"Stearman - Barbers Point HONOLULU" shirt

The Boeing-Stearman Model 75 is a biplane designed as a military primary trainer aircraft. Between the 1930s and 1940s, at least 9,783 aircraft were built in the United States by Stearman and Boeing.

During this period, the Stearman served as the U.S. Navy’s primary training aircraft, operating from virtually every Naval Air Station across the country, including one of the most iconic and exotic: Naval Air Station Barbers Point on Oʻahu, Hawaii, also known as John Rodgers Field.

On December 7, 1941, Barbers Point was among the many installations attacked during the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor. During the second wave of the attack, American pilots George Welch and Kenneth Taylor took to the skies to engage the Japanese aircraft, shooting down two enemy fighters in one of the first American aerial victories of the Pacific War.

After the end of World War II, thousands of Stearmans found a second life as civilian aircraft, serving in agricultural aviation, utility work, aerobatics, and, of course… barnstorming!