Airstream, Curtis Wright or Silver Streak?

Trying to determine the manufacturer and year of an early American aluminium trailer can be confusing. Airstreams of the late 1930s, Curtis Wrights of the 1940s, and early Silver Streaks all look very similar; and many secondary sources on the web are, at best, muddled, so any corrections are welcome.



Wally Byam started working life in advertising, and later either worked for or became a magazine publisher during the Great Depression. In seeking to get to the bottom of reader complaints about inaccuracies in plans for a caravan published in an early DIY magazine, Byam started building them himself, in plywood. From 1930 this became Byam's full-time occupation, and he founded Airstream - web sources give the date as anywhere between 1931 and 1934.



In about 1935 Byam went to work for William Hawley Bowlus. Bowlus was an aircraft pioneer, had been Superintendent of Construction on Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis. He'd taken to designing all-aluminium bullet-shaped caravans - the Chief and the smaller Papoose. When Bowlus went bust in 1936, Byam bought some of the equipment and took on some of the Bowlus workers. He started selling, under his Airstream brand, a near copy of the Bowlus Chief, the key difference being that the Airstream had the door in the side instead of at the front. Byam's caravan was called the Clipper.



Meanwhile, a chap named Curtis Wright, one S, made clever use of his name to build caravans at the facilities of aircraft manufacturer Curtiss-Wright, two Ss and two surnames hyphenated together. One-S Curtis Wright hired Byam and in 1946 they started producing, at Los Angeles Metropolitan Airport, a trailer based on Byam's pre-war Airstream Clipper. The relationship lasted only a few months. In 1947 Byam refounded Airstream, first making again the Clipper, and, from 1948, offering a range of sizes. Wright founded Curtis Wright Travel Trailers, but in 1949 sold out to three investors who changed the name to the Silver Streak Trailer Company. The Silver Streak Clipper was built in South El Monte, California.



Today's acquisition is ostensibly a 1947 Curtis Wright. However, it bears a badge that says it's a Silver Streak from El Monte, so must be of 1949 or later. Against that, though, it has two rectangular windows at the rear, instead of the one wide window, or two 'Argonaut' windows, that feature in every image of Silver Streak Clippers seen so far. A bit of a mystery at this stage.