Peter M. Bowers (May 15, 1918 – April 27, 2003) was an aeronautical engineer, airplane designer, and a journalist and historian specializing in the field of aviation. An engineer for planemaker Boeing for over 35 years, Bowers is famed in the aviation community for his role as a military and general aviation historian and writer, and designer of the popular Bowers Fly Baby homebuilt aircraft design. Personal and early life Bowers lived in Seattle, Washington for most of his life. Bowers' first ride in an aircraft was in 1928, at the age of 10. He began intensively designing and building aircraft models, which led to requests for plans and articles about them from editors of model airplane magazines—his first article appearing in 1938 in Air Trails. Bowers took a course in aeronautical engineering at the Boeing School of Aeronautics in Seattle, then enrolled as an Engineering Cadet in the Army Air Corps. During World War II, and after, Bowers spent five years in the U.S. Army Air Forces as a maintenance and intelligence officer, before his discharge in 1947. Aeronautical career Following his 1947 discharge from the military, Bowers went to work for The Boeing Company in Seattle, eventually becoming an aeronautical and research engineer for the company, and remained with the company for 36 years. Bowers learned to fly in 1948, and by 1962 had reportedly logged over 3,000 hours of flight time, mostly in sailplanes, homebuilt aircraft, antique aircraft, and "other romantic types"—becoming "an internationally-known consultant on aviation history and sport flying." Bowers' designing and building of model aircraft evolved into developing actual, full-size aircraft. In 1961, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first trans-continental flight, Bowers crafted a reproduction of the Wright Brothers' Vin Fiz Flyer (first plane to fly across the U.S.). The plane was built to airworthy standards, and flown as a towed glider, before becoming a display in the San Diego Air and Space Museum. Starting in the 1950s, and culminating in 1962, Bowers designed a noted homebuilt aircraft, the Bowers Fly Baby (winner of the 1962 Design Contest of the Experimental Aircraft Association—one of the most successful homebuilt designs, eventually built by over 500 homebuilders) Bowers also designed and built the Namu II, and also completed and flew a Detroit G1 Gull primary glider. Under its Fly Baby entry, Jane's All The World's Aircraft, 1964–1965, says of Bowers: Mr. Peter Bowers, an