After six years of tremendous success designing, manufacturing and selling airplanes, the Travel Air Company and its leader, Walter H. Beech, became cogs in the aeronautical wheel of fortune known as the Curtiss-Wright Corporation.
Late in 1929, only months before the stock market collapse on Wall Street, an organization was formed by the merger of Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Company with the Wright Aeronautical Corporation. In the wake of the merger, the new Curtiss-Wright Corporation absorbed 18 companies and 29 subsidiaries, of which Travel Air and Walter Beech were considered among the most valuable. Total assets were worth more than $70 million and the value of stock hit $220 million before the “crash” struck in October of that year.
America’s enthusiasm for flying grew rapidly after the solo flight of Charles A. Lindbergh from New York to Paris in May 1927. In 1928 the Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Company bought Robertson Airlines, based in St. Louis, Missouri. In addition to carrying passengers, Robertson was a contract air mail carrier for the United States Post Office and operated a flight school as well as an engine and airframe repair facility. From that acquisition came the Curtiss-Robertson Aircraft Corporation whose only purpose was to manufacture Curtiss airplanes at a factory located in Anglum, Missouri, near St. Louis.
After Curtiss-Wright acquired Travel Air in 1929 it bought all the assets of Robertson Airlines and merged Travel Air and Curtiss-Robertson to create the Curtiss-Wright Airplane Company. The Wichita factory was designated as the Travel Air Division, but in mid-1931 the factory had begun to gradually cease manufacturing and production operations in an effort to reduce Curtiss-Wright’s operating costs. Aircraft technical drawings and blueprints, along with one engineer and Walter Beech, were transferred to facilities at Lambert Field in St. Louis. As part of the merger, Beech was appointed a vice president of the company.
(Edward H. Phillips Collection)
When Walter arrived to oversee sales production of the Curtiss-Wright CW-1 Junior – a two-place, open-cockpit monoplane powered by a three-cylinder Szekely static, air-cooled radial engine rated at 45 horsepower – it was well underway. It sold for only $1,490 and was the company’s final attempt to sell a lightweight commercial airplane in an overcrowded marketplace where little or no demand for new aircraft existed.
Before the Wichita facilities were closed, only a skeleton crew remained to complete a small number of new airplanes for delivery, or to place airframes and engines into storage. In November 1930, orders for airplanes had plummeted and massive employee layoffs commenced and continued unabated into 1931. One of the last Travel Air ships built was the Type “R” monoplane ordered by the Italian Regia Aeronautica. It was delivered in July and shipped to Italy.
Roy Edwards was employed by Curtiss-Wright to sell all the equipment at the factory campus on East Central Avenue, and by September 1932 the five buildings had become little ghost towns in their own right – silent testimonies to a ravaged national economy. (Side note: Clyde Cessna and his son Eldon, however, did lease space to build their diminutive, but fast, CR-2 and CR-3 racers in 1932-1933 while Walter Beech was building the Beechcraft Model 17R- and B17-series cabin biplanes in Cessna’s abandoned factory on Franklin Road.)
It should be mentioned here that when Curtiss-Wright took control of Travel Air, model number and constructor number (C/N) designations were changed. From 1925-1931 Travel Air had assigned consecutive numbers to airframes regardless of model or type. For example, a Type 2000 biplane may have been assigned C/N 1250, while a Type 6000B monoplane would be assigned C/N 1251. The new system assigned numbers based on aircraft model. For example, a Type 6000B monoplane became the Type 6B with C/N beginning with 6B-2001, while a Type 6A used C/N beginning with 6A-2001. The same procedure was applied to biplanes. Another example is the five Type R racing monoplanes that were assigned C/N R-2201 through R-2005.
Meanwhile, in 1930 Curtiss-Wright/Travel Air Division engineers Herbert Rawdon and Theodore “Ted” Wells were charged with designing a new generation of small, lightweight, open-cockpit biplanes powered by inline or static, air-cooled radial engines of small cubic-inch displacement and low horsepower. The primary focus was on minimizing manufacturing costs while achieving a price level below $4,000.
The first airplane developed was designated the Curtiss-Wright Travel Air Model CW-12Q that was powered by an inline, upright, four-cylinder Wright Gypsy L-320 engine that produced 90 horsepower at 2,000 RPM. The Gypsy powerplant was a British design built in the United States under license and also powered the popular British de Havilland Gypsy Moth biplane.
Construction of the 12Q was typical of that era – welded steel tube fuselage with the four wing panels built up from laminated spruce spars and plywood ribs. The wing leading edges were sheathed in metal. The Model 12 wing configuration featured a zero angle of incidence, a positive interplane stagger of 28 inches and a dihedral of 1.5 degrees. According to Curtiss-Wright technical information, the wing structure, spars, ribs and fittings were all interchangeable, not only with other Model 12-series ships but also with some other models of Curtiss-Wright light airplanes.
The empennage structure was fabricated using welded steel tubing, and the entire airframe was covered in cotton fabric that was shrunk tight with butyrate dope. The conventional landing gear arrangement included a welded steel main gear fitted with 6.50 x 10 semi-airwheels with mechanical brakes, and a non-steerable tailskid.
General specifications for the Model 12Q Include:
- Length: 21 feet five inches
- Height: 8 feet 10 inches
- Wing span (upper panels): 28 feet 10 inches; (lower panels): 26 feet 4 inches
- Wing chord (upper and lower panels): 48 inches
- Wing area (upper panels): 113.4 square feet; (lower panels): 93 square feet
- Wing loading: 8.15 pounds per square foot
- Power loading: 17.72 pounds per horsepower
- Airfoil Section: Clark Y-15
- Empty weight: 1,071 pounds
- Gross weight: 1,725 pounds
- Useful load: 654 pounds
- Fuel capacity: 33 gallons
- Maximum speed: 105 mph
- Landing speed: 44 mph
- Ceiling: 12,000 feet
- Rate of climb (sea level): 600 feet per minute
- Cruising range: 390 statute miles (at 6.5 gallons per hour fuel consumption) 1
- Price for a standard-equipped airplane was $3,500. As the market for small aircraft worsened, the price was reduced to the point where production was terminated.
A prototype 12Q was completed in 1930 and initial flights were conducted by Lloyd Child, test pilot for the Curtiss-Wright Airplane Company in St. Louis. In February 1931, the Aeronautics Branch of the United States Department of Commerce issued Approved Type Certificate (ATC) number 401 for the Model 12Q. Late in 1930 production of the Model 12Q began at the Travel Air factory in Wichita and continued until June 1931, when production activities at that facility were gradually decreased. A total of 27 Model 12Q aircraft were built.
Introduced at the 1931 Detroit Aviation Show, Curtiss-Wright Airplane Company touted the qualities of the new Model 12Q:
“What Curtiss-Wright learned from the [Travel Air] Mystery Ship, fastest commercial airplane in the world, Curtiss-Wright now incorporates in the striking new Travel Air Sport-Trainer. Sturdily built, trimly refined, you’ll like this fleet little ship. It offers advances in stability, handling and servicing ease, which can be affected only when an organization builds for the whole field. Its clean-cut lines, its sleek streamlining, its speed in excess of 100 mph and cruising range of 500 miles, make it a craft of which you may be justly proud. Actually, it’s so stable in flight and so responsive to all controls it’s a real treat to fly it! Powered with the Wright-Gypsy engine, with a full complement of instruments, with a special wide tread, shock-absorbing landing gear and brakes, this Travel Air is easy to control on the ground or in the air. It is designed to make flying and servicing by the owner as inexpensive as possible.” 2
In addition to the Model 12Q, Curtiss-Wright offered two other versions of the airframe. The Model 12K, priced at $4,288, was powered by a Kinner B5 radial that developed 125 horsepower. The additional cost of $788 compared to the Model 12Q discouraged potential customers, and Curtiss-Wright faced stiff competition from other manufacturers that offered airplanes with similar performance for less money.
Only two of the Model 12K were built, both at the Travel Air Division’s factory. General specifications were identical to the Gypsy-powered version but the Kinner engine increased performance slightly to a maximum speed of 112 mph and a cruising speed of 95 mph. It could climb to 14,000 feet and had a range of 420 statute miles. The CW-12K received Approved Type Certificate number 406 in March 1931.
By contrast, the Model 12W featured a seven-cylinder Warner Scarab radial powerplant rated at either 110- or 125-horsepower. The small diameter of the engine allowed Herb Rawdon and Ted Wells to enclose the Warner in Curtiss-Wright’s version of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA) pressure cowling that was developed by a team led by engineer Fred Wieck in the late 1920s.
Performance changes included a maximum speed of 117 mph, cruising speed of 99 mph and a range of 480 statute miles. Rate of climb (sea level) was 780 feet per minute and maximum ceiling was 15,000 feet. Chiefly because of its higher price, the Warner-powered Model 12 did not sell well and only 12 are known to have been built. Price for a standard-equipped airplane was $4,455.3
Another variant of the Curtiss-Wright/Travel Air was the Model CW-16 Light Sport developed by Rawdon and Wells and based largely on the Model 12 airframe. The chief advantage of the Light Sport over its siblings was room for two in the front cockpit, but the wider fuselage, engine and other minor alterations necessary to accommodate the third occupant drove the price up to $4,488 for a standard-equipped airplane compared with the CW-12Q, CW-12K or CW-12W.
Three versions were offered: The CW-16K, CW-16W and CW-16E. Development of the Model 16K included installation of the Kinner B5 (R-440) radial that produced 125 horsepower. The Travel Air Division manufactured only 11 of these three-place biplanes that could be considered a modern reincarnation of the old Travel Air Type 2000 from 1925. Approved Type Certificate number 411 was issued to the CW-16K model in April 1931.
General dimensions and specifications remained the same as the other three versions except for an empty weight of 1,176 pounds, useful load of 774 pounds and a gross weight of 1,950 pounds. Maximum speed was 112 mph and range 420 statute miles.
The same airframe was also adopted to accept the seven-cylinder Warner Scarab engine and was assigned the designation Light Sport Model CW-16W. The design was awarded ATC number 429 in June 1931. Only one of this specific type is known to have been built at the Travel Air Division factory. The CW-16E was powered by a Wright Aeronautical J6-5 (R-540E) radial engine rated at 165 horsepower. Priced at $4,600 in standard configuration, the CW-16E cost more than the CW-12 and CW-16 series airplanes but offered little or no increase in performance compared with its siblings. Ten were built by the Travel Air Division. The CW-16E type was granted ATC number 463 in February 1932. By 1932 production of the entire Model 12 and Model 16 series had been terminated after approximately 50-55 airplanes had been manufactured in Wichita.4
Notes:
- Curtiss-Wright Airplane Company claimed a maximum range of 500 statute miles but did not state a power setting or rate of fuel consumption.
- “Aviation,” February 1931, Page 13.
- In the decades since these ships were manufactured, a small number of Model CW-12Q were modified to accept either the Kinner or Warner engine and airframe designations were changed accordingly.
- As of 2020 only a handful of the CW-12 and CW-16 series exist worldwide. Of these, only a very small number have been restored to airworthy condition, making the CW-12 and CW-16 biplanes among the rarest of Curtiss-Wright/Travel Air designs.