Eccentric innovator Henry Ford built airplanes as well as automobiles and antisubmarine ships (the Eagle boats), and developed low-cost housing projects and rubber plantations.1 Pro-fascist, anti-Semitic, and seeking to control the lives of his employees, Ford revolutionized the auto industry by adopting mass production and standardization techniques. He had hoped to do the same for the aircraft industry.
In 1925 he purchased the Stout Metal Airplane Company of Detroit. Established in 1919 by William B. Stout, the firm had produced several monoplanes, including a single ST-1 twin-engine torpedo bomber for the U.S. Navy. The newly acquired aircraft firm became a division of the Ford Motor Company.
A year after acquisition, the company produced a three-engine passenger monoplane developed from the Stout Pullman design. Designated 3-AT by Ford, this quickly morphed into the three-engine, 11-passenger 4-AT, which flew for the first time on 11 June 1926. The aircraft was an immediate commercial success, and production rapidly got under way. Ford’s designers followed with the 15-passenegr 5-AT and improved 13-passenger 7-AT, with the production of all variants reaching a peak of four “tri-motors”—as they were dubbed—per week.2
Ford built 199 tri-motor aircraft of all models. They were immensely popular. The U.S. Navy acquired nine Ford tri-motor variants, with the Army Air Corps receiving 13 planes of various models. The naval aircraft were:
Ford | Navy | No. | Date |
4-AT | XJR-1 | 1 | 1927 |
4-AT | JR-2 | 2 | 1929 |
5-AX | JR-3 | 3 | 1929–30 |
5-AT | RR-4 | 1 | 1930 |
5-AT | RR-5 | 2 | 1931–32 |
The Navy’s designation “J” for transport aircraft since 1928 was changed to “R” in 1931 for the Ford tri-motors as well as several other passenger aircraft. (“J” became the symbol for utility aviation in 1931.) In the Navy’s highly confusing nomenclature system, the Ford-produced planes were given the manufacturer letter “R” because “F” already was assigned to Grumman (with “G” having earlier been allocated to Great Lakes and then to Bell-produced aircraft).
The Navy’s first Ford aircraft was delivered to Naval Air Station Anacostia in Washington, D.C., on 9 March 1927, less than a year after the prototype Ford 4-AT first flew on 11 June 1926. This Navy XJR-1 was the fourth aircraft built by Ford. (The U.S. Army would not acquire its first Ford tri-motor until ten months after the Navy procurement; some Army planes were fitted with two open dorsal positions for machine guns.)
The 4-AT was the largest all-metal aircraft built in the United States up to that time. It featured a corrugated Alcad covering of the fuselage, wings, and tail, with an internally braced cantilever wing. Alcad combined the corrosion resistance of pure aluminum with the strength of duralumin. That airplane had three Wright 400-horsepower engines. Accommodations were provided for eight passengers in addition to the pilot and copilot.
The high-wing aircraft had a fixed-tricycle landing gear with large “pants” over the main portion in later aircraft (see drawing). Ford also experimented with floatplane variants of the tri-motor. The Navy evaluated a 5-AT-74 model fitted with two 30-foot floats. It was flown at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in February 1930 while being considered as a possible torpedo bomber. Some proposals called for the aircraft to carry two Mark IV torpedoes, each weighing 1,800 pounds, or—with wheels—carrying two 1,100-pound bombs with a defensive armament of three machine guns. But there was no further Navy interest in these concepts. (At least one other Ford 4-AT commercial aircraft was fitted with floats.)
The XJR-1, like most other Ford tri-motors, had a relatively brief service life, being stricken in April 1930. During its brief career, on Navy Day in October 1927, nine Navy parachutists jumped from the plane over Washington.
Six aircraft were flown by the Marine Corps, five of which were used in Nicaragua during the second U.S. intervention—1926 to 1933. (The first U.S. Marine intervention in Nicaragua was from 1909 to 1913.) Assigned to Marine utility squadron VJ-6M, these planes performed invaluable duties, moving supplies and people, often using rough airfields in the jungle-covered country.
David Ingalls, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air, used a JR-3 as a personal transport.
Six of the Navy–Marine Corps aircraft were discarded or crashed during the 1930s. The one RR-4, flown by the Marines, survived until mid-1937, but still had only 148 hours total flight time. An RR-5 in Marine markings—a veteran of Nicaragua—also survived until August 1937, racking up 1,836 hours. The final Ford tri-motor in naval service was an RR-5 that was stricken in July 1940, having logged 2,784 flight hours with Navy pilots at the controls.
In addition to the Ford JR/RR aircraft, the Navy–Marine Corps team also flew the Fokker TA/RA-series tri-motor transports (developed by famed Dutch aviation pioneer and aircraft manufacturer Anthony Fokker). These were built in the United States by the Atlantic Aircraft Corporation.
Although tri-motor aircraft had a relatively brief career in U.S. military service, the tri-motor configuration was seen on many combat fronts during World War II with the German Junker Ju52 transport. (A total of 4,845 Ju52s were produced from 1931 to 1952, with post–World War II production in France and Spain.)
Henry Ford’s aircraft production slowed from 1930 onward and ceased completely in 1933. Other firms, especially Boeing, Douglas, and Fokker, were producing more efficient and longer-range aircraft.
Ford JR-3
Type: Transport
Crew: 2 plus 15 passengers
Gross weight: 13,499 pounds
Engines: 3 Pratt & Whitney R-1340-88 radial; 450 hp each
Length: 50 feet, 3 inches
Wingspan: 77 feet, 10 inches
Wing area: 835 square feet
Height: 13 feet, 6 inches
Speed: 135 mph at sea-level maximum 122 mph cruise
Range: 500 miles
Ceiling: 18,000 feet
Armament: nil
1. The author thanks James Caiella for his invaluable research for this column.
2. The most comprehensive account of the Ford tri-motor aircraft—including the military variants—is William T. Larkins, The Ford Tri-Motor, 1926–1992 (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1992). See also Gordon Swanborough and Peter Bowers, U.S. Navy Aircraft since 1911 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1968), 191–92.