Stinson Model A

The Stinson Model A was a three-engined airliner of the mid-1930s, one of the last commercial airliners designed in the United States with a fabric-covered steel tube fuselage before stressed-skin aluminum construction arrived. It carried a crew of two and eight passengers on three 260 horsepower Lycoming R-680 radial engines. Thirty were built before production ceased in 1936, and the stressed-skin Boeing 247 and Douglas DC-2 cut its commercial prospects short. Airlines of Australia bought four after the waiting lists for the new Boeing and Douglas aircraft proved too long, and flew them between Sydney and Brisbane. In 1945 one of the re-engined Australian aircraft lost a wing in flight near Melbourne, killing all ten aboard in the first known accident of that kind from metal fatigue. One Model A survives at the Mid America Flight Museum in Ohio.