Stinson, Convair Aircraft Companies

Stinson Aircraft, Consolidated Aircraft, Avco, Vultee Aircraft, and Convair Aircraft Legacies

(most of this information was from Wikipedia)

Stinson

The Stinson Aircraft Company was founded in Dayton, Ohio, in 1920 by aviator Edward “Eddie” Stinson, brother to Katherine Stinson. After five years of business ventures, Stinson made Detroit, Michigan the focus for his future flying endeavors. Stinson found Detroit's business community receptive to his plans. A group of local businessmen — the Detroit Board of Commerce's Aviation Committee — supported Stinson's plans to establish the Stinson Aircraft Syndicate in 1925 at a site southwest of Detroit, where today's Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport is located, and provided $25,000 to develop a new monoplane; the SM-1 Detroiter made its first flight on January 25, 1926, and became an overnight success that enabled Stinson to quickly assemble $150,000 in public capital to incorporate the Stinson Aircraft Corporation on May 4, 1926. Always an aviator at heart, Eddie Stinson was still flying as a stunt pilot, earning $100,000 a year for his efforts — a huge sum in those days. Stinson Aircraft Corporation sold 10 SM-1 Detroiters in 1926. Business was steadily increasing, and Stinson delivered 121 aircraft in 1929.

Automobile mogul Errett Lobban (E.L.) Cord acquired 60 percent of Stinson's stock in September 1929, and his Cord Corporation provided additional investment capital to permit Stinson to sell its aircraft at a competitive price while still pursuing new designs. At the height of the Depression in 1930, Stinson offered six aircraft models, ranging from the four-seat Junior to the Stinson 6000 trimotor airliner.

Eddie Stinson did not live to enjoy the success of his company. He died in an air crash in Chicago, Illinois on January 26, 1932, while on a sales trip. At the time of his death at age 38, Stinson had acquired more than 16,000 hours of flight time — more than any other pilot at the time.

The Stinson name did not last much past the end of World War II. Eddie Stinson's death accelerated the assimilation of Stinson Aircraft Corporation into larger corporate entities: first by Cord Corporation, then by Aviation Corporation (AVCO), and later by Consolidated Vultee. By 1950 the Stinson company was sold to the Piper Aircraft Corporation, which continued to produce 108s for a limited time. Piper transformed an original Stinson design (the "Twin Stinson") into the successful Piper Apache, the world's first general aviation all-metal twin engine modern aircraft.

Aircraft
Stinson SM-1 Detroiter
The six-seat Stinson SM-1 Detroiter made its first flight on January 25, 1926 — the first fixed-wing aircraft with a heated, soundproof cabin, electric starter, and wheel brakes. Stable in flight, the Detroiter became an overnight success. It was selected by Ruth Elder and Elsie Mackay for their attempted trans-Atlantic crossings in 1927 and 1928, both of which failed.

Stinson SM-2 Junior
Soon after the SM-1 Detroiter hit the market, Stinson started refining the basic design in 1928 to appeal to private flyers and business owners. The SM-2 Junior, was a smaller and lower-powered three-four seat high-wing cabin monoplane of which 321 were built by 1933.

Depression-era aircraft

Stinson Model OAt the height of the Depression in 1930, Stinson offered six aircraft models, ranging from the four-seat Junior to the 6000 trimotor airliner.

Two new Stinson designs — the 1931 Model W and the 1932 Model R-2/3 — were powered by Wright or Lycoming radial engines and combined dependable performance with a luxurious cabin. These two models were the ancestors of the most famous of the Stinson line — the Reliant, first introduced in 1933.

Also in 1933 and 1934 , The Stinson Model "O", a high-wing parsol aircraft was delivered for a military trainer. 10 were produced, five of which were sold to Honduras, three to China, and one to Brazil. The prototype remained in the U.S. as an instrument trainer in Long Beach, California[1]

From 1933 to 1941, Stinson delivered 1,327 Reliants—ranging from the SR-1 through the SR-10 — each variation building upon its predecessor with upgraded engines and design refinements. The Stinson Reliant SR-10, introduced in 1938, was considered the ultimate, featuring leather upholstery, walnut instrument panels, and automobile-style roll-down windows.

Also in 1933 Stinson introduced its last trimotor airliner, the Stinson Model A.

Model 105 Voyager/L-5 Sentinel
Another popular Stinson aircraft was the Model 105 Voyager, also called the HW-75 and Model 10, a three-passenger aircraft featuring a strut-braced wing mounted on the top of the fuselage and capable of flying at about 105 miles per hour (169 km/h). The little HW-75 proved an immediate success attracting a flood of orders the manufacturer was hard-pressed to match. Costing $US2,995 in 1939, the Voyager featured innovations such as slotted wing flaps, and fixed wing slots for better handling at lower speeds.

By August 1939 Stinson had received more than 100 orders and the company’s plant at Wayne, Michigan was rolling out three aircraft each day. James Stewart, air-minded Hollywood movie star, and Howard Hughes were some of the more notable Voyager owners.

Introduced in 1939, Stinson sold 535 Voyagers in 1939 and 1940 before World War II intervened and the Stinson aircraft line was adapted for an important mission. A few prewar Voyagers were commandeered for wartime use and designated the AT-19/L-9.

Voyager VH-ACZ exhibited at Australia's Museum of Flight, HMAS Albatross in 2006. This is one of two HW-75s imported to Australia in 1939. It was owned for thirteen years (1940 – 1953) by Axel Sigurdsson von Goes, the son of Australia’s Danish Consul.The 105 Voyager was substantially redesigned to become the U.S. Army's L-5 Sentinel, one of the most used and least recognized U.S. aircraft of the Second World War. Serving as a short field liaison aircraft, the L-5 supported missions such as artillery spotting, medical evacuation, aerial reconnaissance, and passenger transport. Stinson delivered 3,590 between November 1942 and September 1945 under a variety of designations from L-5, L-5B, L-5C, L-5E and L-5G.

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps received 306 Sentinels from the Army, designating their models as the OY-1 and OY-2, while two versions went to the Royal Air Force as the Sentinel Mk. I and Sentinel Mk. II. After the war, most Sentinels were sold for surplus, but a number of aircraft (now designated the U-19) served in the Korean conflict. A few remained in active military service until the late 1950s. An owners club dedicated to the L-5 hosts a website at http://www.sentinelclub.org.

[edit] SR-10 Reliant
The SR-10 Reliant was also transformed for use in World War II as the UC-81, used by the U.S. Army as a utility aircraft, and the AT-19/V-77, used by the Royal Navy for a passenger transport, instrument trainer and photo-reconnaissance aircraft.

Stinson 108
The last Stinson aircraft design produced was the 108, an immediate post-World War II design that competed against designs from Piper Aircraft and Cessna.

Stinson Model O

At the height of the Depression in 1930, Stinson offered six aircraft models, ranging from the four-seat Junior to the 6000 trimotor airliner.

Also in 1933 Stinson introduced its last trimotor airliner, the Stinson Model A.

SR-10 Reliant
The SR-10 Reliant was also transformed for use in World War II as the UC-81, used by the U.S. Army as a utility aircraft, and the AT-19/V-77, used by the Royal Navy for a passenger transport, instrument trainer and photo-reconnaissance aircraft.

Stinson 108
The last Stinson aircraft design produced was the 108, an immediate post-World War II design that competed against designs from Piper Aircraft and Cessna.

Convair (Consolidated, AVCO, Vultee, Consolidated Vultee)

Convair was an American aircraft manufacturing company which later expanded into rockets and spacecraft. Convair existed as a company for the design, development, and manufacturing of high-technology aerospace products, and/or sub-units of them, or else was a subsidiary of a larger corporation. Convair existed as a company from 1943 until 1994.

The origins of Consolidated Vultee Aircraft and Convair

Gallaudet
In 1908 Edson Gallaudet organized the first aircraft engineering office, whch later became the first manufacturer of airplanes in the United States. The Gallaudet Aircraft Corporation mass produced Curtis floatplanes in 1918.

Wright Aeronautical Company
Wilbur and Orville Wright started manufacturing aeroplanes in 1909.

Glenn L. Martin Aircraft
Organized in 1911, Glenn Martin began producing military trainers in 1914.

Wright-Martin Aircraft Company
In 1916 Glenn Martin Aircraft merged with Wright Aeronautical Company to form Wright-Martin Aircraft Company. In 1919 this company was dissolved and reorganized into Wright Aeronautical. This American company evolved from the 1909-1916 Wright Company, which merged with the Glenn L. Martin Company in 1916 to form the Wright-Martin Aircraft Corporation. Glenn Martin resigned from Wright-Martin and reformed an independent Glenn L. Martin Company in September 1917. Wright-Martin was renamed Wright Aeronautical in 1919.

In May 1923, Wright Aeronautical purchased the Lawrance Aero Engine Company, as the United States Navy was concerned that Lawrance couldn't produce enough engines for its needs. Charles Lawrance was retained as a vice president. In 1925, after Wright's president, Frederick B. Rentschler, left the company to found Pratt & Whitney, Lawrance replaced him as company president.

Wright Aeronautical merged with the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company on July 5, 1929, to become the Curtiss-Wright Corporation.

Three Manufacturers of Aircraft after WWI
After WWI everyone returned to making automobiles except for Wright Aeronautical, Packard and Curtiss.

Consolidated Aircraft
Consolidated Aircraft was formed on May 29, 1923, by Major Reuben H. Fleet.
Reuben Fleet had served as a pilot in the U.S. Army and had organized the first Airmail Service in 1918.
As an aviation pioneer, Reuben Fleet had played a key role in the development of the first supercharger which allowed planes to fly faster at higher altitudes and had also organized the development of the first military parachute.

Fleet had been the Executive Officer (second in command) in charge of training United States pilots during WWI.
Major Reuben H. Fleet's first goal with Consolidated Aircraft was to produce a safe trainer airplane, since two thirds of those who learned to fly died in airplane accidents.

Reuben Fleet took over Gallaudet Aircraft's business and acquired the rights to Dayton-Wright Company designs from General Motors, who had left the aviation business. This is why it was called, "Consolidated Aircraft."

Dayton-Wright Company

The Dayton-Wright Company was formed in 1917, on the declaration of war between the United States and Germany, by a group of Ohio investors that included Charles F. Kettering and Edward A. Deeds of Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (DELCO). Orville Wright lent his name and served as a consultant, but except for the location of one of its three factories in the original Wright Company factory buildings in Dayton, Ohio, Dayton-Wright had no connection to the Wright brothers. In addition to plant 3 (the former Wright Company buildings), Dayton-Wright operated factories in Moraine (plant 1, the main factory) and Miamisburg (plant 2), Ohio. During the course of the war, Dayton-Wright produced about 3,000 DH-4s, as well as 400 Standard SJ-1 trainers. The company was hurt by the reputation of the DH-4s it produced as "flaming coffins" as well as by the scandals it faced.

Deeds and Kettering formed the Dayton Airplane Company in 1917, which was soon reorganized as the Dayton-Wright Company. When the war began, Deeds was commissioned and put in charge of procurement for the Aircraft Production Board. He divested himself of his financial interest in Dayton-Wright but awarded the company two contracts to produce more than 4,000 DH-4 and Standard SJ-1 aircraft. The company survived a scandal about the contracts. It went on to produce the XPS-1, the first airplane held by the U.S. Army with retractable landing gear.

In 1919, Dayton-Wright built a limousine version of the DH-4, the single-seat Messenger, and a three-seater. In 1920, Milton C. Baumann designed the RB racer,with solid balsa wood wing, enclosed cockpit, and retractable landing gear linked to rod-operated leading and trailing-edge camber-changing flaps.

In 1923 the Dayton-Wright Company had just started producing side-by-side TW-3 aircraft, powered with World War I surplus Wright E engines (American-built 180 hp Hispano-Suiza) when it was closed down by the parent company General Motors, which had purchased it in 1919. Its design rights, chief designer (Colonel Virginius Clark), and the TW-3 contract, were acquired by the newly-formed Consolidated Aircraft Corporation of Buffalo, New York in 1923. Subsequent TW-3 aircraft were delivered as Consolidated TW-3s.

The Consolidated Aircraft Company, Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, whose name was in the course of time changed to Convair, the Convair Corporation and similar names, was an American aircraft, rocket, and spacecraft company for the design, development, and manufacturing of such high-technology aerospace products, and/or sub-units of them, or else a subsidiary of a larger corporation. It existed as a company from 1943 until 1994, and of course, its best-known predecessor the Consolidated Aircraft company had existed before that, and had produced aircraft that were important in the early years of World War II, especially the PBY Catalina for the U.S. Navy, the Royal Canadian Air Force, the British flying forces, and some others. The Catalina remained in production through May 1945, and a total of over 4.000 of them were built. What was soon to be called "Convair" (first unofficially, and then officially), was created in 1943 by the merger of the Consolidated Aircraft Company and the Vultee Aircraft Company. This merger produced a large airplane company of that time period, though still smaller than the giants like Douglas Aircraft, Boeing, and Lockheed. Convair always had most of its research, design, and manufacturing operations in San Diego County of Southern California, and nearby counties, though other locations were involved, as well.

Convair in the Jet Age, the Cold War, and the Space Age

In March 1953, all of the Convair company was bought by the General Dynamics Corporation, a conglomerate of military and high-technology companies, and it became officially the Convair Division within General Dynamics.

After the beginning of the jet age of military fighters and bombers, Convair was a pioneer of the delta-winged aircraft design, along with the French Dassault aircraft company, which designed and built the Mirage fighter planes.

One of Convair's most famous products was the gigantic 10 engined Convair B-36 strategic bomber, burning four turbojets & turning six pusher props driven by huge Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major radial piston engines. The Convair B-36 was the largest landbased piston engined bomber in the world. The Atlas missile, the F-102 Delta Dagger and F-106 Delta Dart delta-winged interceptors, and the delta-winged B-58 Hustler supersonic intercontinental nuclear bomber were all Convair products. For a period of time in the 1960s, Convair manufactured its own line of jet commercial airliners, the Convair 880 and Convair 990, but this did not turn out to be a profitable business. However, Convair found that it was profitable to become an aviation subcontractor and to manufacture large subsections of airliners, such as fuselages for the larger airliner companies, McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, and Lockheed.

The Convair Division produced its own airplane designs, such as several airliners, until 1965, when it shifted from these to airframe/aerostructure subcontracting projects for other companies. Convair also shifted more money and effort into its outer space products, especially rocket boosters. The Convair-made and cryogenically-fueled Atlas missile ICBM for the U.S. Air Force had within just a handful of years become obsolete, and had been replaced by the room-temperature liquid-fueled Titan II missile and the solid-fueled Minuteman missile.

Convair worked hard to make its Atlas rocket product into a very reliable space booster rocket, especially when combined with the Centaur upper stage to form the Atlas-Centaur rocket for launching geosynchronous communication satellites and space probes. The Centaur rocket was also designed, developed, and produced by Convair, and it was the first widely-used outer space rocket to use the all-cryogenic fuel-oxidizer combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The use of this liquid hydrogen - liquid oxygen combination in the Centaur was an important direct precursor to the use of the same fuel-oxidizer combination in the Saturn S-II second stage and the Saturn S-IVB third stage of the gigantic Saturn V moon rocket of the Apollo project. The S-IVB had earlier also been used as the second stage of the smaller Saturn IB rocket, such as the one which was used to launch Apollo 7. The Centaur upper stage was first designed and developed for launching the Surveyor lunar landers, beginning in 1966, to augment the delta-V of the Atlas rockets and give them enough payload capability to deliver the required mass of the Surveyors to the Moon.

More than 100 Convair-produced Atlas-Centaur rockets (including those with their successor designations) were used to successfully launch over 100 satellites, and among their many other outer space missions, they launched the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 space probes, the first two to be launched on trajectories that carried them out of the Solar System.

In addition to aircraft, missiles and space vehicles, Convair developed the large Charactron vacuum tubes, which were the precursors of modern cathode ray tube (CRT) computer displays, and to give an example of a minor product, the CORDIC algorithms, which is widely used today to calculate trigonometric functions in calculators, field-programmable gate arrays, and other small electronic systems.

The end of the road for Convair and all its predecessors

In 1994, the General Dynamics Corporation dismembered and sold the original Convair Division, along with other General Dynamics aerospace units that had been swept into it over the decades. The airframe/aerostructures manufacturing company and the space boosters company (both mostly in California) were sold to the McDonnell Douglas Corporation. The Fort Worth, Texas factory and its associated engineering locations and laboratories - which had been previously used for the manufacture of hundreds of General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark fighter-bombers and F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters for the U.S. Air Force, along with dozens of smaller projects - were sold, along with all intellectual property and the legal rights to the products that were being designed and built within, to the Lockheed Corporation. In 1996, General Dynamics deactivated all of the remaining legal entities of the Convair Division.

Convair timeline
Due to name changes and acquisitions over the years it is often difficult to sort out the exact sequence of events. In order to clarify things, the following timeline was created by consulting a variety of sources to resolve discrepancies.

1923 Consolidated Aircraft Corporation formed by Major Ruben Fleet
1929 Aviation Corporation (AVCO) holding company formed by multiple participants
1932 Airplane Development Corporation formed by Gerard F. "Jerry" Vultee; Errett Lobban Cord soon takes it over
1934 AVCO acquired the Airplane Development Corporation from Cord and formed the Aviation Manufacturing Corporation (AMC)
1936 AMC liquidated to form the Vultee Aircraft Division, an autonomous subsidiary of AVCO
1939 Vultee Aircraft Division of AVCO reorganized as an independent company known as Vultee Aircraft, Inc.
1941 Consolidated Aircraft Corporation sold to AVCO
1943 Consolidated-Vultee, also known as Convair, formed by the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft; still controlled by AVCO
1947 Convair acquired by the Atlas Corporation
1947 AVCO name changed to Avco Manufacturing Corporation
1953 or 1954 Convair acquired by General Dynamics
1959 Avco Manufacturing Corporation name changed to Avco Corporation
1985 Avco Corporation acquired by Textron
1985 General Dynamics formed the Space Systems Division from the Convair Space Program
1994 Space Systems Division sold to Martin Marietta
1994 Convair Aircraft Structures unit sold to McDonnell Douglas
The above timeline was based on the following sources:

Textron Lycoming Turbine Engine, a Company History of AVCO and Lycoming/Textron
Avco Financial Services, Inc. from the Lehman Brothers Collection - Twentieth Century Business Archives
Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission
General Dynamics Corporation, U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission
Central Manufacturing Co. of Connersville, Indiana, a history of Cord, AVCO, and others

Aircraft

The Convair XF-92A was the USA's first delta wing aircraft[consolidated B24](1943)
Vultee XA-41 (1944)
Convair XB-53 (1945)
Convair B-36 Peacemaker (1946)
Stinson 108 (1946)
Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar (1947)
Convair CV-240 (1947)
Convair CV-340
Convair CV-440 Metropolitan
Convair C-131 Samaritan
Convair T-29
R4Y Samaritan
Convair CV-540 (1955)
Convair CV-580
Convair CV-600 (1965)
Convair CV-660
Convair CV5800
CL-66
Convair XB-46 (1947)
Convair XC-99 (1947)
Convair XF-92 (1948)
R3Y Tradewind (1950)
Convair X-6 (1951)
Convair YB-60 (1952)
F-102 Delta Dagger (1953)
F2Y Sea Dart (1953)
Convair XFY Pogo (1954)
Convair P6Y (1955)
B-58 Hustler (1956)
F-106 Delta Dart (1956)
Convair 880 jet airliner (1959)
Convair KINGFISH (1959)
Convair 990 Coronado jet airliner (1961)
Convair Model 48 Charger (1964)
Convair Model 49 (1967-project)
Note U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy aircraft designations that begin with "X" are merely experimental models of aircraft only made in small numbers, including one, two, or three. Examples of those, above, are the XB-46, XF-92, and the X-6. Military aircraft designations that begin with "Y" are developmental models made in small batches, and might or might not have entered large-scale production. An examples of that, above, is the YB-60, where the B-60 never went into mass production. In the airplane business, ones that never went into mass production are far more common than those that did.

In the former designation system the Navy and the Marine Corps used, a final letter of "Y" identified a Convair or a Consolidated product, such as the PBY-5 flying boat.

[edit] Missiles and rockets
MX-774 (1948)
RIM-2 Terrier (1951)
XGAM-71 Buck Duck (1955)
Pye Wacket (1957)
Convair X-11 (1957)
Convair X-12 (1958)
SM-65 Atlas The Atlas ICBM Air Force missile (1957)
FIM-43 Redeye (1960)
Atlas rocket The Atlas civilian space booster
Centaur
Atlas-Centaur and its successor-designations, all of which combined an Atlas booster with a Centaur upper stage - a civilian rocket to launch spacecraft to outer space. Not calling all of them "Atlas-Centaurs" is something of an exercise in semantic hair-splitting. Altogether, well-over 100 of these have been launched

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