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This Ford-Stout Air Transport 2AT with a single Liberty 12 engine, was flown by S.L. Manning on the second National Air Tour in 1926. The 2AT was an early single engine version of the transport aircraft that later grew into the famous Ford tri-motor. Pilots in the 2AT were still sitting up front in an open cockpit. It's average speed on the tour was 92.8 m.p.h.
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Eddie Stinson, founder of the Stinson aircraft company piloted this Stinson Detroiter SB-1, one of his very first aircraft, on the 1926 tour. The Detroiter was owned by the Schlee family of the Detroit's Wayco oil company. A short time later Stinson sold another of this model to fledgling Northwest Airlines. Northwest thus became the first commercial airline in America to offer their customers that incredible luxury of... (now here's a bit of trivia for you)... an enclosed cabin to ride in!
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An OX5 motored Swallow Super, with tour number 21 painted on the side, departs Ford Airport in the 1926 tour competition. Clyde Sterling of LaPorte, Texas was at the time, Chief Instructor at the Nicolas Beazley School in Marshall, Missouri. The brief notation he made in his logbook for the tour may have been characteristic of a pilot who was a grizzled veteran at age thirty. It said simply, "3450 minutes, 2,600 miles, Ford Tour".
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The new Pioneer Earth Indicator Compass, driven by the wind, attracted a lot of attention when it was used by Walter Beech to help him win the 1926 tour. Accompanied by Brice Goldsborough, president of Pioneer Instruments, Beech won the tour crediting superb navigation as his edge for victory. As if to prove the pioneering premise of the National Air Tours, less than a year later Charles Lindbergh would use a the type of compass to help guide him across the Atlantic.
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Like father, like son. Henry Ford, center and Edsel Ford, right, share a moment of contemplation at Ford Airport during the 1927 National Air Tour. At left Edward P. Warner, assistant secretary of the Navy for aviation, awaits
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