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September 1912, Italian immigrant Giuseppe Bellanca founded the Bellanca
Aeroplane Company and Flying School in Brooklyn, New York to manufacture
aircraft and conduct flight training. Bellanca built two airplanes
in his native Sicily before constructing the Parasol in the back of
his brother's grocery store in Brooklyn in 1911 and he then proceeded
to test fly the aircraft, while at the same time, teaching himself how
to fly. The Parasol was a small tractor monoplane with a parasol wing,
30 horsepower Anzani engine, and a simple open framework with a seat
on the lower longeron. After the formation of the school and construction
of another aircraft, Bellanca began instructing from the ground as
students experimented with short hops in the single-seat aircraft. One
of his early students was Fiorello LaGuardia, later a World War I bomber
pilot and mayor of New York City, who offered to teach Bellanca to drive
a Model T Ford in return.
The Maryland Pressed
Steel Company contracted Bellanca to build a trainer and in September
1916, he finished the Bellanca C.D., a biplane with a radial engine
and wing warping for lateral control. The C.E. soon followed quickly
with ailerons and a radial Anzani engine that produced a maximum speed
of 102 mph and was purchased by Clarence Chamberlain as a barnstorming
aircraft. Lured to Omaha, Nebraska, by a short-lived business proposition,
Bellanca then formed the Roos-Bellanca Aircraft Company with Victor
H. Roos and A.H. Fetters to complete the in-progress Bellanca C.F.
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