Peter M. Bowers (May 15, 1918 – April 27, 2003) was an American 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.

Bowers lived in Seattle, Washington, for most of his life.

Bowers's 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.

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's designing and building of model aircraft evolved into developing actual, full-size aircraft.