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[[image No. 95 - black & white photograph of a data plate, including spaces for MODEL and NO. and note "PATENTS APPLIED FOR"]]

[[caption]] Grover Loening with Orville Wright (96), in Dayton, Ohio, September, 1913, at time of roll-out of Wright Model E.  The classic Loening Amphibian OL-8, with Wasp engine, in use from 1926 through 1931 (97).  Loening with Pan-American Good Will Flight commanding officer Major Herbert A. Darque (left), and Lt. Ennis Whitehead (98), before takeoff from San Antonio, Texas, Dec. 21, 1926, in pioneer circumnavigation of Southern Hemisphere. [[/caption]]


[[image No. 96 - black & white photograph of Grover Loening with Orville Wright]]

[[image No. 97 - black & white photograph of Loening Amphibian OL-8 plane inflight]]

[[image No. 98 - black & white photograph of Major Herbert Darque, Grover Loening, and Lt. Ennis Whitehead]]

Grover Cleveland Loening

"You see that picture of me with Orville Wright?  I look too young, and that has been my trouble all my professional career. Looking too young."  Grover Loening still looks a score of years below his age, but it doesn't matter. When he is 100, he'll look like 80.

His sparkle and charm are ageless, and his pioneering spirit has left a priceless heritage on the engineering scene. In 1910, he received an M.A. in aeronautics from Columbia, the first such degree awarded in America, and three years later was working in Dayton as the manager of the Wright factory, and assistant to Orville. In 1914, Grover was appointed Chief Aeronautical Engineer of the Army's Aviation Section in San Diego, and as the nation's first military aviation engineer, became impressed with the future potential of amphibian aircraft.  The following year he became vice-president of Sturtevant Aeroplane Company, Massachusetts, and pioneered development of the first American steel frame airplane.

After perfecting the use of rigid strut bracing, Loening obtained an Army and Navy contract for the building of his own planes, and the Loening Aeronautical Engineering Corporation was born, in 1917. Following the war, the renowned Loening Amphibian, with the first practical, retractable undercarriage, was created. In 1937, Loening's first report to a Congressional commission established guidelines for trans-ocean air commerce.

[[image - small drawing of a propeller]]
  
Grover Cleveland Loening: born Bremen, Germany, Sept. 12, 1888.

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