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AviaBellanca Aircraft

AviaBellanca Aircraft Corporation was an American aircraft design and manufacturing company. Prior to 1983, it was known as the Bellanca Aircraft Company.[1] The company was founded in 1927 by Giuseppe Mario Bellanca, although it was preceded by previous businesses and partnerships in which aircraft with the Bellanca name were produced, including Wright-Bellanca, in which he was in partnership with Wright Aeronautical.

In 2021 the company was reformed as Bellanca Aircraft, Inc and located in Sulphur, Oklahoma. The new company supplies maintenance and aircraft parts, for the legacy Cruisemaster and Viking aircraft.[2]

Bellanca WB-2 "Columbia"
Bellanca CH-400 Skyrocket/XRE-3
Bellanca C-27C Airbus
Bellanca 31-42 Senior Pacemaker
Bellanca Citabria 7ECA
Bellanca 17-30A Super Viking

History

After Giuseppe Mario Bellanca, the designer and builder of Italy's first aircraft, moved to the United States in 1911, he began to design aircraft for a number of firms, including the Maryland Pressed Steel Company, Wright Aeronautical Corporation and the Columbia Aircraft Corporation. Bellanca founded his own company, Bellanca Aircraft Corporation of America, in 1927, sited first in Richmond Hill, New York and moving in 1928 to New Castle (Wilmington), Delaware. In the 1920s and 1930s, Bellanca's aircraft of his own design were known for their efficiency and low operating cost, gaining fame for world record endurance and distance flights. Lindbergh's first choice for his New York to Paris flight was a Bellanca WB-2. The company's insistence on selecting the crew drove Lindbergh to Ryan.[3]

Bellanca remained president and chairman of the board from the corporation's inception on the last day of 1927 until he sold the company to L. Albert and Sons in 1954.[4] From that time on, the Bellanca line was part of a succession of companies that maintained the lineage of the original aircraft produced by Bellanca.[5]

In 2022, the company moved from Alexandria, Minnesota to Sulphur, Oklahoma. While as of 2024 the company website states "Bellanca recently opened a new aircraft factory and maintenance facility in Sulphur, Oklahoma," no new aircraft have been recently produced.

Aircraft

Famous individual aircraft

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. ^ The June 1, 1937 edition of Aviation (today, Aviation Week & Space Technology) describes the Bellanca 17-20 as a five-place, low wing monoplane designed for the medium-priced private market, and notes that the fuselage will have a stressed-skin, monocoque structure without compound curves.[6] The short note also quotes an unidentified source to say that the aircraft will be powered by a "well-known American inline motor", which the anonymous Aviation writer assumes to be a Menasco.[6] The 1937 edition of Jane's All the World's Aircraft adds nothing more than this, simply noting that "Only very brief details were available at the time of going to press".[7] The 1938 edition no longer mentions it in its list of current Bellanca designs,[8] and Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation, published in 1980 and revised in 1989 and 1993 adds nothing more than was announced in Aviation in 1937.[9]

Citations

  1. ^ Wragg, David W. (1973). A Dictionary of Aviation (first ed.). Osprey. p. 60. ISBN 9780850451634.
  2. ^ Bellanca Aircraft, Inc (March 1, 2022). "News". bellancaaircraft.com. Archived from the original on August 18, 2022. Retrieved August 18, 2022.
  3. ^ Mondey 1978, p. 96.
  4. ^ "The Giuseppe M. Bellanca Collection". National Air and Space Museum, Archives Division. Archived from the original on June 18, 2016. Retrieved August 23, 2013.
  5. ^ Palmer 2001, p. 51.
  6. ^ a b "Newest Bellanca"
  7. ^ Grey & Bridgman 1937, p.275.
  8. ^ Grey & Bridgman 1938, pp.248–51.
  9. ^ Taylor 1993, p.150

Bibliography

External links

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