Peter M. Bowers


Peter M. Bowers was a journalist specializing in the field of aviation.
Bowers is famed in the general aviation community for his work with General Aviation News. Writing 26 books and over 800 articles detailing historic aircraft for a column called "Of Wings and Things", Bowers was a fixture of the newspaper for decades. Also an engineer at Boeing, he was an avid aviation photographer and also designed homebuilt aircraft such as the Fly Baby and Namu II. Bowers also completed and flew a Detroit G1 Gull primary glider.
Bowers lived in Seattle for most of his life. He spent five years in the U.S. Army Air Force as a maintenance and intelligence officer. He served as a contributing editor for Sentry Publications' twin magazine titles Wings and Airpower, drawing on a lifetime of aviation photographs of his own, and of a vast archive collected through his employment at Boeing. Bowers died from cancer in 2003.
Under its Fly Baby entry Jane's All The World's Aircraft, 1964-1965, says of Bowers:

Mr. Peter Bowers, an aeronautical engineer with Boeing in Seattle, is a principal source of detailed information on vintage aircraft in the United States, and has provided much of the data for a number of replicas of 1914-18 War aircraft now under construction or flying. He is currently engaged on a redesign of the Fokker D.VIII monoplane of 1918 in association with Herr Rheinhold Platz, the original designer, with a view to starting a replica building program.
A full-scale Fokker Triplane replica of this period has been under construction by Mr. Bowers for nearly five years. At least six others are known to be under construction from plans that he has provided.
Another aircraft built by Mr. Bowers is a full-scale replica of the Wright Model EX of 1911, the first aeroplane to cross the American continent. This machine was tested as a towed sailplane in the Autumn of 1961 and is to be powered by a converted "B" Ford automobile engine from a 1938 Funk monoplane.
In addition to this work on replicas, Mr. Bowers has designed and built a single-seat light aircraft known as the Fly Baby...