WW1 Aviation > Sturtevant Manufacturing Co.

                     Sturtevant Manufacturing Co.
                                     (1910 - 1915)

This sharp deviation from their core fan business can be traced to a family member who caught the aviation bug.

Noble Foss, one of the two Harvard attending sons of the owner, was forced to leave school due to illness in 1907. Lacking a career focus, he spent a year in the Southwest then another year traveling around the world. It was a journey through France in 1910 and exposure to the aviation excitement sweeping across Europe that piqued his interest in aeroengines and proved to be the catalyst for his first vocation upon returning to America.

That same year, in one section of the machine shop mezzanine at Sturtevant's Hyde Park factory, he established the Sturtevant Manufacturing Co. Massachusetts' first aeroengine company was thus born with Noble, at 22, its youthful president. Operations weren't restricted to just the mezzanine, testing and manufacturing also occurred on the main floor.

One of the principal engine developers was Harold N. Bliss. On board from the start, he worked for a year in a Pawtucket, RI cotton mill where he did development work on motors before becoming a partner with Sturtevant. He and George Abel, an M.I.T. grad, helped develop the Model 5 before joining the Thomas-Morse Aircraft Co. in 1915.

The four water-cooled engine rollouts were as follows: "L" head type, vertical Model D-4 (1911); "L" head type, vertical Model D-6 (1912); "T" head type, vertical Model E-4 (1913) and "V" type Model 5/5A (1915). Sharing a commonality with the future Sturtevant aircraft, the early engines also had a maritime role. The 5A was a modified Model 5 with no major changes in dimensions. The "4-1/2" referred to the 0.5" larger bore in this variation.

Diagrams were scanned directly from Sturtevant catalogs. Thumbnails can be enlarged.

One of the most notable installations were in the famous Hickman Sea Sleds when they were introduced in 1914. This radical double hull design allowed for high speeds without resorting to high power by forcing air under it. The Navy was impressed enough by the performance to make it their exclusive high speed rescue boat in open waters. There was one confirmed Sea Sled, based in Pensacola, with a pair of 75hp E-4 engines in 1915. In the civilian sector, the philanthropist Vincent Astor's "Noma" Sea Sled could make 30mph with a single Sturtevant D-6. The exact number of sales is unknown.

The fact that Hickman's boat yard through WW1 was in Boston, Sturtevant's backyard, partially explains the sales. A much stronger explanation is that Hickman was married to Esther Foss, Noble's sister.

As late as 1921, the Model E-4 was being marketed as a pleasure boat engine.

The Herring-Burgess #3 was the first aircraft installed with a Sturtevant engine, the 40hp D-4. This third iteration of the Augustus Herring/Starling Burgess collaboration, purchased by Joseph Shoemaker, took off from the Saugus, MA racetrack on July, 1911 for a brief flight over the adjacent marshes. Fred Chanhouse, the pilot, would later be employed by both Sturtevant Mfg. and Sturtevant Aeroplane Co. The plane was donated to the National Air & Space Museum in 1961 where it waits for reconstruction. It's unknown if the Sturtevant engine, which Shoemaker called the "Foss-Bliss Sturtevant engine", also survived.

What Noble's contributions to the manufacturing of these engines or his exact role is unknown. It's a safe bet, though, that Sturtevant's engine expertise (dating back to the 1870s) was a solid foundation supporting the subsidiary.

A promising new V-8 engine, the Model 5/5A (sometimes misprinted as A5 in some publications), begun in 1914 and introduced in 1915, may have jump-started the next phase of Sturtevant's aviation adventure. There was a lot of industry buzz around this model given the aspirated, unreliable engines that predominated at that time. With the leap to aircraft manufacturing pending, Sturtevant Mfg. was absorbed into B.F.Sturtevant sometime in 1915.