A plant beside the airport

Interstate Engineering became the Interstate Aircraft and Engineering Corporation around July 1937 and opened a plant beside Los Angeles Municipal Airport, in El Segundo. Don P. Smith became president in 1938, and by mid-1939 it had 100 employees. Its first aircraft, the two-seat Cadet, entered production in 1940, helped by the company’s Fabri-Clip method of fixing fabric skin quickly. In 1940 the National Labor Relations Board ordered it to stop discriminating against employees who joined the United Automobile Workers union.

Cadets and Grasshoppers

The Cadet went to war as the XO-63, later the L-6 Grasshopper liaison aircraft, and 259 of the L-6 and L-8 series went to the US Army Air Forces. Interstate also built bomb shackles, gun chargers and hydraulic actuators, and in total made more than 700 light aircraft. It also developed a trainer for the US Navy in only nine months from first blueprint to first flight, and by November 1941 employed 22 deaf workers.

The assault drone

Its strangest product was the TDR-1, a remotely piloted assault drone for the US Navy, steered from a TBF Avenger by an operator watching a television picture. The Navy ordered 2,000 but only about 200 were built, and after limited use against Japanese targets in the Pacific in 1944 the programme was cancelled that October. In 1945 Interstate sold its aircraft line to Harlow and turned to appliances. Interstate Engineering later moved to Anaheim and was acquired by Figgie International in 1967.

工場

• El Segundo plant · El Segundo, beside Los Angeles Municipal Airport — Opened 1937

人々

• Don P. Smith · president — Became president in August 1938

記録と初記録

• TDR-1 among the first unmanned combat aircraft used in action, Pacific, 1944