1939 Taylorcraft BL-65

As one of the earliest and possibly the most successful of its type, Louis Bleriot's Bleriot XI monoplane became a bestseller plane and an important validation of the potential of aircraft and aviation to unite the world and become a military weapon. 

Origins: Piper vs Taylor

The origins of the Cub are found in Rochester, New York in the 1920s when brothers C. Gilbert Taylor and Gordon Taylor designed the A-2 Chummy. In 1928, after Gordon Tayler died in a crash, Pennsylvania oilman William T. Piper convinced Gilbert to move to Bradford, PA to redesign the nearly $4000 Chummy into a low-cost airplane that became the Cub. By 1930, the company was bankrupt, and Piper bought the whole company for $761. However, he kept Taylor as president. In 1935, Piper brought in another designer, Walter Jamoueau, to improve the Cub based on owner comments. This angered Taylor and he left the company to found the Taylorcraft Aircraft Company in Ohio.
In 1937, the Taylor Cub became the Piper Cub. Despite the name change, they were the same airplane: a stable, slow, easy-to-fly airplane. Over 20,000 Cubs were built from 1936-1947 for civilian and military use. 

Design and Operation

Unlike the Wright B and the Curtiss Jenny, the Blèriot is a monoplane (one set of wings) configuration. By showing the viability of his one wing design, Blèriot encouraged other builders to follow in his footsteps. Today’s airplanes share the same basic design as Blèriot’s creation. 

The design was a single-seat, single-engine setup that used wing-warping for lateral control (roll). It had a partially covered box fuselage, with a small all-moving rudder mounted slightly above a horizontal tail, whose tips functioned like elevators. The engine was set directly in front of the wing, attached to a front propeller. Two front wheels and a smaller tailwheel could slide up and down the steel tube sprung on elastic cords to help with shock absorption upon landing.   

The Bleriot XI at College Park

There are two instances of the Bleriot XI at College Park. First, when the National Aviation Company established operations at College Park Airport, it became the authorized agent for the manufacture and sale of Bleriot aircraft in the Washington, DC region.  Instead of designing aircraft, NACO gave flight lessons in Curtiss, Bleriot, and Wright aeroplanes and repaired them as well.

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Bleriots were also the type of plane used by the Moisant School at Mineola (Long Island, NY) one of America's earliest flying schools. In an effort to sell Blèriots to the U.S. Army, the Moisant Company sent Bernetta Miller to showcase the aeroplane’s capabilities to officials at the field. The Army was not convinced of the monoplane’s safety, and it opted not to purchase any Blèriots.  

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Bernetta Miller was the fifth woman in the United States to earn her pilot’s license on September 16, 1912. She trained at the Moisant School in New York, who chose her to demonstrate the Moisant-Bleriot monoplane to the U.S. Army at College Park a few weeks later on October 7, 1912.  

“Of course,” she said later, “I had no illusions as to why I was sent to College Park to demonstrate the monoplane to the U.S. government officials who were exclusively devoted to the idea of the biplane… [It was] on the basis of the idea that if a mere woman could learn to fly one, so surely could a man." 

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Despite her successful flights, the Army was not convinced of the monoplane’s safety, and it opted not to purchase any Blèriots. Fighting against social pressure discouraging women from flying and suffering from financial difficulties, Miller gave up aviation in 1913.