Stearman Aircraft: A Detailed History

The history of the Stearman Aircraft Company is about American entrepreneurship, aeronautical innovation, and the sheer determination to design and manufacture custom-built airplanes that set a standard for the competition to follow. In his new book Stearman Aircraft, author Edward Phillips follows the career of Lloyd Carlton Stearman from his work on the New Swallow biplane to the expansion of Stearman facilities into Boeing Airplane Company plants. In between was the Travel Air years, out of which came the Model A, B, CH, CW, BW, and Type 5000. The book also pays special attention to Stearman's rare C1 and C2 biplanes, as well as later upgraded C2s, the C3 series, the M-2, the LT-1, the luxurious CAB-1, the Model 6 Cloudboy, and others. During World War II, Boeing's sprawling facilities churned out thousands of Kaydet biplanes to train fledgling aviators, more than 1,600 B-29 Superfortresses heavy bombers to pound Japan into submission, and a steady stream of critical airframe assemblies for the famed B-17 Flying Fortress to reduce Hitler's Third Reich to rubble. For its work on these great aircraft, Boeing's Wichita Division earned six Army-Navy "E" awards for excellence in manufacturing and production.