Alfred W. Lawson was a dreamer, an aviation visionary whose ideas about passenger-carrying trans- ports were clearly ahead of their time. As early as 1908, Lawson established a reputation in America’s infant aeronautical community as a proponent of large airplanes. By 1919 he was designing and constructing massive multi-engine biplanes that he claimed would be capable of carrying 20 to 32 passengers on nonstop flights of up to 800 miles. In addition to declaring himself the “creator of improved aircraft,” he often boasted that “there has never been a man hurt in a Lawson airplane.” He became known as a tough advocate of flight safety at the expense of performance.
Born in London in March 1869, Lawson gained U.S. citizenship in 1872. He was trained as a tailor, but spent two decades as a professional baseball player, organizer and manager. In 1908, despite having no publishing training or experience, Lawson once again branched out in a new direction, launching Fly: The National Aeronautic Magazine in Philadelphia. His new magazine, published for less than a year, was specifically designed to draw attention to the future potential of “big passenger-carrying ships of the air.” In 1910 he relocated to New York City and started Aircraft magazine, which further promoted the idea of large transports.
In 1913 Lawson soloed in a Blériot monoplane, and that same year he joined forces with Germany’s Schutte-Lanz Airship Company in an attempt to launch scheduled airline service between New York City and Washington, D.C., via Schutte-Lanz rigid airships. Unfortunately for Lawson, escalating political tensions in Europe led Kaiser Wilhelm II to forbid transfer of the airship’s plans outside Germany.
During World War I, Lawson served as general manager of the Lawson Aircraft Corporation. Hoping to attract orders from the U.S. Army, his company designed the MT-1 primary trainer, the MT-2 advanced trainer and the MT-3, intended for reconnaissance missions. A fourth airplane, dubbed the “Steel Battler,” was to be armed with eight machine guns for ground attack, though the prototype of that design was not completed before the armistice of November 1918.
Lawson’s aircraft firm closed its doors a short time later, but in 1919 he secured investor financing and established the Lawson Air Line Transportation Company in Milwaukee, Wis., with a goal of designing and constructing large passenger transports. Its first airplane, the C-2, flew in August 1919, and by 1920 a bigger transport, the L-4 trimotor, was under construction. Designed for a variety of cabin configurations based on anticipated routes, Lawson’s latest brainchild embodied many innovative concepts. These included the ability to convert the cabin from daytime seating for 26 passengers to sleeper berths at night; a lavatory, complete with white-tiled floor and enameled walls; a hot/cold water tank serving an enclosed shower; and a washstand, mirror and a separate tank holding drinking water.
Since Lawson had obtained contracts to carry the mail, a special chute was installed behind the L-4’s lavatory, along with a baggage compartment. Both could be reached on the ground or aloft through a door in the aft cabin. A narrow walkway farther aft allowed the crew to inspect the airframe during flight. The cabin structure was laminated spruce covered with veneer for additional reinforcement, and the entire cabin was sheathed in mahogany, with cream ac cents and green carpet. All the windows were safety glass except those in the cockpit, which used conventional celluloid material that could accept a convex curvature.
Dual Deperdussin-type control wheels graced the flight deck, activating the ailerons via a unique rack-and-pinion system. The elevator and rudder controls, however, were connected via conventional cables routed under the cabin’s left side. The mahogany instrument panel featured an airspeed in dicator, altimeter, lateral and longitudinal inclinometers and a vertical speed indicator. Complementing those instruments were a trio of Delco ignition booster coils for the engine magnetos, three tachometers and three sets of indicators for oil pressure/temperature and water temperature.
Similar to the controls in modern airplanes, the three throttle levers were located in a console between the pilot and navigator. The console also housed another innovative feature, a wheel for adjusting pitch trim via a special control surface on the aft fuselage forward of the elevator and rudder control surfaces. Operated by a separate set of cables, the trim system relieved heavy control forces in the pitch axis and reduced pilot workload. All the switches for the L-4’s rudimentary electrical system were installed in an overhead panel.
The wings, covered with doped linen and spanning 120 feet, were slightly unequal in area: 1,250 square feet (including ailerons) for the upper wing and 1,175 square feet for the lower. The wood spars were built up of spruce laminated in two pieces and reinforced by two hardwood strips on the top and bottom. The wing ribs were spruce. The aircraft’s balanced ailerons (two upper, two lower) used a push-pull tube system instead of cables.
Pitch and yaw control was provided by a biplane empennage featuring dual balanced elevators and three rudders, the outer two of which were balanced. To support the L-4’s total weight of 22,820 pounds on the ground, including 4,589 pounds of fuel, oil and water for the engines, the fixed landing gear was equipped with four Palmer wheels, each 49 inches in diameter and 10 inches wide. Rubber shock absorbers reduced the impact of taxiing, takeoffs and landings.
In 1920 the availability of American-built engines with sufficient power and reliability to propel a large aircraft was limited. Lawson’s engineers chose to equip the L-4 with three Liberty 12-cylinder power plants, each of which developed 400 hp, turning two-blade, fixed-pitch wood propellers 10 feet in diameter. Two of the engines were partially enclosed in nacelles between the inner wing bays and the cabin, with the third engine installed in the nose. Each aluminum-covered nacelle housed a fuel tank holding 490 gallons. The center engine’s tank, located under the cockpit, held 149 gallons.
Three radiators were mounted on the sides and backs of the engines to cool circulating water, but only the aft-mounted radiators were equipped with adjustable vanes to control airflow. Header tanks in the leading edge of the upper wing used a maze of pipes routed between the engine water outlets and radiator inlets. The flow of air around these pipes helped to further cool the water during flight.
The cockpit crew consisted of a pilot, navigator and mechanic, who occupied a first-row seat on the cabin’s right side. During flights the mechanic’s job was to monitor a special instrument panel displaying air pressure from the engines that fed an air distribution tank connected to each engine’s fuel tank. The air served to slightly pressurize fuel to facilitate starting. The mechanic could also advance or retard the magnetos to further assist with starting and operating the engines.
Although the L-4 featured sound airframe design and conventional construction for 1920, the airliner’s performance— at least on paper—promised to be woefully inadequate. With all three Liberty engines roaring at full power (1,700 rpm), the aircraft’s maximum speed was only 112 mph, while at a cruise power setting of 1,400 rpm it lumbered along at just 70 mph. Company specifications stated the airplane had a service ceiling of 22,000 feet and a maximum range of 800 miles at cruising airspeed, but Lawson’s leviathan never got the opportunity to prove its claims.
Completed in December 1920 and dubbed the Midnight Airliner, the L-4 did not actually get off the ground until May 1921. Instead of disassembling the behemoth biplane and transporting it to an airfield with an adequate runway, Lawson opted to attempt its maiden flight from a hastily prepared dirt strip near his Milwaukee factory. Only a few hundred feet long, the runway was clearly unsafe for an airplane the size and weight of the L-4. Though two pilots somehow managed to coax the plane aloft, it crashed after colliding with some trees. Fortunately there were no fatalities, but the accident led to the demise of Lawson’s company in 1922 and the end of his dream of building passenger transports.
Alfred Lawson would briefly reappear on the aviation scene during the late 1920s with another proposed design, this time for a double-decker transport that could carry more than 100 passengers. But that was the last hurrah for a man whose vision, although never fulfilled, had helped to inspire America’s airline industry.
Originally published in the January 2015 issue of Aviation History. To subscribe, click here.
