trainer
2 aircraft
Boeing/Stearman PT-17 Kaydet
If you flew for the Allies in World War II, odds are you learned in a Stearman. Over 60,000 pilots got their wings in this bright yellow biplane, including future aces and airline captains. The Army called it the PT-17, the Navy the N2S, but everybody just calls it the Stearman. It was forgiving enough that a scared kid from Iowa could solo in one, and tough enough that he could bounce a landing without bending anything important. When the war ended, thousands hit the surplus market for practically nothing. Farmers bought them, bolted on spray rigs, and the American crop-dusting industry was born. The Stearman didn't just train pilots. It built an entire chapter of American aviation.
Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny"
The Jenny taught America that airplanes were real. Before the JN-4, flight was a novelty. After it, flight was a business. The Army trained thousands of WWI pilots in Jennys, and when the war ended, the government dumped surplus aircraft on the market for next to nothing. That's when things got interesting. Every daredevil, wing-walker, and fast-talking barnstormer in America bought a Jenny and took to the skies. They flew into county fairs, charged a dollar for rides, and walked on the wings to prove that flying wasn't just possible, it was spectacular. The Jenny was the Model T of aviation: not the best, not the fastest, but the one that put the whole thing within reach of regular people. It turned aviation from a military curiosity into an American obsession.