For almost 100 years, the Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology (originally the Spartan School of Aeronautics), founded in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has been one of the most reputable institutions in the United States for students to acquire skills in aerospace, from flight training and aviation maintenance to aviation electronics and technology management. Though Spartan now has branches in Broomfield, Colorado, Inglewood, Los Angeles, and at the historic Flabob Airport near Riverside, California, its roots remain firmly in the Tulsa community, as it was an outgrowth of the Spartan Aircraft Company based there and the founder of both the aircraft company and the college, oil executive William Skelly, helped to establish the Tulsa Municipal Airport, which has now developed into Tulsa International Airport, one of the biggest hubs for commercial aviation in the United States.
As a part of Tulsa’s long aviation history, both the history of the Spartan Aircraft Company and Spartan College form integral links in the historical narrative told by the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and Planetarium, one of the Sooner State’s largest aviation museums. Here, the museum features no less than three aircraft built in Tulsa by the Spartan Aircraft Company, each with its own story that makes it stand out, with one of these being quite literally one of a kind.
Spartan C2-60 NC11908 (s/n J-15)
The oldest of the Spartan aircraft on display at the Tulsa Air and Space Museum is a small maroon and orange-colored monoplane of the early 1930s, a Spartan C2. Prior to the development of the C2, the most successful design from the Spartan Aircraft Company (originally founded in Tulsa as the Mid-Continent Aircraft Manufacturing Company) was the Spartan C3, an open-cockpit biplane designed for flight training, and used as the Spartan School of Aeronautics primary training aircraft, with the company constructing about 122 examples of this type. Spartan attempted to follow up the C3’s modest success with the C4 and C5 cabin monoplanes, but because of the financial constraints of the Great Depression, only 7 Spartan C4s and 4 Spartan C4s were ever built. Realizing that a smaller aircraft designed for sport pilots had a greater potential for success, the company introduced the Spartan C2 in 1931. Powered by a Jacobs L-3 3-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine with an output of 60 hp, the output of this engine gave the aircraft the company designation C2-60. Production began on both the C2-60, and a more powerful variant, the C2-165, which was powered by a 165 hp Wright J-5 Whirlwind radial engine. However, the economic hardships of the Great Depression ensured that production came to a with only around 16 C2-60s and two C2-165s built, but both the Spartan Aircraft Company and the Spartan College survived and moved on to new designs.
Built as construction number J-15, the Tulsa Air and Space Museum’s Spartan C2-60 is one of only two examples of the type known to exist today. It was rebuilt by a member of the Antique Airplane Association (AAA), George Goodhead, who in 1937 had been a graduate of the Spartan College of Aeronautics at Tulsa, and had acquired two hours of flight time in a Spartan C2-60 before completing his flight training in a Piper J-3 Cub. Nevertheless, Goodhead always wanted to have his own Spartan C2-60, and in 1958, began working on acquiring or restoring a C2-60. He first went back to the Spartan College, and though the original drawings had been discarded, Goodhead found a wing assembly tracing and some fitting tracings. An inquiry with the FAA’s was less fruitful, so Goodhead wrote an ad titled “C2-60 Wanted” in American Airman, the official magazine of the Antique Airplane Association, Later, Goodhead got a letter from an Eastern Airlines pilot named Bob Beitel, who mentioned he had a Spartan C2-60 fuselage and assorted parts stored at his parent’s basement in Tiffin, Ohio. Goodhead and his wife Betty, returned home to Tulsa with the fuselage, plus the landing gear, engine mount, wing fittings, and the tail, where Goodhead would later sandblast the metal parts and apply a protective coating of zinc-chromate before he and his friend, Encel Kleier constructed new fuselage fairings, new elevator and rudder control cables, and a new instrument panel. With that, the fuselage was certified to be ready to be covered in doped fabric. With the fuselage rebuilt, Goodhead began his search for a Jacobs L-3 engine, which by the late 1950s was as rare as the Spartan C2. On a hunch, he contacted the Jacobs Aircraft Engine Company in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, to see if they had an L-3. By this point, the company was shutting down its operations, which included a museum of engines built by the Jacobs company. Among their collections was a zero-time L-3 engine that had been displayed for 25 years in the company’s museum. From a starting price of $500, Goodhead acquired the Jacobs radial engine for $400 (worth about $4,495 in 2025). After bringing the engine to Tulsa, it was run for the first time on November 25, 1960. After acquiring a Hamilton ground-adjustable propeller from M.V. Williams of Gibson City, Illinois, the last thing Goodhead needed to do was build a new set of wings for his aircraft. It was then that he found that another pilot, Bruce Molleur of Greenland, New Hampshire, was restoring the only other surviving Spartan C2-60, construction number J-3, NC11016. In exchange for allowing Goodhead to use Molleur’s wing spars as patterns for his own project, Goodhead built a new set of landing gear fairings for Molleur’s C2-60 project, which was completed and flown before Goodhead’s C2-60. Though Spartan C2-60 was getting closer to completion, Goodhead decided to focus on other aircraft restoration projects and entrusted the completion of the airplane to his friend J.O. Payne of the Spartan School of Aeronautics. Goodhead arranged to have the C2-60 brought back to the Spartan College to have the students complete the project by installing the Jacobs radial engine, constructing a new engine cowling, completing the wings, installing the wheels and brakes of a Piper Cub for safety reasons, and applying fabric on the aircraft.
On April 24, 1967, the FAA officially licensed the Spartan C2-60 built from the airframes of J-9, J-13, and J-15 as N11908. That same day, George Goodhead’s friend and fellow pilot Gene Chase took the aircraft on its first post-restoration flight. Chase would later note of his early evening flight that “The only faults I uncovered were that the airplane was a little out of rig and the engine had a rough spot between 1,100 and 1,500 rpm. Straight-and-level flight could only be accomplished by holding considerable back pressure on the stick, maintaining moderate right rudder, and holding a little left aileron.” On May 2, 1967, Goodhead took flight in N11908, the first time he had flown a Spartan C2-60 in 30 years. The aircraft would spend some time on display at the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) Museum, then located in Hales Corners, Wisconsin, before returning to Oklahoma, and later being sold to Bert and Mary Mahon, who later took the airplane with them to Justin Time Airport near Justin, Texas. All of these details can be read in Jay B. Miller’s article for the January 1981 issue of AOPA Pilot, The Other Spartan, which can be accessed HERE, and in Gordon Goodhead’s article for the August 1967 issue of EAA Sport Aviation HERE.
After going through several owners over the years, Spartan C2-60 NC11908 was acquired by the Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology and is now on loan by the college to the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, where it is suspended from the ceiling of the museum. The only other Spartan C2-60 on public display, construction number J-3, N11016, is currently maintained in airworthy condition at the Western Antique Aeroplane and Automobile Museum (WAAAM) in Hood River, Oregon, while another C2-60, N11904 (c/n J-11), is listed to a private owner in Wyoming.
Spartan NE-1 BuNo 3691, c/n 47 …