Inconspicuous Little Biplane for You to name

OK, Baldeagle, I put your words in the comment section of the picture anf leave it this way. Thanks once more.

Regards, RT

I didn’t mention the Hagerstown museum because I didn’t need to ask them to know that it was a Bellanca CE. The fuselage, wings, struts, undercarriage, engine, and horizontal tails are clearly Bellanca CE. Just putting a different fin and rudder on it and fairings over the rigging cables (not struts) doesn’t make it a different type. Since there were skeptics I confirmed it with a contact at the museum. They have several photos of it in that configuration, and believe that Chamberlain brought it back to Hagerstown and had Kreider and Reisner put on a new fin and rudder that are half of a horizontal tail. In this configuration he flew it at the 1926 National Air Races in, guess where, Philadelphia.
It is simply a Bellanca CE. As Ex Brat says, this shows the limits of depending on the internet.

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Hi Baldeagle,

thank you for your efforts. My comments:

1) You didn’t mention the Hagerstown Museum before. I am used to confirm a solution by googling for it. Doing this for the Bellanca CE, I find differring pictures, none showing the aircraft in the configuration in the picture I posted.
2) How do they know in the museum this particular type is the shown one? Who told you this? Does he quote from a book?
3) Do they have more pictures or other evidences to prove this claim?
4) The Hagerstown Museum runs a website about the Bellanca CE: https://www.hagerstownaviationmuseum.org/bellanca-ce.html The aircraft I posted is not to be seen.
5) Aerofiles says: “…one 1p known as CE Sport [302V], and several incomplete constructions, purchased at auction by Clarence Chamberlain when Maryland Pressed Steel Co filed bankruptcy in 1920.” Not saying a special one was produced for Clarence Chamberlain.
6) I surely could label the aircraft “Bellanca CE Chambelain Special”. But I still would like to know if this is correct.

Thank you for understanding and maybe futher efforts.

Regards RT

You’re certainly free to draw an incorrect conclusion, what are internet forums for? However, I checked with the Hagerstown Aviation Museum, and they confirmed that the aircraft in the photo is in fact a Bellanca CE, built in Hagerstown. In fact that particular one belonged to famous pilot Clarence Chamberlain.

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Thank you for the answers. But, sorry to say, I disagree to the solution “Bellanca CE”. The mismatching tail shape was already mentioned, also the struts supporting the upper wing also are not the Bellanca’s ones. In the position of the x-shapes wires the Bellanca has, the obscure aircraft shows another set of struts!

But anyway, thanks again.

Regards, RT

The Gere is very different.
It is a Bellanca CE, vertical tail shape notwithstanding.

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To be a bit more specific…
the Naval Aircraft Factory rebuilt 80 wartime DH-4s into modernized DH-4Bs, which featured several features of the DH-9s.
The government bought so many wartime DH-4 “Liberty Planes” that the Congress demanded they be used so many were rebuilt and modernized post war…an example being the DH-4Ms with Boeing-built steel tube fuselages.

At one time it was Navy policy to have the NAF build 10% of its aircraft, whoever the original designer, in part to keep a check on costs (to learn what it did cost to build a design).

As far as the small aircraft…while it does have some features in common with the Bellanca (like the non-parallel wing struts) it has a different tail from the Bellanca photos I’ve found. So, it might be an early version or a different type.
At any rate, it’s obscure and rare, it did not receive an A.T.C. post-1928.

Bellanca CE with Anzani engine.
DH-4 in background.

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No idea what the little biplane with radial engine might be but its a De H 4 behind it.

Standard J? Like the little thing in the foreground whatever it is.

Background aircraft – JN-4 with a Hispano engine?

No idea what is might be but it is way too small for a deH 9…….

DH.9 with Liberty engine.