American mOTH

This classic biplane returned to the air after a ground-up rebuild

"My father was an aeronautical engineer, so I came to aviation naturally. seeing what he was doing, I knew it was not for me so I became an architect. My first airplane ride was with Clarence Chamberlain in 1937. I was stationed in China after WWII with the Air Transport Command for a short period of time. When I got out, I started flying J-3 Cubs, went back to school, got married, had mortgages and children. I did not start flying actively again until the 1960s. The first airplane I owned was a Cessna 172. I went through a series of airplanes including Bonanzas, Musketeers and even a Rallye. Somewhere around 1975, I got involved with the Tiger Moth"

And so spoke Gerry Schwam, architect, as he already told us, and amateur entomologist, President for some 18 years of the Moth Club of America.

He continued: "There was a fellow in Newburyport, Massachusetts, named Geert Frank, who imported and restored most of the Tiger Moths in the US. A great many of them are still flying today. I made a deal with him and bought one of them. I kept it for some 25 years, and sold it only to finance my latest project."

For some time, Gerry has been flying around the northeastern United States with de Havilland DH.6OGM Gipsy Moth NC919DH (c/n 120), built in 1929 by the Moth Aircraft Corporation of Lowell, Massachusetts.

The de Havilland DH.60 Moth was the forerunner of a series of successful Moth aircraft which revolutionized flying for some years following the 1920s. Many Moth family aircraft remain airworthy today. The DH.60 first flew in the hands of Geoffrey de Havilland, on 22 February 1925, with a 60-hp Cirrus engine. It was an immediate success, and the British Air Ministry subsidized five Moth-equipped flying clubs. Orders soon came from Australia and Japan, and there was interest from the Air Ministry and Irish Flying Corps.

The configuration of the plane was definitely "British," and harbored several interesting innovations. Quite novel was the use of wooden interplane bracing struts, and also the automatic wing slots, which were like auxiliary airfoils that drooped out forward at low airspeeds and high angles of attack. Some lift was retained at high angle of attack, and the airplane was touted as impossible to stall. The airplane had no tendency to spin, and control could be regained by dropping the nose.

Geoffrey de Havilland, in a demonstration, deliberately stalled a D.H. Moth in flight at some 200-ft, and let it mush to the ground while still holding the stick all the way back. The airplane hit the ground with quite a jar, but he was not hurt and the craft was damaged only slightly. With the average airplane of the time this kind of stunt was quasi-suicidal.

When Alan Cobham delivered a Moth floatplane in the US, an agreement for production in America was reached. The Moth Aircraft Corp. of Lowell, Massachusetts, was incorporated in 1928 to manufacture the DH Moth under license. Several airplanes were brought over from England for test and demonstration (constructor # 1A to 6A). Production of the American version of the Moth started in the early summer of 1929. By November of that year, over 120 had been built.

The Moth was easy to fly, with a friendly and forgiving nature; one flying school operator with the strictest confidence in himself and his Moth offered to teach anyone to fly in the space of one day. Starting bright and early in the morning, he guaranteed to have you up for your first solo by sundown.

The type became a favorite of longdistance pilots from Amy Johnson to Francis Chichester. Numerous races were entered with the Moth, and numerous record flights undertaken. The list would be too long to mention, but one feat stands out: Laura Ingalls looped a DH.60 344 times to establish a new record. By the end of production in 1934, 595 DH.60Gs had been built at Hatfield, while another 40 were built in France by Morane-Saulnier (as MS-60), and 32 in Australia by Larkin Aircraft Supply Company. Another 1000 were built at Edgware and were used in clubs and schools throughout Britain.

Sales and distribution of the Moth was handled by the huge Qirtiss Flying Service organization and, in early 1930, the Moth Aircraft Co. was absorbed as a division of Curtiss-Wright. Operations were then moved to Robertson, Missouri, in the sprawling plant site of the Curtiss-Robertson Airplane Division. The Wright Aero Corporation, also an affiliate in the Curtiss-Wright complex, was now manufacturing the Gipsy engine under a license agreement. This type of engine, called the Gipsy-Wright, powered the GMW version of the Moth (23 built in 1930-31: c/n 90, c/n 151 to 171, and c/n 179, still flying as N617V).

The type certificate (ATC #197) for the models 60GM and GMW was issued in August 1929 for both the land and seaplane version. One hundred and seventy-nine examples of the Moth were built at the Moth Aircraft Corporation and the Moth Aircraft Division between 1929 and 1931, when all production stopped because of lack of sales.