The PA-15 was a bare-boned, side-by-side, sport aircraft built to keep Piper from bankruptcy.
By: Norm Goyer
My close friend Sparky Barnes Sargent totally rebuilt a Piper PA-17 Vagabond by herself. Over the several years that was required, Sparky documented the project with photos and her thoughts. The story of her Vagabond became her college thesis. At the time I was Editor of Custom Planes, and thanks to a tip from Charles Stites, contacted her and a very successful writing career for Sparky was on the way. Sparky loves her “Vag” and flies it often from her home, which is located on a grass strip. This area of Washington, Oklahoma, is perfect for leisurely site-seeing flights. The original Piper Vagabond PA-15 resulted from a very clever pre-bankruptcy “clean up man.” The resulting PA-15 is credited with saving Piper in the unexpected postwar aviation slump.
The PA-17 Vagabond had sprung landing gear and dual controls. It was also called the Vagabond Trainer.
Piper built some well established post-war aircraft, the J-3 Cub, J-5 Cruiser (PA-12 Super Cruiser) and the J-4 Coupe. The problem was they were pre-war aircraft and did not fit the mold of what 1948 post war pilots wanted to fly or to buy. The airframe was welded steel with some wood parts. The aircraft were fabric covered and were all tail draggers. Piper believed that the airplanes they were marketing were very good airplanes, and they were. But, they were not very saleable post-war airplanes. Technology had advanced, Piper had not. Sales plummeted and Piper was facing possible bankruptcy.
The four-place 115-hp Piper PA-16 Clipper had control sticks. It was replaced very shortly with the PA-20 Piper Pacer which had a larger engine and control wheels.
The word came down, “Build a minimum airplane as cheaply as you can. Use only the parts that are in the warehouse.” Those parts were mostly J-3 parts, steel tubing, fabric, wood parts, 50 gallon barrels of Cub Yellow dope, 65-hp Continental engines and big fat balloon tires. Have at it guys! The resulting aircraft did indeed save Piper from bankruptcy. The PA-15 managed to use all the parts from the Cubs. The wings of the new airplane were cut down one bay which still allowed the fabric rolls to be used without any waste. The plane was a side-by-side sport plane, no dual controls, no landing gear shock struts, no bungee cords only a welded-on, steel-tube landing gear which depended on the low pressure fat tires from the Cub for shock absorbing duties. Piper had the airplane and they used another technique to sell them. It’s called “filling the pipe line.” Call all the Piper dealers and with a little arm twisting cajole them to purchase two of the new minimum PA-15s. Almost all the dealers fell in line looking for the rumored all metal low wing models now on the drawing board. (Comanche no doubt). To help out the dealers, Piper designers took the Piper PA-15, stretched it 17 inches, added two seats in back, added dual controls, shock absorbing landing gear, a larger fuel tank and a 115-hp Lycoming engine. The PA-16 Piper Clipper was born. Almost immediately Pan American filed a breach of copy write suit stating that they had the exclusive rights to the name “Clipper” and didn’t want a little puddle jumper besmirching their great flying boat image. So Piper dumped the Clipper, added a little larger engine, took out the control sticks and added control wheels. prettied it up a bit and the PA-20 Pacer was born, still a modified Vagabond however. The short-wing Piper inventory was slowly growing. But, it was also the decade of the wimpy pilot and the tail dragger was out, and training wheel airplanes were in. Being the leader in the cheap way to do things, Piper turned the main gear around so the wheels were further back behind the CG. Then they added a nose gear and a matching size tire. Most other aircraft used a smaller tire as a nose gear, but not the new PA-22 TriPacer. Like all the Vagabond family the TriPacer was a great flying aircraft; it did look rather dumb, but fly it did, and it was cheap to buy and cheap to fly. Piper had one more dumb trick in its bag called the Colt. They took the TriPacer, removed the two rear seats, removed the rear window and the flaps, put a 115 Lycoming engine in it and hoped to steal some of the learn to fly students from Cessna’s C-150. Didn’t work. There you have it Piper buffs, the story of the PA-15 and PA-17 Vagabond and the launch of the Piper Short wing series. The upcoming Piper Cherokees would save Piper, and just in time. Poor Piper, they were successful, in spite of themselves.