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Summary: Piper J-3 Cub aircraft Airplane blueprint for the Piper, J-3, Cub ... Aviation history and aircraft blueprints/plans. Piper J-3 Cub is one of the aircraft that defined its category. With over 20,000 examples of the basic J-3 model built, it's not hard to understand why every constant cord, high-winged, fabric tail-dragger is thought to be a Cub.
Evolving from the Taylor E-2 Cub, the Piper edition filled several roles during its production lifetime. It was the most common commercial aircraft sold during the late 1930s -- literally 1/3 of all American aircraft sold in 1936 and 1937 were Cubs. As war approached, the U. S. Army looked to the Piper Cub to be one of three commercial types to evaluate for what in modern military terms is forward spotting. By Dec. 7, 1941, some 6,000 Cubs had flown off the Lock Haven, Penn., assembly line, mostly as civilian aircraft.
With America's entry into the Second World War, the Piper Cub became the Army's L-4. It served in the war zone as artillery spotter and front line liaison. Back in the States, the Cub played its biggest role as primary training craft for the thousands of new pilots needed for the U. S. Army Air Force. In all, 5,687 of the Piper L-4s, primarily equipped with a Continental O-170-3 65-horsepower engine, were provided to the Army by war's end.
The Cub spawned a whole line of variants, including the L-18A (a 90-hp Continental) and L-21A (125-hp Lycoming). Piper and Taylor accounted for 14,125 commercial Cubs, many snapped up for use by the Army in its massive training efforts.
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