A Designer Who Had Everything But Luck

By Drew Fetherston | Staff Writer

Giuseppe Bellanca, in straw hat with his monoplane in 1927: He nearly rose to fame with Charles Lindbergh. (Long Island Studies Institute, Nassau County Museum)

GIUSEPPE BELLANCA possessed genius in abundance, and he built airplanes that were admired and coveted by aviators. What he lacked was luck, and that cost him his chance at larger fame. Bellanca was born in 1886 in Sciacca, Sicily, and educated in engineering in Milan. In 1908, with no experience in aeronautics, he and two friends built and flew an airplane of his design. He moved with his family to Brooklyn in 1912, and by early the next year, he was teaching himself to fly in earnest at the Garden City Aerodrome, in a monoplane he had designed and built in his family's basement.

In 1914, Bellanca opened a flying school at the airfield, where one of his students was Fiorello LaGuardia, the future mayor of New York City. In 1920, he created the CF, an airliner that could carry four passengers in an enclosed cabin. The CF entered three major performance contests in 1922, won them all and earned a reputation as ``the world's best airplane.''

Unfortunately, the market was then glutted with surplus World War I airplanes, and Bellanca couldn't sell his marvels. He was hampered, too, by a lack of capital: Most of his backers were restaurateurs, waiters and bakers from Brooklyn's Italian neighborhoods.

In 1924, in partnership with an engine manufacturer, Bellanca designed the WB-1, a cabin airliner that also won speed and performance contests. He followed this with the WB-2, an improved model, but his partner wasn't interested in producing it, and the WB-2 was eventually put up for sale.

Bellanca hoped to sell the plane to the pilot who most wanted it: Charles Lindbergh, who thought the WB-2 was the best plane for his planned solo flight from New York to Paris. Lindbergh wrote a check for $15,000. But when Bellanca's partner refused to sell the plane unless their company could select the pilot, an annoyed Lindbergh took back his check and turned to a small airline company in California. Lindbergh named his new monoplane the Spirit of St. Louis, and when it and not the WB-2 carried him to Paris, Bellanca was condemned to be a footnote in the history of aviation.

A Bellanca aircraft, the Miss Veedol, did make the first nonstop flight across the Pacific in 1931, and in the years that followed Bellancas set many records for speed and endurance. But their high quality meant they weren't well suited for mass production.

Bellanca died in 1960. Admirers of his abilities have restored, and keep flying, a few of the airplanes he designed and built.