Page 27 - Volume 12 Number 2

propeller. The cockpit featured indirect lighting and a complete set of instruments for “blind flying” was standard equipment.
Flight tests revealed a maximum speed of 135 mph and a cruising speed of 115, and the ship’s large wings of generous span and area provided a gentle landing speed of 47 mph (no wing flaps installed). The service ceiling was 16,000 feet with a rate of climb (sea level) of 900 feet per minute. Maximum gross weight was a hefty 4,270 pounds with a payload of only 780 pounds. After the Detroit event, the Stearman Coach was flown on a nationwide air tour to demonstrate the airplane to Stearman Aircraft’s dealer/distributor network. Unfortunately, the CAB-1’s biplane configuration worked against its acceptance by potential customers. Just as Walter Beech had already learned with the Type 6000, by 1929 air-minded businessmen preferred cabin monoplanes that represented the way of the future for business aviation. Plans to begin production 60 days after the Detroit show were scrapped when the marketplace showed little interest in the CAB-1. The sole example was disassembled and quickly disappeared from the company’s sales literature. By the end of 1929, the Stearman Coach was only a footnote in the history of the Stearman Aircraft Company.
In yet another effort to capitalize on the M-2’s basic airframe, Lloyd Stearman and Mac Short created the LT-1 (Light Transport) that was slightly larger than the M-2 and accommodated four passengers in a cramped cabin forward of the pilot’s open cockpit. Airmail was stowed in a compartment aft of the engine. The first LT-1 built flew in July 1929 and was powered by a Wright Cyclone engine of 525 horsepower, but the three other airplanes manufactured used the Pratt & Whitney Hornet nine- cylinder, radial engine that also produced 525 horsepower.
The LT-1 was a large cabin biplane with a total wing area of 490 square feet. Weighing in at a heavy 6,250 pounds, the biplane still managed a respectable cruising speed of 115 mph and a range of 690 statute miles. Only
four of the hard-working LT-1 series were built. Three of these soldiered on into the 1930s after Interstate Air Lines was absorbed by American Airlines.
Although Wichita’s airframe manufacturers were not alone in selling enclosed cabin airplanes, their products were often at the leading edge of design and offered good performance, comfort and economy for the dollar. Today’s Beechcraft owners and operators may view Travel Air’s Type 6000, Stearman’s LT-1 and Cessna’s DC-6 as nothing more than antiquated artifacts from a bygone era, but they played an important role in laying the foundation for the future of business flying. KA NOTES:
1. The Travel Air Type 5000 prototype was the first commercially- built airplane to fly from California to the Territory of Hawaii. That flight occurred in July 1927. One month later, a Type 5000 built specifically for the Dole Race to Hawaii won that event after flying for more than 24 hours from Oakland, California, to Wheeler Field, Territory of Hawaii. The airplane, named the Woolaroc, is on static display at the Frank Phillips Museum near Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
2. The Model AW was Cessna’s best-selling airplane although less than 50 were delivered before the stock market crash in 1929 sent sales into an unrecoverable flat spin. In 1934, however, Cessna’s nephew Dwane Wallace, with help from young engineers Tom Salter and Jerry Gerteis, redesigned the Model AW into the Model C-34 that became known (unofficially) as the Airmaster. More than 170 C-34, C-37, C-38, C-145 and C-165 airplanes were built before the Cessna factory transitioned to wartime production in 1940.
Ed Phillips, now retired and living in the South, has researched and written eight books on the unique and rich aviation history that belongs to Wichita, Kan. His writings have focused on the evolution of the airplanes, companies and people that have made Wichita the “Air Capital of the World” for more than 80 years.
Another design by Lloyd Stearman and engineer
Mac Short was the LT-1 cabin biplane featuring a 525-horsepower Pratt & Whitney radial engine. An evolution of the highly successful Stearman M-2 Speed Mail, the LT-1 could haul four passengers and hundreds of pounds of mail or small cargo. Only four were built. (ARCHIVES OF THE WICHITA AREA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE)
FEBRUARY 2018
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 25