Past Meetings


At our public meeting on January 21, 2007 the featured multimedia presentation was:

The Ryan Connection: The Relationship between the Main Line Airport, Paoli, PA and the Ryan Aeronautical Company, San Diego, CA

  By Society President Roger Thorne

When Charles Lindbergh completed his first-ever solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean in his Ryan NYP, on May 21, 1927, he became, overnight, a hero around the world - pushing the limits of the possible.

But Lindbergh’s record in his "Spirit of St. Louis" also made the airplane’s builder, Ryan Aviation of San Diego, widely famous as well. In 1928 Claude Ryan formed the Ryan Aeronautical Company. The company’s ability to design and build airplanes such as the classic ST-A and the innovative SC-W made the company a legend in its own time, and helped Ryan prosper during the lean depression years.

Local business opportunities were created by Ryan’s success. Early in 1937, the fledgling Demorr Aeronautical Co., located at the Main Line Airport in what is today the Great Valley Corporate Center, became the Eastern Pennsylvania distributor for Ryan airplanes. Using the actual flight logs, interviews with participants and contemporaries, and a great number of newly discovered photographs, Thorne told the story of the people and their machines, as well as “the rest of the story.”

 

The officers of Demorr Aeronautical Co.
show off their first newly arrived Ryan ST-A,
NC 17343, at the Main Line Airport , Paoli PA, April 1937.

 

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