John W Thorp

John Willard Thorp (June 20th, 1912 - April 18th, 1992) is an American aeronautical engineer who drew a family of light planes while working for the research departments of large manufacturers.

Born in 1912 with French Camp, California, John W Thorp grows with Lockeford, California. It off integrates the Boeing School Aeronautics into Oakland, California, and works on the final assembly line of the Boeing 247. Learning how to control in 1929, it obtains a license of pilot deprived in 1930 and adds up more than 300 hours of flight on 30 types different of planes in 1935. It is at the time where it is at the school Boeing that it starts to draw light planes. With his comrade Rudy Paulic it builds the Thorp T-3 and Thorp T-5 at the Boeing School then founds Thorp Aircraft Corp with Oakland, California. Engaged at Lockheed during the war, it is responsible for the Lockheed Little Dipper and Lockheed Big Dipper, then preliminary studies of the Lockheed P2V Neptune. Since 1944 it takes again the design of light planes with the Thorp T-11 Sky Skooter.

In 1949 is created the Thorp Aircraft Co with Pacoima, California, and draws for Fletcher Aviation three apparatuses of which the Fletcher FU-24 Utility, agricultural plane produced with more than 300 specimens, primarily for the needs for the New Zealand. In 1956 is created the Thorp Engineering Co with Burbank, California and John W Thorp develops for Piper the version 180 ch du Piper PA-28 Cherokee while working with a version twin-engine of Skooter, Thorp T-17 Wing Derringer. In 1962 it modernizes the Thorp T-11 Sky Skooter of 1945, which becomes Thorp T-211 Sky Skooter and still studies a project of four-seater light twin-jet aircraft. In 1985 appears in Lockeford the Thorp 211 Aircraft Co and in 1990 Thorp Aero Inc is made up in the Kentucky to ensure the sales promotion of the Thorp T-211 Sky Scooter out of the United States.

It also designs the two-seater T-18 Tiger in the field of construction amateur. This two-seater side by side, entirely metal, motorized by 150 with 180 ch, was built with tens of specimens in the world. An old driver of USAF, Mr. Taylor, carried out the first round the world tour carried out by a plane of construction amateur, with the orders of his T-18.

John W. Thorp died in 1992. The rights on the Thorp T-211 Sky Skooter became in 2003 the property of Indus Aviation Inc, which benefitted from the appearance in the USA of a new category of planes (LSA) to start again in 2004 the marketing of this light two-seater.

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