Wichita's Wee Wooden Wonders

Wichita's Wee Wooden Wonders http://www.wingsoverkansas.com/history/article.asp?id=895 How Culver & Mooney Became Wichita Airplanes Copyright 2003, 2008 by Richard Harris Originally published in InFlightUSA, 2003 Revised for WingsOverKansas.com, 2008 This is the first in our series "Wichita's Wee Wooden Wonders", about the Wichita roots of Culver and Mooney Aircraft Companies, tracing the career of their creator, Al Mooney. Kansas's most famous general aviation plane-makers of today are Cessna, Beech (now Hawker-Beechcraft) and Learjet (now a division of Bombardier). But there is another legendary general aviation airplane manufacturer -- still very much alive today -- that started in Wichita, as well: Mooney Aircraft. In fact, the Mooney company started in Wichita twice -- and, in between, its namesake founder brought another remarkable planemaker to Wichita: Culver, who would quietly build a thousand tiny military planes in secret, and over a hundred civilian planes as well. And all the Wichita Culvers and Mooneys -- extraordinary performers Albert W. Mooney for their size and power, and powerful trend-setters -- would be made of (image courtesy of wood. This is the story of the pioneering genius behind them, and how MooneyMite.com) his remarkable craft came to be "Wichita's Wee Wooden Wonders." And along the way, many other Kansas aviation names come into play, in shaping a legendary career. As a boy, young Al Mooney, on his own, studied aircraft engineering by burrowing into the books of the Denver Public Library. Raised by a Rocky Mountain railroad bridge-builder, and having spent time building such things with his own hands, big, husky Al had an ingrained fascination with engineering -- and airplanes were the most fascinating engineering puzzle of the times. Four Laird Swallows, in 1920, waiting for delivery in Wichita. The one in the foreground appears to be the same model Swallow as the first plane owned by the 'Alexander Aircraft Co.' Note the short wings, which gave the Swallow a speed advantage at low altitudes (because of reduced drag), but severely limited its lifting ability at high altitudes and airport elevations, like Denver's. 1 In 1925, he chased an airplane to a local airstrip, where it landed, and correctly diagnosed a rigging problem that was handicapping its flight. It was a Wichita-built "Swallow" Longren barnstorming biplane [NOTE: There seems to be a bit of confusion as to poster (Kansas State whether it was an original 1920 "Laird Swallow" (designed Historical Society photo) by Matty Laird), or a later "New Swallow" (designed by Lloyd Stearman and manufactured under the supervision of Walter Beech). Photos seem to indicate a 1920 Laird Swallow. The boy's aeronautical acumen impressed the Swallow's owner, who asked the bright boy to come to work for him -- beginning one of the most diverse and legendary careers of American aviation. The impressed owner of this particular Swallow was Denver movie-ad tycoon J.Don Alexander. It was the first of a handful of planes that Alexander would try to use to put his national team of movie-ad salesmen in the air, something never done before by any sizeable sales force. At this time, in the early 1920s, Americans didn't have TV -- they had the movies, and everyone went to them, every week, spending a whole afternoon at the theatre watching movie after movie, punctuated by commercials. Alexander Film Co. had become the nation's leading supplier of those movie ads, and its huge sales force traveled constantly back and forth across the country. J. Don Alexander had the outlandish idea of buying several-dozen aircraft (one for everyone in his sales force) in a time when even the government wasn't placing aircraft orders of that size -- and all the leading aircraft- makers turned him down, unable to meet Alexander's massive airplane needs in his time frame, or unable to believe the sincerity and sanity of his "order." Alexander's Swallow, designed in Wichita (where the elevation was a scant 1,300 feet above sea level) was simply too short of wing for effective flight in the thin air of mile-high Denver. And in any case the entire production of the Swallow factory couldn't keep up with Alexander's ambitions. THE LONGREN "SOLUTION" Alexander decided to solve the problem by starting his own aircraft manufacturing firm - - by buying up the designs and assets of the defunct Longren Aircraft Co. of Topeka, in 1924. Longren AK / Fibre Sport Plane / New Longren Sport / Commercial, first "composite shell" airplane: its hollow streamlined fuselage was made of fibres reinforced with vulcanized rubber. Shown with its short wings folded back, and an extra pair of wheels under the tail, for towing to a garage. This was the approximate state of the art in Longren planes, about the time Alexander acquired the Longren company's assets. (Courtesy of Aerofiles.com ) 2 Longren was a bit of Kansas history. In Topeka in 1911, Albin K. Longren developed the first flying airplane built in Kansas -- the first of hundreds of thousands of Kansas-built planes that would someday fly from Kansas soil. And Longren developed some exotic and pioneering ideas (including the first "composite"-shell aircraft, today considered the wave of the future). But after producing a handful of two-seat biplanes (some of them rather remarkable), Longren went bankrupt in 1924, and wandered off into an almost anonymous life as one of the great unsung pioneers of aircraft manufacturing technology -- a role he would develop at Spartan Aircraft in Oklahoma, then for Cessna Aircraft in Wichita, quietly creating manufacturing techniques that would someday revolutionize airplane building. Meanwhile, J.Don Alexander hauled off four Longren airplanes and various other assets, and set up shop in Denver under the banner "Alexander Aircraft Co." The Topeka-designed Longren Flyer "fleet" (four planes) was reassembled in Denver with the help of former Longren engineer Dan Noonan. They were re-named Alexander Eaglerock biplanes (for the company's pet eagle, and the surrounding Rocky Mountains). But, alas, the low-land Longrens, like the low-land Swallow, flew poorly, or not at all, in the thin air of mile-high Denver. Renaming the Longrens for an eagle in the Rocky Mountains just couldn't make them fly like one. MOONEY'S DESIGN DEBUT: THE LONG-WING EAGLEROCK Alexander turned to engineer Noonan, and directed him to create a new plane design, from scratch, using some of the extra parts acquired with the Longren fleet. It was a daunting task, made all the more difficult by the fact that Noonan was only a "shirtsleeves" engineer, lacking the formal training of a "real" engineer. Further, Alexander was insisting that the new plane seat four people -- in a time when even the best biplanes (Swallows, Travel Airs, WACOs) only seated three. Noonan crafted a Alexander Eaglerock, designed by Al Mooney. Heavy hauling, even plane resembling a mix of Swallow, Longren at low altitudes on a meager 90-hp OX-5 engine (shown here), this and early Travel Air biplanes. But it was too 3-seater was in great demand for serious airplane users. Over 850 heavy to get off the ground in the thin air of of these would sell, nationwide, in just a few years -- even briefly the mountain country. making Alexander Aircraft the nation's leading producer of 'commercial' airplanes. With backing from Noonan, 19-year-old Al Mooney persuaded Mr. Alexander to let him design a better plane – the very effective, stong-hauling Alexander Long-Wing Eaglerock – starting one of the most successful biplane families of the 1920's. Mooney privately nicknamed the plane his "M-1" – first of many Mooney planes. The Long-Wing Eaglerock had a distinctive appearance that set it apart from all other biplanes. The span of bottom wings was wider than the span of the top wings. It was a bit of clever engineering on the part of young Al -- who wanted to gain efficiencies of mass production by making the top and bottom wings the same. The bottom wing appeared to be different because the fuselage sat between the left and right lower wings, adding a few feet to their span, but not between the left and right upper wings. Overall, though, the plane had LOTS of wing -- its huge wingspan (40 feet), was easily five to ten feet more than any contemporary competing design -- crucial to its role as a plane to fly in the high country. And that wing could lift three passengers and a full load of fuel. (J. Don Alexander was grateful to finally have something 3 that worked, and let the fourth-seat issue fade away.) The A-1 Eaglerock was the first biplane to really make flying almost as easy in the mountainous West as it was in the lowlands of the Midwest and East. A later "combo-wing" Eaglerock -- essentially the same as Mooney's first design, updated with a big radial engine and an extra wing panel inserted between left and right halves of the upper wing. Shown here during the 2003 National Air Tour stopover in Wichita. As a result, the plane was an instantly in demand with buyers throughout the West. And its extra lifting capability (even more impressive in the lowlands) made it a hit with commercial flying operations across the country. Faced with a swarm of customers, opportunistic J. Don Alexander got serious about mass-production. Around 1926, Alexander Aircraft Co. briefly became the nation's top producer of "commercial" (civilian) airplanes, in sheer numbers. Even Charles Lindbergh listed the Eaglerock among the planes he sought as possible mounts for his later, famous, transatlantic solo.

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