Alexander Aircraft Company

The company began life as the Alexander Film Company[lower-alpha 1] that specialized in film advertising, and the younger J. Don Alexander decided that his salesmen could sell more film advertising if they had airplanes. He wrote to plane manufacturers around the country asking for a price on a lot of 50 planes. But the builders, who were happy to get an order for one craft in those days, thought his letter was the work of a crackpot. It went into the wastebasket. This angered Alexander. He decided to build his own planes. He moved his operation to Englewood, Colorado and set up the aircraft company. He sent Justin McInaney to Marshall, Missouri (then a center of aviation manufacturing) to buy a plane and learn to fly. Justin's instructor was the great Ben O. Howard, who later became famous as a plane racer and test pilot. Justin soloed after only ten hours of instruction. He bought a Swallow airplane for $2,300 and proceeded to fly back to Denver. That trip involved so many forced landings and other aerial adventures that he ended it almost an overnight veteran. Justin began teaching other men to fly, among them Vern Simmons; O.R. Ted Haueter (past vice president of Continental Airlines); Ray Shrader (past vice president of Braniff Airlines); Red Mosier (past vice president of American Airlines); Jack Frye (past president of TWA); plane designer Al Mooney. As the national sales manager, Justin helped build the firm to the top producer in the United States (eight planes a day, just before the depression).

By 1928, the company was having trouble meeting demand from its jury-rigged factory in Englewood. Operating out of a small town enabled the company to evade the fire code and building code, but there were rumours that Englewood would be annexed by nearby Denver and regulations would become stricter.[2] The company directors began to prepare for a move to other cities while using the threat of leaving to extort concessions out of the town.

Just before noon on 20 April 1928, a fire started in the shed where aircraft wings were coated with flammable silver nitrate 'dope.' A back room was crowded with seamstresses sewing fabric. All of the windows were high and barred, the walls and floors were soaked in the flammable chemical, and the only exits from the building were in the doping room and opened inwards. The doping shed was engulfed in fire and explosions, the exits became crowded with fleeting workers, and eleven workers were killed: Ella Taylor, Effie Harkins, Gertrude Jarrett, Carriebelle Wesse, Carl Moseley, Jack Nordstrom, Albert McGary, Robert Holmes, Jesse Perry, George Rawe, and Ross Scott.[2] Many others were horribly burned.

The five directors were charged with voluntary manslaughter and eventually plead guilty to failure to provide sufficient means of escape, failure to have doors that opened outward, failure to provide proper ventilation, and failure to provide proper sanitation in exchange for the manslaughter charge being dropped.[2] They were fined a total of $1,000 and given suspended 90-day jail sentences.

With its factory in Englewood shut down by Arapahoe County Sheriff John Haynes, the film-turned-aircraft company moved operations to the facilities they had been building in Colorado Springs.[3]

West of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and the Monument Valley Highway (now Interstate 25), the aircraft company had an El Paso County manufacturing plant between Pikeview and Roswell[4] in 1931.[5] The company went bankrupt in August 1932 and was acquired by Aircraft Mechanics Inc., founded by W. F. Theis and Proctor W. Nichols,[6] in April 1937. It produced components for the Douglas Aircraft Company during World War II, US Air Force ejection seats, and Space Shuttle crew seats.[7]

For a brief period from 1928 to 1929, Alexander was the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, and more aircraft were built in Colorado than anywhere else in the world. In the early 1930s, the firm built a revolutionary new plane—the forerunner of modern aircraft, with low wing and retractable gear—called the "Bullet". Several of them crashed in the testing process because the government insisted that the unspinnable plane be tail-spun. The plane later was certificated, though, and became famous in racing and civil aviation. The depression and losses suffered in the Bullet program forced the aircraft firm to fold in the mid-1930s. Alexander would also be known for starting the career of Al Mooney, the founder of Mooney Aircraft, a general aircraft manufacturer that continues in operation in Kerrville, Texas.[8]