T. Claude Ryan

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Tubal Claude Ryan (January 3, 1898 – September 11, 1982) was an American aviator born in Parsons, Kansas. Ryan was best known for founding the Ryan Flying Company in 1922. The Ryan Flying Company became the first all-year airplane passenger service in the United States in 1925, between San Diego, California and Los Angeles, California. The company's first aircraft, the M-1 Mail plane developed in 1926, was the first production monoplane in the country, and provided the design basis for Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis.

Ryan sold the Ryan Flying Company (renamed Ryan Airlines) to his business partner, Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Mahoney in 1925, and remained to manage it. He was approached by a group of St. Louis, Missouri, businessmen to build an aircraft to cross the Atlantic non-stop (to be flown by Charles A. Lindbergh), but had no financial interest in the company and made no financial gain from the project.

He formed a company known as Ryan Aeronautical Company in 1926 to import engines made by Siemens in Germany, and was bought out by them in 1928. He then opened a flying school in San Diego, which was renamed as the Ryan School of Aeronautics in 1931^[1]. Dissatisfied with the trainer aircraft available at the time, he decided to produce his own, and returned to manufacturing^[1]. In 1934 the Ryan ST, the first product of the fourth company to bear his name, the second incarnation of the Ryan Aeronautical Company (which became known as "Ryan Aircraft"), flew for the first time. The ST was developed into a series of aircraft that were widely used by civilian organisations and Air forces worldwide.