Travel Air, then a company of his own

Lloyd Stearman was born in Wellsford, Kansas, in 1898, studied engineering and architecture at Kansas State College, and learned to fly Curtiss seaplanes in the Naval Reserve in 1918. After working as a mechanic for Matty Laird, he teamed up with Walter Beech and Clyde Cessna in 1925 to form the Travel Air Manufacturing Company in Wichita, a partnership of three future aviation names. In 1926 he left to build his own aeroplanes, and on 10 December 1926 Stearman Aircraft was chartered, with fabrication at Venice, California, and final assembly at Clover Field.

Mail pits and Wichita

Only four C1 and C2 biplanes had been built in California when Wichita money brought the company home in 1927. Walter P. Innes Jr. and his associates raised new capital, and the C3, a three-seat commercial biplane, became the firm’s first success, with 179 built. A mail version with the front cockpit turned into a cargo hold flew airmail routes in 1928, and the M-2 Speedmail went to Varney Air Lines in January 1929. From one aircraft in 1927, Stearman built 130 in 1928, and at the 1929 peak employed 250 people with ten distributors nationwide.

Swallowed by an empire

In July 1929 Stearman swapped 375 of its shares for 100 of the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation, the combine that William Boeing and Frederick Rentschler were assembling out of Boeing, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky, Chance Vought and airlines. Lloyd Stearman was moved to research and resigned in July 1931; he went on to help buy Lockheed in 1932. The Depression cut Stearman’s workforce to 25 by 1932, and only parts work for the Boeing 247 kept it alive. When the 1934 Air Mail Act broke up the combine, Stearman became a division of Boeing.

Kaydet: ten thousand trainers

Salvation was a trainer. The Model 70 flew on 1 January 1934, the Navy ordered 41 of the developed Model 73 as the NS-1, and the refined Model 75 won orders from the Army Air Corps as the PT-13. Then the war orders poured in: from 600 staff in autumn 1939 the workforce passed 5,000 by June 1941, and the factory was turning out five trainers a day. Officially called the Kaydet but universally known simply as the Stearman, it trained the Tuskegee Airmen and the naval aviator George H. W. Bush. At least 10,626 were built, counting Models 70, 75 and 76; Boeing records give 10,346 primary trainers including spares.

From biplanes to the B-52

In September 1941 the Stearman name disappeared from the company, which became the Wichita Division of Boeing. The Wichita plant went on to build 1,769 B-29s, 1,390 B-47s and 467 B-52s; counting everything from 1927 to 1962, the works produced more than 14,500 aircraft. The biplanes had a second life: in 1948 more than 4,345 Stearmans were flying as crop-dusters, and they became popular for aerobatics and wing-walking at air shows. In 2005 Boeing sold the civil side of the old Wichita works to become Spirit AeroSystems, and bought Spirit back in 2025.

מפעלים

• Venice, California · Venice and Clover Field, California — 1926–1927; final assembly at Clover Field
• Wichita Municipal Airport plant · Wichita, Kansas — From late 1930; later Boeing Wichita and Spirit AeroSystems

אֲנָשִׁים

• Lloyd Stearman · founder (1898–1975) — Co-founder of Travel Air; later president of Lockheed; National Aviation Hall of Fame 1989
• Walter P. Innes Jr. · investor, president from December 1930
• Mac Short · vice president and chief engineer
• Frederick Rentschler · chairman after the 1929 merger
• Julius Schaefer · president from 1933

שיאים וראשונות

• Model 75 trained the Tuskegee Airmen and George H. W. Bush
• Delivered the 1,000th trainer to the Army on 15 March 1941 and the 10,000th trainer in July 1944