Dayton-Wright Airplane Company Photographs

In April 1917 the newly-established Dayton Airplane Company was reorganized into the Dayton Wright Company. Its founders were Edward A. Deeds, Charles F. Kettering, Harold E. Talbott, and Harold E. Talbott, Jr. Orville Wright lent his name to the operation and served as a consulting engineer. Dayton Wright operated out of plants in three locations: Moraine, Miamisburg, and the two former buildings of The Wright Company off West Third Street in Dayton.

Upon American entry into WWI, also in April 1917, Edward Deeds was commissioned a colonel and given the responsibility to procure aircraft for the Aircraft Production Board. He left the Dayton Wright Company, and then granted it two government contracts for 4,400 aircraft. The contracts specified 4,000 De Havilland 4s, British bombers to be redesigned for the American Liberty engine, and 400 J-I trainers designed by the American company Standard Aircraft.

The first Dayton Wright DH-4 was completed in September 1917. By October 1918 the company was at the height of its production, employing more than 8,000 workers and sending 400 airplanes to France each month. In total, the company delivered 3,506 airplanes to the warfront. In addition to these piloted aircraft, Charles Kettering and Orville Wright began in the fall of 1917 to develop a self-guided flying bomb with a carrying capacity of 200 pounds of explosives over a distance of 200 miles. The Bug was still in development when the war ended, but the program was cancelled in the 1920s. However, it was a significant contribution to early guided missile engineering.

Following WWI the national defense budget was cut dramatically, and Dayton Wright was forced to find new markets for its inventory of hundreds of partially completed planes. The air forces of Central American countries like Nicaragua, the U.S. Air Mail Service, and commercial buyers became its primary customers. The company continued to manufacture new designs, including the K.T. Cabin Cruiser, R.B. Racer, and XPS-I, the first airplane with retractable landing gear to be used by the U.S. Army.

The company was acquired by General Motors in 1919 and dissolved in 1923 when GM withdrew from airplane manufacturing and converted the plants for use in its Inland Division. Dayton Wright design rights were purchased by the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation.

The photographs in this collection were taken by industrial photographers like William Preston Mayfield and staff photographers for the Dayton Electrical Laboratories (Delco), founded by Deeds and Kettering in 1912.