Regent Rocket

The Regent Rocket was a five place, tricycle-gear, all-metal airplane designed by R. S. "Pop" Johnson, designer of the Swift, Johnson Rocket and Texas Bullet.

After losing control of the Texas Bullet program, "Pop" Johnson found investors in Henderson, Texas and formed the Regent Aircraft Corporation to build a new design. One investor was Vess Taylor, whose father, S. J. Taylor, had been an investor in Aircraft Manufacturing Company which built the Texas Bullet.[1] J. Mitrovich was chief engineer.[2] The Regent Rocket was slighter larger than the Texas Bullet and powered by a 260 hp Lycoming GSO-435 engine.[3]

First flight was in April 1951 at the Rusk County Airport in Henderson, Texas.[4] Over the next three years, Regent Aircraft moved successively to Pearland, Edinburg and finally McAllen, Texas. Installation of a 400 hp Lycoming engine was proposed but never accomplished. An unfinished airframe was behind the hangar of a fixed-base operator in McAllen for many years and was reported to have later gone to Minnesota. The flying prototype was destroyed by fire in the 1960s after a forced landing on a highway in New Mexico by the current owner, Dick Carroll, following an engine failure.

Johnson later attempted to develop an updated version of the Regent Rocket in Lafayette, Louisiana as the Johnson 260.[5]

Specs

References

  1. ↑ letter from Regent Aircraft to "Aeronautical Engineering Review" dated May 5, 1954
  2. ↑ "Western Flying" June 1951
  3. ↑ Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1954–1955
  4. ↑ "Western Flying" June 1951
  5. ↑ Johnson 260 sales brochure
  6. ↑ "Western Flying" June 1951


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