Stout Metal Airplane Division of the Ford Motor Company was an American aircraft manufacturer founded by

William Bushnell Stout William Bushnell Stout (March 16, 1880 – March 20, 1956) was a pioneering American inventor, engineer, developer and designer whose works in the automotive and aviation fields were groundbreaking. Known by the nickname "Bill", Stout designed an ...

as the Stout Metal Airplane Co. in 1922. The company was purchased by

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...

in 1924 and later produced the

Ford Trimotor The Ford Trimotor (also called the "Tri-Motor", and nicknamed the "Tin Goose") is an American three-engined transport aircraft. Production started in 1925 by the companies of Henry Ford and ended on June 7, 1933, after 199 had been made. It ...

. At the height of the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

, Ford closed the aircraft design and production division in 1936, temporarily re-entering the aviation market with the production of the

B-24 The Consolidated B-24 Liberator is an American heavy bomber, designed by Consolidated Aircraft of San Diego, California. It was known within the company as the Model 32, and some initial production aircraft were laid down as export models ...

, at the

Willow Run Willow Run, also known as Air Force Plant 31, was a manufacturing complex in Michigan, United States, located between Ypsilanti Township and Belleville, built by the Ford Motor Company to manufacture aircraft, especially the B-24 Liberator he ...

aircraft factory during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

History

Early Ford aviation interest

In 1909

Henry Ford Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that ...

lent three factory workers to his 15-year-old son

Edsel Edsel is a discontinued division and brand of automobiles that was marketed by the Ford Motor Company from the 1958 to the 1960 model years. Deriving its name from Edsel Ford, son of company founder Henry Ford, Edsels were developed in an eff ...

, and Edsel's friend Charles Van Auken, to build a monoplane with a

Model T The Ford Model T is an automobile that was produced by Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927. It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, which made car travel available to middle-class Americans. The relati ...

engine. The Blériot XI inspired plane featured wing warping controls and a radiator perpendicular to the wind. The plane did not fly well in multiple test flights from the

Fort Wayne Fort Wayne is a city in and the county seat of Allen County, Indiana, United States. Located in northeastern Indiana, the city is west of the Ohio border and south of the Michigan border. The city's population was 263,886 as of the 2020 Cens ...

parade grounds − the final flight ended in a tree − and the project was put aside. In

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

Ford went into the aircraft motor business with production of the

Packard Packard or Packard Motor Car Company was an American luxury automobile company located in Detroit, Michigan. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last Packards were built in South Bend, Indiana in 1958. One of the "Th ...

-designed

Liberty Liberty is the ability to do as one pleases, or a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant (i.e. privilege). It is a synonym for the word freedom. In modern politics, liberty is understood as the state of being free within society fr ...

engine for the military. Ford completed 3,950 Liberty engines. The newly formed Lincoln was bought by Ford in 1922.

Stout

William Stout was appointed to the board of the

Aircraft Production Board The Aircraft Board was a United States federal government organization created from the Aircraft Production Board on October 1, 1917, by Act of Congress to provide statutory authority to the APB, which had been created by a resolution of the Counci ...

in 1917. The board awarded Stout with a contract to build a blended wing fuselage aircraft, the

Stout Batwing The Stout Batwing was an experimental low aspect ratio flying wing aircraft developed by William Bushnell Stout. The aircraft used wood veneer construction and was an early example of cantilever wing design. The internally braced wing was also on ...

, intended for the US Army air service. One example was built and abandoned. In 1919 Stout formed Stout Engineering Laboratories. With money from the Champion Spark Plug corporation, Stout built the three-passenger Batwing Limousine in 1920. This was eventually re-skinned and had structural components replaced with duraluminum. Stout gave speeches across the country touting that all future aircraft would be metal. Soon after, Stout received a US Navy contract for three

Stout ST-1 The Stout ST was a twin-engine torpedo bomber built for the US Navy. It pioneered the American use of metal construction and the cantilever "thick wing" design concepts of German aeronautical engineer Hugo Junkers, themselves pioneered in the sec ...

aircraft. The ST-1 was a twin-engine, all-metal torpedo bomber. Its test pilot was a record setting pilot, Eddie Stinson, who recently moved to Detroit with his own all-metal Junkers-Larsen JL-6 mailplane. A 1922 crash of the prototype canceled the contract. This led to an innovative form of financing for a new venture. He began a letter campaign requesting $1,000 from over 100 prominent businessmen. He got $128,000, including money and support from Henry and Edsel Ford. This started the Stout Metal Airplane company. After taking over the company, and the less-than-successful performance of the

Stout 3-AT The Stout 3-AT trimotor was the first all-metal trimotor built in America. The poorly performing tri-motor led to an updated design which became the popular Ford Tri-Motor. Development As a friend of the Ford family, Richard Evelyn Byrd visited ...

, Ford reassigned Stout to speaking engagements and promotional tours. In 1927,

Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance o ...

took the Spirit of St. Louis to Mexico on a promotional tour following its non-stop flight over the Atlantic. Stout arranged with Henry and Edsel Ford to fly Lindbergh's mother to Mexico City to join her son for Christmas and to gain publicity for the new Ford aircraft. In addition to Mrs. Lindbergh, Stout, his wife, other Ford executives and two pilots went on the trip. The Ford Tri-motor they flew, NC-1077, is today in Greg Herrick's Golden Wings Flying Museum near Minneapolis and is the oldest flying metal aircraft in the world. William Stout left the Metal Airplane division in 1930. He continued to operate the Stout Engineering Laboratory, producing the

Stout Skycar The Stout Skycar was a series of four one-off American light aircraft of the 1930s. Development William Bushnell Stout was a prolific designer of road vehicles and aircraft, including the Ford Trimotor series. He was founder of the Stout Metal A ...

aircraft series and the

Stout Scarab The Stout Scarab is a streamlined 1930–1940s American car, designed by William Bushnell Stout and manufactured by Stout Engineering Laboratories and later by Stout Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan. The Stout Scarab is credited by ...

car. In 1954, Stout purchased the rights to the Ford Trimotor in an attempt to produce new examples. A new company formed from this effort brought back two modern examples of the trimotor aircraft, the

Stout Bushmaster 2000 __NOTOC__ The Bushmaster 2000 was a small commuter airliner built in the United States in an attempt to revive the Ford Trimotor design. Work began in 1953 by testing a vintage Trimotor and in 1954 Bill Stout purchased the design rights to the or ...

. Stout was later to say, "The greatest single thing I accomplished for aviation was to get Mr. Ford interested in it."

Edsel Ford

Edsel Ford Edsel Bryant Ford (November 6, 1893 – May 26, 1943) was an American business executive and philanthropist who was the son of pioneering industrialist Henry Ford and his wife, Clara Jane Bryant Ford. He was the president of Ford Motor Company f ...

became a stockholder in Stout's operations in 1922 at the age of 28. He became the president of the division in 1925. Edsel sponsored many aviation events from Ford Airport, cross-marketing his interests in airlines and aircraft production. The

Ford National Reliability Air Tour The Ford Reliability Tour, properly called "The National Air Tour for the Edsel B. Ford Reliability Trophy", was a series of aerial tours sponsored in part by Ford from 1925 to 1931 and re-created in 2003. Top prize was the Edsel Ford Reliability ...

gathered manufactures from around the world to compete in order to promote aviation. In 1926, he sponsored Admiral Byrd's flight to the North Pole in a Fokker F.VII named the Josephine Ford. In 1928, he sponsored his trip to the South Pole in a

named the Floyd Bennett. The similarity of design between the Fokker trimotor and the later Ford Trimotor was a source of contention between designers Stout and

Anthony Fokker Anton Herman Gerard "Anthony" Fokker (6 April 1890 – 23 December 1939) was a Dutch aviation pioneer, aviation entrepreneur, aircraft designer, and aircraft manufacturer. He produced fighter aircraft in Germany during the First World War suc ...

Ford Airport

In 1924 Ford and Stout negotiated the building of Ford Airport in

Dearborn, Michigan Dearborn is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. At the 2020 census, it had a population of 109,976. Dearborn is the seventh most-populated city in Michigan and is home to the largest Muslim population in the United States per ...

. A factory that would house Stout Metal Airplane production would be built if Stout could convince all 128 of the initial investors in his company to sell out to Ford. This was accomplished at a cost of $500,000 to Ford, and the Stout Metal Airplane Company became an official division of Ford Motor Company on July 1, 1925. Ford Then invested an additional $2,000,000 in the venture. The airport site chosen was 260 acres on Dearborn's Oakwood Boulevard. Ford Airport also featured an airship mooring station and hangar to test the Ford-sponsored ZMC-2 metal-hulled airship.

The fire

The Model 3-AT trimotor was heavily promoted by Henry Ford as the airplane of the future. Test flights proved otherwise, with the underpowered aircraft barely able to maintain altitude. After witnessing the tests, Henry Ford left disgusted, and shortly afterward reassigned Stout away from engineering. On January 16, 1926 Harold Hicks asked Tom Towle to bring all drawings of the 3-AT to the Ford Engineering Laboratory. At about 6am the next morning, a fire destroyed the Stout factory and all aircraft in it, including 13 new Wright Whirlwind engines, several 2-AT Pullmans and the

Prototype. Damages were claimed to be $500,000 in 1926 dollars. Tom Towle was placed in charge of engineering, and hired MIT graduate Otto C. Koppen, John Lee, and

James Smith McDonnell James Smith "Mac" McDonnell (April 9, 1899 – August 22, 1980) was an American aviator, engineer, and businessman. He was an aviation pioneer and founder of McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, later McDonnell Douglas, and the James S. McDonn ...

(co-founder of what is now

McDonnell Douglas McDonnell Douglas was a major American aerospace manufacturing corporation and defense contractor, formed by the merger of McDonnell Aircraft and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. Between then and its own merger with Boeing in 1997, it ...

). Together they refined the 3-AT into what is now recognizable as the "Tin Goose", the Ford Trimotor. Ford visited and encouraged Stout that this was an opportunity to build an even better facility. The new factory had two buildings with the largest doors in the world at the time. McDonnell would leave to the Hamilton Metalplane Company in 1927, building his own corrugated metal aircraft design that closely matched the 2-AT. It was bought by a group of investors rounded up by Stout to invest in the CAM-9 airmail route forming an entity called

Northwest Airlines Northwest Airlines Corp. (NWA) was a major American airline founded in 1926 and absorbed into Delta Air Lines, Inc. by a merger. The merger, approved on October 29, 2008, made Delta the largest airline in the world until the American Airlines ...

Production

Ford Air Transport Service was started in 1925 to carry passengers and mail on the lucrative new airmail routes. It was assigned the first airmail routes, Cleveland-Detroit (CAM-6) and Chicago-Detroit (CAM-7). The regularly scheduled service used six Stout 2-AT aircraft. Ford became the first regularly scheduled airmail service and air freight operator. The Ford Trimotor entered production and became a popular choice for the new airlines serving airmail contracts. In 1927, Ford became the first company to use an assembly line for aircraft production. Ford tried his hand at engineering in the company as well. Working along with engineer Karl Shultz, Ford submitted U.S. Patent no. 1749578 for a Ford Trimotor sized aircraft with separate sets of propellers providing thrust and lift. Similar to the

Berliner helicopter The Berliner Helicopter was a series of experimental helicopters built by Henry Berliner between 1922 and 1925. The helicopters had only limited controllability but were the most significant step forward in helicopter design in the US, until th ...

or the modern V-22 Osprey, the mechanism was far too heavy to see practical use. One example was worked on in the shop and abandoned. In 1929 Richard Byrd used a 4-AT-13 in his fleet on an expedition to be the first to fly over the South Pole.

Decline

The Trimotor sales dropped from a peak of 86 a year in 1929 to only two sales in 1932. Losses from the aircraft division totaled six million dollars. By 1933 Stout, Mayo, and Hicks had left the company. Ford Trimotor sales lagged as the depression set in. Used Trimotors flooded the market at prices between $10,000 and $40,000. As the recession eased, Ford explored a radical flying wing design in the

Ford Model 15-P The Ford Model 15-P flying wing was the last aircraft developed by the Stout Metal Airplane Division of the Ford Motor Company. After several flights resulting in a crash, the program was halted. Ford eventually re-entered the aviation market pr ...

using its new V-8 automobile engine from the Ford Model B. After a crash of the prototype, the effort was dropped.

Legacy

Ford Motor Company stopped production of new aircraft designs with the closure of the Stout Metal Airplane Division. Ford has continued to be involved in aviation in the much more profitable production role, and also has marketed its automotive products with its aviation heritage though high-profile events. Most noteworthy is Ford's production of the

. Up to 650 units a month were produced at Ford's

plant until 1945. Ford also produced 2418

Waco CG-4 Waco ( ) is the county seat of McLennan County, Texas, United States. It is situated along the Brazos River and I-35, halfway between Dallas and Austin. The city had a 2020 population of 138,486, making it the 22nd-most populous city in the st ...

gliders under license for the war effort. In 1956 Ford started the

Aeronutronic Aeronutronic was a defense related division of Ford Aerospace, owned by Ford Motor Company, and based in Newport Beach, Orange County, California. The Engineering and Research Center campus was located on Jamboree Road at Ford Road, overlooking ...

division, specializing in space and defense communications. The company combined with

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to produce space communications gear for

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...

. The Ford Aerospace Corporation division was sold to

Loral Loral may refer to: * Loral Corporation, contractor founded in 1948 in New York by William Lorenz and Leon Alpert as Loral Electronics Corporation * Loral Space & Communications, satellite communications company * Loral GZ-22, a non-rigid airship * ...

in 1990. In 2001 Ford sponsored the EAA's Countdown to Kitty Hawk Ford has remained a sponsor of the EAA Airventure airshow since this event. Ford is also a major contributor to the

Young Eagles The Young Eagles is a program created by the US Experimental Aircraft Association designed to give children between the ages of 8 to 17 an opportunity to experience flight in a general aviation airplane while educating them about aviation. The pr ...

program, auctioning off aviation-themed custom Mustangs each year since 1998.

Aircraft

''The AT moniker originates from the Stout 2-AT "Air Truck"''

References

Notes

Bibliography

External links

Aerofiles
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stout Metal Airplane Division Of The Ford Motor Company Defunct aircraft manufacturers of the United States *