An Entrant in the Ford Reliability Tour of 1928

This aircraft is a Ryan B-1 Brougham, S/N 118 (ATC 25). It shares lineage with the “Spirit of St. Louis”, but was built during the following year. The B.F. Mahoney Aircraft Co., San Diego, CA manufactured it on 6/16/28. It was equipped with a 220 HP Wright J-5AB Whirlwind engine, S/N 8496. It weighed 3,300 pounds.

NC5553 was sold on 6/20/28 to Ryan Distributor Mutual Aircraft Corporation of Los Angeles. While in Mutual’s possession, the airplane was entered in the 1928 Ford Reliability Tour, scheduled for the next month. They chose as their pilot Vance Breese. The airplane was assigned tour #16.

The 1928 tour passed through Tucson (review this link for tour information). It was during the tour, on 7/10/28, that the airplane touched down amid the flurry of other tour participants that landed late in the morning (look near the bottom of this Register page to get a feel for the excitement that morning). Breese was accompanied by passengers Larry Gunther and J.T. Hurst. They completed the tour, and at the finish line they placed 9th.

That winter, on 12/28/28, with 205.5 flight hours, the airplane sold to Charles W. Seaton of Riverside, CA. He flew over five hundred hours and maintained the airplane for a few years, installing new control cables, repairing the fuselage and re-covering the fuselage and tail surfaces as of 5/31/32 (765.5 flight hours).

On 12/6/32 it was involved in an accident in Chiapas, Mexico and “washed out”. There was no record of who the pilot/passengers were, or if they survived. The registration was cancelled 1/24/33.

UPLOADED: 6/27/05 REVISED: