WEB-LINKS TO OTHER SOURCES OF AVIATION INFORMATION & HISTORY Copyright 2001-2007 by R.Harris

KANSAS AVIATION  &  AIRCRAFT

NOTE:   These web links below provide special information on
Wichita, Kansas
-- the aviation manufacturing "Air Capital" --
and on Kansas aviation & aircraft manufacturers, generally.
(Most major U.S. plane-makers have Kansas ties.)

~ KANSAS AVIATION COMMUNITY ~ past & present, including:
KANSAS AVIATION , GENERALLY (Wings Over Kansas website)	Wichita: "The Air Capital City" ~ the world's leading aircraft-manufacturing center	Famous Kansas Aviators	Kansas airlines: ~ TWA (Trans World Airlines) ~ Air Midwest ~ Ryan International	Aviation Museums of Kansas

~ AIRCRAFT MANUFACTURERS of KANSAS ~ past & present, including:
major commercial & military	major general aviation
Boeing Airbus Bombardier Beech/Raytheon North American Republic Stearman	Cessna, Learjet, Mooney, Beech/Hawker/Raytheon, Stearman, Luscombe, Helio, Bede, and dozens of others (see more-complete list below):
The BIG list of Kansas aircraft manufacturers, past & present:   (See   individual   listings   below...) Ace     (Corbin      BabyAce) Airbus Alon Aircoupe     (Ercoupe) American   Eagle Bede Boeing Bombardier Beech Cessna Commonwealth Culver Eagle Fairchild Funk Great Lakes Hawker Helio HGL Aero Javelin LaFrance Laird Learjet Longren Luscombe Marshall Montague Mooney North American Piaggio Porterfield Prescott Purvis-Wilson RANS Raytheon Rearwin Republic Seibel Helicopter Stearman Superior Swallow Travel Air Wren STOL
Other Aircraft Manufacturers with Kansas Ties: American Aviation and its sucessors: Grumman-American, Gulfstream American, American General, and Tiger Aircraft (makers of the Yankee, Traveler, Cheetah, Tiger and Cougar light planes) In the late 1960's / early-1970s, airplane designer Jim Bede, an aeronautical engineering graduate of Wichita State University, created the most influential, all-new, single-engine lightplane of the 1970s: the "BD-1", which became the American Aviation "AA-1 Yankee". The radically simple, light, sleek and speedy two-seater -- though devilishly risky to fly -- promised revolutionary performance in the cheapest all-metal airplane on the market (144 mph, and nearly acrobatic capabilites, in a $7,500 airplane). A horde of new enthusiasts entered general aviation, on the allure of Bede's popular "personal fighter plane."     Bede manufactured his first design, the BD‑1, through Cleveland-based American Aviation in the early-1970s. When fledgling American fell on hard times, it was brought back from the brink of failure by a fighter-pilot-turned-lawyer, Russ Meyer. Meyer oversaw the refinement of the AA-1 line into a more marketable aircraft, and its growth into a superior four-seat design, the AA-5 (today, the final variant of that design, the AG-5B Tiger, is one of the most in-demand light planes). Meyer grew the company into the 4th-largest-volume U.S. maker of small light planes, then ushered the company into the hands of aerospace giant Grumman.     Russ Meyer's outstanding airplane-manufacturing management skills caught the eye of Cessna Aircraft, who brought him aboard, quickly moving him to the leadership of the company, to replace retiring Dwane Wallace.   Meyer eventually became head of all the aviation enterprises of Cessna's parent company, Textron, a role he still performs intermittently to this day (see Bell Helicopter, below).     Meanwhile, Jim Bede's fame from the American Yankee helped boost Bede's further adventures with other radical, cheap/speedy designs, including his BD-4 and BD-5 kitplanes. The latter design, the BD-5, was partially pre-assembled at the Bede Aircraft factory in Newton, Kansas, in kits for homebuilders -- including the world's smallest jet, the BD-5J. Bede's exciting, controversial designs infused new excitement into the field of "home-building" (amateur builders making their own planes) , and ignited an explosion in the tiny "kitplane" movement -- now the most common form of homebuilding. (To this day, Bede continues, elsewhere to develop stimulating new designs, including the BD-10 / Viper Jet.) (For a detailed history of the American Aviation Co. and its successors, click here .) Bell Helicopter Bell Helicopter -- one of the world's most important helicopter producers -- has benefitted extensively for decades from a variety of connections to Wichita. When Cessna decided to abandon its development of the Cessna/Seibel Skyhook helicopter, designer Charles Seibel joined Bell to become one of its leading design engineers -- involved in the development of Bell's signature designs -- the Model 47, JetRanger and Huey.     During the 1960s and 1970s, when Bell was unable to meet soaring military and civilian demand for its JetRanger helicopter, the company outsourced manufacture of JetRanger fuselages (bodies) to Wichita's Beech Aircraft Co..     During the late 1980s, Wichita's Cessna Aircraft Co. was acquired by Bell's parent company, Textron. Bell fumbled and faltered under the weight of its ill-fated efforts to create a vertical takeoff and landing airplane (the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor), but has been kept in business by feeding off of the profits from Textron's most profitable division -- Cessna Aircraft. When a scandal broke out over the Pentagon-Bell test program for the Osprey, and other troubles began torpedoing Textron's aviation enterprises (which also included major engine-maker Lycoming), Textron's board brought in former Cessna CEO Russ Meyer to clean up the mess, and oversee all of Textron's aviation enterprises -- Bell, Lycoming, AND Cessna. Curtiss-Wright Corp. Derived from the late-1920s/early-1930s merger of Glenn Curtiss' Curtiss Aeroplane Co. and the Wright Brothers Wright Aeronautical Corp., Curtiss-Wright then began to acquire as many airplane companies as it could, capitalizing on fire-sale prices as the stock market began unraveling towards the collapse of the Great Depression.   Wichita's Travel Air Mfg. Co. was one of Curtiss-Wright's main acquistions, whereupon the new parent moved Travel Air to St. Louis, Missouri.   Travel Air president Walter Beech was made Curtiss-Wright's V.P. of Marketing, but Beech chafed at the New York desk job. He quit, and managed to wrangle the old Travel Air factory in Wichita out of Curtiss-Wright's hands -- to reopen it under his own name, starting Beech Aircraft Corp. in 1932. General Dynamics (now a division of Lockheed-Martin) Derived from Vultee Aircraft and its acquisition, Consolidated Aircraft, which became Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft, later shortened to Convair, then renamed General Dynamics -- one of America's 5 biggest defense contractors, building everything from the F-16 Falcon fighter to submarines -- before being absorbed in the 1990s by Lockheed-Martin.   Ironically, Vultee Aircraft was founded by former Lockheed engineeer Gerard F. ("Jerry") Vultee, who helped develop the pioneering Lockheed Vega around 1925-1930, and later designed the Lockheed Sirius and Orion. Before working at Lockheed, Vultee had been a craftsman at Wichita's E.M. Laird Mfg. Co., helping craft America's first 'commercial' airplane, the Laird Swallow.   During the 1980s, Wichita's Cessna Aircraft Co. was acquired by General Dynamics, and held for a several years as a major subsidiary, before being sold to Textron. Laird Aircraft Manufacturing Co. , Chicago In 1923, after Matty Laird was driven off from his Swallow factory in Wichita (by co-owner Jake Moellendick), young Laird took his company name (E.M. Laird Mfg. Co.) back to his hometown (Chicago), and began a successful enterprise specializing in sleek, fast cargo and airmail biplanes, known as the "Laird Commercial" and "Speedwing" -- the speed-leaders in the industry.   After Laird's former Wichita employee, Walter Beech, produced the revolutionary Travel Air 'Mystery Ship' monoplane -- and it famously won at the 1929 National Air Races -- Laird countered by winning the following year with his sleek "Laird Solution" biplane (his 'Solution' to the Travel Air 'Mystery') and again the next year with his "Laird Super Solution" biplane, flown by Jimmy Doolittle.	Lockheed-Martin derived from two companies started (or re-started) by Kansas aviators:   Lloyd Stearman (first president of Lockheed, when revived from bankruptcy around 1931; helped develop its first financially successful airplanes -- the Orion and Electra; later worked on the Constellation airliner), and   Glenn Martin (youngest of the early aircraft manufacturers, founded Glenn L. Martin Aircraft -- one of America's first major aircraft manufacturing companies; Martin bombers and giant Martin seaplanes were world-famous from World War I through the Golden Age and World War II. Martin's flying school trained William E. Boeing -- whose first airplane was a Martin seaplane. Also, Martin employed a promising young designer: Donald Douglas, who would found Douglas Aircraft, and design the most important airplane of all time, the Douglas DC-3. Martin's company later became one of the key leaders in U.S. missiles and spacecraft.)   Gerard F. "Jerry" Vultee, was also a key colleague of Lloyd Stearman during the revival of Lockheed, before starting his own company (which evolved into General Dynamics, as noted previously). Vultee, an alumnus of Wichita's Laird/Swallow enterprise, first became famous as a co-designer (with John Northrop and Tony Stadlman) of the revolutionary pace-setting, globe-circling Lockheed Vega, and then chief designer in the development of the speedy, far-ranging Lockheed Sirius (which Lindbergh used to scout routes for airlines).   When Lockheed changed hands, and Stearman became president, Vultee took the lead in designing the industry-shaping single-engine Orion airliner -- the first plane developed in the revival of Lockheed under Stearman's presidency. Vultee left to form his own company, and that company (Vultee Aircraft) eventually evolved into major aircraft-and-submarine manufacturer General Dynamics. Ironically -- in recent times -- that company has become a division of Lockheed-Martin, completing the circle. Northrop-Grumman derived from Northrop Aircraft and Grumman Aircraft. Briefly around 1929-1931, Northrop was acquired by the giant United Aircraft conglomerate, and merged with Wichita-based Stearman Aircraft, to become Stearman-Northrop, headquarted in Wichita. Much of the work on Northrop's pioneering all-metal, hollow-shell airliners -- the Alpha and Beta -- was done in Wichita. These set the standard for modern aircraft construction.     After a government anti-monopoly lawsuit separated Northrop from Stearman and the United Aircraft conglomerate, Northrop returned to being an independent company until the 1990s merger with Grumman (known today as Northrop-Grumman). Northrop was a pioneer in advanced military aircraft -- including the Flying Wing, T-38 trainer, F-5 Freedom Fighter, F-20 Tigershark, and today's leading Naval and Marine fighter/bomber, the F/A-18 Hornet. Ryan Aircraft T. Claude Ryan, born and raised in Parsons, Kansas, became an important aircraft design-and-manufacturing leader, from his base in California. His "Ryan NYP" (for "NewYork-to-Paris") "Spirit of St. Louis" monoplane -- famously flown by Charles Lindbergh in the first trans-Atlantic solo -- triggered one of the most decisive revolutions in American airplane design: the switch to monoplanes (in place of biplanes).     Ryan Aircraft was also one of America's key pioneers of "modern" airplanes -- sleek aluminum-shell aircraft with unbraced ("cantilever") wings.     During World War II, their flight-school affiliate -- the Ryan School of Aeronautics Company -- trained 14,000 Army Air Corps pilots. Thousands more learned in Ryan PT-22 military trainer planes.     Though rarely successful, Ryan Aircraft remained a famously unusual and daring innovator in aviation well into the jet age -- with aircraft like the Navy's first jet fighter, jet/propeller hybrid planes, and vertical-takeoff jets. Rutan Aircraft and Scaled Composites, Inc. Burt Rutan, famed designer of the first private spacecraft to successfully reach outer space and win the "X Prize", has pivotal career ties to Kansas. Rutan's pioneering role in aerospace innovation began with his work with Jim Beded on the Bede BD-5 (and its worlds-smallest-jet variant, the BD-5J) at Bede Aircraft, in Newton, a few miles north of Wichita (see American Aviation, previously in this section).     Rutan's experience with the radical homebuilt BD-5 kits helped prepare him for his radical pioneering ventures into "composite" (carbon-fiber shell) construction, and modern "canard" and "tandem-wing" designs. Rutan's popular, speedy composite/canard homebuilt designs rapidly made him the world's leading expert on this cutting-edge technology, and made Rutan Aircraft the most-admired, most-watched innovator in modern aeronautics.     When Wichita's Beech Aircraft wanted to infuse new life into its aging line, it hired Rutan to serve as Director of Engineering, and Rutan guided the initial development of the Beech Starship -- America's first certificated (mass-manufactured) composite airplane, and one of the world's first certificated canard aircraft (the horizontal tail is moved to the nose, for greater efficiency).     Rutan then returned to his Scaled Composites, Inc. company in the California desert, where he continued to develop design ideas for other companies and NASA. When the "X-Prize" was announced -- offering $10 million for the first successful, reusable, manned, private spacecraft to fly to space twice (with people) -- Rutan applied his expertise to create a radical composite aerospace craft system (involving two craft), which accomplished the mission, winning the prize. Piper Aircraft Though firmly rooted in Pennsylvania at the time, Piper was swamped during the mid-1950s with soaring demand for its Piper Tri-Pacer. Taking advantage of the abundant supply of trained aviation workers in the Wichita area, Piper opened a 'branch' factory in nearby Ponca City, Oklahoma, for a short time, until the Cessna 172/Skyhawk began to eclipse the Tri-Pacer as America's most popular airplane.     In the 1970s, when a hositile corporate takeover drove the Piper family out of their company, one of old Bill Piper's sons, Howard 'Pug' Piper (who had directed Piper's new aircraft developments), defected to Wichita's Beech Aircraft Co. -- where he briefly became Director of Engineering, developing near-clones of his T-tailed Pipers: the Tomahawk trainer (imitated by the Beech Model 77 Skipper) and the Piper Seminole light twin (imitated by the Beech Model 76 Duchess). (For a detailed history of Piper Aircraft, click here .) WACO (Weaver Aircraft Co.) , Alliance, Ohio & other Ohio Cities (alias Advance Aircraft Co.) This legendary leading 1920s-1940s biplane-maker was co-founded by Buck Weaver -- a friend of Wichita's first successful airplane manufacturer,Matty Laird. Weaver worked briefly with Laird at Wichita's E.M.Laird Mfg. Co., building the industry-pioneering Swallow, then returned to Ohio to build its first significant competitor, the WACO 4.   WACO became the chief American rival to Wichita's Swallow and Travel Air for dominance in 1920's civilian aircraft manufacturing. For a couple of years, WACO was the largest-volume producer of aircraft in America, until surpassed in 1929 by Wichita's Travel Air.

Wichita -- The "Air Capital of the World" -- Its Aviation History
The city which has built far more aircraft than any other city on Earth (over 250,000).

"What the National Archives is to American history, Wichita is to aviation. Powered flight may have been born on those sand dunes in Kitty Hawk but it grew up here in Wichita" ~ Nicholas A. Sabatini, FAA Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety, in the Opening Speech at the annual AIAA Technology Conference (the aerospace industry's leading technical conference), Wichita, Sept. 27, 2006