By: Norm Goyer
When the troops
came marching home in 1945, the aviation community was gearing up for what
everyone thought was going to be a huge boom in aviation. The GI Bill was
enacted and it seems that everyone who wanted to fly could now become a
pilot with Uncle Sam picking up the tab. This huge influx of student pilots
had Piper and Aeronca cranking out Cubs and Champs by the thousands. But,
Cessna shot them all down with their all metal Cessna 120/140 two-place.
Beechcraft produced a few of their beautiful D-17 Staggerwings while gearing
up for the award-winning “V” tail Bonanza.
To compete with
this super successful Bonanza, Cessna used left over Jacobs’ radial engines
from their wartime Cessna T-50 “Bamboo Bomber” in their new Cessna 195
Businessliners. Stinson was busy designing a new light twin and the
soon-to-be-popular Stinson 108 Voyager and Station Wagon. WACO even tried a
tricycle geared, very unappealing cabin bipe. Bellanca was still using steel
tube fuselages with wood wings on their 150 hp Cruisers. Ads claimed 150 mph
on a 150 hp, a first in the light plane market. Swift opted for an all
metal low-wing retractable that was grossly underpowered. Ercoupe decided
that folks needed a plane with controls similar to a car with no rudder
pedals. The design was successful, but buyers didn’t like the special
license restricting the pilot to “two-controls.”
Piper,
Taylorcraft, Aeronca and Luscombe all adapted their designs to include
four-passenger versions; none were successful. It seems the flying public
wanted all-metal airplanes; and they wanted tricycle gears; taildraggers
were thought to be too hard to take off and land safely on modern hardtop
runways.
The next ten
years saw many companies fail. The fabled boom turned out to be a bust. One
bright spot was Piper purchasing the light twin from Stinson, tweaking it a
bit into the very successful Apache, one of the first light twins.
In the next
“Under the Radar” we discuss the North American Mustang-Navion and Republic
Thunderbolt-SeaBee connection.
To Read More about Norm and his previous article
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