Page 23 - Volume 12 Number 4

Model AW own by Earl Rowland in the 1928 air derby, but the young Cessna had made numerous modi cations to the ship in an effort to reduce drag and eke out more speed. Earl Rowland also entered a Model AW sponsored by the Wichita Flying Club.
A total of 63 pilots were registered for the transcontinental speed dash, and when the race began Eldon led the yers into Arizona, but Rowland was forced out when the normally bullet-proof Warner Scarab engine quit cold. The forced landing badly damaged the monoplane, and Earl spent the next few days dismantling the wreckage and having it shipped back to the factory in Wichita.
Meanwhile, Eldon and his Model AW continued to outpace the rest of the eld, but he had slipped to third place when the racers landed at Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Eldon managed to hang on to third place when the race ended in Cleveland a few days later and was happy to pocket $1,200 in prize money. Eldon and the speedy Model AW had distinguished themselves as tough competitors on a national scale, and he had gleaned valuable experience in the air that he would put to good use in 1932.
Back in March 1931, in a move designed to avoid declaring bankruptcy, the board of directors at the Cessna Aircraft Company voted to close the factory and remove Clyde Cessna from the payroll. Sales were non-existent, and investors had run out of patience. Clyde was disappointed, but he understood that their decision was appropriate given the near hopeless state of the nation’s small aircraft industry. Undaunted and armed with suf cient cash, Clyde and Eldon formed the C.V. Cessna Aircraft Company and took up residence in a small building located in Wichita. The father- son duo planned to design and build small and fast monoplanes capable of winning air races, because in the severely depressed aviation business, that is where the money was in 1932.3
The rst product of the C.V. Aircraft Company was the diminutive CR-1 (Cessna Racer-No. 1). It was, indeed, small. The fuselage was only 12 feet long and the shoulder-mounted, full-cantilever wing spanned a mere 16 feet. A retractable main landing gear (manually operated via a crank and chain system) was an innovation for that class of airplane. Clyde was quoted as saying that retracting the gear into the forward fuselage “was the only way to arrange it” because the wings were the strongest part of the airframe and should “not have holes in them.”
To power the CR-1 Clyde installed an engine he was thoroughly familiar with – the seven-cylinder Warner Scarab. The engine’s small frontal area dictated the width of the fuselage, and the Warner was surrounded by a NACA-type pressure cowl. CR-1’s rst ight occurred on January 18 with Eldon at the controls. The racer was so unstable and dif cult to y that it was also its last. It was rebuilt into the CR-2 and featured an additional two feet of wingspan and the fuselage was stretched two feet. Clyde’s friend and racing pilot Roy Liggett made the rst ight without incident. A series of tests ensued to check the airplane’s behavior in high-G turns around simulated pylons, and to determine maximum speed. In accordance with standard practice for a thoroubred racer like the CR-2, the Warner was modi ed to operate at 2,500-2,700 RPM – far above the standard redline speed of 2,050 RPMs.
Christened Miss Wanda in honor of Clyde’s daughter, the tiny monoplane made its competition debut at the Omaha Air Races held in May 1932. Liggett placed fourth in the event for engines of 500 cubic-inch displacement at a speed of 166 mph. The racer’s last event at Omaha was a free-for-all that found Roy again crossing the nish line in fth at a speed of 172 mph. Considering that the little Cessna was competing against racers boasting
APRIL 2018
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 21