WW1 Aviation > Sturtevant Aeroplane Co.

                                    Sturtevant Aeroplane Co.
                                  (1915 - 1919)

With a new engine under development and having years of contact with the state's small aviation fraternity, its easy to imagine Noble pushing for actual aircraft production. Eugene Foss might have viewed the prospect of winning war-inspired government contracts as reason enough to acquiesce.

While it sounds extraordinary that a fan company would get involved in aircraft construction, it has to be viewed in the context of the industry's state. In 1914, the United States aircraft industry ranked last among the major powers, employing less than 200 people. It was comprised of small companies each of which produced only a few airplanes a year. American military aviation spending, the main business catalyst, ranked 14th in the world before 1914 and did little to encourage development of the industry in this country. With such low barriers to entry and minimal competition, Sturtevant took the plunge. The old company slogan, "Sturtevant Puts Air to Work", would soon take on a whole different meaning.

The Sturtevant Aeroplane Co. was organized in the summer of 1915 at B.F.Sturtevant's original Jamaica Plain factory. Sturtevant Mfg. was absorbed by the parent company with all 5A engines wearing the B.F.Sturtevant label, previous models were stamped with both names. The business was staffed using existing Sturtevant employees with Noble (President) and his brother Benjamin (Vice-President/Treasurer) holding the executive spots. Benjamin's role was primarily to act as a sort of liaison officer between the company and Washington on airplane matters.

The search for a designer to complement their manufacturing abilities took Benjamin and Eugene to San Diego where they signed Grover Loening to a two year contract. Loening was one of the famous aeronautical engineers of this period, among his future achievements was development of the first retractable landing gear.

One enticement was the new V8 engine, it's a reasonable deduction made from a letter Tex Millman sent to Loening. In accepting employment with Sturtevant Aeroplane, Millman glowingly declared it would likely be an industry best. It's not a stretch to assume that Loening bought into some of that hype.

Over time, a surface tension developed between Loening and Noble, whose job was apparently too long on title and short on direct involvement in his real interest, aircraft development. Though Loening sensed that Noble coveted complete control and would shove him aside once the business had progressed beyond the start-up stage, there is no evidence that Sturtevant Aeroplane was adversely affected by any of this.

Another issue encountered by Loening as he tried to move the business forward was the element of culture shock his boss was experiencing:

        "We were constantly employing test pilots, as we had none of our own, and their pay ran up to         $100 and hour, flying. When Governor Foss asked me one day what we paid a test pilot, and I told         him $100 an hour, he nearly blew up. It required a lot of explaining that an hour's flying took days
        to do and as a matter of fact he never ceased to comment on it and shake his head. He was an         employer of labor thinking in terms of mill hands getting forty cents an hour".
                                             (Our Wings Grow Faster,1935)

The actual work area was relatively small @ 20k sq.ft. in the fire damaged building consisting of wing assembly, covering and final assembly rooms. The wing spars were made of Alaskan spruce since an acceptable metal substitute couldn't be devised. The shaping of the metal frames was done at Hyde Park. After the wing frames had been assembled, they were taken to the covering room where they were double surfaced with strong gray Irish linen. This was sewed onto the ribs and then "doped" with a cellulose varnish which shrunk the cloth to drum tightness. Final assembly work included chassis assembly and finishing touches on the secondary guying, propeller mounting, etc.

Their planes shared the commonality of being convertible (land and sea usage), all-steel with wooden spars, utilizing the Model 5A engine as their exclusive powerplant and (with the exception of the Model A) having a signature triangular fuselage.

All part of a business strategy emphasizing, as they advertised, "simplicity" and "interchangeability". This philosophy, embraced to a degree greater than any other contemporary builder, was exemplified by the early use of standardized steel frames, copying the approach of the construction and automobile industries. The extensive use of spot welding in assembling the fuselage was another first, though, that may have been a marketing liability with competitors using scare tactics to feed existing biases against welded tubing. Altogether not a surprising approach for an organization known for their metal products.

Aircraft Specifications

3-Way Line Drawings
        Being copies of a copy of the original drawings, the scan quality is only fair

                  Models: A, B1, B2, S2, S4 (5 pages)
                 

                                Model A (Sturtevant Battleplane)

During 1915 and 1916, several companies, including Sturtevant, Curtis and Thomas Bros., began the first concerted effort toward building an American fighter with the introduction of models publicized as "Battleplanes".

More conceptual then practical due in large part to their designers inexperience, they all proved to be failures.

Based on a redesigned Burgess tractor Loening engineered while employed by the Army, the Model A's notable feature was the two removable nacelles attached mid-wing. Measuring 8ft. long by 2.5ft. wide, the nacelles were designed to hold a gunner allowing for a horizontal firing arc in excess of 200 degrees beyond the propeller blades. Synchronization technology that enabled firing through the propeller existed only in Europe which explains this odd approach. The dummy guns seen in published photos, including the small wooden model below, were the only armament ever installed.

The Model A had one recorded flight during December, 1915 at Readville Trotting Park. An important historical footnote to this flight is that the area encompassing this park and the adjacent land was formerly Camp Meigs, the Army training site of the Union's 1st all-black regiment during the Civil War.

The track and bleachers seen in the Model A photo gallery were constructed by the New England Trotting Horse Breeder's Association in 1895. When the track opened it was one of the premier venues for harness racing in the United States. By World War II, the site was largely abandoned, although U.S. Navy pilots from Squantum Naval Air Station flying their Stearman biplanes would practice “touch and go” landings on the remnants of the old oval track.

Being more of a fishing expedition then a response to an explicit request, The Model A was ignored by the Army.

                                                  Model B

In 1916 a new aircraft type made its appearance, small single-seat unarmed planes known as Speed Scouts. Late that year, the Army Air Service received its first appropriation large enough to purchase more than trainers, and ordered a small number of Speed Scouts for evaluation.

Mock attacks on Army fields that year revealed the need for armed high-speed planes to pursue and attack an enemy.

Sturtevant's late 1916 entry was the Model B Speed Scout, a single-seater even more unconventional looking than the preceding Model A. Its most visual attribute was the pyramid struts anchored to a very narrow lower chord member. A quick look at the images in the Aircraft gallery clearly show impaired forward visibility for the pilot. Loening drew on his previous Army experience with a prototype monoplane in designing this. A careful look at the few remaining photos of this sesquiplane reveal the existence of two variations, the Model B1 Speed Scout and the Model B2 Pursuit Plane. Given the number of changes made in the subsequent B2, its clear that the original design had numerous undesirable characteristics. Those changes included a closed cowl, twin rigid bracing tubes extending from mid-wing to the fuselage and a lower rudder.

Another unusual feature which was touted in advertisement literature was the "Sturtevant variable camber wing section". Design and performance data was generated through extensive experiments in the wind tunnel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their claim was that the speed range could be greatly extended by giving a flat reversed curve section for high speed at a low angle, and a very deep camber wing at a high angle of incidence for slow speed. This may have been a type of trailing edge wing flap but no further data is available to comfirm the design specifics or if it ever entered production.

A flying field was established at Squantum for testing their aircraft, later acquired by the Navy and turned into the Squantum Naval Air Station, on land leased by the B.F.Sturtevant Co. from the New York and New Haven Railroad.

The experimental features and insufficient flying time to work out all the bugs, in part due to poor New England weather, preordained the final result. At an official test before Army officials on March 1917, the pilot lost rudder control at an altitude of 100ft. While attempting to land, he clipped a tree and crashed. The Army subsequently canceled their modest order of four planes. The company got some solace from the post-crash Army report which stated in part: "The accident demonstrated a triumph of steel construction over wooden construction from the standpoint of safety to the personnel at least."

                                                  Model S

Sturtevant achieved modest success with their final model. The Model S in its two variations, S2(pronounced overhang on top wing) and S4, was a conventional looking tandem biplane built in 1916 and 1917. Total production amounted to (Navy) 12 S4 seaplanes, (Rhode Island Naval Militia) 1 S4 seaplane and (Army) (2)S2, (2)S4 tractors.

The four Army planes are a telling number as they were part of a large order of 26 whittled down by way of cancellations. There were workmanship complaints, signs of cracking on the steelwork around the engine mountings, a dislike for the cockpit which felt crowded compared to the traditional rectangular ones and a chronic overheating problem with the 5A engine that couldn't be corrected. 

One additional seaplane sale, the most successful Sturtevant seaplane according to Loening, was made to the Rhode Island Naval Militia in 1916, their first plane purchase.

Forerunners to today's US Naval Reserve, state naval militias were formed in the late 1890's serving as National Guard level coastal defense organizations that worked closely with the US Navy. The Rhode Island militia, based in Quonset, eventually became a torpedo unit that frequently trained at the Navy's torpedo school at Coaster's Island near Newport. While the use, purpose and disposition of the Sturtevant seaplane await discovery, it is known that a popular Rhode Island heiress and aviatress, Lyra Brown Nickerson, contributed $7500 to its acquisition.

The magnitude of the troubles they experienced as a struggling aviation business are clearly seen in a letter that Harry Jones, Loening's assistant, sent him while at Pensacola Naval Air Station after delivery of 6 S4 planes:

"Since writing you last, on January 29th, we had two machines accepted on that day, the other two machines with overheated radiators. The next morning we took off these two radiators and tried to clean them again; then we put them back on the machines, and ran motors, and each one boiled over in less than the required 10 minutes. Then I took the radiator off of No.7 machine and put it on in place of the one that boiled, and this one passed the test all right. The fourth machine, I have had considerable trouble with. In the first place, with the motor running for the ten minute test, one of the pistons froze in the cylinder, That meant that we either had to wait for a new block of cylinders or change the motor. So we decided to change the motor. Then we found that the motor was not up to speed, and after considerable time we discovered some of the core left in the casting on the manifold. The next trouble was with the magneto: had to change one, and the last trouble was with the carburetor. Out of five radiators, we had only two that do not boil. I have kept changing the radiators in order to get the machines accepted. The Navy does not know that I change the radiators, as I did it at night. This is the only way that I could get the machines accepted". (Our Wings Grow Faster,1935).

A surplus of the 5A engines led to one being utilized for an interesting application; the Navy's DN-1 blimp. It wasn't very good and was quickly replaced but it was their very first and Sturtevant powered it in 1917.

                                                      Subcontracting

America's entry into WW1 caused Sturtevant Aeroplane, like other small manufacturers, to morph into the role of sub-contractor by request of the government. With this change, Loening departed to form his own aircraft company, leaving Noble in complete control. Since Sturtevant's forte was manufacturing, not aircraft engineering, they now had a chance to snatch success from what was a profitless venture.

A rapid ramping up of production capacity soon followed which resulted in an expanded factory complex of 150k sq.ft. and an employee count that swelled from 40 to over 1000. Complete sets of parts for nearly 2000 JN-4 and DH-4 training aircraft were produced by war's end. The Armistice brought a swift end to Sturtevant Aeroplane. With the world awash in surplus aircraft and government contracts being canceled, its time was over. Operations were stopped in November,1918 and the subsidiary was liquidated by February,1919.

Noble apparently saw this flood of war surplus as an opportunity to take a final swing in aviation. As reported by the British Flight magazine that February, J. McElroy, the last chief engineer of Sturtevant Aeroplane and Foss were planning an airship service between Chicago and New York with four Zeppelin dirigibles (helium gas) costing 100,000 £. It was estimated that the trip, with 25 passengers, would be made within 12 hours. There is no evidence that these plans went much beyond the press release stage.

                                                           Epilogue

Though this aviation footnote ended up in the historical dustbin with so many of the "alphabet soup" start-ups of that era, it's memory would linger in the minds of those involved.

On the negative side of the ledger, the B.F.Sturtevant Co. became embroiled in a 13 year legal fight with the State of Massachusetts, largely over the treatment of earnings from the defunct airplane subsidiary. Known internally as the "Great Sturtevant Tax Case", it was eventually settled in the company's favor.

Loening's 1932 autobiography allocated only a brief chapter to his Sturtevant experience. Though mostly bemoaning the many difficulties encountered in building the business from scratch, he did tout the fact that they were technologically ahead with metal designs that wouldn't be industrywide accepted until the 1930s.

During WW2, the Sturtevant Director of Research, Mr. Hagan, was quoted at a company meeting, upon hearing of a Loening visit to Roosevelt Field, reminiscing about their own wartime aeronautical contributions in the last great war. A legitimate bit of patriotic pride at a time of serious conflict.

Finally, for the catalyst of this entire story, Noble Foss, his passing in 1969 generated a two column obituary in his local newspaper with an appropriate reference to the work of a young man a half century earlier. It plainly stated he was: "a pioneer in the manufacture and design of airplanes and engines for the Army and Navy."

A fact every bit as obscure as the company's existence is that Sturtevant never severed its ties to aviation. After WW1, the foundry was moved to Framingham and became known as the Framingham Foundries. It was the primary supplier of castings to aeroengine builders Pratt & Whitney in the 20s and 30s. During WW2, Sturtevant coils were used in aircraft engines while ventilation fans and heaters found their way into planes like the B-17.