Travel Air
Type R Mystery Ship
First Flight August 29, 1929
Role Racing Aircraft

The Type R "Mystery Ships" were a series of wire-braced, low-wing racing airplanes built by the Travel Air company in the late 1920s and early 1930s. They were so called because the first three aircraft of the series (R614K, R613K, B11D) were built entirely in secrecy. In total, five Type Rs were built and flown by some of the most notable flyers of the day, including Jimmy Doolittle, Doug Davis, Frank Hawks, and Pancho Barnes, not only in races but also at air shows across the United States, and most notably, by Hawks in Europe.

Design and development

Under construction during 1928, the aircraft was kept under cover prior to the 1929 Cleveland Air Races, with the builders even going so far as painting the windows on the factory to keep the curious press from getting a look at it. The local Wichita paper picked up on the secret program, with one reporter even going so far as to scale a ladder to try to peek into the vents in the factory roof. The paper dubbed it the "Mystery Ship" and the name stuck with R (for Rawdon) added.^[Rawdon and Burnham both knew that to approach Travel Air CEO Walter Beech would be fruitless, unless they hit him with the idea just before the air racing season began, so they designed the aircraft in their spare time, without pay until they could get Beech to agree to build the type.