corporation, owned by the brothers, local businessmen and soaring pilots. In the Second World War its SGS 2-8 and 2-12 trained Army glider pilots as the TG-2 and TG-3.

The sailplanes America learned on

After the war Schweizer more or less supplied American gliding. The two-seat SGU 2-22, first flown in March 1946, became the most numerous two-place trainer in the USA; 258 were built. The single-seat SGS 1-26 of 1954 was even more successful: 700 were built and it became the world’s most popular one-design class, raced in identical machines so that only pilot skill counted. The SGS 2-33, first flown in 1965, was the main training glider in North America until the late 1980s; 579 were built, the US Air Force Academy flew it as the TG-4, and Canada’s Air Cadets still fly more than seventy.

Biplanes for the crop-dusters

Schweizer’s biggest production run was of someone else’s design. From 1957 it built the Grumman G-164 Ag Cat, a single-engine agricultural biplane with a sealed, pressurised cockpit to keep out pesticides and a structure designed to collapse progressively in a crash. By 1981 Schweizer had built 2,455 Ag Cats under contract; it then bought the design and built it as the Schweizer Ag Cat until selling the rights in 1995. In the 1970s it also built a dozen Thurston Teal amphibians.

Quiet spy planes and a robot helicopter

A motor glider designed for the Air Force Academy in 1982, the SGM 2-37, took the company in an unexpected direction. Lockheed had used a Schweizer sailplane as the basis for its YO-3 quiet observation aircraft in the 1960s, and Schweizer did the same with the 2-37, producing the near-silent RG-8A reconnaissance aircraft and then the twin-boom RU-38 Twin Condor. With Northrop Grumman it developed the MQ-8 Fire Scout unmanned helicopter, and it helped build Sikorsky’s X-2 coaxial-rotor demonstrator.

The Hughes 300 and life after Sikorsky

In 1986 Schweizer bought all rights to the Hughes 269 light helicopter from McDonnell Douglas and built it as the Schweizer 300C, adding the turbine 330 and 333. Between Hughes and Schweizer nearly 3,000 have been built, making it one of the most widely used training helicopters in the world. In 2004 Sikorsky bought what had been the oldest privately owned aircraft company in the United States. It closed the plant in 2011–2012. In 2018 a new company, Schweizer RSG, bought the business and restarted production of the 300C, 300CBi and 333 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Factories

• Elmira Knitting Mill · Elmira, New York — Second-floor workshop after leaving the family barn
• Horseheads plant · Horseheads, New York — Main factory; closed by Sikorsky 2011–2012
• Schweizer RSG · Fort Worth, Texas — Production restarted 2018

People

• Paul, William and Ernest Schweizer · founders — Built their first glider in 1930
• Bob McDowell · attorney — Arranged the move to Elmira and the incorporation
• David Thurston · designer — Teal amphibian, built at Schweizer from 1972

Records and firsts

• SGS 1-26: world’s most popular one-design sailplane class and the most numerous sailplane in the US
• SGU 2-22: most numerous two-place training glider in the USA from the 1940s to the 1960s
• Formerly the oldest privately owned aircraft company in the United States