eBay Guides - JOE OTT MODEL AIRPLANE KITS 1920

JOE OTT MANUFACTURING

The model airplane designer and kit manufacturer, Joseph S. Ott (Joe Ott) was born in 1900 and died at the age of 86. His birthdate is sort of important as you'll learn in the next paragraph.

Ott was a designer and builder of model airplanes. Early designs depended upon spruce and bamboo for construction which consisted of a lot of twin-boom pushers and sticks. The explosion of model kits didn't happen until balsa wood began to be used in the late 1920s. Ott's major contributions to modeling began in the 1930s. He authored the book, MODEL AIRPLANES - Building and Flying, published in 1931 in Chicago. The Preface to this book states that, "The author, who has been engaged in aviation work and model design and construction for the past twenty years, has designed, built and flown hundreds of models of every known type. From this vast experience he has selected certain models, which have been outstanding successes as flyers, and only these have been included in this book." This suggests to us Joe was designing planes at the age of eleven. He designed the "American Rocket Model" in 1930 which used a standard fireworks-style rocket motor. One model from this book, the Sky Pursuit, was featured in a building article in Model Aviation in November 1984 -members of the AMA can access this article from the AMA's website archives.

Ott began designing scale, rubber powered flying models. His scale designs were meant for flying, not static scale. These were somewhat "standoff scale" when compared to the detailed models of Ed Packard's Cleveland, Wanner and Peerless kits. Joe Ott designed models for Popular Aviation as model editor in the early 1930s, bookended by Bertram Pond and Paul Lindberg. One of Fred Megow's earliest kits, the nice "Gee-Bee Super-Sportster" R-1 of 1933, was based on a 1932 Joe Ott design although not given credit on the plan.

Joe Ott produced SKYFLYER kits in the mid-1930s with a company name of Model Aircraft Products in Chicago. An example of this series is the "Wedell Williams" solid model kit with a wingspan of 6-inches. This solid kit features printed balsa blocks with a nice plan of the Wedell Williams #92, NR536V, although it is not identified as such on the plan. The plan states, "ALL SKY FLYER PLANS COPYWRIGHT by J.S. OTT MODEL DESIGNER AND AUTHOR". The bottom area of the black & white plan features some perspective views showing how to carve the model.

Ott started the Ace Whitman kit firm in 1935 in Racine, Wisconsin in the unused woodworking factory of Western Coil & Electric and used the services of Western Printing to do the kit marketing under the name of Whitman Publishing, a book publisher. The Ace Whitman kits were sold in huge numbers through dime stores and were not advertised - Ott's design efforts helped created magnificent blueprint style plans with a reverse side featuring a blackline, framework perspective drawing and instructions. Ott left the company in 1938 and started manufacturing his own line of Joe Ott kits which were marketed by J.L. Wright Inc. of Chicago. Known as a "Joe Ott Kit" with "Blue print picture plan", these kits were very nice flying scale models with three-foot plus wingspans; all balsa with plans similar to the Ace Whitman kits. These are the very best of all Joe Ott kits and were copyrighted in 1939 and 1940 - for example, the Curtiss XP-40 (with aft radiator), the Curtiss Fighter, had a 36-inch wingspan (Kit No. 3606) and a conventional model construction. His Lysander had a 42-inch span and would make a very respectable model by today's standards. But as WWII loomed on the horizon, Ott must have had a premonition about balsa shortages.

In September, 1941, Model Airplane News ran an ad for the Joe Ott Manufacturing Co. based in Chicago; the ad stated that "Joe Ott America's Ace Model Airplane Designer announces a new and revolutionary Ott-O-Former Building Method" and that a full color page would run the following month.

The new Ott-O-Former kit line started by featuring 22-inch, 32-inch and 36-inch kits. Note that he also still offered some of the standard, all-balsa kits. The Ott-O-Former kits became the best sellers with their die-cut bristolboard formers and balsa strips. The balsa would soon be substituted with hardwood as the wartime restrictions on balsa began. The large, gas powered Turner Racer was still being offered in mid-1942 although.

Joe Ott was still advertising in 1945, but with this message: "I want you to know why we use OTT-O-FORMERS in our Kits. These Formers were first designed by me during the early days of the War, when Balsa was unobtainable for assembling with thin wood stringers. Now that Balsa is available, we have found that the OTT-O-FORMERS are still the best construction with Balsa stringers. The Balsa Former, being a round, thin piece with definite grain, is not as strong as the same weight of Bristol (no grain). Adequate Balsa Formers require 2 or 4 pieces. That's why we are continuing to develop 1945 OTT-O-FORMERS for better and easier-to-build kits each year."

The Joe Ott kits disappeared following WWII as economic doldrums felled many kit manufacturers in the late 1940s. Joe Ott was an instructor of Aeronautics at Texas A&M University.

The XP-38 "Bomber Catcher" appeared in all of Joe Ott's line of kits. A 36 inch all balsa version came out in 1940 and reappeared in many sizes of the OTT-O-FORMER kits. A Joe Ott "Flying Battle Plane Kit"

No. 3216 "Lockheed" with 32" wingspan is not dated but probably from around 1941. The XP-38 shape was used and the box illustration is unmistakably a XP-38, much of it in the same fanciful colors as the Jo Kotula Model Airplane Newscover featured on the Original Art page under the XP-38. Makes you want to buy that kit! It appears as if the box art was traced from Kotula's cover and rotated a bit.

A very early OTT-O-FORMER kit is the box which has only a vague, circular, poorly printed "New OTT-O-FORMERS" logo that looks like an afterthought - later kits boldly printed "OTT-O-FORMER" on the box.