Biographical Sketches

LLOYD CARLTON STEARMAN

Born: October 26, 1898    In: Wellsville KS
Died: April 3, 1975    In: Northridge, CA

Lloyd Carlton Stearman was schooled in Harper KS, then attended Kansas State College in 1917. Higher education was cut short when he enlisted in the Naval Reserve Flying Corps in Aug 1918. After ground school at the University of Washington, he was transferred to North Island, San Diego, where he began his flying career by learning to fly a Curtiss N-9 seaplane.

Military service was brief, as the war ended three months later, and in December he returned to Wichita to work as a draftsman for an architect. When an opening for a mechanic was advertised by the new Laird company, he decided that he would rather work around airplanes, hired on, and soon became foreman of the assembly division. He next transferred into design drafting and was soon promoted to assistant engineer. During spare time he resumed his flight training at the airfield, and there formed a friendship with fellow Laird employee, Walter Beech.

When Laird reorganized in 1924 as Swallow Airplane Company, Stearman was the chief engineer, and designed its first airplane in the spring of that year. However, a conflict of design ideas with Mattie Laird precipitated Stearman’s and Beech’s resignations, and the two, along with Clyde Cessna, pooled their resources and talents to form the Travel Air Company in Feb 1924. There he created the first half-dozen planes. However, an ambition to build planes with his own name of their tails could not be contained, so he finally gave up his interests in Travel Air to form his own company in Santa Monica CA, opening its doors in May 1926, only to relocate operations back in Wichita early the next year.

He remained as president and chief designer-engineer, producing an historic line of civil and military airplanes, until mid-1931. Faced with the sagging economy of the Great Depression, he had joined conglomerate United Aircraft and Transportation Corporation in 1930, but became disenchanted with their invasive corporate policies, and resigned in 1931 to go back to California. With Walter Varney and Lockheed’s Robert Gross, Stearman-Varney Co was formed in Alameda to experiment with new ideas, but when Lockheed was put up for sale, Gross bought the company for $40,000, and made Stearman its president.

In January 1935 he resigned and went with the Bureau of Commerce as a CAA Inspector. During one of his field tours, he met designer Dean Hammond and was so impressed with Hammond’s innovative twin-boom design that it led to yet another partnership, and formation of the Stearman-Hammond Co to produce the Model Y-125, which attracted only 15 buyers despite its superior handling and gentle flight characteristics.

Other roads in Stearman’s meandering career led to a stint as vice president of Transiar Co (San Francisco), 1938-39, then as manager of the airplane division of Harvey Aluminum Co, who produced aircraft cowlings during WW2, next his own engineering operation in Dos Palos CA, designing crop sprayers, then his Inland Aviation Co of 1946 at Van Nuys CA, as fate would have it converting surplus Boeing-Stearman trainers into crop dusters, and finally the Stearman-Hammel Co, designers and manufacturers of farm equipment.

Stearman returned to aviation and Lockheed in 1955 to work on VTOL projects and other advanced designs, retiring in 1968 to produce his final design as the Stearman MP (for Multi-Purpose). Deteriorating health, however, kept this project from becoming a reality, and he withdrew from activity, passing away at age 77.

Enshrined in National Aviation Hall of Fame 1989. (Peter Bergen)

Denotes an individual known to have soloed an aircraft prior to December 16, 1917, whether they were members of the "Early Birds of Aviation" Organization or not.