Long Island, having its treeless expanse referred to as the Hempstead Plains, proximity to Manhattan, and gateway to your country as well as the European continent with the Atlantic Ocean, gave rise to several, once-famous aircraft manufacturers, for example 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 pioneer designs and biplanes through the 1910s and 1920s, introduced significant advancements over the two-decade Golden Age between 1919 and 1939, and produced military fighters that had been considered integral elements inside the arsenal of democracy over the Second World War.
Although these East Coast companies were but shadows of these on the West Coast, for instance Boeing, Douglas (later McDonnell-Douglas), and Lockheed, which endowed the entire world with piston, turboprop, pure-jet, and turbofan passenger-carrying airliners, their Long Island counterparts produced some notable types within this category.
American Airplane and Engine Corporation:
The American Airplane and Engine Corporation’s first-and, within the event, only-airliner was the Pilgrim 100, that has been conceptualized by Fairchild, but was subsequently continued through the new company, itself a division with the Aviation Corporation. It planted its roots inside former Fairchild factory at Republic Airport in 1931. It represented, to your degree, the influence a private jet manufacturer could exert by using an airline.
William Littlewood, general manager with the original Fairchild Engine factory, and Myron Gould Beard, a pilot and engineer there, ultimately used employment at then-named American Airways (now American Airlines) as well as the former’s first significant assignment ended up being to develop specifications for the cost-effective airliner. “Airliner” then signified at most a dozen passengers.
“Out with this assignment came the Pilgrim, the very first commercial transport being designed as outlined by an airline’s specifications,” as outlined by Robert J. Serling in Eagle: The Story of American Airlines (St. Martin’s/Marek, 1985, p. 19). “It was obviously a single-engine plane carrying nine passengers and flown by way of a single pilot. The cockpit was inaccessible on the cabin; messages on the passengers were passed by way of a sliding panel in the bulkhead.”
Principally created by Fairchild Chief Engineer Otto Kirchner and Project Engineer John Lee, it had been the result of Avco’s $35,000 study to exchange the existing single-engine types that proved too small for American’s needs, whilst the trimotors offered an excessive amount of capacity. The initial, 15-aircraft order supplied the carrier’s Embry-Riddle, Southern, and Universal divisions.
Powered by the 575-hp Pratt and Whitney, nose-mounted R-1340 Wasp engine, the Pilgrim featured a superior, straight, fabric-covered wing; three passenger windows as well as a fourth at the top on the exit door on each side of its fuselage; two single-wheel main undercarriage bogies truss-rigged in the wing; a tailwheel; with an enclosed, single-person cockpit and nine-passenger cabin. The production 100A version was pre-loaded with a 575-hp Pratt and Whitney Hornet B-16 engine, that was replaced from the equally-rated Wright Cyclone R-1820 radial about the 100B that itself introduced a more substantial vertical tail. American also operated this variant.
Featuring a 39.2-foot overall length as well as a 57.5-foot wingspan, it carried a 2,150-pound payload along a 7,100-pound gross weight. Range was 510 miles. Cruising speed was 118 mph. And its service ceiling was 13,600 feet.
Of the 26 Pilgrims produced, American operated 22 100As and 100Bs, and also the US Army Air Corps flew four designated Y1C-24, employing them on light cargo and still provide missions. In their later aeromedical evacuation role, they accommodated four liter patients.