Page 20 - Volume 12, Number 7

“Monoplanes Cessna”Part Two
By early 1928, Clyde V. Cessna was building and selling cabin monoplanes of his own design. Less than two years later the debacle on Wall Street would clip Cessna’s wings, just when financial success was within his grasp.
by Edward H. Phillips
The year 1928 would prove to be an undreamed-of boon to the airplane manufacturers from coast to coast, including those in Wichita, Kansas. Charles A. Lindbergh’s solo flight to Paris from New York City in May of the previous year helped to ignite a nationwide interest in aviation. Flight schools, it seemed, were popping up everywhere, books on how to fly flew off the shelves and companies such as Wright Aeronautical, whose J-5 static, air-cooled radial powerplant had propelled Lindbergh across the vast North Atlantic Ocean, struggled to meet skyrocketing demand for their engines. In addition, more people were learning to fly and those wealthy enough kept fattening the order books at local manufacturers such as the Travel Air Company, the Cessna and Stearman factories, as well as the Swallow Airplane company and other aviation- related businesses located in the city.
Of these, Travel Air, led by Walter H. Beech and a forward-thinking board of directors, and the Swallow company were already well established, but Clyde Cessna and Lloyd Stearman’s companies were struggling with production problems that kept initial deliveries to a trickle. In Cessna’s case, as of January 1928 not one airplane had been delivered to a customer, and their patience was wearing thin. The principal reason deliveries were delayed was the acute shortage of Wright J-4 and J-5 radial engines that Clyde preferred and his customers demanded. An even more pressing issue was cashflow – Cessna needed to deliver airplanes as soon as possible before the coffers were empty.
There was an interim solution to his dilemma and Cessna quickly seized upon it: The factory workers would install obsolete 10-cylinder Anzani engines (Clyde had at least 60 on hand) but each one would require major internal modifications to ensure reliability. When the Wright engines eventually became available, the airplane would be flown back to the factory for installation of the appropriate Wright radial engine. To keep the production line moving along, Cessna enlisted the help of his friend Curtis Quick, a local engineer who was well-known for his expertise with the aging engines such as the Anzani.
To upgrade the powerplants, Quick installed aluminum alloy pistons and removed the automatic intake valves, replacing those parts with a camshaft-activated mechanism that permitted the engine to produce more
18 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
horsepower. Internal lubrication was vastly improved, a new scavenge return system was developed along with a new crankcase ventilation tube, and modern, dual Scintilla magnetos were installed. These modifications not only increased the engine’s horsepower to 120 from 90 but made the Anzani a reliable powerplant. During the time it took Quick to develop tooling to modify the engines, Clyde bought a new Siemens-Halske SH-12 nine-cylinder radial from T. Claude Ryan, who acted as a distributor for the German engine. Cessna planned to install it on a prototype monoplane and conduct extensive flight tests before committing to a large order. Rated at 128 horsepower, the SH-12 did not appeal to many buyers who preferred the new Wright J-5 or Warner Scarab radial. When equipped with the SH-12, the Cessna monoplane was designated Model AS. Only four are known to have been built, with the first ship sold to Beacon Airways in Kansas City, Missouri.1
As soon as Curtis Quick completed one of the first modified engines, Cessna installed it on airframe serial No. 114 (the 14th Cessna monoplane), completed flight testing and declared the ship ready for delivery. On Feb. 28, 1928, the Cessna Aircraft Company delivered its first airplane to customers Edmund A. Link and Richard Bennett, who paid $6,500 for the cabin monoplane. The new Cessna, however, did feature an unusual option: a wind-driven siren mounted on the main landing gear strut. A few days after taking delivery, Mr. Link flew the Model AS home without incident.
Meanwhile, orders for the Wright-powered Cessna Model BW were piling up fast. Clyde pleaded with the Wright company to ship quantities of the J-5 engine to the Wichita factory, but Cessna was allotted only one radial per month. Clyde’s dilemma was shared by Walter Beech at Travel Air and Lloyd Stearman at his factory north of the city. Fortunately, other new, lightweight radial engines were coming on the market during the hot Kansas summer of 1928 and were quickly snapped up by Beech, Stearman and Cessna for flight testing. These included three seven-cylinder powerplants – the 110-horsepower Warner Scarab, the Floco (later renamed Axelson) rated at 115-150 horsepower, and the 130-150 horsepower Comet. Of these, the rugged and reliable Scarab proved to be the most popular with Cessna, chiefly because of its small frontal area, good fuel
JULY 2018