This is part of our document archive project. The goal is to preserve the original documents and images from our past, and make high quality copies readily available. This section is a sample of the images from approximately 1919 — 2001.
My parents, Harry & Marian Davis were both pilots. They were licensed around the end of World War II, and continued flying into the late 1950s. Their first airplane was a 1944 Boeing PT-17 Stearman, and in 1949 they sold it and bought a Globe Swift. Among their activities were fly-in meetings, various airshows and cross country flights. They continued to fly the Swift until they sold it around 1959. These photos are a sample of the photos we've take over the decades, roughly in chronological order. The first two pictures appear to be Marian's father, the late Paul G. Watson (1900-1966) sitting in a Curtiss Jenny (JN4?). The picture has no caption, but was taken around May 1919.
In Harry & Marian's day, many aircraft engines had the cylinders arranged radially around the crankshaft. If you look at the biplane pictures, you'll see the engine layout. The radial engine makes a characteristic series of low frequency harmonics, which can be heard for miles. Click here to listen to a radial engine airplane flyover. This is what their Stearman sounded like to a ground observer.
