A railway engineer’s son in Denver

Albert Mooney grew up in Denver, the son of a railway engineer. Told at school that there was no such thing as a safe aeroplane, he read every pilot’s handbook in the public library instead. He followed a Swallow biplane to the airfield, pointed out its rigging errors and was hired by Alexander Aircraft at 19. In 1929, with money from the Bridgeport Machine Company, he and his brother Art founded the Mooney Aircraft Corporation in Wichita. Its M-5 flew seven months later, an attempted non-stop promotional flight across America ended near Fort Wayne with a failed fuel pump, and the Depression closed the firm by 1931.

The Texas Messerschmitt

Al spent the 1930s designing for others: the Bellanca Airbus and the Irish Swoop racer at Bellanca, the Monocoupe Dart, and the Culver Cadet, of which more than 350 were built. After the war he and Art restarted Mooney with backer Charles Yankey. Its first product, the single-seat M-18 Mite, was pitched at returning fighter pilots; it was the first post-war civil aircraft with a NACA 6-series laminar airfoil, and it looked so much like a Bf 109 that people called it the Texas Messerschmitt. Between 1947 and 1954, 283 were built in Wichita and Kerrville.

The M20 and a name without its owner

In 1953 the company moved to Kerrville, Texas, and on 3 September the four-seat M20 flew. Weeks later Yankey died after a stroke, his heirs had no interest, and the firm was rescued by two Midland investors, Hal Rachal and Norm Hoffman. Al Mooney left soon after certification in 1955 for Lockheed, where he worked on the JetStar and the XV-4 Hummingbird; the company kept his name. The M20 reached 170 mph on 150 horsepower. Ralph Harmon, who had led the Beechcraft Bonanza design, made it all-metal in 1960. The pressurised M22 Mustang lost money on every one of 36 built, and with the Mitsubishi MU-2 assembly venture it pushed Mooney into bankruptcy in 1969.

Faster on less: LoPresti’s 201

A sequence of owners followed: American Electronics Laboratories, Butler Aviation, which renamed the aircraft Aerostars and closed the plant in 1971, and from 1973 Republic Steel, whose manager Robert Cumming was a Mooney owner. Roy LoPresti, formerly of Grumman, cleaned up the airframe into the M20J 201, the first production aircraft to reach 201 mph on 200 horsepower. The turbocharged M20K 231 set a transcontinental record for single-engine piston production aircraft. A six-seat turboprop project, the 301, was shelved in the mid-1980s and became the SOCATA TBM 700.

Owners come and go

The pattern of crisis continued: bankruptcy in 2001, the first woman chief executive of a US aircraft manufacturer, Gretchen Jahn, from 2004, and in 2006 the M20TN Acclaim, at its launch the fastest single-engine piston production aircraft in the world. The 2008 recession halted production. Chinese investors bought the company in 2013 and restarted the line in 2014, but sales dwindled and it closed in 2019. More than 11,000 M20s were built across three production runs. Since September 2020 a group of Mooney owners has run the company, prioritising support for a fleet of more than 7,000 aircraft.

Заводы

• Уичито · Wichita, Kansas — 1929–1931 and post-war until 1953
• Kerrville · Kerrville, Texas — Headquarters and factory since 1953
• San Angelo · San Angelo, Texas — Mitsubishi MU-2 assembly from the mid-1960s
• San Antonio · San Antonio, Texas — Opened 1989, sold in 1993

Люди

• Albert Mooney · founder, designer — 1906–1986; left in 1955 for Lockheed
• Arthur Mooney · соучредитель
• Charles Yankey · financial backer — Died December 1953
• Ralph Harmon · head of engineering from 1960 — Earlier led the Beechcraft Bonanza design; made the M20 all-metal
• Roy LoPresti · head of R&D, later president — Designed the M20J 201
• Gretchen L. Jahn · chief executive from 2004 — First woman CEO of a US aircraft manufacturer

Рекорды и первые достижения

• M22 Mustang: first pressurised single-engine piston aircraft; non-stop New York–Paris in 13 h 10 min, June 1967
• M20J 201: first production aircraft to reach 201 mph on 200 hp
• M20K 231: fastest transcontinental flight in a single-engine piston production aircraft
• M20TN Acclaim Type S: fastest single-engine piston production aircraft at its introduction, 242 knots