Ryan ST-A
The Sport Trainer
“Art Deco given wings, in mirror-polished aluminum.”
Ryan Aeronautical · private
Ryan's 1934 Sport Trainer looked like nothing else at the airfield: a gleaming bare-metal fuselage, tandem open cockpits, and flying wires singing in the slipstream. The aerobatic ST-A became the Army's first monoplane primary trainer, and its descendants schooled thousands of WWII pilots as the PT-22 Recruit — 1,568 of the family built in all. The original silver civilian STs are nearly extinct.
Only 3 Ryan STs remain on the registry — but more than a thousand of its PT-22 Recruit descendants taught America's WWII pilots to fly.
Mirror-polished bare metal, tandem open cockpits, fixed gear in teardrop wheel pants, and bracing wires running from wing to wheel. If the whole airplane is chrome, it's a Ryan.
One might be overhead right now.
Bogey turns the The Sport Trainer from a dot in the sky into a card in your logbook.
