A Century of Aviation History
The Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar, circa 1953.
A high-flying event will celebrate Hagerstown’s significant impact on American aviation
By Erin Jones
The vintage military aircraft flying above Hagerstown this month will ring nostalgic for Hagerstown’s older generations and should pique the curiosity of younger generations. The old planes will fly in commemoration of Hagerstown’s aviation history, which is one of the most significant aspects of America’s aviation history.
The aviation innovation and construction that happened in Hagerstown pushed both commercial and military flight forward and helped win both world wars.
Hagerstown’s aviation history begins even before the Fairchild Aircraft Company was formed. During World War I, Hagerstown-based Maryland Pressed Steel Company supplied weapons and ammunition to the war effort. Wanting to expand into aviation, the company brought on Giuseppe Bellanca who designed and built the first of many airplanes to be manufactured in Hagerstown. The aircraft, called the Bellanca C.D., was intended to be a training aircraft for Allied pilots in World War I, but the war ended before they were put into use.
The assembly line at Hagerstown Airport factory for the Fairchild PT-19 Trainer, circa 1943.
An employee of Bellanca named Lou Reisner started an airplane repair company in 1921, and along with Ammon Kreider, formed the Kreider-Reisner Aircraft Company. It designed a small monoplane called the KR-Midget, followed by the C-1 and C-2 Challenger biplanes. By 1926 their production was outgrowing their buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue so 60 acres north of Hagerstown was purchased.
Sherman Fairchild founded Fairchild Aviation Corporation in Farmingdale, New York, in 1925. By 1929 he was looking to expand operations and purchased Kreider-Reisner in 1929, just as the Great Depression began.
“Sherman lost control of a lot of the companies that he had controlled in New York, and he retained control of Kreider-Reisner. He basically came to Hagerstown to restart and rebuild the aircraft business,” said Kurtis Meyers, vice president and curator of the Hagerstown Aviation Museum.
By 1931, the Fairchild headquarters moved to Hagerstown. The move was mutually beneficial. The depression had taken Kreider-Reisner’s workforce from 200 to 15. Fairchild brought with him the funds to design and manufacture a new airplane, and with it, employment opportunities.
The Event
September 12: Watch vintage airplanes land at the Hagerstown Regional Airport. The Hagerstown Aviation Museum will offer Fairchild Heritage Flights for a $200 donation. There will be a 1940s Hangar Dance at the museum with Big Band music, dancing, food, and drinks.
September 13: The traditional Wings & Wheels Expo highlights the museum’s extensive collection of vintage aircraft, as well as the historic Fairchild Flight Test Dome Hangar and aviation exhibits. There will also be a “cruise-in” showcasing antique and classic cars, trucks, tractors, motorcycles, tractor-trailers, cranes, law enforcement vehicles, SWAT vehicles, and more. There will be live music and local food vendors throughout the event.
September 14: There will be a speaker series that includes a Ranger Engine Clinic, a Rosie Reception, and an A-10 Warthog Roundtable.
“That really started them on the next path—to get them through the 1930s,” Meyers said.
That first plane was the Fairchild 22, which had an open cockpit, followed by the Fairchild 24, which had a closed cockpit. The plane earned a reputation as a sport plane, and the museum notes it was called the “Cadillac of small private airplanes.”
The Fairchild PT-19 Trainer used to train World War II pilots, circa 1943.
But the time for a greater demand was approaching. As World War II loomed, Fairchild designed a monoplane for training pilots. Fairchild test pilot Dick Henson flew the plane in a competition at a U.S. Army Air Corps testing facility and Fairchild won a contract to manufacture 270 of the aircraft, the PT-19.
“What Fairchild designed was something that had the look and feel of the fighters they would eventually be flying.” says John Seburn, Hagerstown Aviation Museum president and executive director. “The way they designed it, the airplane was very safe to fly for people who had never flown an airplane before…The wings were designed so they wouldn’t stall easily. Then there were other features like the landing gear was very wide and stable on the ground.”
The demand for the planes was high, not just for the U.S. military, but from European allied countries. The company was in the process of expanding its factory space to keep up with the demand when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Overnight the demand for planes was in the thousands.
People flocked to Hagerstown to work for Fairchild, and the community rose to the occasion. In what became known as the “Hagerstown System,” Fairchild began using local companies to create airplane parts. Furniture companies, machine companies, even Moller Pipe Organ Company, were now part of the war effort, creating airplane parts and delivering them to the factory for assembly.
“They looked at Hagerstown as one single factory because they had trucks and vehicles running and picking up parts here and there and moving them from one place to another,” Meyers says. “That was all orchestrated through Fairchild…and then it all came back here and was put together and assembled.”
The Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II Warthog, circa 1980.
Women played a significant role in the manufacturing efforts, too. Iconized by the “Rosie the Riveter” image, women created a vital workforce in the assembly of the airplanes. Other women learned to fly and became Women Airforce Service Pilots or WASPs, delivering the planes to bases upon completion.
By the end of the war, Fairchild had an estimated workforce of 8,000. Beyond the local impact, the Hagerstown community became a model for the war efforts around the United States.
“The Hagerstown System that was developed here…was taken by other companies all over the country and implemented as much as possible in the communities,” Meyers says.
In the end, Hagerstown’s impact on the war was staggering. Seburn says it’s estimated that half of the allied pilots learned to fly in a Fairchild PT-19.
The PT-19 and its variations would not be Fairchild’s only significant aviation contribution. The company designed a revolutionary military cargo plane with a huge door that opened the back of the fuselage, making it easier to load or unload cargo.
The Fairchild Aircraft factory at Hagerstown Airport, circa 1955.
The C-82 was followed by the C-119, which earned the nickname, the Flying Boxcar and is now honored in the name of Hagerstown’s minor league baseball team.
Previous military cargo planes had been based on commercial airlines with much smaller side doors. The innovative design of the C-82 and C-119 allowed jeeps, trucks, and heavy equipment to be easily driven in and out of the aircraft. Dropping pallets of supplies out the back with a parachute also became possible.
As the war progressed, the company sought to expedite production.
“Our understanding was that they were trying to build them as fast as they could because they assumed we would have to do an invasion of Japan like D-Day. Nobody knew about the atomic bomb,” Seburn says.
The Museum
The Hagerstown Aviation Museum’s Fairchild Aircraft 100th Anniversary Homecoming September 12 to 14 will celebrate aviation, innovation, and community, but aviation history enthusiasts can immerse themselves all year long in the aviation heritage that is celebrated and preserved by the museum.
“All the years that we’ve worked on the museum it’s been really rewarding because there’s so many families in the community whose parents, grandparents, great-grandparents worked with Fairchild. We’re preserving the family history of their ancestors helping to build airplanes here. Hopefully that group of people will find it nice to come pay homage to all those who helped to build the airplanes,” says John Seburn, Hagerstown Aviation Museum president and executive director.
The museum’s mission is to preserve Hagerstown’s aviation heritage. The museum may be Hagerstown’s best-kept secret, but the innovation and manufacturing that took place on its grounds left a profound impact on American aviation history.
The museum is at the intersection of two runways at Hagerstown Regional Airport, which means that while visitors learn about Hagerstown’s aviation past, they are surrounded by its present.
The museum has plans to expand to offer more educational resources about the factory, the production process, and the unique role that women played in making it all happen. It also seeks to inspire a new generation with STEM and aviation education and a sense of pride in the aviation heritage of Hagerstown.
The war ended before the new cargo planes could be used, but in the years that followed they would be used in the Berlin airlift, and aircraft using the same concept would be used in Korea and Vietnam.
“It’s sort of the grandfather of all the military cargo planes ever to load from the back,” Seburn says.
In 1965, Fairchild purchased Republic Aircraft, which shifted the focus to building fighter aircraft. In response to a call for proposals from the U.S. Air Force, the company developed the Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt, nicknamed the “Warthog.” Production began in 1976. The contract expired in 1984, the company ceased operations in Hagerstown that same year.
Fairchild C-82 Cargo “Packet” assembly line at Hagerstown Airport Factory, circa 1945.
Fairchild had once employed about 10,000 people, but at the time of its closing that number had dwindled to about 400. While the economic effect of the closing was devastating, some of that impact was mitigated by the need for similar work in the Mack Truck Company, which had come to Hagerstown in the early 1960s.
The closure put more at risk than jobs, however. Decades of aviation history on both a local and a global scale teetered precariously close to being relegated to the past. Seburn and Meyers, along with Richard Henson and Kent Mitchell, created the museum as a non-profit in 1996, but lacked a location for their preservation efforts. The remaining aircraft were housed at Hagerstown Regional Airport, and the group relied on expos and airshows to showcase their history.
In 2008, Meyers published a book called Hagerstown During World War II, which includes many photographs and primary source documents from the era.
In 2019, the museum secured a lease at the original Fairchild property and three years later, purchased the hanger where the museum lives today.
“We couldn’t be in a better place,” Meyers says. “It is our biggest artifact to a large extent.”
“This is where the history happened.” Seburn adds.