Herbert Rawdon

Herbert Rawdon (30 December 1904 - December 1975 in Wichita, Kansas) was an American aviation pioneer. He was known throughout his life as Herb Rawdon.

Rawdon graduated from Tri-State College in Angola, Indiana in 1925 with a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering, and immediately obtained employment at the Wichita-based Travel Air Manufacturing Company, where he soon rose to the rank of Chief Engineer. Every spring, company boss Walter Beech would come into the Engineering Department and suggest that they convert a stock design into a faster or more powerful airplane to be entered in that year's racing events. In 1927 Rawdon was on the team of engineers that modified a pair of Travel Air 5000 aircraft which won the deadly Dole Air Race to Hawaii. After the 1928 National Air Races, Rawdon told himself, "All things being equal, I'd just as soon not go through this exercise next year." He and his assistant Walter E. Burnham began working on their own at that point to design the Travel Air Type R Mystery Ship, which Beech accepted and built, just in time to enter the 1929 race. The plane ended up winning the race ahead of the fastest military biplanes of the day (the first time that a military airplane had lost that race). The streamlining and low-wing design of this airplane influenced aircraft design for the next decade.

The Great Depression eventually forced Travel Air into bankruptcy, when airplane sales dropped dramatically. The company was bought by Curtiss-Wright, at which time Rawdon left.

In 1933 Rawdon obtained employment as draftsman, first at Lockheed, then at Boeing. He became an engineering instructor at the C-W Technical Institute in 1935, also serving as production manager for Spartan Aircraft Company during that time. From 1937 to 1940 he worked as a design engineer for Douglas Aircraft Company and also consulted for National Aircraft Company (San Antonio, Texas).

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