The most experienced pilot in the world

Eddie Stinson learned to fly at the Wright School in Dayton in 1913, working as mechanic for his famous sister Katherine. In the First World War he taught Army pilots at Kelly Field and became one of the first instructors to teach spin recovery. After it he raced Barney Oldfield’s car at exhibitions and, to land in racetrack infields, fitted the first practical wheel brakes on an aeroplane. He founded his company in Dayton in 1920, then moved to Detroit, where the city’s Board of Commerce helped form the Stinson Aircraft Syndicate in 1925 with 25,000 dollars for a prototype.

A cabin with a cigar lighter

The SB-1 Detroiter, flown on 25 January 1926, was a four-seat biplane with something few aircraft then offered: an enclosed, heated cabin with upholstered seats and even an electric cigar lighter. Joyrides for 70 people in February raised 150,000 dollars in stock. Northwest sold its first passenger ticket on a Detroiter in July 1927. The SM-1 monoplane followed, deliveries reached 121 in 1929, and that September E. L. Cord bought 60 per cent of the company. Eddie did not see what came next. He died in a crash in Chicago on 26 January 1932, aged 38, with more than 16,000 hours in his logbook, more than any other pilot.

The flying jeep

Under Cord, then AVCO and from 1940 Vultee, the Wayne plant built 1,327 Reliant cabin monoplanes and the three-seat Model 105. Its military descendant, the L-5 Sentinel, was nicknamed the Flying Jeep at the factory: liaison squadrons flew it into front-line strips to bring out wounded, and Marines on Iwo Jima flew it off a ship using a cable hook. After the war Stinson built more than 5,000 Model 108 Voyagers before Consolidated Vultee sold the business to Piper in 1948. A twin design begun at Stinson became the Piper Apache.

工場

• Northville factory · Northville, Michigan — Former Stimson Scale building, acquired 4 May 1926
• Wayne plant · Wayne, Michigan — Main works from 1929, next to Detroit Industrial Airport

人々

• Eddie Stinson · founder — 1893–1932; set a world endurance record in 1921
• Katherine Stinson · aviator, Eddie’s sister — Pioneering woman pilot
• E. L. Cord · majority owner from 1929 — Automobile magnate

記録と初記録

• First practical aircraft wheel brakes, fitted by Eddie Stinson
• World flight endurance record, Eddie Stinson, 1921