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Curtis Hardeman Pitts (December 9, 1915 – June 10, 2005) was an American aircraft , aircraft manufacturer, crop duster, and airport fixed-base operator. He became widely known and revered in the aerobatics community for his design of the Pitts Special, a series of highly aerobatic . Pitts Specials dominated aerobatic competition from the 1960's to the 1970's. Though later outclassed by newer monoplane designs, Pitts Specials remain popular as sport airplanes for their excellent flying qualities. The Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC has called Curtis Pitts' design "revolutionary because of its small size, light weight, short wingspan and extreme agility".
Settling in Jacksonville, Florida, Curtis met and married Willie Mae Lord. In 1940 he took at job at Naval Air Station Jacksonville as a Naval repair depot aircraft inspector. Curtis continued flying in his spare time, as much as money would allow. Interested in aerobatics, he managed to purchase a Waco F series biplane, but found the performance of the heavy airplane to be dismal, especially in regards to available power vs. weight. Realizing there were no aircraft within his budget capable of the maneuverability he had in mind, he decided to design and build his own airplane.
Curtis shared the project with a friend at the Naval repair depot, Phil Quigley, and the two men devoted all their spare hours over several months turning raw materials into an airplane. They finished in the summer of 1945. Carrying registration N52650, Curtis served as test pilot, taking the prototype into the air for its first flight on August 28, 1945. The minuscule airplane had a wingspan just under 17 feet and an empty weight of about 500 lbs. Limited by a 55 hp Lycoming engine, it still delivered exceptional performance, exactly what Curtis had originally hoped.
The small Lycoming soon gave way to a 90 hp Franklin engine. Curtis experimented with his own home-brewed inverted fuel system on the Franklin with mixed results. Both Curtis and Phil Quigley enjoyed flying the prototype Pitts Special over the next four months, putting 40 hours on it. Local Jacksonville pilots took notice and Curtis recalled, "Everybody was kind of in awe of it...it was a little bitty airplane and they just couldn't believe it could do the things that I was doing".
Curtis had borrowed money to buy the Franklin motor, however, and by the end of 1945, the lender wanted payment. He subsequently sold N52650 to a local agricultural pilot for $2,000. The new owner crashed the airplane a few days later after fuel starving the engine while flying inverted. Fortunately, he walked away from the accident, but the airplane was destroyed.
After the loss of the prototype Pitts Special, Carl Stengel of Stengel's Flying Service in Gainesville convinced Curtis to relocate his family from Jacksonville. Stengel planned to finance the building of 10 more Pitts Specials at his facility and Curtis began building a new airplane. However, the financing fell through and only one incomplete aircraft emerged from the deal. Curtis bought out Stengel's crop dusting and FBO operation in the spring of 1947 and worked to complete Pitts Special #2, carrying registration NX86401.
In 1948 Curtis sold the airplane to airshow pilot and promoter Jess Bristow. Bristow hired Phil Quigley to continue flying the Pitts Special that summer, and one of Bristow's other airshow pilots, Betty Skelton, was so impressed with the airplane she decided to buy it without even test flying it first. She paid Bristow $3,000 for the airplane in August 1948.
Betty re-registered NX86401 as N22E in 1949 and christened it "Little Stinker", winning competitions and performing in air shows between 1949 and 1951. She crated the airplane and took it to England and Ireland, where she flew in the Royal Air Derby and created international interest in the design. Betty retired from performing in 1951 and sold N22E, but she later reacquired the airplane and donated it to the Smithsonian. "Little Stinker", Pitts Special #2/N22E, hangs today in the Udvar-Hazy annex of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
However, the excitement of what he had created would not die out. Other motivated home builders began putting together their own versions of the Pitts Special S-1, examining "Little Stinker" and dropping in on Curtis for advice and rudimentary plans. Dean Case's airplane, N11JC, "Joy's Toy" was completed in 1960 and among the first Pitts-inspired airplanes not built by Curtis. Dean went on to build five more Pitts Specials. Jim Meek, one of Curtis' duster pilots, completed N37J "Mr. Muscles" in late 1959 while working at Pitts' Aero Service in Homestead, no doubt with the help of Curtis and Phil Quigley. Mr Muscles was the first Pitts Special to use a high horsepower 170 HP Lycoming.
"Pitts Special" home builders in the 1950s had to be highly creative as they had little more than shop plan sketches to use as a reference. People began to pressure Curtis to release detailed plans for his Pitts Special and he finally relented in 1961.
With single-seat plans selling well, Curtis moved on to tackle the next challenge, a two-seat version of the Pitts Special. Scaling up the same basic design of the S-1, he came up with the S-2, powered by a 180 hp Lycoming. The prototype S-2, registration N22Q, was ready by the summer of 1966 and Curtis again served as the first test pilot on July 7 of that year. Dubbed the "Big Stinker", Curtis flew the S-2 to that summer's Experimental Aircraft Association fly-in at Rockford, IL. Recognizing the commercial appeal of the two-seat airplane, Curtis began pursuing FAA Type certificate of the design such that he could manufacture and sell completed airplanes. N22Q now resides at the EAA Aviation Museum in Oshkosh, WI.
Curtis sold his crop dusting business in the late '60s and dedicated himself to designing and producing aircraft, forming the company "Pitts Aviation Enterprises". In the summer of 1967 he set up shop on a grass airstrip at 21155 SW 320th St., still in Homestead, where he remained for the rest of his life. He initially sold S-1C plans and provided certain specialty parts to builders by request, inviting them to reach out by phone or visit anytime for help completing their projects.
He began experimenting with symmetrical airfoil wing designs in the mid-'60s, hoping to improve inverted flight characteristics. Enlisting Pat Ledford's N8L to serve as a test bed, the initial effort almost cost Curtis his life during spin testing. He remembered, "The first wings had a sharp leading edge and a sneaky stall...just happened without warning. I was out one day and got into a spin, so I recovered, started to pull up, and I was in a spin again. By the time I got things sorted out and was able to straighten it out, I got pretty low. When I came around the bottom on recovery I could have counted the blades of grass on the ground. It was close." After that experience, Curtis reportedly removed the wings from N8L and took a saw to them. He persevered, however, and soon had a working design. He began building an updated S-1 with the new symmetric wings.
In 1969 three airshow performers, Gene Soucy, Marion Cole, and Bob Heuer, formed a Pitts aerobatic team known as the "Red Devils". The team continued into the 1970s with Tom Poberezny and Charlie Hillard joining Gene Soucy after Cole and Heuer left.
Work on the S-2 continued with an upgraded 200 hp Lycoming engine and a constant-speed propeller, dubbed the S-2A.
Pitts Aviation Enterprises began turning out kit versions of the S-1 while continuing to sell S-1C "flat wing" (non-symmetrical airfoil) plans. The FAA granted certification to the S-1S and Curtis began building and selling completed airplanes at a slow rate.
In October 1970 Curtis learned that an aircraft factory with a skilled local workforce was vacant in Afton, Wyoming. Herb Anderson, the owner of Aerotek in Afton, convinced him to license production of Pitts aircraft to Aerotek. Curtis retained the rights to the designs as well as responsibilities for engineering support and marketing. The type certificate for the S-2A was finally issued in the spring of 1971 and the factory in Afton began building the first airplane, an S-2A.
The first production S-2A completed at Afton, N14CB, went to airshow performer Marion Cole. Airshow great Art Scholl bought another early S-2A, N13AS, and adapted the airplane to cover the front cockpit and add a single-seat bubble canopy to the rear. S-1S production soon moved to Afton as well. Curtis and Doyle Child subsequently bought Aerotek from Herb and they operated it as a partnership.
The 1972 USA Aerobatics Team won the FAI World Aerobatic Championships flying the S-1S exclusively. Experimental/amateur built model S-1S aircraft began appearing in large numbers in the early 1970's, but most had home brew wings as Curtis did not initially release plans for them. The factory in Afton cranked out complete certified S-1S aircraft alongside S-2A's, building four aircraft per month (2 of each design). Eventually, kits and plans for both Pitts Special types were released as models S-1E and S-2E, with the "E" to designate them as experimental/amateur built. The S-1S became the gold standard aerobatic competition aircraft of the 1970's.
Always interested in improving the design, Curtis came up with an updated S-1 in the mid-1970s, the S-1T. This aircraft was designed around a 200 hp angle valve Lycoming motor, changing the shape of the firewall and reversing the angle of the Cabane struts, among other small changes. The prototype S-1T, N22XP, still exists at the Pitts Flying Museum in Queen Creek, AZ (along with N8L, N14CB, and other historic Pitts artifacts).
Despite his semi-retirement, Curtis remained an integral part of the aerobatics community and continued to produce new designs, including the S-1-11B "Super Stinker" and the Pitts Model 12 "Macho Stinker" in the late 1990s. Curtis designed the Model 12 around the Russian M14P/PF radial engine and the design is now owned by Don Adamson of 92nd West Aviation, Inc, Lonoke, Arkansas. 92nd West produces Model 12 plans sets, kits, and completed aircraft on order.
In the 1980 aviation drama film Cloud Dancer Curtis Pitts appears in a brief scene, played by Woodrow Chambliss.
In 1987 he was inducted into the International Aerobatic Club's "Aerobatics Hall of Fame".
His 75th birthday became a major event in 1990, with dozens of Pitts Specials traveling to Florida and hundreds of friends gathering to celebrate. Friends built and flew a replica of the first S-1 prototype to mark the occasion.
Pitts was inducted into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame in 1991, and the International Council of Airshows (ICAS) Foundation Hall of Fame in 2002.
"Ma Pitts", Willie Mae, passed away in 1998.
The last aircraft Curtis designed was the Pitts Model 14, a large biplane similar in size to the Model 12, but no example was built during his lifetime.
Aviation writer and Pitts owner/pilot Budd Davisson summarized it best when he wrote: "To most folks outside of the Pitts community, those of us who fly his little biplanes appear to be just another group of enthusiasts who like a specific kind of flying machine. But it's more than that. Once you learn to make love to that sometimes-cantankerous little flying machine, you inevitably find that it's more than a machine. It's a semi-animate being that becomes a living part of your life. The boundary between man and machine, between mechanical interest and lifestyle, blurs, and you find yourself part of a community of kindred souls, all of whom have the same father—Curtis Pitts. You're part of a brotherhood because of that. There's a feeling of family and belonging that's hard to explain, and at the heart of it all is the love of a smiling, slow-talking gent from Homestead, Fla."
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