Background
Lloyd was born on October 26, 1898 in Wellsford, Kansas, United States, the son of Icie May Grimm, a music teacher, and Frederick Carlton Stearman, an architect and draftsman.
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(A memoir of extraordinary scope, William Lloyd Stearman's...)
A memoir of extraordinary scope, William Lloyd Stearman's reminiscences will attract those interested in early aviation, World War II in the Pacific, life as a diplomat behind the Iron Curtain, the Vietnam War, and the ins and outs of national security decision-making in the White House. Stearman begins with a description of childhood as the son of aviation pioneer Lloyd Stearman. He then covers his naval combat experiences in the Pacific war and later struggles as one of the Navy's youngest ship captains. Following graduate school, he moved to the front lines of the Cold War and writes about his life as a diplomat who negotiated with the Soviets, spent nine years in Berlin and Vienna, and was director of psychological operations in Vietnam. His reflections on seventeen years with the National Security Council at the White House are of special interest.
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Lloyd was born on October 26, 1898 in Wellsford, Kansas, United States, the son of Icie May Grimm, a music teacher, and Frederick Carlton Stearman, an architect and draftsman.
Raised in Harper, Kansas, he attended public schools there and graduated from Harper High School in 1917. That fall, Stearman entered Kansas State Agricultural College to study engineering and architecture; he left to join the U. S. Naval Reserve Flying Corps on August 21, 1918. He received flight training at the North Island Naval Air Station, San Diego, California.
In December 1918, Stearman joined the architectural firm of S. S. Voight in Wichita, Kansas. Stearman had been bitten by the flying bug, however, and in 1919 he became a mechanic, and then assistant engineer, for E. M. Laird, the first commercial airplane company in Wichita.
E. M. Laird was reorganized as the Swallow Airplane Company on January 22, 1924, with Stearman as chief engineer. He could now put his design ideas into practice. The fragile aircraft of World War I led him to realize that flying, to be commercially viable, required sturdier airplanes. Rugged dependability became the hallmark of Stearman's airplanes and was evident in the Swallow factory's first design, the New Swallow, which won the 1923 national efficiency race at Dayton, Ohio.
Western Air Express received the first Wichita-built Stearman in December 1927. The United Aircraft and Transport Corporation purchased the Stearman Aircraft Company in 1929. Stearman remained as president and design engineer, but he soon became frustrated by the constraints of corporate management. He resigned in December 1930 to pursue his first love, aircraft design.
He and Robert Gross, a former Boston investment banker who had joined Stearman in 1928, severed all ties with United and went to California, where, with Walter Varney, an airline executive, they formed the Stearman-Varney Company in 1932, with Stearman as president. They soon heard that the Detroit Aircraft Corporation was bankrupt and that one of its divisions, the Lockheed Aircraft Company, was available. The three men purchased Lockheed for $40, 000.
Stearman was named president. Stearman left Lockheed in 1935 and joined the Bureau of Air Commerce of the U. S. Department of Commerce as an aircraft inspector. In that capacity he became familiar with a radically new personal airplane being developed by the Hammond Aircraft Company at Ypsilanti, Mich. Unorthodox in design, the all-metal airplane featured twin booms extending from the wing to the tail, with an engine behind the cabin driving a pusher propeller.
A tricycle landing gear, unusual for the time, enhanced ground handling. The original design won a government-sponsored contest for a low-cost person "safety plane" in 1935. Stearman was so impressed that he resigned his government position and, with Dean Hammond, a designer, formed the Stearman-Hammond Aircraft Corporation, in San Francisco, to refine and develop the airplane.
Unfortunately, the Great Depression helped to kill the project; only fifteen airframes were sold. With the demise of Stearman-Hammond, Stearman became vicepresident of the Transair Company of San Francisco (1938 - 1939). During World War II he managed the Airplane Division of the Harvey Machine Company in Long Beach, California.
Ironically, an airplane that bore his name was already perfectly suited to this role. It was the Model 75 Kaydet, popularly known as the Stearman Trainer because it was produced by the Stearman Division of the Boeing Airplane Company. Boeing was part of the United Aircraft conglomerate that had bought out Stearman fifteen years earlier.
Although he had not been directly involved in its creation, the Model 75 was based on one of his earlier designs. Perhaps the most famous of all Stearman aircraft, it had trained thousands of fledgling pilots during World War II and was available in large numbers as military surplus.
Stearman and an associate named George Willett formed the Inland Aviation Company to convert the trainers to crop dusters. The two parted company in 1946, and Stearman joined the National Aircraft Corporation in Van Nuys, California, where he continued his work with the Model 75.
Later, he became vice-president and chief engineer of the Hammel Company of Dos Palos, California, which in 1950 became the Stearman-Hammel Company, manufacturers of a twin-sickle hydraulic mower designed by Stearman. Stearman came full circle in 1955, when he rejoined Lockheed, by then an aerospace giant.
He filled out a routine application and quietly left the employment office. Hibbard recognized the "nut" and hired him as a senior design specialist. Stearman participated in many projects, including several connected with the space program, thus helping to fulfill a prophecy he had made in 1930, when he predicted that rocket-shaped aircraft would someday circle the earth in an orbit sixty miles high, at speeds of twenty-five thousand miles per hour.
Stearman, retired in August 1968, and died of cancer on April 3, 1975 at home in Northridge, Los Angeles.
(A memoir of extraordinary scope, William Lloyd Stearman's...)
On October 6, 1920, he married his high school sweetheart, Ethyl Trusty. They had two children.