Page 32 - Volume 14 Number 10
P. 32
IN HISTORY
30 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
OCTOBER 2020
Stearman’s Last Stand – The “Cloudboy”
In 1930 America’s economy was in a tailspin when the Stearman Aircraft
Company introduced the Model 6 biplane – a rugged design but one that found
few commercial buyers and was rejected by the military as a primary trainer.
by Edward H. Philips
The “Roarin’ Twenties” had been good to Wichita’s airframe manufacturers. In 1928, for example, the city’s big three – Travel Air, Cessna Aircraft and Stearman Aircraft – delivered more than 900 new airplanes and company officials were expecting to manufacture more than 1,000 aircraft in 1929. Travel Air, under the capable guidance of Walter H. Beech, was swamped with orders and the 600-man workforce struggled to build five airplanes per day. A few miles to the southwest, Cessna Aircraft Company’s president Clyde V. Cessna and his employees were frantically trying to complete and equip a new factory complex, one designed to manufacture the popular Model AW cabin monoplane.
