Page 24 - Volume 13 Number 2

Early in 1920 Laird had 11 men working in an and returned to Chicago, his business partner Jacob
abandoned factory in downtown Wichita. A prototype biplane was completed in April and prepared for its first flight at a flying field north of the city. Late in the afternoon of April 8 Laird flew the ship on a short but successful test hop.
Soon after the flight the airplane was renamed the Laird Swallow and the stage was set to being limited manufacturing. Thanks to advertising in national aviation magazines, the E.M. Laird Company Partnership began receiving inquiries about the new biplane as well as a steady flow of visitors to the factory and flying field. By the end of the summer, production for 1920 was sold out and Laird was accepting orders for the 1921 sales year. Lloyd Stearman’s role in the design and development of the Swallow was, at best, minimal, despite a story written seven years later by Dwight Pennington in September 1927 claiming that the airplane was “designed largely by Stearman” (there is, however, no known evidence to support that statement).
Moellendick took the reins and promoted Lloyd to chief engineer. In 1923 Stearman was chiefly responsible for the design of the aging Swallow’s replacement – the New Swallow.
In 1924, however, he and Walter Beech, along with pioneer aviator Clyde V. Cessna, formed the Travel Air Manufacturing Company and moved Clyde’s woodworking equipment into a small workshop in downtown Wichita. Lloyd had designed a single-bay, three-place, open- cockpit biplane that was designated the Travel Air Model A and although initial sales were slow, in 1925 sales increased and Stearman’s name was appearing more frequently in national aviation publications as a promising designer.
Early in 1926 Stearman was approached by aviators Fred Day Hoyt, George Lyle and a few local businessmen in California to “go west young man” and build airplanes for the Hollywood elite. Hoyt was based at Clover Field, Santa Monica, and was a successful salesman and dealer for the Travel Air company. He was convinced that there were more than enough potential customers not only in Southern California but in the entire Golden State. On Oct. 8 he resigned from Travel Air, bid farewell to
During the next three years Lloyd gained valuable
knowledge and experience assisting Laird in the
development of improvements that were made to the
Swallow as production slowly increased. When Laird
resigned from the company during autumn 1923 his good friends Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna, Olive
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22 • KING AIR MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2019