Page 28 - Volume 13 Number 4

A New Beginning – Part One
The Model 6 was one of the final designs completed by Lloyd C. Stearman before he resigned from the company that had borne his name since 1926. Utilitarian but rugged, the humble Cloudboy was the company’s entry-level product. (Kansas Aviation Museum)
In 1934 amid the United States’ worst economic calamity, the Stearman Aircraft Company unveiled the utilitarian Model 70 – a landmark design that saved the company from extinction.
by Edward H. Phillips
Throughout the early 1930s Ben Selvin and the Crooners could often be heard on the radio belting out the popular song, “Happy Days Are Here Again.” It was so popular during the Great Depression years that Democratic presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt chose it to be the theme song of his 1932 campaign to win the White House, and it would go on to become the Democratic party’s unofficial song for years to come.
By 1934 the aircraft industry in Wichita, Kansas, which had been crippled for the past four years by the nation’s economic woes, was finally experiencing a painfully slow, but authentic, recovery. Southeast of the city more than 100 men and women were working feverishly to build parts and assemblies for the all-metal, twin-engine Boeing Model 247 airline transport. East of town, the infant Beech Aircraft Company was beginning limited production of the Beechcraft Model B17L cabin biplane, and on Franklin Avenue Dwane Wallace and his brother Dwight were fighting a battle to wrest control of the
26 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
APRIL 2019