Earl Schuyler Kleinhans

Sky started work in the summer of 1933 at the Douglas Aircraft Company hired by James H. Kindelberger (Dutch) and he was put in charge of all flying boats as a project engineer. In 1935 he was appointed assistant chief designer for all of Douglas Aircraft, including the B-19 and DC-4. From 1937 to 1940 he was promoted to chief designer, and when World War II started in 1941 he became assistant chief engineer, Edward F. Burton (designer of the Douglas DC-3) was now chief engineer, but by 1960 Sky became chief engineer then director of research and engineering. His last position was chairman of the scientific advisory board in until his retirement in 1967.

Then there was a series of aircraft design jobs with fledgling airplane firms including Metal Aircraft Corporation Flamingo of Cincinnati Ohio, where Sky was assistant chief engineer during the summer 1929 – December 1929. He worked on the Flamingo made famous as the airplane that flew Jimmie Angel to discover with worlds highest waterfall Angel Falls. Sometimes in those early years an aircraft can be designed, built and test flown in four to five months.

Sky married Virginia Winterstein in Bristol Pennsylvania in 1928 and they had two daughters: Charlotte Kleinhans Wood, and Letitia Kleinhans Aaron.

After graduation in the summer 1927, he started work at Keystone Aircraft in Bristol Pennsylvania to develop Felixstowe F5L flying boats, an aircraft designed by John Cyril Porte at the Seaplane Experimental Station in England.

Sky started at the Pittsburgh Academy in the fifth grade, then in 1916 his family moved to California, where he graduated from Hollywood High in 1922. Then he continued his education at the University of Southern California Branch (now UCLA) then transferred to UC Berkeley where he majored in chemistry. He joined the Alpha Kappa Lambda fraternity there. In 1924 he attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology, switching to math, physics and anything to do with aircraft or boats, where he earned a BS in mathematics in 1927.

Earl Schuyler (Sky) Kleinhans (February 3, 1905 – September 21, 1996) was an airplane and flying boat aeronautical engineering pioneer with primary experience at Sikorsky and Douglas Aircraft where he advanced over a 36-year career to become chief engineer and retired as the chairman of the scientific advisory board in 1969 for McDonnell Douglas.