Stinson Model A Trimotor
The Stinson Model A was a three-engined, fabric-covered airliner built by the Stinson Aircraft Corporation at Wayne, Michigan, and first flown on 27 April 1934. It was built to compete with the Boeing 247 and Douglas DC-2 at lower cost, carrying eight passengers behind three Lycoming radials, and it served American Airlines and other United States carriers, Airlines of Australia, and, secondhand, Tata Airlines in India. The type is best remembered in Australia, where the City of Brisbane disappeared on a scheduled flight in February 1937 and Bernard O'Reilly located its wreckage in the MacPherson Ranges, leading to the rescue of two survivors. Production was small, with published totals ranging from 30 to about 35 aircraft, and one example survives, restored to airworthiness in the United States.
Why It Mattered
The Model A was Stinson's attempt to keep the trimotor airliner competitive against the new all-metal twins: it was built to compete with the Boeing 247 and the Douglas DC-2, yet cost less to buy and operate, and it had better short-field ability. Stinson advertised it as "America's fastest and most economical Tri-Motor". American Airlines was the anchor customer, and Stinson was working on a batch of fifteen aircraft to the airline's order. In American service the type was regarded as dependable, stable and quiet, and pilots enjoyed flying it. Its widest fame came in Australia, where an airliner's disappearance in 1937 and the rescue of its two survivors became one of the country's best-known aviation stories, retold in books and in a 1987 television special. Wikipedia counts the Model A among the last American airliners designed around a fabric-covered steel-tube fuselage, a method of construction the stressed-skin twins were about to displace.
Design Notes
Robert W. Ayer designed the Model A, and the Stinson Aircraft Corporation built it at its facility in Wayne, Michigan. The fuselage was a welded steel-tube framework shaped by formers and fairing strips and covered with fabric; only the forward section was metal-covered. The cabin was sound-proofed, ventilated and heated. The wing combined a steel-tube girder spar and truss-type ribs under fabric covering, struts braced it to the fuselage on each side, and it carried trailing-edge flaps. Three Lycoming R-680-5 nine-cylinder radials of 260 hp each, each fitted with an electric starter, powered the aircraft. The undercarriage was a retractable tailwheel type. Aeropedia's specification gives a cruising speed of 163 mph at 5,000 feet, and the type could maintain altitude on two engines. It seated up to eight passengers, attended by a stewardess, behind a crew of one or two pilots.
Operational History
The prototype X-14141 first flew on 27 April 1934, and Stinson showed it at the Detroit Air Show the following year. American Airlines took the initial batch of fifteen, and Delta Air Lines and Pennsylvania Central Airlines also flew the type in the United States. Published totals for the production run disagree, ranging from 30 aircraft to about 35, and production had ended by 1937. Five secondhand aircraft from Marquette Airlines went to Tata Airlines in India in 1941. Four aircraft came to Australia for Airlines of Australia and entered service there in 1936. On 19 February 1937 the City of Brisbane, VH-UHH, left Archerfield on a scheduled flight for Sydney and disappeared, crashing in the MacPherson Ranges. Five people died and two survived; eight days later Bernard O'Reilly, who kept a guest-house on the Lamington Plateau, located the wreckage, and the survivors were rescued. The following month the City of Lismore was destroyed, suffering an engine failure at dawn on take-off at Archerfield in fog, crashing and burning. The two surviving Australian aircraft passed to Australian National Airways, and as spares for the Lycoming engines became scarce, ANA rebuilt both at Essendon in 1943 with two 450 hp Pratt & Whitney Wasp engines and the nose engine removed; registered as the Model A-2W, they flew on as twins. On 31 January 1945 the twin Tokana was destroyed near Mia Mia, Victoria, breaking up in the air through metal fatigue, and its crew of two and eight passengers were killed. The other twin, Binana, had its certificate of airworthiness suspended on 10 February 1945 and was later scrapped.
Afterlife
One Model A survives in the United States: construction number 9125, registered NC15165, built in 1936 for American Airlines. It later went to Lavery Airways in Fairbanks, Alaska, and while operated by Northern Consolidated Airlines in 1947 it suffered a forced landing in remote bush on a flight from Fairbanks to Bethel. Its recovery and restoration took eight years from 1966, after which it was sold to the Alaska Heritage Museum at Anchorage. Sold again in 1998, it was returned to airworthiness at Anoka, near Minneapolis, as part of the Golden Wings Flying Museum, and in 2007 it was flown to the EAA convention at Oshkosh. Wikipedia now places the aircraft at the Mid America Flight Museum's Ohio wing in Urbana, Ohio. Australia kept a reminder of the type as well: the full-size fibreglass replica built for the 1987 television special is now displayed at O'Reilly's Rainforest Retreat in the Lamington National Park.