Howard Aircraft Corp. - Specimen Stock Certificate - Aviation is Extremely Popular

Specimen Stock printed by Columbian Bank Note Company. Howard Aircraft Corporation was a small United States aircraft manufacturer in the 1930s and 1940s. The factory was initially on the south side of Chicago Municipal Airport at 5301 W. 65th Street; during World War II a second plant was opened at DuPage Airport west of Chicago. Designer Ben "Benny" Howard, after his success with smaller aircraft, designed and built the Mister Mulligan, a successful 4-seat cross-country racer that also proved a worthy closed-course mount. While Beechcraft had designed and produced their Staggerwing for the private market, that aircraft was mechanically and structurally complex; Howard instead chose to emulate (on a larger scale) the simpler Monocoupe design. After winning both the Bendix and Thompson trophies in 1935, Howard turned to the formation of the Howard Aircraft Company - later Howard Aircraft Corporation on January 1, 1937, to produce commercial versions of the now-famous DGA cabin monoplanes, each custom-built by Ben Howard and Gordon Israel.

One of the airplanes produced by the company was the DGA-11, powered by a nine-cylinder 450 horsepower (340 kW) Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp Junior radial engine, was purportedly the fastest four-seat civil aircraft of the late 1930s, able to achieve a top speed of about 200 miles (320 km) per hour. A favorite of the high society and Hollywood circles, the DGA-11 cost about $16,500 in 1938 — a princely sum for the time. A slower and less costly version, the DGA-12, used a 300 horsepower (220 kW) Jacobs engine. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Aircraft_Corporation