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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:
Athina Crawford

James R. Bede is a gifted aircraft designer. He earned his degree at Wichita State, now Wichita University. At the university, there was an organization called the Institute of Aeronautical Science (now the Engineering Society for Aeronautical Engineering). Bede found it to be a relatively small school with a tremendous amount of aviation capability and their own wind tunnel. He had the wind tunnel to himself!
He worked at North American Aviation in Columbus, Ohio on the Vigilante doing performance calculations for subsonic and supersonic flight. He designed his first BD-1 two-place trainer that became American Aviation's AA-1 Yankee, and gave birth to a line of piston singles including the Traveler, Cheetah, and Tiger. Bede pioneered the use of bonded metals and honeycomb construction for general aviation applications.
He created the first complete kit aircraft (the BD-4) and set a world's record (longest distance in a closed circuit: BD-2). One of the most noted projects was the bullet-shaped, single-seat BD-5, the micro plane with a pusher prop. Currently, the BD-5B is on display in the National Air and Space Museum.