Erco had brought in the innovative aeronautical engineer Fred Weick to design a safe and easy to fly everyman’s aircraft which they called the Ercoupe. Production was suspended during WW II, while Erco produced gun turrets and other aircraft equipment for the Navy.  After V-J Day, production resumed, with almost 5,000 Ercoupes being produced, until demand dried up in the post-war general aviation bust. Erco went out of the aviation business, but other companies continued to market it as the Aircoupe.

Depicted is the first Ercoupe 415 (NC16962) flying over the ERCO factory in Riverdale, MD, circa 1941, with the aircraft’s designer, Fred Weick, at the controls.

Depicted is NS-8, a Bellanca Pacemaker CH-300, operated by the Aeronautical Branch of the Department of Commerce for the Bureau of Standards Radio Section, as it leaves a fog-shrouded College Park Airport en route to Newark, New Jersey, March 20, 1933.  Completely equipped for instrument flying, the aircraft was piloted by James L. Kinney, Aeronautical Branch test pilot, and carried as passengers Harry Diamond, the lead scientist with the NBS aeronautics radio team, and a mechanic. Scheduled as a routine flight to support the blind landing trials being conducted at Newark Airport, the flight went ahead despite the adverse weather conditions. Navigation during entire flight was conducted using radio range and localizer beacons, including the instrument letdown to a normal landing at Newark, where visibility was only about 100 feet.  Along with the successful tests at Newark, this flight helped establish the basic principles that resulted in the development of practical ILS systems.

Inspired by a contemporary photograph, the painting depicts a ‘race’ between the Army’s first aircraft, the Wright Military Flyer, also known as Signal Corps 1, and a B & O locomotive on its scheduled run between Washington, DC, and Baltimore, MD, October 16, 1909.   According to the New York newspaper story accompanying the photograph, Wilbur Wright was piloting the craft, although other stories put one of the Army pilots he trained at College Park at the controls. The reporter proclaimed the Wright aircraft the winner, although its top speed was only about 55 mph, and trains of the period were capable of twice that. Since the specific B & O equipment involved is not identified, the locomotive shown in the painting is a generic American 4-4-0, a type commonly used by the B & O on their Baltimore-Washington run. Artistic license was used to eliminate the numerous telephone poles then lining either side of the tracks, which run along the east-side of the College Park Airport.  These tracks are still in use, although the Washington DC Metro now shares the right-of-way with AMTRACK.