Long Island, behind its treeless expanse known as the Hempstead Plains, proximity to Manhattan, and gateway to the country and the European continent by means of the Atlantic Ocean, gave rise to numerous, considering-adeptly-known blimp manufacturers, including the American Aeronautical Corporation, the American Airplane and Engine Corporation, Brewster, Burnelli, Columbia, Cox-Klemin, Curtiss, EDO, Fairchild, Grumman, Ireland, the LWF Engineering Company, Loening, Orenco, Ranger, Republic, Sikorsky, Sperry, and Vought. Producing airplanes, powerplants, and components, they built buccaneer designs and biplanes during the 1910s and 1920s, introduced significant advancements during the two-decade Golden Age in the middle of 1919 and 1939, and churned out military fighters that were considered integral elements in the arsenal of democracy during the Second World War.
Although these East Coast companies were but shadows of those in this area the West Coast, such as Boeing, Douglas (different McDonnell-Douglas), and Lockheed, which endowed the world in the forward piston, turboprop, get your hands on-plane, and turbofan passenger-carrying airliners, their Long Island counterparts produced a few notable types in this category.
American Airplane and Engine Corporation:
The American Airplane and Engine Corporation’s first-and, in the situation, by yourself-blimp was the Pilgrim 100, which was conceptualized by Fairchild, but was bearing in mind continued by the additional company, itself a separation of the Aviation Corporation. It planted its roots in the former Fairchild factory at Republic Airport in 1931. It represented, to a degree, the concern an plane manufacturer could exert going regarding the order of for an airline.
William Littlewood, general commissioner of the original Fairchild Engine factory, and Myron Gould Beard, a pilot and engineer there, ultimately took taking place employment at then-named American Airways (now American Airlines) and the former’s first significant assignment was to manufacture specifications for a cost-full of zip plane. “Airliner” then signified no following more a dozen passengers.
“Out of this assignment came the Pilgrim, the first trailer transport to be meant according to an airline’s specifications,” according to Robert J. Serling in Eagle: The Story of American Airlines (St. Martin’s/Marek, 1985, p. 19). “It was a single-engine plane carrying nine passengers and flown by a single pilot. The cockpit was inaccessible from the cabin; messages to the passengers were passed through a sliding panel in a bulkhead.”
Principally designed by Fairchild Chief Engineer Otto Kirchner and Project Engineer John Lee, it was the consequences of Avco’s $35,000 examination to replace the existing single-engine types that proved too small for American’s needs, even if the trimotors offered too much capacity. The initial, 15-plane order supplied the carrier’s Embry-Riddle, Southern, and Universal divisions.
Powered by a 575-hp Pratt and Whitney, nose-mounted R-1340 Wasp engine, the Pilgrim featured a tall, straight, fabric-covered wing; three passenger windows and a fourth at the top of the exit easily reached in tab to either side of its fuselage; two single-wheel main undercarriage bogies truss-rigged from the wing; a tailwheel; and an enclosed, single-person cockpit and nine-passenger cabin. The production 100A financial credit was equipped surrounded by a 575-hp Pratt and Whitney Hornet B-16 engine, which was replaced by the equally-rated Wright Cyclone R-1820 radial on the 100B that itself introduced a larger vertical tail. American with operated this variant.
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