The Airplane That Saved General Aviation

The Aeronca C-2 and C-3, a/k/a the "Bathtub", underpowered and probably much unloved, was the airplane that saved general aviation in the early 1930s.


Before the Aeronca C-2/3 came along, a typical general aviation airplane was the Curtiss Robin:


Robins were great airplanes for their time, but like most of the airplanes in the late 1920s, they were extremely expensive to own and operate. I've read in several places that the rental rate for airplanes like the Robin was $60 per hour. That was in 1929 dollars, and reportedly that's about what Amelia Earhart paid for her lessons. That is almost $700 per hour in today's dollars.

An Aeronca C-3, though, could be rented for $4 per hour, which works out to roughly $50 per hour today. (The C-2 was single place, the C-3 could carry two people, if neither of them were very hefty.)

Aeronca C-2s and C-3s were powered by the mighty E-113 engine. The E-113 is probably the great grandfather of today's opposed-piston aircraft engines.



The E-113 put out 36HP, which probably was barely enough to get a C-3 off the ground with a pilot and instructor. Note that it had one sparkplug per cylinder.

The success of the C-3 gave rise to a competitor, the Taylor J-2 Cub:


The J-2 wasn't much better than a C-3, it had a 4-cylinder engine that pumped out all of 40HP. The J-2s were still underpowered and on a hot day, the distance to clear a 50' tree probably approached infinity. I've heard it said that every J-2 that survives today was crashed at least once.

One of C.G. Taylor's investors in the Taylor Aircraft Company was William T. Piper. Piper eventually forced Taylor out. Bill Piper renamed the company (no prizes for guessing the name) and had a new, more powerful 65 HP engine installed in the J-2, which resulted in the J-3.



The Piper J-3 probably trained more pilots than any other airplane until the Cessna 150 came into being.

And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.