SHELTON CRUSADER STREAMLINE CABIN PLANE

YEARS AHEAD of its 1933 design, the Crusader Streamline Cabin Plane of Thomas Shelton was a philosophical precursor to the Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter. I came upon this fascinating aircraft because of my Microsoft Flight Simulator hobby.

Classic Airplanes of the 30’s and Aircraft of the Roaring 20’s, The Antique Airplane Association, Arno Press, 1980. The book is listed at www.amazon.com.

The Shelton Crusader appears in Classic Airplanes of the 30’s and Aircraft of the Roaring 20’s. This book, fairly rare, is part of the Arno Press collection of Flight—Its First Seventy-Five Years. The contemporary article on the Cabin Plane described it as being in flight testing. In fact, http://goo.gl/qS7ZVj shows a video gleaned from 35-mm filming of this 1935 event.

Don’t try this at home, kids; we’re professionals. My Shelton Crusader buzzes Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle.

Built by the American Gyro Company of Denver, Colorado, the Crusader also carried the AG-4 moniker. Its defining characteristics—which led to a patent—were its twin engines, twin booms and separate cabin, compact yet highly streamlined.

The Crusader had split flaps and twin Menasco engines. Image from Classic Airplanes of the 30’s and Aircraft of the Roaring 20’s.

The Crusader was a four-seater, though six-place seating was envisioned as well. Its power came from twin Menasco engines, inverted inline-4s, each producing 125 hp.

Crusader: The Story of the Shelton Flying Wing, its Company, and its Creator, by Alexander Roca, Rare Birds Publishing, 1989. The book is listed at www.amazon.com.

Roca’s Crusader places the aircraft within a duality of Art Deco design and the Great Depression. The book is given a full review at http://www.rareplanes.com/revw.htm. Admired by the likes of William Randolph Hearst, Howard Hughes and Amelia Earhart, the Cabin Plane also led to business intrigue and courtroom drama.

Unknown to me when I did my flightsim model, the Cabin Plane prototype was copper in color. Advertising of the period displayed other choices, though its X14429 registration was retained. Image from Roca’s Crusader.

For a time, the single Cabin Plane prototype resided in Burbank, California’s Union Air Terminal, only a short distance from Lockheed Aircraft’s main facility. Indeed, designer Tom Shelton recounted seeing guys in Lockheed jackets swarming over the plane with tape measures.

The Shelton Cabin Plane was all-metal, of 17 ST duraluminum, with exception of its wingtips and control surfaces; this, at a time when many others were still predominately fabric-covered. Image from  Roca’s Crusader.

Lockheed’s P-38 Lightning fighter, appearing in 1939, shared the Cabin Plane’s twin-engine/twin-boom/separate cabin layout. So did the Hughes XF-11 appearing in 1943.

Shelton considered patent litigation, but challenging the might of Lockheed or Hughes—not to say the U.S. government, which supported their projects—precluded his doing so. Shelton’s own patriotism also played a role.

Stock was issued in 1936 for the Crusader Aircraft Corporation of Glendale, California, an offshoot of American Gyro. The website http://scripophily.net/crusaircor.html offers an artfully engraved stock certificate dated 1937, hand-signed by company officials. Alas, Crusader folded in 1938, at which time it was under investigation for securities fraud.

Tom Shelton’s Crusader Streamline Cabin Plane never entered production. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2014