ERCOUPE 415

A truly innovative aircraft, the Engineering and Research Company (ERCO) Ercoupe is a low-wing, single-engine, two-seat, monoplane created for the burgeoning civil aviation market prior to the Second World War. Designed to be flown by non-professional pilots the Ercoupe contained features that produced an aircraft that was economical, safe, easy to fly, and certified by the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) as “characteristically incapable of spinning” and nearly impossible to stall. The aircraft’s unique elevator design allowed only 13° of travel, coupled with automatic yaw correction the aircraft was able to fly itself out of a spin.

Going on sale in 1940, only 112 Ercoupe 415s were delivered before the advent of hostilities and the company switched to military contracts. Ercoupes were widely used for pilot training and by the Civil Air Patrol. Production of the Ercoupe design resumed after the war with the last model being the 1970 “Mooney 10”.

The Ercoupe holds the distinction of being the United States first “rocket-assisted” fixed-wing aircraft. On August 12, 1941, at March Field, California USAAF Captain Homer A. Boushey Jr. piloted a civilian Ercoupe 415 NC 28655 fitted with a Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, Caltech (forerunner of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) solid propellant Jet Assisted Take-Off (JATO) booster with a thrust of twenty-eight pounds. The tests proved the potential of rocket assisted take off for heavily loaded aircraft. In the post-war period JATO has been successfully used on a number of aircraft including the B-47 Stratojet and C-130 Hercules.

The museum’s Ercoupe 415C N2640H was manufactured in 1946. 

SPECIFICATIONS:

Crew: 1.

Capacity: 1 passenger.

Length: 20 ft 9 in

Height: 5 ft 11 in

Wing area: 142.6 ft² 

Empty weight: 749 lb

Useful load: 511 lb

Max takeoff weight: 1,260 lb