Background
He was born on January 8, 1881 in Knapp Creek, New York, United States, the son of Thomas Piper, a farmer who entered the oil business in Bradford, Pennsylvania, and Sarah Elizabeth Maltby.
He was born on January 8, 1881 in Knapp Creek, New York, United States, the son of Thomas Piper, a farmer who entered the oil business in Bradford, Pennsylvania, and Sarah Elizabeth Maltby.
He attended public school in Bradford and at home received a strict Methodist upbringing. In 1899, after serving in a volunteer unit during the Spanish-American War, he entered Harvard, where he played football and threw the hammer. He graduated in 1903 with a B. S. in mechanical engineering.
Piper worked for the United States Steel Corporation in Loraine, Ohio, and for construction firms in several cities. In 1914, Piper returned to Bradford and founded the Dallas Oil Company, which operated several wells.
During World War I he was commissioned a captain in the Corps of Engineers. In 1931, Piper bought the C. G. Taylor aircraft company to prevent its bankruptcy. Dedicated to the idea of an inexpensive airplane for the average person, Piper encouraged design changes in the Taylor aircraft. The first new plane, called the Cub, was licensed on June 15, 1931. During the next few years, the company produced several hundred planes but continued to lose money, but Piper made up the losses from his oil business. In 1936, Piper purchased Taylor's remaining interest, cut the selling price of the new-model Cub to $1, 270, and made a small profit.
After the Bradford factory burned in 1937, Piper reopened the Piper Aircraft Corporation in an abandoned silk mill in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. He soon began to dominate the private-airplane industry. Pilots were hired to promote the Cub by acrobatic flying at air shows and by setting endurance and distance records. The "Cub Convoy" of several hundred planes began flying each New Year's Day to Orlando, Florida, to dramatize the air age. By 1939, when he sold 1, 806 Cubs, Piper was marketing more private planes than all his competitors combined. Piper attracted skilled workers by offering them flying lessons at $1. 10 an hour in company planes. By 1940 he had over a thousand employees, whose average age was twenty-three and whose average wage was forty-four cents an hour. Dealers, backed by the Aviation Funding Corporation, were able to advertise a Cub for a down payment of $333, including free flying lessons.
During World War II, Piper sold 7, 000 L-4's (called "Grasshoppers, " "puddle jumpers", "flying jeeps" or "putt-putts") to the army. They were used for observation, medical evacuation, communication, and aerial photography. With a slow landing speed of thirty-eight miles an hour, they were able to take off and land in less than a hundred yards. Even before the end of the war, Piper predicted a boom in private flying and urged the federal government and local communities to build airports and landing fields.
Although orders for new planes went up in 1946, they fell drastically in early 1947, forcing many companies to close and causing Piper's creditors to reorganize his company with William Craig Shriver as chief executive. Shriver cut the payroll, closed some plants, and reorganized the board of directors. In less than a year, most of the loans were repaid, and despite Piper's objections, the company purchased the Stinson division of the Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft Company.
Amid growing conflicts on the board, Piper Aircraft began producing the Super Cub and the Pacer in 1948 and planning a twin-engine plane. The twin-engine Apache, the first all-metal Piper airplane, went on the market in 1954, selling for $32, 500 - more than Piper wanted but below the prices of the Beech Twin Bonanza and the Cessna 310. Piper produced 2, 000 Apaches in seven years, and the plane became the cornerstone of Piper Aircraft's prosperity. The Apache and later models were promoted through long-distance flights: Max Conrad flew nonstop from New York City to Paris in an Apache in 1954; in 1959 he flew from Casablanca to El Paso in a Comanche; and Sheila Scott flew around the world in a Comanche in thirty-three days in 1966. With the addition of several new models such as the Pawnee, an agricultural plane, and the nine-passenger Navajo, Piper Aircraft was producing 12, 000 to 15, 000 planes a year by 1970.
The company that Piper built was continued by his sons until 1971, when the Piper Aircraft Corporation was taken over by Bangor-Punta. In 1984 the company closed the Lock Haven headquarters and moved to Vero Beach, Florida.
Piper died in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania.
Piper was married on April 14, 1910, to Marie Van de Water, who died in 1937, and then, on August 10, 1943, to Clara Taber. He had five children by his first marriage.