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In Daryl Murphy's "Planes & People"

Al Mooney's Mighty Mite

By Daryl Murphy ©2005

For $2,965 in 1954, you could buy a 140 mph Mooney Mite M-18C that burned 3 1/2 gallons of fuel per hour.

The Mooney M-18 "Mite" could be described as the most efficient airplane ever built. With 65 hp, it could reach speeds of 140 mph, and designer Al Mooney once flew it on a 1,300-mile trip from Brownsville, Tex. To Watertown, S.D. and averaged 35 miles per gallon.

Al and his brother Art-who often served as his manufacturing expert-had professionally lived a gypsy life from the time they had started in the airplane business in 1924. Al's first design (M-1) was the successful Eaglerock for Alexander Aircraft in Denver, and then he created the M-2 for Marshall/Montague Monoplane Co. in Marshall, Missouri before returning for a second tour at Alexander and the M-3 Eaglerock and M-4 Bullet. The first Mooney Aircraft, the M-5, was created in Wichita in 1929. Al attempted to set a distance record by flying the one and only M-5 from California to New York, but was forced down when his Kinner engine quit over rural Ohio-after 22 hours, 27 minutes and 1,980 miles, which doubled the existing class record...

In 1931, Mooney moved to Bellanca for the next three creations, The C-27A Army cargo plane, a similar design for use in the Canadian North and a racing plane named Irish Swoop.

The Bellanca C-27A cargo aircraft, 1932

"Irish Swoop," built for the 1934 MacRobertson England-to-Australia air race

Al next designed the M-10 Monosport and twin-Menasco M-11 Monocoach for Monocoupe in St. Louis. Then they moved back to Wichita in 1939 and Al created the M-12 Culver Cadet, a series of target drones and the M-17 Culver V. He and Art quit when military orders began to dry up late in the war.

Al Mooney signed a partnership agreement with local investor Pappy Yankey in July 1946 to form the Mooney Aircraft Company of Wichita. The principal product would be the M-18, a sleek single-place, all-wood retractable design that was sort of a poor man's fighter plane.

To hold cost down, Al began thinking of industrial engines rather than the conventional flat fours. Waukesha and Hercules nibbled but did not bite. Then he found Crosley Motors in Cincinnati. Owner Powell Crosley, Jr. was building a phenomenal little overhead cam, water-cooled inline four for the Crosley mini-car. Its block was a lightweight welded assembly and it had a five main bearing crankshaft. The 44 cu. in engine produced 26.5 hp @5,000 rpm.

Left side of the modified 44 cu. in Crosley auto engine showing reduction gear, as used in the Mite prototype. (Kansas Aviation Museum)

Right side of Crosley engine. Note the generator behind exhaust header; the powerplant had to be installed hind-end-forward in the aircraft (Kansas Aviation Museum)

There were some modifications needed to get certification as an aircraft powerplant, of course. Mooney's shop brazed a second set of spark plug holes and a 1.9:1 belt-driven reduction gear was fitted before 50-hour FAA tests were begun. Problems ensued because engine parts did not always match prints submitted, so they changed the drawings.

"In hindsight, what we should have done right there was forget the Crosley and install a 65 hp Continental or Lycoming," Al Mooney later said.

M-18 Mite with Crosley engine; note radiator under fuselage

Valve trouble cropped up because they were using automotive fuel, so they changed valves and switched to avgas. Then sealed bearings on the prop shaft failed. Once everything was fixed, the little engine was installed in the prototype airframe and was flown. Just on a hunch, Al had the airframe tested to higher speeds and weights. He was already looking askance at the Crosley.

The Mite was the lowest cost transportation of any means then known, and it promised to be the weekend pilot's dream, but its production was soon suspended while development went ahead to increase the engine's power rating.

Mooney decided to drop the auto engine and switch to a four-cylinder, 65 hp Lycoming O-145. That version was the M-18L, certified March 15, 1949 with a gross weight of 780 lb. While that change lowered the overall economy, the performance gain was astounding; even ex-fighter pilots took a fancy to it.

Gross weight was increased to 850 lb. in the M-18-LA, and the M-18-C used a 65 hp Continental at the same weight; the Continental engine proved to make the airplane a slightly better performer. The last version was the M-18-C55, with a larger cockpit area and bigger canopy.

Besides its blazing performance and miserly fuel use, a small aircraft like the Mite had other advantages.

In 1950, while flying the prototype throughout the East looking for sales, Al had to make a landing in Mount Union, Penn. after scud running along a railroad track. In his haste to get on the ground, he forgot to crank the gear down.

"As I jockeyed for the landing and flared, the wheels didn't seem to touch," he related. "Then wham! The tailskid touched, down went the nose, pieces of the prop flew, and we slid to a quick halt on the belly."

Mooney walked up the runway and found four men sitting in a hangar. "I told them I'd made a belly landing and needed help in lifting the airplane so I could lower the gear. They must have thought I was some kind of nut, but they followed me out into the fog. They easily lifted the Mite, and I reached in and lowered the gear."

Other than a broken prop, there was no damage to the airplane, and in two days he had installed a new one and continued his trip.

Mite deliveries began late in mid-1948, and in the five years it was produced in Wichita, some 239 rolled out of the factory. An additional 65 were built in Kerrville, Texas after the company moved there in 1955. Al and Art Mooney left Mooney Aircraft, Inc. in 1968; neither had ever owned any of the companies that carried their name. Al quit after his M-20 design got FAA production approval in 1955 and went to work at Lockheed in Marietta, Ga., where his last three designs were fashioned for the Lockheed Possum Works he headed. Al Mooney retired back to Texas on the last day of 1968.

Specifications and Performance

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