Robert Novell

Lockheed XF-90 – First Military Fighter with Afterburners – July 24,2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 01:02:00 +0000

RN3DB

July 24, 2026

Good Morning,

Afterburners are common on most military aircraft but who produced the very first? It was Lockheed, and it was called the XF-90.

Enjoy…..

Lockheed XF-90

The Need for a “Penetration Fighter

Assuming their bombers would be dropping nuclear weapons in the next major war, the US Air Force made a requirement for a new escort aircraft that could follow bombers to and from their targets, ensuring their survival. This “penetration fighter” needed to be fast and have a long range.

Lockheed’s P-80 Shooting Star was the go-to jet fighter at the time, but as America’s first operational one, it was quite a poor performer. One of its main drawbacks was its straight wings, which limited its maximum speeds. Aircraft design legend Kelly Johnson proposed upgrading the aircraft with delta wings, which are excellent at high speeds, but this would have significantly hampered its low speed performance. In the end, Johnson and the Skunk Works team settled on swept wings. Power came from a pair of Westinghouse J34 turbojets, and wingtip fuel pods gave the aircraft an estimated range of 2,300 miles. It was also fitted with an ejection seat, a pressurized cockpit and an unusual vertical stabilizer that could move backwards and forwards. Overall, the aircraft shared some similarities to the P-80, but was a new design, designated the XF-90. The airframe was designed before supersonic flight was completely understood, so the team working on the aircraft over-engineered its airframe to ensure it would survive such speeds. It was built from 75ST aluminum, instead of 24ST that was typically used at the time. Many parts were forged and machined for strength. All of this made the XF-90 very strong, but also very heavy. Empty, it weighed over eight tons, more than a Douglas C-47 Skytrain. In comparison, the P-80 weighed less than four tons when empty. Its engines were simply not up to the task of powering an aircraft of this weight, and it had very poor performance.

Two examples of the aircraft were built: the XF-90 and the XF-90A. The “A” variant was equipped with afterburning J34 engines, which gave it a performance boost. It made its first flight on June 3, 1949. As expected, it proved to be sluggish and underpowered. Its heavy weight and slow acceleration meant it needed long distances to take-off and land, and once in the air its speed was unimpressive. The XF-90A was only able to hit 665 MPH, but was able to break the sound barrier in a dive. In 1950, the XF-90 was put against the McDonnell XF-88 Voodoo. Unsurprisingly, it lost, and the penetration fighter project was canceled soon after. The two XF-90s were no longer of use to Lockheed and were handed over to the departments that wanted the XF-90 was ship to the predecessor of NASA, where its aluminum frame was extensively studied in tests that eventually destroyed it. The XF-90A had a slightly more heroic end. It was given to the US government and quite literally blasted by atomic bombs.

The US was still learning about the effects of nuclear weapons at this time and one of the many questions posited was how well parked aircraft could deal with nuclear blasts. The XF-90A was placed on the Frenchman’s Flat testing range in Nevada, ready to be destroyed (or not). On April 15, 1952, a one-kiloton Mark 4 nuclear bomb was dropped over the range from a B-50 Superfortress. It hit the ground half a mile away from the XF-90A. The aircraft was inspected and, incredibly, was found to have only suffered a few cracks. With just 106 hours of repairs, it could have returned to service.

The following week, another test was conducted, this time with a 33-kiloton nuclear bomb. This caused more damage, particularly to the aircraft’s nose. In both tests, the aircraft faced the explosion, but on the third was turned sideways. The blast from a 19-kiloton nuclear bomb smashed into the XF-90A, ripping off its tail section and warping virtually every panel on the aircraft. The radioactive wreckage was moved to the desert in Nevada’s Area 11 and left.

Enjoy the weekend and join me next week for another look back at aviation history.

Robert Novell

July 24, 2026

The C-7 Caribou….The Workhorse of Vietnam – July 17, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 02:36:00 +0000

RN3DB

July 17, 2026

Good Morning,

A few months ago we talked about the Shorts -330/360 and this week I want to take you back to Vietnam and the history of the C-7. Not a glamorous airplane by any means but the capabilities of this airplane made up for it”s looks and then some.

Enjoy…..

C-7 / CV-2 Caribou

The Caribou was first flown in 1958 as the DHC-4A, and the US Army acquired the CV-2 Caribou the following year. Starting with the U-6A Beaver — which was designed as a “bush pilot’s dream,” and progressing to the reliable, but somewhat clumsy Otter — the Caribou seemed a natural to those Army planners who saw a significant gap between the Army’s organic capability and the C-130 Air Force transport. Initially procuring 173 in 1959, the De Havilland Caribou was the largest Army fixed-wing aircraft. Initially designated AC-1, the aircraft was redesignated CV-2 in 1962 and retained that designation for the remainder of its Army career. When responsibility for all fixed-wing tactical transports was transferred to the U.S. Air Force, the Caribou received the designation C-7.

Two piston engines are mounted in the wings’ leading edges, and the engine nacelles extend beyond leading edges. Powered by two Pratt & Whitney engines of 1,450 hp each, it cruised at 149 knots with a service ceiling of 27,500 ft. It is designed to take off and clear a 50-foot obstacle in a distance of 1040 feet with zero wind. With a 20-mile headwind, the takeoff distance over a 50-foot obstacle is just 460 feet. Its landing distance is just over 590 feet while clearing a 50-foot obstacle. These characteristics enabled the Caribou to operate out of tiny jungle landing strips, from beachheads, or from improvised military landing strips as short as 850 feet. The wings are high-mounted with straight leading edge and forward-tapered trailing edge from engines to the blunt tips. The fuselage is slab-sided with a solid, rounded nose and stepped cockpit. The tail flats are mid- to low-mounted on the tail fin and tapered with blunt tips. The large fin is tapered with blunt tip.

The Caribou was the second exception by the Secretary of Defense to his memorandum on the weight limitations for Army fixed-wing aircraft. In 1951 an Army-Air Force memorandum of understanding (MOU) allowed 2 exceptions on weight limitations: OV-1 [AO-1] Mohawk Medium Observation Aircraft and AC-1 [CV-2] CV-2 Caribou Medium Tactical Transport (MTT). In the early 1960’s the Caribou and the Mohawk were the two major symbols of Army-Air Force disagreement. The CV-2 was to bridge the gap between the US Air Force (USAF) C-130 and Army capabilities. Its very size threw down a gantlet to the Air Force strategists. It could carry as much as the venerable C-47 and land and take off of remarkably short unimproved airstrips. It had a rear end loading door which facilitated rapid cargo handling and was relatively easy to maintain and operate. The Air Force saw this 32 passenger aircraft as a second invasion of its domain and the projected rise of the Army’s inventory at a time that the Air Force aircraft inventory was declining was bound to cause more heat than light.

The Caribou proved to be an extremely useful addition to the United States aircraft inventory and did yeoman service in Vietnam. A not-well-known fact is that the Caribou airplane predated the major helicopter commitment to Vietnam by five months. On 21 August 1961, an experimental “Y model” Caribou landed at Saigon under the auspices of the Advanced Research Project Agency. The Advanced Research Project Agency had its own charter to test almost any device, technique, or prototype that it felt might have application in our counter-insurgency efforts. Consequently, the Agency was able to cut through the red tape of Service disagreements and expedite those tests it deemed appropriate.

The Army ferried the CV-2s to Vietnam in 1962 where their excellent short-field performance and 3-ton payload served as a tactical transport airplane. The Caribou flew up and down the length of Vietnam going into airstrips normally limited to much smaller aircraft such as the O-1 or U-6 Beaver. Initially it specialized in resupply of Special Forces outposts that were in accessible by road and that normally were supplied by either air drop or an occasional helicopter. The Army Caribou pilots took justifiable pride in their proficiency at bringing this big twin-engine airplane into the shortest possible strip. Even the old Southeast Asia hands of “Air America” were impressed when this lumbering bird made its unbelievably slow, steep approach into some of the primitive airstrips.

The Caribou filled a serious gap in the United States inventory. Its short field characteristics, pay load, and light “footprint” made it an ideal aircraft in the counter-insurgency environment. The next plane in size was the C-123B which had a gross weight of 55,700 pounds compared to the Caribou’s 28,500 pounds, and the single wheel load of the C-123 was almost double that of the Caribou. Consequently, the Caribou could operate repeatedly and routinely into airfields that were denied to the C-123 and later the C-130.

The very existence of the Caribou in the Army inventory changed one Air Force program-the Fairchild C-123 “Provider.” This latter aircraft was scheduled to be phased out of the active Air Force inventory in 1961, with a few programmed to the reserves and the remainder to be declared surplus. When Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara suggested that the Air Force turn over the C-123’s to the Army (to train on this type aircraft prior to the receipt of the Caribou) , the Air Force suddenly discovered new and pressing Air Force requirements for the C-123. Thus the Army Caribou protagonists not only pushed the Caribou into being, but-incidentally-saved the C-123 for much-needed duty in Vietnam.

The Caribou aircraft performed so well in Vietnam that the Air Force demanded that the Army turn them over to the Air Force, because they were performing missions that the Air Force considered its own better than the aircraft the Air Force had at the time. The Army released the CV-2s to the Air Force in 1966 under an Army-Air Force agreement. Prior to the Air Force assumption of the Caribou, most were already under centralized management under Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, and were participating in the Southeast Asia airlift effort. However, one-fourth to one-half of their resources were dedicated to specific Army support. The 7th Air Force in Vietnam, which had been upgraded from the 2d Air Division on 2 April 1966, was severely critical of the Army’s method of operation of its Caribou assets. They believed that the Caribou should be incorporated into the Air Force managed Southeast Asia airlift and consequently be more productive from a ton-mile basis.

The Army traded the Caribou for an end to all restrictions on helicopters. It is for this reason, many consider the Caribou to be the most significant aircraft in Army Aviation history.

The Army kept several prototypes, Tail #59-3079 being the fifth prototype. The yellow and white paint scheme represents the Golden Knights colors, the Army’s Parachute Team, who used this plane from 1973 to 1985.

Source Document

Enjoy the video below and come back next week when we will continue our look back at events in aviation history.

Robert Novell

July 17, 2026

Tell Me About the Pepsi Concorde – July 10, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 01:44:00 +0000

RN3DB

July 10, 2026

Good Morning,

I received a link from a friend in Kentucky that I would like to share with you. You will find the contents interesting, informative, and entertaining.

Enjoy…..

Have a good weekend and join me next week when we will talk about an aviation pioneer who became a real estate tycoon.

Robert Novell.

July 10, 2026

The Long Way Home….Pan Am Flight 18602 – July 3, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 01:15:00 +0000

RN3DB

July 3, 2036

Good Morning,

The D-Day/Normandy Invasion occurred eighty years ago on June 6, 1944, and I was once again reminded of the bravery of the landing forces hitting the beach, dropping in by air, and landing in Gliders. The number of US, and allied, Forces who died that day was estimated to be 4500 and another 5000 wounded or missing. When we talk missing what we are talking about are bodies that were washed out to sea, and bodies in destroyed gliders, and other aircraft, that could not be identified in the ashes. An amazing feat made possible by the amazing courage for those who led the way to victory.

Now, on with the story of Pan Am flight 18602 and how Pan Am responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor…..

Pan Am Flight 18602

Bill Gates made a very interesting observation while giving a speech at a public event which I would like to share with you now. “The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together.” Interesting observation, and one that I agree with, but I would have also added that Pan American Airways took the World Wide Web, as noted by Bill Gates, to that level and made it all work.

Today, we will talk about how Pan Am did that, but first I want to talk about Pan Am and flight 18602. I hope you find this as interesting as I do and at the conclusion of the main article I have a brief overview of Pan Am and their Clipper fleet followed by an outstanding video. However before we proceed let me set the stage with the following:

On December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, there was a Pan Am Clipper proceeding to Auckland, New Zealand when the radio operator announced to the crew, in a panicked voice, that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. The Captain realized that this was not a joke, after looking over at the radio operator’s face, and said, “Please confirm the details of your news with Pan Am headquarters in New Caledonia.”

When the radio operator returned to the Captain’s side he advised that the news was in fact correct and they advised me to tell you the following, “Implement Plan A.” The Captain reached for a sealed envelope from his jacket and read the following words:

From: Division Manager, Pacific Division

Subject: Special instructions to avoid hostile military activity.

Pan American Airways, in cooperation with the Chief of Staff, United States Army, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet Operations, the Secretary of War and the Secretary of State, has agreed to place its fleet of flying boats at the disposal of the military for whatever logistical or tactical purpose they may deem necessary at such time as hostilities break out between the United States forces and the military forces of the Imperial Japanese government.

In the event that you are required to open and read these instructions, you may assume that hostilities have already occurred and that the aircraft under your command represents a strategic military resource which must be protected and secured from falling into enemy hands

Now, lets talk about what happened next……..Enjoy.

The First Around-the-World Commercial Flight

Stranded. Six days from its home port of San Francisco, a luxurious Boeing 314 flying boat, the Pacific Clipper, was preparing to alight in Auckland, New Zealand, as part of the airline’s transpacific service when the crew of ten learned of the Japanese attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. All across the Pacific, Pan Am facilities came under assault: Wake Island, where the Martin M-130 Philippine Clipper returned just in time to pick up the Pan Am staff and escape although riddled with bullet holes; Manila, which had come under direct air attack; Hong Kong, where a Sikorsky S-42B was destroyed at its dock; and, of course, Pearl Harbor. Where to go?

Pan Am Captain Robert Ford was faced with a dilemma. After a week in the U.S. Embassy Ford finally received word from Pan Am headquarters that they were to return to the U.S. by flying westward. They were on their own for gasoline and supplies and had to fly over land and water with which none of the crew was familiar. With orders in hand, Captain Ford took off on December 16th, unsure of his fate, backtracked to Noumea, New Caledonia, to pick up the Pan Am staff left there and headed west for Australia. Hours later, they put down in Gladstone, north of Brisbane on the Coral Sea. The next day, Captain Ford and the Pacific Clipper headed northwest to Darwin, flying over the Queensland desert and watching it gradually transform into tropical rain forest near their destination of Darwin. The next goal was Surabaya, in the Dutch East Indies (present day Indonesia). Keeping their fingers crossed that the Japanese expansion had not reached this far, the crew of the massive flying boat flew 2,253 kilometers (1,400 miles) over open ocean and reached the city but not before they were intercepted by suspicious British fighter aircraft and escorted in to safety after taxiing through mined waters.

After refueling with automobile grade gasoline, since no 100 octane fuel was available, the Pacific Clipper carefully took off and headed for Trincomalee, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) without any charts, only the coordinates of their destination. With remarkable precision, navigator Roderick Brown found the island and the port city where they alighted safely, although only after avoiding a patrolling Japanese submarine. Refueling once again, the Boeing 314 left Trincomalee on Christmas Eve only to turn back after losing an engine. Repairs took all day on Christmas before they retook to the air on Boxing Day bound for Karachi, India (now Pakistan). After an uneventful flight, Captain Ford continued safely on to Bahrain and then across the vast desert expanse of the Arabian peninsula to Khartoum, Sudan, where they alighted on the Nile. Not wishing to risk any further desert flying, the crew of the Pacific Clipper pressed on to Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo (now Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and was able to put the huge flying boat down on the Congo River when they reached their destination.

Fighting the oppressive heat and the strong current of the river, the flying boat once again clawed into the sky becoming airborne before reaching a set of waterfalls. Safely clear of the obstacles, the Pacific Clipper droned 5,766 kilometers (3,583 miles) westward to Natal, Brazil, then up the coast to Port of Spain, Trinidad, and finally on January 6, 1942, to the Marine terminal at Laguardia, Long Island, New York. Total flight time was 209 hours which covered 50,694 kilometers (31,500 miles). It was the first around the world flight by a commercial airliner — the hard way.

After this historic flight, the Pacific Clipper was assigned to the U.S. Navy for the rest of World War II. When the War ended, the aircraft was sold to Universal Airlines who salvaged it after it was damaged in a storm.

The Clippers of Pan Am

The history of Pan American Airways is inextricably linked to the expansive vision and singular effort of one man – Juan Trippe. An avid flying enthusiast and pilot Trippe, only 28 years old when he founded the airline, lined up wealthy investors and powerful government officials from his personal acquaintances in the high-society of the 1920s. However, Pan Am’s first flight was an inauspicious start to its epic saga.

In 1927, facing a Post Office deadline for the commencement of mail carriage, Pan Am had no working equipment for its sole airmail contract between Key West and Havana. Fortunately for Pan Am, a pilot with his Fairchild seaplane arrived at Key West and was willing to carry the mail to Cuba for the start up operation.

Pan Am’s fortunes took a turn for the better in the fall of 1927. Through the heavy lobbying efforts of Juan Trippe, Pan Am was selected by the United States government to be its “chosen instrument” for overseas operations. Pan Am would enjoy a near monopoly on international routes. Pan Am added lines serving Mexico, Central America, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Most of these destinations were port cities, which could be reached only by landing on water so Pan Am made good use of its “flying boats,” the Sikorsky S-38 and S-40. Flights were eventually expanded to serve much of South America.

Just a few years later, Pan Am launched its effort to cross the world’s largest oceans. Survey flights across the Pacific were conducted with the Sikorsky S-42 in 1935, but passenger service required bigger and better aircraft. Accompanied by much fanfare, the Martin M-130 was introduced in 1936, followed by the Boeing 314 in 1939. Known as Pan Am Clippers, these mammoth flying boats flew from San Francisco harbor skipping across the Pacific with stops at Hawaii, Midway Island, Wake Island, Guam, the Philippines and then Hong Kong. Advance teams had prepared the stopover islands by blasting coral to make safe coves for sea landings and constructing luxury hotels for Pan Am’s discerning, rich clientele. Next on the Pan Am list for conquest was the world’s other major ocean – the Atlantic.The Boeing 314 entered European service in 1939 flying from New York to Lisbon and Marseille by way of the Azores.

Boeing 314

As airplane travel became popular during the mid-1930s, passengers wanted to fly across the ocean, so Pan American Airlines asked for a long-range, four-engine flying boat. In response, Boeing developed the Model 314, nicknamed the “Clipper” after the great oceangoing sailing ships.

The Clipper used the wings and engine nacelles of the giant Boeing XB-15 bomber on the flying boat’s towering, whale-shaped body. The installation of new Wright 1,500 horsepower Double Cyclone engines eliminated the lack of power that handicapped the XB-15. With a nose similar to that of the modern 747, the Clipper was the “jumbo” airplane of its time.

The Model 314 had a 3,500-mile range and made the first scheduled trans-Atlantic flight June 28, 1939. By the year’s end, Clippers were routinely flying across the Pacific. Clipper passengers looked down at the sea from large windows and enjoyed the comforts of dressing rooms, a dining salon that could be turned into a lounge, and a bridal suite. The Clipper’s 74 seats converted into 40 bunks for overnight travelers. Four-star hotels catered gourmet meals served from its galley.

Boeing built 12 Model 314s between 1938 and 1941. At the outbreak of World War II, the Clipper was drafted into service to ferry materials and personnel. Few other aircraft of the day could meet the wartime distance and load requirements. President Franklin D. Roosevelt traveled by Boeing Clipper to meet with Winston Churchill at the Casablanca conference in 1943. On the way home, President Roosevelt celebrated his birthday in the flying boat’s dining room.

Sikorsky S-42

The Sikorsky S-40 had laid the groundwork for Pan Am’s Latin American route system, but Pan Am was never fully satisfied with its compromise design,. Even before the S-40 first entered service, Pan Am technical adviser Charles Lindbergh was developing specifications for a streamlined airliner that could truly span the oceans and fulfill Pan Am’s intercontinental ambitions.

Two aircraft manufacturers made credible bids for Pan American’s next airliner. Igor Sikorsky wanted the chance to build improve the S-40, whose limitations he fully understood, and Glenn Martin wanted to expand his business from military to commercial aircraft. To hedge his bets against either company’s possible failure, and to stimulate competition, so that Pan Am would not be overly dependent on any one firm, Juan Trippe accepted both bids and ordered three planes from each company. On October 1, 1932, Pan Am placed a firm order for three S-42 aircraft, with an option for seven additional planes.

Martin M-130

Even before the first Sikorsky S-40 entered service in 1931, it was obvious that the plane — which Charles Lindbergh called a flying forest — would not provide the performance necessary to fulfill Pan Am’s ambitions. Consequently, the airline began searching a streamlined airliner that could truly span the oceans. Two manufacturers wanted the job. Igor Sikorsky wanted a chance to improve on his own S-40, and Glenn Martin wanted to establish his company in the commercial aviation business. Juan Trippe ordered planes from both.

The driving force behind Pan Am’s specifications for a new plane was Andre Priester, the Dutch immigrant who had worked for KLM and who became Pan Am’s detail-obsessed chief engineer. Charles Lindbergh, who had been so deeply involved with Pan Am’s earlier designs, had just undergone the trauma of his son’s kidnapping and murder on March 1, 1932, and was only minimally involved with the plans for the new clipper.

Pan Am wanted a plane that could fly 3,000 miles (long enough to reach Europe or Hawaii) while carrying a payload equal to its own weight, and the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company designed a plane that met the airline’s needs. Although the first Martin M-130 was delivered over a year behind schedule, and its $417,200 cost was almost twice that of the Sikorsky S-42 (and more than five times the $78,000 price of the leading airliner of the day, the Douglas DC-2), the M-130 had the speed, size, and range to carry mail and passengers profitably across the Pacific or Atlantic.

The first M-130, named China Clipper, was delivered to Pan American on October 9, 1935, just two days after its first test flight. A little more than a month later, on November 22, 1935, China Clipper left San Francisco on the first scheduled mail flight across the Pacific ocean.

Enjoy time with family and friends, enjoy the video below, and have a good weekend.

Robert Novell

July 3, 2026

Smokey The Bear and Piper Aircraft….The Rest Of The Story – June 26, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 01:00:00 +0000

RN3DB

June 26, 2026

Good Morning,

The story of Smokey the Bear, his real name is “Smokey Bear,” is well known to most but did you know that Bill Piper, owner of Piper Aircraft, was responsible for getting Smokey to Washington? That is our topic today along with a few facts about Smokey.

Enjoy…..

The Orphan Bear

One spring day in 1950 in the Capitan Mountains of New Mexico, an operator in one of the fire towers to the north of the Capitans spotted smoke and called the location into the nearest ranger station. The first crew discovered a major fire being swept along the ground between the trees, driven by a strong wind. Word spread rapidly and more crews reported to help. Forest Rangers, army soldiers, Native American crews, men from the New Mexico State Game Department, and civilian volunteers worked together to gain control of the raging fire. As soon as they contained the fire to one spot, the wind would push it across the lines. During one of the lulls in firefighting, a report of a lonely bear cub who had been seen wandering near the fireline was reported. The men left him alone because they thought the mother bear might come for him.

About 30 firefighters, mainly soldiers but also a Capitan High School student, were caught directly in the path of the fire storm, barely escaping by laying face down on a rockslide for over an hour until the fire had burned past them. In spite of the experience, the firefighters were safe except for a few scorches and some burned holes in their clothes.

Nearby, the little cub had been caught in the path of the same fire and had not fared as well. He had taken refuge in a tree that was now completely charred. His climb had saved his life but left him badly burned on the paws and hind legs. The soldiers removed the little bear cub from the burned tree, but they did not know what to do with him. A rancher, who had been helping the firefighters, agreed to take the cub home. A New Mexico Department of Game and Fish Ranger heard about the cub when he returned to the fire camp and drove to the rancher’s home to get the bear. The cub needed veterinary aid and was flown in a small plane to Santa Fe where the burns were treated and bandaged.

The news about the little bear spread swiftly throughout New Mexico. Soon the United Press and Associated Press picked up the story and broadcast it nationwide. Many people wrote or called to inquire about the little bear’s progress. The State Game Warden wrote an official letter to the Chief of the Forest Service, presenting the cub to the agency with the understanding that the small bear would be dedicated to a publicity program of fire prevention and conservation. The go-ahead was given to send the bear to Washington, DC, where he found a home at the National Zoo, becoming the living symbol of Smokey Bear.

Source Document

Now, let’s talk about how Piper Aircraft became involved……

Smokey and Bill Piper

After Smokey, the bear cub, was injured in the Capitan New Mexico forest fire, he was moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. There, the children of Ray Bell and Homer Pickens nursed him back to health.

Young bear cubs grow rapidly, and Smokey soon become unmanageable. A decision had to be made. The Game and Fish Department of the state of New Mexico and the United States Forest Service made the decision to dedicate the bear cub to the boys and girls of America.

Bill Piper, owner of Piper Aircraft Co., sent a brand new Piper Cruiser to Santa Fe so they could fly Smokey to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Can you imagine trying to travel with the bear cub in an airliner?

On the eve of the flight, prominent Santa Fe artist Will Schuster hurriedly painted the Smokey Bear logo on the plane. Frank Hines, the Piper dealer in Hobbs, New Mexico, piloted the plane. Homer Pickens, Assistant Director of the New Mexico Game and Fish Department, tended to Smokey for the duration of the several days’ plane trip to Washington, D.C. I really can’t imagine holding a bear in my lap in the back seat of a small plane for a trip across the United States. Finally, in ceremonies at the Nation’s capitol, Mr. Pickens presented Smokey to the boys and girls of America as a living symbol of forest fire prevention.

Smokey lived to a ripe old age of 70 at the zoo in Washington and many newspapers ran obituaries on S. Bear when he died. A real life legend that lives on in the hearts, and minds, of many Smokey was buried on the grounds of his museum in Capitan, New Mexico.

Source Document

Have a good weekend, enjoy each moment with family and friends, and fly safe/be safe.

Robert Novell

June 26, 2026

Transcontinental and Western Air, Inc. – Aviation Ads Open a Window to the Past – June 19, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 01:17:00 +0000

RN3DB

June 19, 2026

Transcontinental and Western Air, Inc.

Today I want to take a breather and revisit advertisements from the past which show you where commercial aviation was seventy plus years ago.

Enjoy…..

Take care, have a good weekend, and enjoy time away from work…..and remember, the preceding ads are presented for educational purposes and cannot be reproduced or used for any other purpose.

Robert Novell
June 19, 2026

The Curtiss C-46 – The Airplane History Has Forgotten – June 12, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 01:49:00 +0000

RN3DB

June 12, 2026

Good Morning,

Another week of our lives has past and it’s time to talk about airplanes. The Curtiss C-46 Commando is an airplane that was overshadowed by the the DC-3 and has been largely forgotten; however, I have not forgotten and this week I want to reintroduce you to an airplane that made a lot of history and is still making money for commercial operators around the world.

The C-46 Commando – Enjoy………………………

The Curtiss C-46 Commando

The Curtiss Commando began life as a design for a 36-seat commercial airliner with a pressurized cabin, designated the “CW-20”, with development initiated by Curtiss in 1936. The CW-20 was intended to provide a larger, more capable competitor to the Douglas DC-3, which was then entering service. The CW-20 featured a roomy “Double Bubble” fuselage, with a cross-section in the form of two circle segments mated together, top and bottom. This configuration provided large internal volume and the structural strength to support pressurization. The junction between the small segment and the larger top segment was faired over to improve aerodynamics. The CW-20 also featured a low wing with twin radial engines, twin tailfins, and fully retractable tailwheel landing gear — the single-wheel main gear retracting into the engine nacelles. The cockpit windscreen was flush with the fuselage contour, giving the aircraft a whale-like appearance.

Flight tests quickly showed that the twin-fin tail left much to be desired, and it was replaced by a conventional tail arrangement with a single tailfin. The modified aircraft, now known as the “CW-20A”, was demonstrated to airlines, and there were some interest in the type. However, in September 1940 the US Army Air Corps (USAAC), implementing an increasingly frantic program to prepare for war, ordered 200 modified “CW-20Bs” with the military designation of “C-46”. Production began at the Curtiss plant in Buffalo, New York, with the first “Commando” delivered to the US Army Air Forces (which had superseded the Air Corps in the meantime) on 12 July 1942. With a war on, Curtiss focused on military production, and commercial production was out of the question for the duration.

Adapting the CW-20 to military service as the C-46 Commando needed few changes. The first 25 aircraft, designated C-46, were built essentially to the original specifications. The Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engines were replaced by Wright Double Cyclones and plans to provide pressurization were abandoned, as well as a number of minor changes were incorporated.

The Commando initially went into service on the South Atlantic ferry route, and would also participate as a glider tug in the Rhine crossings in March 1945. However, due to its long range, it was primarily used in the Pacific and China-Burma-India (CBI) theaters, becoming the primary cargo lifter for ferrying supplies from India to China over “the Hump”, the Himalaya Mountains, after the Japanese shut down the Burma Road in 1943. Commandos of Colonel Edward H. Alexander’s “India-China Wing” of the USAAF Air Transport Command flew from primitive airstrips in the Indian state of Assam, climbing with overload cargoes to clear ridges from 3.7 to 4.3 kilometers (12,000 to 14,000 feet) high, to land at Chunking and drop off their loads for USAAF General Claire Chennault’s 14th Air Force and Nationalist Chinese forces.

The loss rate of the C-46 was high and it had a mixed reputation with aircrews. Partly the problem was the fact that environment was very harsh, operating conditions were difficult, and Japanese fighters were an occasional threat. However, stories still circulate that the C-46 also suffered from a large number of engineering and manufacturing faults, in particular a leaky hydraulic system. Crews were said to take a barrel of hydraulic fluid along on flights to make sure that the hydraulic systems were topped off before they were used. There was also apparently a fuel leak problem that took a long time to work out, with aircraft being lost in midair explosions at a steady rate until it was.

It doesn’t appear that the C-46 was an inherently bad aircraft, it was just rushed into service without the level of qualification that it would have been run through in peacetime, and it took a lot of work to get the bugs fixed. The aircraft’s detractors called it the “Curtiss Calamity” and the “Leaky Tiki”, though it was also more affectionately named “Dumbo”, after the flying baby elephant in Walt Disney’s 1941 animated movie.

The airlift from India to China, “Flying the Hump,” was the real hour of glory for the Curtiss C-46 Commando. The following is from an article that I found on the web:

In Feb. 1942 President Roosevelt ordered General Arnold to open a supply line across the Himalayas in support of General Chiang Kai-Shek (and his air adviser Claire L. Chennault) at a time when the Japanese offensive was at its peak. Rangoon fell in March 1942 and this cut off the supply via the Burma Road. The initial 26 aircraft for this project were 10 ex-airline DC-3s and some C-53s. The flights were started in late 1942 by the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) and the USAAF. By December of that year some 62 DC-3s of various types were involved, but already 15 had been destroyed. Conditions were poor at the airfields serving the China airlift, in September 1942, e.g. fuel was still being pumped by hand from drums.

Chennault, a retired USAAC Colonel who had become special advisor to the Chinese Air Force in 1937, formed the American Volunteer Group (AVG) with 100 US-financed P-40Bs and began operations against the Japanese from bases at Kunming, the first successes recorded on 20 December 1941. In fact, this was the only air defense China had to offer at that time. The AVG ceased to exist on 30 June, 1942. The aircraft were taken over by the 23rd Fighter Group, developing into the China Air Task Force (under Chennault, recalled to active service as a General). Because the Japanese controlled the Chinese coast and the fall of Burma closed off the last remaining supply routes over the ground, all supplies (including aviation fuel!) had to be airlifted in. Existing numbers of aircraft had to be increased to be at all effective.

In early 1943 General Arnold ordered to build up strength to 112 C-47s and 12 C-87s (converted B-24s). Enlarging the effort, they encountered problems of pilot inexperience, weather personnel problems, problems in communications, engineering and maintenance, lack of radio aids and direction finders…. The airfields were not complete and monsoon rains (beginning in June and lasting over 5 months!) played havoc with the facilities. Colonel Alexander, CO of the India-China Wing declared the C-47 unsuitable and requested C-46s. By 15 April 1943, 30 C-46s were delivered, replacing an equal amount of C-47s. More were to follow.

The direct distance between the Assam bases and Kunming was only some 500 miles, but the route is the most rugged imaginable. Chabua, on the banks of the Bhramaputra River, is only 90 ft above sea level but the Valley Walls climb to 10.000 ft. in the Patkai range. A series of ridges rise to a height of 14.000 ft and over, while Kunming itself sits at 6.200 ft. elevation. The icing level is at about 12.000 ft. and the flying was mostly done on instruments in foul weather: constant cloud cover, frequent violent thunderstorms, and tricky wind currents over the mountains…. Men and machines were put through extremes here, pushing the limits!
The service ceiling of the C-46 stood at 16.000 ft., above which it is not completely stable. The Hump was flown at 20.000 or 22.000 ft. eastbound and 21.000 ft. westbound…! As the C-46 cannot climb at 500 ft. per minute, it was necessary to climb near the base to gain sufficient altitude for the crossing.

During the dry season (winter) there was the danger of attacks by the Japanese fighters, but the biggest enemy was the weather. Carburetor icing was encountered, but this was a relatively well understood phenomenon. But there was more… The engines were susceptible to vapor lock at altitude, but as long as fuel was fed from one tank, there was no problem. On attempting to change tanks at altitude, the low atmospheric pressure and the suction of the engine driven pump caused vaporization of the fuel in the line, leading to the engine stopping… The engine could usually be restarted at lower altitude, but over the mountains there was no room to maneuver. The solution proved to be an electrically driven fuel pump inside each tank.

The early C-46s (as flown by Eastern Airlines) were fitted with 3-bladed Hamilton propellers. Fairly early in production these were replaced by the 4-bladed Curtiss electrically operated props. An electric motor was used to alter the angle of the blades. With a little corrosion, the electric contact could be lost, resulting in the prop moving into fine pitch and the engine overspeeding. This was particularly serious on takeoff from high altitude fields. Like Kunming. With gross weights above those initially intended by the designers….! The cumulative effect of the problems encountered was such that by November 1943, some 721 modifications had been ordered. The flow of new C-46s was stopped for a time while a modification program was put into effect. In 1942, when the airlift was first planned, a target of 7.500 tons per month was set, but this proved to be overoptimistic. This goal was not reached till October 1943. A typical payload for a flight consisted of 23 55-gallon steel drums of aviation fuel and 1 1/2 tons of bomb fuses. Other items carried included earth moving equipment aircraft engines and other spares. Little was carried out of China. From 8 February 1944, 25 C-46s were diverted from their original tasks and were seconded to supplement Troop Carrier Command aircraft for a few days of supply droppings in the Arakan region to help British troops to stem a northward Japanese advance; the 22.000 troops were down to two days supplies. Assignments like these happened quite often. Sometimes the C-46s played their part in evacuations. While the Hump operation progressed, statistics showed impressive figures: in July 1944 19.050 tons was carried, in December 31.935 tons, by 250 aircraft (daily average availability) in 7.612 trips…. Kunming could not handle all this and Luliang (60 miles East) became an India-China Division terminal in August 1944.

The total number of aircraft assigned to the Hump continued to rise to a maximum of 332 in July 1945, during which 71.042 tons were carried. At present day this would take 536 sorties by C-5 Galaxies…! Personnel involved peaked at 22.359.
By 1945 the tide of war changed and other routes became available; thus the C-54 could now could be put to use (it lacked the ceiling of the C-46, but on the routes now available it could carry 1.7 times the payload of the C-46).

The Hump was officially closed on 30 November 1945.

Source Document

Another interesting article that I found on “Flying the Hump” was located on CNACs web page and is a reprint of an article from The Wall Street Journal on Saturday, February 25, 2012. You may have difficulty reading this but if you click on the image itself it will take you to the actual web location.

The web sites that I used are listed below, and if time permits, do some research on your own and let’s see if we can bring history’s forgotten airplane back in to the mainstream.

Web site One —- Web Site Two —- Web Site Three

Have a good weekend and I hope to see you back here next Friday when we will be talking about……………. Take care, fly safe, and be safe.

Robert Novell

June 12, 2026

Red Stevenson – Pilot, and Aircraft Dealer, Who Became a Bixby, Oklahoma Icon – June 5, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 02:41:00 +0000

RN3DB

June 5, 2026

Good Morning,

Recently I visited Red Stevenson’s web site to listen to a few of his stores, and I enjoyed them as much the second time as I did the first time. Now, who is Red? Red was born in southern Oklahoma where he spent his first few years in an orphanage during the great depression. Eventually he was adopted and moved to Bixby, Oklahoma. He was sixteen when he ran away and joined the U.S. Army Air Corp and for the rest of his life he would credit the military for setting him on the right path. After ten years of service, including World War II, Stevenson went on to a number of careers. He became a truck driver and then operated a national wrecker service and a chain of tire stores. He also became one of the country’s top sellers of small aircraft. He owned and piloted thousands of planes over the years, including over 400 aircraft that were flown in war.

Stevenson’s longtime residence and office in downtown Bixby was known as “Red’s Roost.” He had an especially entertaining way of telling stories that would leave you wondering if they were true—which they were. Red was also a writer and self-published an autobiography titled Up, Up and Away: My Life and How I flew it. Harold Dean “Red” Stevenson was 87 when he died October 23, 2016.

Now, here is his story…..enjoy.

Red Stevenson – Oklahoma Icon

Having piloted about every kind of aircraft imaginable at one time or another, Red Stevenson enjoyed a little change of pace. And “Breezy” offered him just that.

“You don’t need instruments and you can’t get lost. You just fly along the interstates and look for the exit signs,” Stevenson told the Tulsa World once, describing what it was like to be at the controls of his 1912 Curtiss-Wright Pusher airplane.

A throwback to aviation’s earliest days, Breezy, as he’d christened the open-air flying machine, cruised along at about the height of a housetop.

“You can talk to people (on the ground) as you fly,” Stevenson added.

For Stevenson, that was a big part of the fun with Breezy. After all, there was nothing the high-flying raconteur liked better than a chance to shoot the breeze.

A former pilot and aircraft dealer whose adventurous life and the stories it spawned elevated him to almost-mythical status in his hometown of Bixby, Harold D. “Red” Stevenson died Sunday. He was 87.

A celebration of life is set for 2-4 p.m. Saturday at Red’s Roost, 205 N. Armstrong St. in Bixby. Leonard & Marker Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

Stevenson’s son, Cash Stevenson, knows how hard it could be to believe his father’s stories.

“Some were so outlandish,” he said. “But they all were true.

“It’s just that Dad’s life was bigger than life. He lived more in his life than 99 percent of people do.”

That life started out without much promise. Born in southern Oklahoma, Stevenson spent his first few years in an orphan’s home after his family was split up during the Great Depression.

Eventually, he was adopted and moved to Bixby.

But it wasn’t until age 16, when he ran away and joined the Army Air Corps, that his fortunes would take a dramatic turn. For the rest of his life, he would credit the military with having set him on the right path.

After 10 years of service, including World War II in the Pacific, Stevenson went on to a number of careers. From cross-country truck driver, he would later operate a wrecker service and a chain of tire stores. Eventually, he founded Red S Aircraft, and would become one of the country’s top sellers of small aircraft.

However, for Stevenson, it was as a dealer in the odd and unusual that Tulsa-area people would best remember him. A far-roving traveler and frequenter of auctions, he came home with one curiosity after another over the years, and at different times owned everything from Elvis Presley’s Cadillac to a hot air balloon. Most memorable among his transactions, he once brought back to Bixby 31 red cabooses he’d bought from the defunct Rock Island Railroad.

With such items and his flair for showmanship, Stevenson’s own auctions and sales became major public events, earning area news coverage.

What Stevenson didn’t sell usually found a home at “Red’s Roost,” as his longtime residence and office in downtown Bixby was known. Something of a local landmark, it’s equal parts museum and menagerie, with perhaps its strangest conversation piece being the custom-made pine coffin that doubled as Stevenson’s work desk.

“You should see people’s faces when I come up out of that thing and say, ‘Please come in,’ ” Stevenson joked once with the Tulsa World.

An avid storyteller and writer, Stevenson had no shortage of material from his own life, which he summed up once in a self-published autobiography, “Up Up and Away, or My Life and How I Flew It.”

Among the stories he enjoyed relating was one about his 1950 trip to the North Pole. Just 21 at the time, he earned a nod and a plaque from National Geographic for being the youngest person to set foot at the Pole.

Fond of expressing himself in words, Stevenson sought out other forums as well. Possibly topping them all was his “Red Says” billboard series, which popped up along local roadsides in the 1980s bearing samples of his wit and wisdom.

Throughout Stevenson’s life, flying remained a passion. He owned and flew thousands of planes over the years, including some 400 war aircraft.

Stevenson’s son still remembers what became a Saturday morning ritual — his dad trying out his latest purchase.

“I can still see him,” Cash Stevenson said, “taxiing out on the runway in some exotic aircraft from around the world.”

He continued to fly up until recently, as long as his health allowed.

More than even flying, though, Stevenson loved the people in his life, his son said.

Chief among them was his wife. Before she died last year, Betty Margaret Stevenson had been the devoted and able companion in her husband’s adventures for 64 years. Stevenson talked about dealing with losing her in a World story earlier this year.

Stevenson also loved his community and was one of its biggest boosters. A recent sign on his office door proclaimed him to be the “luckiest man” for being from Bixby.

But then, Stevenson had always seemed to have a little luck going for him.

Of the diverse experiences that came his way, he told the World once, “Most people live their lives one time. I’ve relived my own life hundreds of times.”

Stevenson’s survivors include a daughter, Debbie Stevenson; two sons, Cash Stevenson and Stacy Stevenson; and five grandchildren.

Source Document

Have a good weekend, spend some time living life with family and friends, and stop by next week when we will go back in time and visit a true aviation pioneer; however, take some time to visit Red’s website and listen to a few of his stories. I think you will enjoy them as much as I do and you will have more than a few laughs.

Red Stevenson’s Tells His Stories

Robert Novell

November 21, 2025

The Worse Place To Be a Pilot – May 29, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 29 May 2026 01:14:00 +0000

RN3DB

May 29, 2026

Good Morning,

I hope all is well with you, and yours, and as for me I am enjoying a few days of vacation on the North coast of Colombia – life is good. Today, to start the week, I want to introduce you to a TV series you may not be familiar with. Enjoy the video, keep up with the series, and have a good week.

Robert Novell

June 29, 2015

An Aviation Legend, Gone but not Forgotten – May 22, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 22 May 2026 01:48:00 +0000

RN3DB

May 22, 2026

Good Morning to all and to all Happy Friday,

This week I am going to once again highlight a man who I consider to be a cornerstone for the success of aviation, in our era, although the results of his efforts, and tireless spirit, can never be truly measured. Aviators have a proud tradition to build on, that is unequaled by any other country, and for those who will carry on this tradition rest assured you will be standing on the shoulders of Robert Hoover, and men like him, to take those accomplishments to the next level.

Enjoy…………………………………

Robert “Bob” Hoover

(Promoter/Test Pilot – Enshrined in to the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1988)

Robert A. Hoover has thrilled millions of men, women and children over the last five decades with his acrobatic flying maneuvers. In addition, he has flown over 300 types of aircraft and flight tested or flown nearly every type of fighter aircraft.

Hoover was born in Nashville, Tennessee on January 24th, 1922. He learned to fly at Nashville’s Berry Field and worked at a grocery store to earn the money required for flight instructions. Almost immediately, Hoover began to try his hand at rolls and loops and taught himself aerobatics. The young pilot then enlisted in the Tennessee National Guard and was later received orders to Army Pilot Training School.

At the time that Hoover graduated, World War II was in full swing and the Allied invasion of North Africa had begun. Hoover’s first assignment was in Casablanca, Morocco, where he tested planes before they were sent into combat. Hoover’s next assignment was in Corsica with the 52nd Fighter Group, one of two Spitfire outfits in the Army’s Air Forces. After flying 58 missions, he was shot down off the coast of southern France and spent sixteen months in a German prison camp.

Upon his return to the United States after the war, Hoover was assigned to the Flight Evaluation Group at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. There he flew Japanese and German airplanes captured during the war. He also flew the latest aircraft being tested by the United States Air Force.

Hoover accepted a position with General Motors in 1948 as a test pilot for high altitude performance testing of Allison jet engines and the development of propellers. In 1950, Hoover would begin a 36-year association with North American Aviation and Rockwell International. He performed experimental flight test work on the Navy FJ-2 jet fighter and then the F-86D and the F-100. Hoover demonstrated the safe handling and flying qualities of the F-86 and F-100 series fighters to pilots all over the world.

Bob Hoover was the first man to fly the XFJ-2 Fury Jet and the Navy’s T-28 trainer. He is also the holder of several aviation records. In 1978, he set three climb-to-altitude records at Hanover Air Show in West Germany. And in 1985, he set a coast-to-coast record flying a P-51 from Daytona Beach to Los Angeles in five hours and twenty minutes.

During his career, Hoover has been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, Soldiers Medal, Air Medal and Purple Heart. He is the only person to serve two terms as president of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and was captain of the United States Aerobatic Team in the 1966 International Competition in Moscow.

His famous yellow P-51 has been one of the main attractions at the Reno Air Races. His performances in the Shrike Commander have thrilled audiences as he swoops, rolls, loops and finally maneuvers the aircraft to a landing following his famed energy management sequence with no engines running.

Source Document

Robert A (Bob) Hoover

(The annual Living Legends gala at the Beverly Hilton – January 24, 2012)

Robert A. “Bob” Hoover, the “greatest stick-and-rudder pilot who ever lived,” according to General James Doolittle, was honored at the annual Living Legends gala at the Beverly Hilton. Hoover reflected on his life experiences with the characteristic graciousness that also distinguishes him as the consummate Tennessee gentleman.

Hoover’s “infatuation with aviation” started in 1927 he learned of Charles Lindbergh’s non-stop flight across the north Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis. He told the crowd at Living Legends that his childhood heroes were Lindbergh, Roscoe Turner [and his pet lion], Eddie Rickenbacker and especially Jimmy Doolittle.

Fast forward to the early 1950s. Hoover was signing autographs at after performing in the F-86 at an airshow in Europe when an unassuming gentleman in the crowd introduced himself as Mr. Schwartz. The man asked Hoover if he could speak with him. Hoover told Mr. Schwartz that he’d have to wait until he finished signing autographs.

Mr. Schwartz waited patiently for Hoover to attend to his fans for nearly two hours. When the two finally met, it was apparent that Mr. Schwartz actually was the reclusive Charles Lindbergh in disguise.

Hoover’s jaw dropped. He had kept Charles Lindbergh waiting while he signed photos. Lindbergh wanted to discuss with Hoover the future of jets at Pan Am where he served on the board of directors. A bond between the two soon developed and Hoover helped Mr. Schwartz maintain anonymity while he explored new technologies with top aerospace companies, including North American Aircraft.

In 1969, Hoover was head of the Society of Experimental Text Pilots and he was charged with organizing SETP’s big celebration dinner. A once in a blue moon opportunity arose. Hoover had a long-shot chance of orchestrating the appearance of two of America’s biggest aviation heroes.

Hoover said the dinner was held in the very same ballroom at the Beverly Hilton as the Living Legends dinner. He was presiding over the ceremony at the same place on the stage behind the podium.

Seated at the head table, were the reclusive Mr. Schwartz [aka Charles Lindbergh] and Neil Armstrong, just back from the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. In the middle of the two was Hoover’s wife Colleen.

When Hoover brought up the house lights and introduced Lindbergh and Armstrong to the SETP members, they were awestruck at the sight of the two air and space pioneers.

The media was just as awestruck. They assumed Lindbergh never made public appearances and that Armstrong was still in quarantine after returning to earth. When the wire services and other media saw Lindbergh and Armstrong together they snapped hundreds of photos and sent them all over the world.

The photos all showed Bob’s wife Colleen, right in the middle of Lindbergh and Armstrong.

“It was the proudest moment of my life,” Hoover says. “There was dear Colleen, now my wife of 65 years, together with two of my biggest heroes. Her picture with them was seen all over the world.”

“To this day, I assume she is the only person to have sat with the first man to cross the Atlantic in an airplane on one side and the first man to set foot on the moon on the other,” Hoover writes in his autobiography Forever Flying.

That moment, is so emblematic of Bob Hoover. He speaks infrequently of his many accomplishments as a barnstormer, World War II fighter pilot, USAF and North American Aircraft jet test pilot and air show performer during his 60+ year flying career. He’d much rather laud others for their feats and stand on the sidelines as a humble spectator.

He also calls virtually all his friends on special occasions, such as birthdays and Christmas. Imagine my shock when, out of the blue, my hero Bob Hoover first called me several years ago on December 24 to wish me a Merry Christmas while I was driving on Pacific Coast Highway. I was so awestruck, I nearly crashed my car. That tradition has continued ever since, but now I’m less likely to lose control.

Source Document

Enjoy the weekend, enjoy time away from aviation with family and friends, but most importantly, enjoy life – it is a short ride and tomorrow morning when we awake the ride is one day closer to being finished.

Robert Novell

May 22, 2026

The Wright Brothers After Kitty Hawk – May 15, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 15 May 2026 01:00:00 +0000

RN3DB

May 16, 2026

Good Morning,

Hope all is well with you and yours and welcome back to the 3DB. This week I want to talk about the Wright Brothers after Kitty Hawk; however, before I talk about the Wrights after Kitty Hawk lets talk about the Wrights before Kitty Hawk.

Enjoy……

The Wrights

Before, And After, Kitty Hawk

Orville Wright

(August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948)

Aviator and inventor, Orville was born in Dayton, Ohio, to Milton and Susan Koerner Wright. He was the sixth of seven children born to the Wrights, five of whom survived infancy. Orville attended school in Iowa, Indiana, and Dayton, where future poet Paul Laurence Dunbar was part of his class at Central High School. However, Orville never graduated from high school, having not earned several credits required for a diploma. Having already decided to pursue a career as a printer, Orville was not worried about lacking a diploma; instead, he and Wilbur established a printing shop near their home in west Dayton.

Source Document

Wilbur Wright

April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912

Aviator and inventor, Wilbur was born near Millville, Indiana, to Milton Wright and Susan Koerner. He was the third of seven children born to the Wrights, five of whom survived infancy. Wilbur moved often as a child due to his father’s ministry in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, and he attended primary schools in Iowa and Indiana. He attended high school in Richmond, Indiana, but did not receive his diploma with the rest of the class of 1884 as his family moved to Dayton, Ohio, before his commencement ceremonies. In Dayton, Wilbur enrolled in the college preparatory program at Central High School, but a freak hockey injury during the winter of 1885-1886 caused him to convalesce at home for three years. During those years he nursed his ill mother, who died of tuberculosis in 1889, and read widely in his father’s extensive library.

Source Document

Orville and Wilbur

The Quest -From Beginning To End

In 1889, Wilbur and brother Orville – four years his junior – decided to form a business partnership and open a printing shop. Between May of 1889 to August of 1890, they published two local newspapers, the West Side News and the Evening Item. The newspapers failed in a saturated journalistic market, but their printing shop fared better. In 1890, they moved it to new quarters in the recently-built Hoover Block on West Third Street near the Wright family home. It was there that the Wrights printed the Dayton Tattler, a short-lived newspaper for the local African American community that was edited by a high school acquaintance of Orville’s, Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dunbar later gained national renown for his poetry.

Though printing became an overly predictable business to Wilbur and Orville, they maintained their shop until 1899, when they sold their press and type. Meanwhile, in the spring of 1893, they responded to the bicycling craze sweeping the United States by opening a bicycle repair and sales shop. Business at the cycle shop boomed, and it overtook the printing shop to become their primary business. While other companies produced most of the bicycles the Wrights sold, they also sold cycles made at their own shop. Few bicycles built by the Wrights exist today. The Wrights left the bicycle business in 1908.

Milton piqued the interests of Wilbur and Orville in aviation in 1878, when he gave them a toy helicopter after one of his trips in the west. The 1896 death of German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal in a glider crash, rekindled the brothers’ latent interests in flying. Drawing upon similarities between bicycling and flying, Wilbur and Orville began researching aerodynamics, propulsion, and control. Their research did not occur in a vacuum; they investigated the experiments of other aviation pioneers, writing to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., for suggestions of relevant readings in 1899. The Wrights progressed from kite to glider research and, valuing privacy while needing consistently high winds, moved glider experimentation to the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Research and development activities took place at the cycle shop on West Third Street in Dayton. Through experimentation at the cycle shop using a small, homemade wind tunnel, the Wrights designed the airplane that made the first powered, controlled, sustained flight on December 17, 1903. Experimentation and flight testing over the next decade at Huffman Prairie (Huffman Prairie Flying School adjoins Wright Patterson AFB), eight miles (13 km) east of Dayton, and at Kitty Hawk, resulted in the development of practical airplanes that could remain airborne for as long as fuel reserves permitted.

Orville and Wilbur were wary of competitors copying their designs while patents pended and did not fly between late 1905 and the spring of 1908. Orville returned to the air that spring to conduct airplane trials for the U.S. Army, while Wilbur ventured to France to conduct trials for potential French investors. The Wrights signed a contract with the U.S. Army stating that they would provide an airplane capable of flying for one hour at a speed of forty miles per hour (64 km/h) for $25,000 without performance incentives. While the trials at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, were generally successful, one flight ended abruptly when Orville’s plane crashed. The accident seriously injured Orville and killed his passenger, Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge. Orville’s injuries, which included a broken thigh and broken pelvis, gave him pain for the remainder of his life. He and sister Katharine joined Wilbur in France after his injuries healed.

In 1909, the Wrights and several prominent industrialists created the Wright Company to market Wright airplanes. Wilbur became the company’s first president, with Orville as one of two vice-presidents (Andrew Freedman being the other). Orville became president of the Wright Company upon Wilbur’s death of typhoid fever in 1912. Orville also served as executor of his brother’s estate.

In the years after Wilbur’s death, Orville became an elder statesman among aviators. He, Katharine, and Milton moved into Hawthorn Hill, a mansion in the Dayton suburb of Oakwood, in 1914. Orville sold his interests in the Wright Company in 1915, remaining with it for a year as a consulting engineer. He also built a laboratory on Broadway in west Dayton, close to the last site of the Wrights’ cycle shop and the family’s former home at 7 Hawthorne Street. Orville worked on a variety of projects at this laboratory, designing devices to ease tasks around Hawthorn Hill. He also served on several aviation commissions and boards, including that of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the predecessor agency of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Orville, who never married, died in Dayton of a heart attack on January 30, 1948 and is buried at Woodland Cemetery.

Huffman Prairie Flying Field

When the Wright brothers returned to Dayton, after their historic first flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903, they looked for a suitable flying field closer to home. Dayton banker, Torrence Huffman allowed the brothers to use his pasture, which was located eight miles northeast of Dayton, rent-free. Here in 1904 and 1905, through a series of unique experiments, the Wright brothers mastered the principles of controlled, powered flight and developed the world’s first practical airplane.

In 1904, the brothers made 105 flights, totaling 49 minutes in the air with their 1904 Wright Flyer II. With this flying machine, they made the first turn and the first circle in the air. They also employed a starting derrick for the first time and Wilbur set a new distance record.

When the brothers returned to the Huffman Prairie for the 1905 flying season, they brought along an improved machine, the 1905 Wright Flyer III. This flying machine, which evolved throughout 1905, could bank, turn circles, and make figure-eights. On October 5, 1905, Wilbur piloted the plane for a world record of over 24 miles in 39 minutes. About two weeks later, the brothers ended their experiments for 1905 feeling that they now had a practical airplane that they could market. In the 1905 flying season, the brothers stayed aloft for 262 minutes in just 50 flights.

The Wright brothers returned to Huffman Prairie Flying Field in 1910. The field was used by their new business, The Wright Company, as a testing ground, flying school, and home to their exhibition team. The Wright Company ceased use of the flying field in 1916.

Today, Huffman Prairie Flying Field is located on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990.

Source Document

Tomorrow I am off to The Wrights Shop in Dayton, make a visit to their graves of the Brothers Wright, and then to the Air Force Museum. Have a good weekend, keep family and friends close, and stop by again next week when we will talk about ?????

Robert Novell

May 16, 2026

Transcontinental and Western Air, Inc. – Aviation Ads Open a Window to the Past – May 8, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 08 May 2026 01:00:00 +0000

RN3DB

May 8, 2026

Good Morning,

This week I want to look back at the aviation industry by using ads from the fifties…..enjoy.

Transcontinental and Western Air, Inc.

I hope you enjoyed this look back in time and as always, take a few minutes each day to reflect back on your roots as an aviator and help me identify what we, as “Gatekeepers of the Third Dimension,” need to do to protect our profession.

(The preceding ads are presented for educational purposes and cannot be reproduced or used for any other purpose.)

Robert Novell
May 8, 2026

Charley and The Wright Brothers – May 1, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 01 May 2026 04:00:00 +0000

RN3DB

May 1, 2026

Good Morning,

Happy Friday and welcome back. Today we are going to talk about the man who made the Wright Brothers a success and then drifted into obscurity. The man – Charles E. Taylor – designed and built the engine for the Wright Flyer, helped develop the first wind tunnel, and he never sought notoriety from his work with the Wrights and few ever recognized his contributions.

This article is a reprint from late last year but the story of Charley needs to be kept alive and here at the 3DB we will do our part to preserve his memory.

Enjoy……………………

Charles “Charley” Taylor

(Aviation’s First Mechanic of Powered Flight)

When we think of the first powered flight we automatically think of Wilbur and Orville Wright; however, there was a third person involved whose skills were an essential part of the Wright’s success. Charles “Charley” Taylor was that man and without his help the Wright Brothers may have lost their place in history.

Charley was born in Illinois in 1868 and at the age of twelve quit school to find his place in life. He quickly learned that his hands, and tools, were almost one in the same, and America’s first aviation mechanic for powered flight started down a path in life that would have him working for the Wright brothers and building the first engine for the Wright Flyer.

Charley started to work for the Wright brothers on June 15, 1901, doing routine repairs on bicycles, so that the Wright brothers could pursue their experiments with gliders which included many trips to Kitty Hawk. After one of these trips, the brothers decided they needed more accurate information and decided they needed to build a small wind tunnel. With this, they would measure the amount, and direction, of air pressures on plane and curved surfaces operating at various angles and improve their theories based on their gliding experiences.

Building the wind tunnel was the first job that Charley Taylor did for the Wright brothers that had any connection with aeronautics. The wind tunnel was a rectangular box with a fan at one end driven by a natural gas engine. The Wright brothers did many experiments in their wind tunnel and from this data they began to make their 1902 glider with Charlie machining many of the parts.

On August 13, 1902, the brothers shipped the glider to Kitty Hawk. They did several flights with the glider and on October 31, 1902, the Wrights returned to Dayton to make plans for a powered airplane. Through their experiments, the Wrights were able to accurately predict the horsepower which was needed to produce and achieve powered flight. The next problem was where to get a light engine that would produce eight horsepower. The Wrights knew that a steam engine might suit their purpose, but a gasoline engine would be safer and more efficient.

In December of 1902, the Wrights sent letters to almost a dozen automobile companies, and gasoline engine manufacturers, asking if they could produce or modify an engine that would develop eight to nine brake horsepower, weigh no more than 180 pounds, and be free from vibration. Most companies replied that they were too busy to undertake building such a special engine. Falling back on their own mechanical experience, the Wright brothers decided to design and build their own engine.

They estimated they could build a four cylinders engine, with four inch stroke and four inch bore weighing no more than 200 pounds with accessories included, and by their calculations it would develop the horsepower necessary to power the glider in flight. Now the problem was who was going to build the engine; however, that problem was quickly solved when the brothers decided to give the task to Charley.

Charley was excited about his new challenge, and from his knowledge of mechanics, and design, he knew that the engine design was basic, straight forward, and simple. Charley had very limited knowledge about gasoline engines, but he used his craftsmanship, genius, and enthusiasm to tackle the task. Without any formal drawings available it was necessary for each part to be crudely sketched out by the Wrights, or Charlie, on a piece of paper, and after a thorough discussion with the brothers, Charley would pin the drawing above his workbench and go to work. Using these sketches, and specifications, he finished the engine in six weeks.

Now, you would think that Charley’s accomplishments up to this point would be sufficient to satisfy most aviation pioneers but it wasn’t to be. After the successful flight of 1903 Wilbur and Orville decided to have Charley build a more powerful engine and they started work on an improved airframe. When the new Flyer was ready they received permission to fly it at a pasture near Dayton called Huffman Prairie. The flying was more difficult there and the Wrights crashed numerous times and Charley was heard to say, “Every time one of the brothers goes up I expect it to be the last time I’ll see him alive.” However, because Charley devoted most of his time to maintaining the airplanes and facilities at Huffman Prairie Charley actually became the first Airport Manager in US aviation history.

There were several other major accomplishments in Charley’s career that I will notate at the conclusion of my story but for now I want tell you how this forgotten pioneer of aviation faded into obscurity and died a lonely man.

After Wilbur died in May of 1912, of Typhoid fever, the pioneering days of the Wright Brothers were finished. Charley traveled to California to look for work, during the Great Depression, and found a job as a factory mechanic. He invested what money he had in a few hundred acres of land near the Salton Sea and waited to make his fortune – nothing happened and he lost everything.

In 1937 he went to Greenfield Village and restored the Wrights’ bicycle shop, and home, to their 1903 condition and built a replica of the first engine. He later returned to California during the war and at the age of 73 went to work making cartridge shells but in 1945 Charley suffered a heart attack and was never able to work again. Now, all alone, the last of the original three men who had built the first successful airplane, he was almost destitute.

In November 1955, a reporter discovered Charlie in a Los Angles General Hospital’s charity ward. His income was his Social Security check and an $800 a year annuity fund belatedly established by Orville Wright before his death in 1948. The aviation community immediately started a campaign to raise funds for Charlie and he was moved to a private sanitarium where he died a few months later on January 30, 1956 at the age of 88. Having no close relatives Charles E. Taylor was buried in the Portal of Folded Wings Mausoleum dedicated to aviation pioneers, located in Valhalla Memorial Park, Los Angeles.

Portal of the Folded Wings

The Portal of the Folded Wings is located just south of the Burbank airport in beautiful Valhalla Memorial Park. Originally built in 1924, (6 years before United Airport/Burbank was built) it was once the grand entrance to the memorial park.

On December 17, 1953 (the 50th anniversary of powered flight) the Portal was dedicated as a “Shrine to Aviation” and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

24 Aviation Pioneers are laid to rest in the

Portal of the Folded Wings

Shrine to Aviation

Bertrand B. Acosta, co-pilot with Admiral Richard Byrd in 1927

Walter R. Brookins, flew for the Wright brothers.

Mark M. Campbell, stunt pilot and aircraft designer.

Col. Warren S. Eaton, early pilot who also built airplanes for Lincoln Beachy.

W. Bertrum Kinner, built ‘Kinner’ airplanes. Amelia Earhart flew a Kinner.

A. Roy Knabenshue, balloon and dirigible pilot who flew in the Dominguez Air Meet in 1910.

Elizabeth L. McQueen, one of Los Angeles’s first women pilots.

John B. Moisant, won the Statue of Liberty Race in 1910; first to carry a passenger across the English Channel.

Matilde J. Moisant, the second licensed female pilot in the United States in 1911.

J. Floyd Smith, test pilot and instructor for Glenn Martin and manufacturer of parachutes.

Hilder F. Smith, aerial acrobat and parachute jumper.

Carl B. Squier, WWI aviator, barnstormer, test pilot, and salesman. As Vice President of Lockheed Aircraft he sold Charles and Anne Lindbergh their Sirius airplane in 1931.

Charles E. Taylor, machinist for the Wright brothers who helped design and build the first engine for the Wright Flyer flown at Kitty Hawk.

Source Document

So, what were Charlie’s major accomplishments?

He was one of the three men responsible for the “First Flight.”
He was the first aviation mechanic in powered flight.
He was Calbraith Perry Rodgers’ mechanic on his monumental transcontinental flight in 1911.
He was the first man to fill the position of “Airport Manager.”
He was one of the first men to be actively involved in accident investigation and as a result he improved his skills/product as well as the design of the Wright Brother’s future craft.

Charlie never sought notoriety from his work with the Wrights and few ever recognized his contributions. He was never a part of aviation’s inner circle nor was he ever invited to attend any of the big celebrations held in honor of the Wrights. It seems that if anyone had ever thought much about Charley they didn’t take the time to find him. Gone but not forgotten – Happy Friday Charley and thanks for making my world of aviation possible.

Have a good weekend, enjoy time with friends and family, and enjoy some summer time fun before the cold weather begins to settle in.

Robert Novell

May 1, 2026

We All know About the Lone Eagle but What About Beryl Markam April 24, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 01:52:00 +0000

RN3DB

April 24, 2026

Good Morning,

I suspect you may be wondering what the connection is between the two people mentioned in the title, but there is a connection. They are both pioneers of the Atlantic but no one remembers Ms. Markham. Today I want to tell you her story…..enjoy.

(Little-remembered today, the adventurous Kenya bush pilot outdid her contemporary Amelia Earhart by flying the Atlantic solo the hard way)

Beryl Markham

The small single-engine monoplane emerged from the Atlantic sky and, nearly out of fuel, flew low over the inhospitable, boulder-strewn Nova Scotian landscape.

Desperately seeking a place to land and weary after more than 21 hours at the controls, the pilot set the monoplane down on what appeared to be a solid surface. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a soggy peat bog. Seconds later, the plane nosed over, the pilot suffering a gash to her forehead. Extracting herself with difficulty from the cockpit, the tall blonde aviator promptly found herself up to her shins in glutinous mud. No matter. She was safe, if desperately short of sleep and ravenous after eating only a packet of chicken sandwiches during the entire flight. It was September 5, 1936, and she had just become the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo the hard way—from east to west, against the prevailing winds. She was also the first person to fly directly across the Atlantic from England. Her name was Beryl Markham and, as a bush pilot from Kenya, she was well outside her equatorial comfort zone.

Born Beryl Clutterbuck on October 26, 1902, in the English village of Ashwell, she had moved with her family to colonial British East Africa (Kenya from 1920) at the age of 4. Unlike her mother who, disliking the isolation, soon headed back to England, young Beryl thrived amid the hardships and challenges of settler life. Often left to her own devices while her ex-soldier father developed their farm and horse-racing stable, she formed friendships with the African farm workers’ children, learning to speak their tribal languages and becoming fluent in Swahili. Barefoot and clutching a spear, she joined hunting parties as they scoured the bush for game. The fearless and strongly independent youngster even opted to sleep in her own mud hut. Like the father she hero-worshipped, she was an accomplished rider and, in her late teens, became Kenya’s first female licensed racehorse trainer.

Three times married and divorced, in later life she used the surname of her second husband, Mansfield Markham, with whom she had her only child, a son, Gervase. As someone with a decidedly relaxed attitude toward her wedding vows, the whiff of scandal seemed to follow the vivacious Mrs. Markham around like a comet’s tail. An awed Kenyan contemporary described her as “A magnificent creature, very feline. It was like watching a golden lioness when she walked across the room.”

But it was not until 1931, after making several flights with the renowned professional hunter Denys Finch Hatton, that Markham caught the flying bug. She asked Finch Hatton to teach her to fly, but as a relative novice himself, he sensibly declined. Markham then turned to another friend, the debonair Captain Tom Campbell Black, a Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) and Royal Air Force (RAF) veteran then working as the managing director and chief pilot of the Nairobi-based Wilson Airways. Under his painstaking instruction in a de Havilland DH.60 Gipsy Moth biplane, she soon began to show a precocious natural ability in the air. So close did the flying bond between Markham and Campbell Black become that she would always regard him as her mentor and guide in all aviation matters. They even talked of emulating British record-setters Amy Johnson and Jim Mollison as a way to fame and fortune. Although still married, Markham soon became involved in a long-term affair with Campbell Black.

To build up her flying hours, Markham bought an Avro Avian IV two-seater biplane, soon to be repainted in her blue-and-silver horse-racing colors. In April and May 1932, with only 127 hours in her logbook, she flew the tiny airplane 6,000 miles by stages, with several forced landings, via the Sudan and Egypt across the Mediterranean and Europe to England. Months later she flew back to Kenya, completing an astonishing feat of airmanship and navigation for someone so relatively inexperienced. As a token life-preserver while crossing the Mediterranean, she wore an inflated inner-tube!

Markham obtained her commercial license in September 1933 with just under a thousand hours in her logbook. Her early commercial work included taking joyriding tourists in the Avian along the Mombasa coastline. She delivered mail and supplies to the goldmines of Kakamega in western Kenya, often using tiny airstrips hacked from the featureless bush by the miners themselves. Markham also flew in doctors and medical supplies to isolated farms and bush outposts. Although it was a hazardous way of earning a living, she thrived on the daily challenges.

By late 1933 she had started to work as an aerial big-game spotter for hunting safaris, a technique pioneered by Finch Hatton and Campbell Black, but taken to new levels of precision by Markham. These hunting safaris were big business in 1930s East Africa, attracting wealthy clients, including royalty, from Europe and America.

As the first pilot to offer aerial game-scouting on a commercial basis, Markham specialized in finding elephants, although she was always prepared to search for any game animals on a client’s trophy list, including lion, buffalo and rhino. Her directional instructions, dropped to the hunters in leather message bags, were meticulous in the extreme, detailing the animal and herd size, the density of the surrounding bush, the distance away from the hunting party and a precise compass bearing to follow. More often than not, she worked for safaris led by her professional hunter friend, the Swedish Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, former husband of Karen Blixen, author of the classic Out of Africa. Markham herself was never interested in big-game trophy hunting, preferring to photograph the animals.

When the safari season ended, Markham used her Avian as an aerial taxi for upcountry residents. Later, to increase her operating capacity, she acquired a three-seater DH.85 Leopard Moth high-wing cabin monoplane.

In October 1934, Markham received news that Campbell Black and Charles Scott had won the prestigious Mildenhall-to-Melbourne MacRobertson Air Race flying the DH.88 Comet Grosvenor House. This was one of the contests that she had hoped to enter with Campbell Black. Not long after she learned that he had married actress Florence Desmond.

Deeply upset, Markham determined to demonstrate that her piloting skills were the equal of Campbell Black’s and his record-setting contemporaries. She wanted to set a record that would resonate around the world, conceivably the London–Cape Town–London route, or some form of transatlantic record.

These ambitions began to crystallize in February 1935 when Markham sold her Avian to finance another trip to England. Once there she hoped to persuade Campbell Black to join her in a record attempt on the Cape Town route or, failing that, to go it alone by finding a rich backer to finance a solo record attempt.

But it was not until March 1936 that, accompanied by Bror Blixen, Markham left Kenya in her Leopard Moth to reprise her 1932 flight to England. Although Campbell Black had offered to arrange interviews for several flying jobs in Britain, she sought something more than that: an objective that would make the headlines of the world’s newspapers.

Ironically, when eventually she found a wealthy patron, it turned out to be an old Kenya settler friend, John C. Carberry, who had been a member of Britain’s 1914 Schneider Trophy team and later served in the RNAS. Carberry was in England at that time, awaiting the completion of a Percival Vega Gull he was having built to compete in the Schlesinger African Air Race between Portsmouth and Johannesburg, scheduled for late September 1936. Impulsively he offered the Vega Gull to Markham for an east-west solo transatlantic attempt, conditional on her getting it back to England in time for him to compete in the Schlesinger. She readily agreed.

Jim Mollison had made the first westward solo crossing of the North Atlantic, on August 18-19, 1932, flying between Ireland and Canada in a DH.80A Puss Moth. Mollison had been aiming for New York and so judged the flight a partial failure. Markham also decided to head for New York but, on Carberry’s advice, chose to start from England.

The Vega Gull, dubbed The Messenger, was an elegant low-wing, fabric-covered, four-seater monoplane, powered by a 200-hp de Havilland Gipsy Six II engine driving a Ratier variable-pitch propeller. In standard configuration it had a 174-mph maximum speed, 150-mph cruising speed and a range of about 660 miles. For Markham’s transatlantic flight, several extra fuel tanks were fitted, including two in the cabin, to take on the 255 gallons of gasoline needed to reach New York, giving a theoretical range of about 3,800 miles. The fixed undercarriage was specially strengthened to carry the extra load. All the supplementary tanks were controlled by hand-operated petcocks. The cabin tanks had no gauges, but each contained enough fuel for about four hours. Markham was cautioned that proper use of the petcocks to control the flow of fuel was vital. Were she to open one without first shutting the other, an airlock might result, blocking the fuel flow. There was no room in the Gull’s cabin for a radio.

Campbell Black spent many hours helping Markham with her training regime and detailed preflight planning. To obtain firsthand knowledge of the conditions she was likely to encounter along the route, he also introduced her to Jim Mollison, who soon became a close friend. They chose RAF Abingdon, with its mile-long runway, as the departure point.

Adverse North Atlantic weather delayed the departure until 1850 hours (BST) on September 4, 1936, when Markham, in the pilot’s seat for only the third time, took off in The Messenger and headed west toward Ireland and the vast Atlantic. Among the onlookers, Mollison and airplane designer Edgar Percival watched approvingly as she coolly held the Gull down until it gathered sufficient speed to lift its heavy load. Campbell Black was away, apparently because he doubted she would fly in such unfavorable weather. “Well, that’s the last we’ll see of Beryl,” quipped Mollison to Percival. Nonetheless, as an optimistic token, Mollison had loaned Markham the cherished wristwatch he had used on his successful transatlantic flights.

Nothing was heard of the Gull until 2225 BST, when it was observed overflying Castletown, Ireland, 328 miles from Abingdon. In her autobiography, West With the Night, Markham recalled of this time in the flight: “We are bound for a point thirty-six hundred miles from here – two thousand of it unbroken ocean. Most of it will be by night….I am flying along the Great Circle Course for Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, into a forty mile headwind at a speed of 130 mph.”

She had been flying on a cabin tank estimated to last four hours when suddenly, she wrote, “My motor coughs and dies and the Gull is powerless.” For some 30 heart-stopping seconds, while the monoplane sank toward the waves, Markham grappled frantically with awkward petcocks until at last “the motor explodes into life again.”

As Markham flew on, interminable dark and monotonous hours of instrument flying in the cramped cockpit were at last ended when she sighted “A lighted ship – the daybreak – some steep cliffs. The meaning of these will never change for a pilot….I felt the elation I had so long imagined….We had flown blind for nineteen hours.” It was a magnificent feat of navigation. The ship was the SS Spaarndam, which reported sighting the Gull at 1400 BST, some 200 miles from Newfoundland, headed west.

Soon after the Gull was spotted circling the Cape Race lighthouse on the southeastern tip of Newfoundland’s Avalon peninsula before heading for the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. “After a while there would be New Brunswick, Maine and then New York,” Markham wrote. “…Four hundred miles of water, but then again land at Cape Breton. I would stop at Sydney to refuel and go on….New York was my goal.”

Fate, meanwhile, had another card to play. “My engine began to shudder before I saw the land. It died. It spluttered, it started again and limped along. Airlock, I thought.” Hoping she might clear the airlock by turning the empty tanks on and off, she cut her hands on the sharp metal petcocks, blood dripping onto her maps and clothes, to no avail. The engine ran on intermittently until at last, over Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton, an estimated 12 minutes from Sydney airfield, it cut out completely, leading to that tail-up landing in the Baleine Cove peat bog. (The “airlock” was later attributed to ice lodged in the air intake of the last petrol tank, partially choking the fuel flow to the carburetor.) Since departing England, Markham had covered an extraordinary 2,612 miles in 21 hours and 35 minutes.

Rescued by local fishermen, she was taken to a telephone, from which she reported to Sydney airfield. Next day, her forehead bandaged, she was flown to Halifax and a civic reception. Waiting at the airfield was a U.S. Coast Guard Beechcraft 17, which flew her to Floyd Bennett Field, where a rapturous crowd welcomed her. Over the following packed days, the glamorous, party-loving Markham delighted in New York’s generous hospitality and tickertape welcome. But then came the shattering news that Tom Campbell Black was dead, killed on September 19 at Liverpool Airport in a ground collision between the Percival Mew Gull he was intending to pilot in the Schlesinger Race and an RAF Hawker Hart light bomber.

The trusting John Carberry, of course, never did get to fly his Vega Gull in the Schlesinger. After it was extracted from the Nova Scotian mud, it was shipped back to England and then East Africa, where it was sold to Dar-es-Salaam Airways.

Markham returned to England where, over the ensuing years, she was frequently reported as entering races or seeking sponsorship for record attempts. But nothing ever came of it. Nor did she show any interest in returning to bush flying. It was as if Campbell Black’s tragic death had deprived her of a vital motivational spark—as if she no longer had anything to prove.

She went back to the United States in 1939, living there until 1950, when the siren call of Africa drew her back to Kenya and, eventually, to another period as one of the country’s most successful racehorse trainers. She died in Nairobi on August 3, 1986, aged 83.

Today, Beryl Markham and her epic transatlantic flight are all but forgotten. Few can doubt, however, that had this extraordinary woman so chosen, with her courage, gritty self-confidence and flying skills, she could have ranked alongside such aviation greats as Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson and Jean Batten.

Source Document

Have a good weekend, relax and enjoy the first day of 2021, and come back next week when we will talk about another pioneer in aviation.

Robert Novell

April 24, 2026

The Honolulu Clipper – April 10, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 01:54:00 +0000

RN3DB

April 10, 2026

Good Morning and Welcome Back,

This week I will be talking about my favorite airline – Pan Am. I have written a number of articles on Pan Am as well as provided a few contradictions to some of their claims; however, they are still my favorite. Pan Am provided a solid footing for commercial aviation in the US, and of course they brought us the giant Clippers that tamed the oceans of the world.

This week I want to talk about the Honolulu Clipper but before I do I want to give you a few blog articles to review if you need to refresh your memory on some of the specifics of Pan Am.

There are many more articles on the blog, including the story of the Clipper stranded in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor was attacked, but today I want to talk about a Clipper that was buried at sea.

The Honolulu Clipper

The Honolulu Clipper departed Hawaii on 3 November 1945 carrying 26 military personnel returning to the United States after service in the Pacific. The aircraft lost power in both starboard engines after five hours of flying, and successfully landed 650 miles east of Oahu shortly before midnight. The merchant tanker Englewood Hills maintained radio contact, found the aircraft and removed the passengers on the morning of 4 November.

The escort carrier Manila Bay arrived and sent over aircraft mechanics who were unable to repair the engines at sea. Manila Bay then attempted to tow the aircraft, but the tow line parted as weather deteriorated. The seaplane tender San Pablo was assigned to tow the flying boat into port, but the Honolulu Clipper was damaged in a collision with the tender on 7 November and intentionally sunk on 14 November by perforating the hull with 1200 20mm shells after salvage was deemed impractical.

A sad ending but wait……….There is a effort underway to recover her from the 17,000 foot deep watery grave, and for that story, as well as more pictures and a detailed account of her fate, please click on the following link………………….. The Honolulu Clipper’s Last Flight

Now, for those of you who have never seen the video “The Long Way Home – The Flight of the Pacific Clipper” I have the video below.

I hope everyone had a good week and will have an even better weekend. Take care, fly safe, and keep friends and family close.

Robert Novell
APRIL 10, 2026

The Seaplane Designed to Deliver a Nuclear Payload – April 3, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 01:27:00 +0000

RN3DB

April 3, 2026

Good Morning,

This week I want to take you back to a time when nuclear capability was the focus of the United Sates and all proposals from the US Navy, Air Force, and other branches were taken seriously by the politicians. One of those proposals, the P6M SeaMaster proposed by the Navy, offered the US greater flexibility and higher speeds than that of the B-47, or B-52, which was being used by the Strategic Air Command; however, the SeaMaster never went in to production as a result of the U.S. changing focus and moving ahead with the development of the Polaris Submarine and the ICBMs being put in place by the Air Force.

Enjoy this look back, and the videos, at a time in our history when our country believed that a nuclear confrontation with Russia was unavoidable…..

Martin P6M SeaMaster

In the 1950s, the U. S. Navy saw itself being left out of all-important strategic bombing duties while the Air Force seemingly monopolized the mission with 2,000 long-range bombers ready to attack the Soviet Union. The Navy worked hard to develop a strategic nuclear role by positioning larger aircraft aboard its aircraft carriers, but such carrier-based aircraft were never competitive with the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command. The solution for the Navy, at least as some planners saw it, was to use large seaplanes for strategic missions, freeing the crews from dependence on easily targeted airfields with fixed runways.

The term Seaplane Striking Force (SSF) came into use in the Pentagon. And the most ambitious seaplane ever planned in the United States came into being – the Martin P6M SeaMaster, a graceful, four-jet flying boat almost the size of a B-52 Stratofortress. When details of the SeaMasters’ design were disclosed – some, with Navy cooperation, appearing for the first time in Roy Crane’s syndicated Buz Sawyer comic strip – one observer called the SeaMaster “elegant.” Even today, looking back, it is difficult not to be impressed with the beauty and functionality of this large, highly original aircraft.

Strategic Ambitions

The Navy and the Glenn L. Martin Company envisioned a striking force of P6M SeaMaster seaplanes carrying out nuclear bombing missions and pioneering atomic energy as a source of power for aircraft. Martin built nine P6M SeaMasters. The enthusiasm over their graceful appearance was well founded, but their story turned out to embody tragic elements.

Design work on the SeaMaster began when the Navy laid down a 1953 requirement for a high performance, multirole flying boat. Known to the manufacturer as the Martin Model 275, the design that emerged had an all-metal hull of high length/beam ratio, mounting a high-set wing, sharply swept at 40 degrees, which incorporated so much anhedral (or negative dihedral) that the stabilizing floats on the wingtips were attached permanently.

The P6M-1 SeaMaster had a T-tail. Mounted above the wing to minimize spray ingestion were four 13,000-pound thrust Allison J71 turbojet engines with afterburners. The pressurized flight compartment had provision for a crew of five.

Built by Martin (a predecessor of today’s Lockheed Martin) in Baltimore and tested in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, the first XP6M-1 made its maiden flight on July 14, 1955. It was one of the last Navy planes to be painted in the familiar blue color scheme before the service changed, that year, to a gray and white color combination.

On Dec. 7, 1955, two days after the death of aviation pioneer Glenn L. Martin, 69, who had created the great company bearing his name, the no. 1 SeaMaster broke up, exploded, and burned on a flight over the Chesapeake. Four men died, including Lt. Cmdr. Victor Utgoff, 40, one of the Navy’s most experienced seaplane pilots.

The second SeaMaster flew on May 18, 1956. The Navy placed an order for six J71-powered pre-production XP6M-1 flying boats. On the basis of early flight tests, the Navy placed a subsequent order for 24 production P6M-2 aircraft, which differed in being powered by 17,000-pound non-afterburning Pratt & Whitney J75-P-2-PW turbojet engines and fixed some of the faults found in the XP6M-1.

The SeaMasters’ ordnance delivery system was a Martin trademark, a variation of a feature found on the company’s XB-51 and B-57 bombers. This was a rotary weapons door in the hull, on a fore and aft axis, that could dispense bombs or aerial mines at speeds up to 600 mph. The ordnance could be replenished from openings on top of the hull. Pneumatic tubes sealed the opening around the hull weapons door. The weapons door rotated 180 degrees, allowing weapons to be dropped while keeping the hull sealed to prevent buffeting produced by old-fashioned bomb bay doors.

It was expected that the SeaMaster could, if necessary, be fueled from a submarine near enemy shores – an interesting precedent for the emphasis on littoral warfare adopted by the Navy in later years. The jet flying boat would then have a combat radius of up to 3,000 miles. An imaginative map drawn up in the Pentagon showed offshore SeaMasters capable of flying far enough to strike virtually every important target in the U.S.S.R – wishful thinking which ignored the risks of launching missions near an enemy’s coast.

Flight Tests

The second SeaMaster crashed on Nov. 9, 1957. The four-man crew bailed out successfully and although two SeaMasters had been lost in test-flying mishaps, no serious flaws were ever found in the flying boat’s design. It was immensely strong, with the aluminum skinning at the wing roots an inch thick, and very fast, demonstrating .89 Mach at low level when the contemporary B-52 could achieve only .55 Mach.

But the Navy wasn’t really prepared to build the infrastructure it would need for a global, water-based bomber force. The Navy had no air refueling tankers, no submarines capable of refueling the SeaMaster far from home, and no handy way to cope with mechanical breakdowns in an aircraft sent afar on a solo assignment.

After three XP6M-1 and three P6M-2 aircraft had been built, contracts for remaining airframes were cancelled on Aug. 21, 1959, in a decision that was and remains controversial.

The SeaMaster weighed 160,000 pounds on takeoff, and was 134 feet long, with a wingspan of 102 feet.

Unfortunately, the SeaMaster initially “had design flaws and under performing engines,” said Stan Piet of the Glenn L. Martin Maryland Aviation Museum in Baltimore. Both prototypes “were lost tragically in crashes that didn’t need to happen,” Piet said. Piet said that the SeaMaster “became a viable airplane by 1959, but by then they didn’t need it because they had Polaris.” While the flaws in the SeaMaster had been worked out, the Navy concluded that the concept itself was flawed, because other alternatives for the nuclear strike mission were being developed.

The Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) gave the Navy a strategic nuclear mission never really achieved by carrier-based or water-borne airplanes. All of the SeaMasters were eventually scrapped, with not a single example preserved for history. The SeaMasters were the fastest flying boats ever constructed, but sadly the last aircraft that the Glenn L. Martin corporation ever built.

Source Document

Have a good weekend, enjoy time with family and friends, and remember that someday, in the final moments of life on this plane of existence where we live, your life will flash before your eyes – make sure that the life you see in this video is worth watching.

Robert Novell

April 3, 2026

The Goose – Why Did Howard Hughes Keep the Goose? – March 27, 2026

Robert Fulmer — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 01:40:00 +0000

RN3DB

March 27, 2026

Good Morning,

This week we continue our story on the Goose but before I do I have a few corrections/additions that I need to share with you which were provided by Stewart Bailey, who is the curator at the Evergreen Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

First – Reference the Duramold, there were layers “as thin as” 1/32 inch; however, many layers were thicker in areas like the wing spar and keel.

Second – The Goose did not have a ramp from the hangar to the water. There was no beaching gear, and indeed the size of the airplane made the concept of external gear impractical. So, where the Goose was hangared was really a dry dock, and actually the hangar had three areas that met that criteria. One for the hull, and two for the outrigger floats. When they moved the completed aircraft out of the hangar for it’s first/last flight they flooded the drydocks and floated the Goose out into the open water.

Why Did Howard Hughes

Keep and Protect the Goose

We all know, from articles of the time, that Hughes believed his accomplishment with bringing the Goose alive was something no one else could have possibly accomplished, and he was right; however, why did Hughes’ spend a million plus dollars a year in the 50s/60s/70s to protect the Goose? Why did he keep a staff of 350 employees working on, and modifying, the Goose for the next flight which never came? Was it his larger than life ego or was there something else?

Once the plane had safely landed engineers, scientists, military officials and air industry executives all flocked to examine it to see what lessons they could learn. Its vast size was something that particularly intrigued the major airlines. The design information they gleaned from the plane’s construction greatly helped in the manufacture of new kinds of aircraft, leading eventually to the Jumbo Jets of today.

Similarly, the plane’s technology was of especial interest to the military. In fact, from this date forward Hughes would began to withdraw from public life and concentrate more on air defense technology, which made the US Air Force one of his major clients. This diversification of Hughes Industries, which had started out as the manufacturer of oil-drilling bits, directly grew out of the work that went into the Spruce Goose.

By the early 1950s as the Cold War got under way, Hughes was working closely with the US Air Force and the Department of Defense in developing aircraft weapons technology. Aware of Hughes’ erratic behavior, his governmental business partners watched him closely. An FBI report of 1953 shows just how far Hughes’ mental state had declined in six short years, describing him as ‘a paranoid, vengeful, and emotionally disturbed man, whose mind has deteriorated to the point that he is capable of both suicide and murder’.

Hughes’ love of flying had ultimately led him into a world of politics, and state security, that fueled his megalomania and growing sense of paranoia, and perhaps hastening his end. By his death in 1976 Hughes’ life had encompassed both the glamor and the tragedy of the ‘American Dream’, and, in fact, had done much to invent it.

Source Document

The amount of information that is available on the hidden years is limited; however, once again Stewart Bailey, at the Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, was kind enough to provide a few additional details. Below is his email:

**********

Bob-

The best material I have seen on the “hidden” years of the Spruce Goose is in Charles Barton’s Book; “Howard Hughes and His Flying Boat.” In the book, he talked with a number of Hughes associates who told him about what went on during the years that it was stored.

Hughes made many changes to the aircraft both internal and external, after the one and only flight. One of the most noticeable on the outside is the addition of two rows of stiffeners bolted to the outside on each side of the tail, where the tail cone attaches to the rest of the fuselage. The story is that during the flight, there was a lot of flexing of the tail which caused Hughes a great deal of anxiety. The stiffeners were an attempt to strengthen that area, which was an acknowledged “weak spot” on the aircraft. Internally, Hughes made a number of changes including a fire suppression system, the addition of a “swamp cooler” and the spiral stair case that goes up to the flight deck. (The original access was via a simple ladder.)

On the flight deck itself he re-arranged the controls to make it more user friendly, which included modifying the control panel to wrap around the pilot’s position where he had more access to various switches. Prior to that, he had had to ask the engineers seated behind him at the Engineering station to perform certain tasks rather than do them himself. He also modified the throttle arrangement. Originally he only had four throttles; one to regulate two engines at a time. He modified it to eight throttles, allowing him to control each engine individually.

In one of the more bizarre incidents of it life in captivity, the Spruce Goose was damaged by a flooding incident in September, 1953. So much oil had been pumped out of the ground on Terminal Island, where the plane was hangared, that the island actually sank. This, tied in with an unusually high tide caused the aircraft to float up until the tip of the tail smashed into the roof of the hangar. The top of the vertical tail was repaired and the hangar cleaned after the flood, but the airplane today still bears scars from that incident, which were discovered during the cleaning and restoration process back in the 1990s. After the flood, the hangar building was also enlarged to keep the airplane from ever again bumping the ceiling.

All the best,

Stewart

Stewart W. Bailey-Curator

Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum

500 NE Captain Michael King Smith Way

McMinnville, OR 97128

www.evergreenmuseum.org

**********

That’s it for the this week and I want to again thank Stewart Bailey for his contributions to my effort to tell a story about the Goose that is hopefully more telling than what you may find on the web. Have a good weekend, keep friends and family close, and remember all Aviators are “Gatekeepers of the Third Dimension.”

Robert Novell

March 27, 2026

Howard Hughes, Henry Kaiser, and The Goose- March 20, 2026

Robert Fulmer — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 07:56:00 +0000

RN3DB

March 20, 2026

Good Morning,

Welcome back to the 3DB and this week I want to revisit the blog I posted after visiting the Evergreen Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. The Goose, and Howard Hughes, are iconic figures in aviation history and I especially enjoy the research I have done on Howard Hughes whose lifetime is not as straight forward as people have been led to believe.

So, with that having been said, lets talk about the Goose………………………………

The HK-1 Hercules

(Spruce Goose)

The Goose was not the brainchild of Howard Hughes. The man who put the concept of the Goose on the table was Henry Kaiser – the man who made the “Liberty Ships” for the war effort. (I will have a few statistics on Liberty Ships and a video at the conclusion of this article.)

Now it may seem a little strange that a ship builder suddenly wanted to build airplanes but this was not his plan. Henry Kaiser was going to have Howard Hughes build his brainchild. Now, you know why the original designation of the Goose was HK-1. H is for Hughes and K is for Kaiser; however, the final designation of the Goose was H-4 after Kaiser pulled out of the project and Hughes put his reputation, and money, on the line to prove his critics wrong.

Now, why did Uncle Sam need the Goose…………

The geographic isolation of the US was an advantage, reference keeping the war off our shores, during the Second World War, but this also led to logistic problems with ferrying men and machines to war theaters. Henry Kaiser, a civil engineer who had a habit of thinking big, was building Liberty Ships and had an idea for a large flying boat, which would avoid the U-boat menace in the North Atlantic. He approached Howard Hughes to build the huge craft, which would be called the HK-1.

The HK-1 contract was issued in 1942, as a development contract, and called for three aircraft to be constructed under a two-year deadline to be available for the war effort. The HK-1 was to have eight Pratt & Whitney 3 000 HP engines, a wingspan of 320 feet and a length of 218 feet. It was designed to be capable of carrying 750 fully equipped troops or two 30 ton Sherman tanks. Its fully loaded cargo capacity was 150,000 pounds and all cargo would be loaded through front doors.

The HK-1 would be built from wood, because of wartime restrictions on the use of aluminum and concerns about weight, and the HK-1 critics nicknamed it the “Spruce Goose” despite it being made almost entirely of birch rather than spruce. The plane was covered with duramold, which involved laminating and molding thin sheets of veneer together and one of the most amazing aspects of the construction was that the Spruce Goose had almost no nails or screws. The duramold process used layers of 1/32 inch wood veneer laid in alternating grain direction and then bonded with glue and steam-shaped. Duramold made the Goose both strong, and lightweight, for its size.

As we know the airplane suffered extensive delays. Part of the time delay was due to Hughes insistence on perfection; however, the technological problems that had to be overcome in the design were numerous and included the testing of new concepts for the large hull, flying control surfaces, and the incorporation of power boost systems for control.

Henry Kaiser pulled out of the program because of the delays and Hughes continued the program alone and redesignated the HK-1 the “H-4 Hercules.” Hughes signed a new contract with Uncle Sam, which now limited production to one prototype. Work proceeded slowly, with the result that the H-4 was not completed until well after the war was over.

The airplane was shipped over the roads/highways to Pier E in Long Beach, California by a company specializing in house moving. It was moved in three large sections consisting of the fuselage and each wing, and a fourth smaller shipment containing the tail assembly parts and other smaller assemblies. After final assembly, a hangar was erected around the flying boat with a ramp to launch the H-4 into the harbor. It has been said that this new hangar was the first climate-controlled building in the United States. Imagine that………………

Now that we have an overview of the project let’s talk about one of the few men Howard Hughes trusted and why the history books are wrong about who conceived the idea of the HK-1.

Glenn Odekirk

(The Man Who Built the Spruce Goose for Howard Hughes)

Glenn Odekirk, whose life and times were indelibly entwined with Howard Hughes and who designed and built the Spruce Goose, the flying boat that became more of a success on the ground than it ever was in the air, has died.

Odekirk was 81 when he died of cancer late Monday at a hospice in Las Vegas.

Over the years Odekirk, who met Hughes on a movie set nearly 60 years ago, was the eccentric billionaire’s “shop superintendent,” “chief mechanic” and “assistant to the president” at Hughes Aircraft Co.

What he always was in fact was one of the few people Hughes ever trusted to design the planes that the young adventurer flew to the then furthermost fringes of possibility. He was involved on two important events, when the industrialist, and flier, made an unsuccessful world record airspeed run in 1935 and a nonstop West Coast to East Coast flight in 1938.

However, Odekirk’s most lasting legacy will probably be the mammoth wooden Spruce Goose seaplane with the 100-yard wingspan that has become its own museum in Long Beach Harbor, next to another memento of a Gargantuan past, the Queen Mary.

In a 1979 interview with The Times, Odekirk said he conceived of the flying boat when he heard shipbuilder Henry Kaiser complain on the radio about the huge number of vessels being lost to German submarines in World War II.

“‘Well, I guess I’ll have to put wings on my boat,’ ” Odekirk recalled Kaiser saying.

Odekirk approached Kaiser on behalf of Hughes and together the three men conceived the HK-1 (for Hughes and Kaiser), known popularly as the Spruce Goose, even though a preponderance of the wood used was birch. Odekirk was the designer in charge of the flying boat that was to carry 750 fully equipped troops across the Atlantic to fight in Europe.

However, the plane, 218 feet long and 79 feet high, made only one brief flight. That was on Nov. 2, 1947, 70 feet above the water with Hughes at the controls. It was then placed in storage until converted to a popular public attraction a few years ago.

Shortly after that, Odekirk left Hughes to start his own company and the two men saw each other infrequently, if at all, until Hughes’ death in 1976.

Odekirk contended over the years that the old flying boat, with some mechanical adjustments and checks, could be flown again.

“To me it would be (as simple as) ABC,” Odekirk said.

Source Document

OK, so now we know the rest of the story about the concept, and design, and the man/men responsible for bringing the Goose to life. So, let’s talk about what happened after that historic flight we are all familiar with.

What happened to the Goose after the first/last flight is a story all to itself. The number of people involved maintaining the airplane, the modifications that Hughes ordered performed, and his constant expectations that he was going to fly the airplane again will be covered in pat three of the series. Stand-by for the rest of the story.

I hope you have enjoyed part one on the Goose but before I wrap it up I wanted to give you a brief overview on “Liberty Ships” which will help everyone better understand why Uncle Sam was looking for a boat with wings.

The Liberty Ship Program

The origins of the Liberty Ship can be traced to a design proposed by the British in 1940. Seeking to replace wartime losses, the British placed contracts with US shipyards for 60 steamers of the Ocean class. These steamers were of a simple design and featured a single coal-fired 2,500 horsepower reciprocating steam engine. While the coal-fired reciprocating steam engine was obsolete, it was reliable and Britain possessed a large supply of coal. While the British ships were being constructed, the US Maritime Commission examined the design and made alterations to lessen coast and speed construction.

This revised design was classified EC2-S-C1 and featured oil-fired boilers. The most significant change was to replace much of the riveting with welded seams. A new practice, the use of welding decreased labor costs and required fewer skilled workers. Due to their plain looks, the Liberty Ships initially had a poor public image. To combat this, the Maritime Commission dubbed September 27, 1941, as “Liberty Fleet Day” and launched the first 14 vessels. In his speech at the launch ceremony, Pres. Franklin Roosevelt cited Patrick Henry’s famed speech and stated that the ships would bring liberty to Europe.

In early 1941, the US Maritime Commission placed an order for 260 ships of the Liberty design. Of these, 60 were for Britain. With the implementation of the Lend-Lease Program in March, orders more than doubled. To meet the demands of this construction program, new yards were established on both coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico. Over the next four years, US shipyards would produce 2,751 Liberty Ships. The majority (1,552) of these came from new yards built on the West Coast and operated by Henry J. Kaiser. Best known for building the Bay Bridge and the Hoover Dam, Kaiser pioneered new shipbuilding techniques.

Operating four yards in Richmond, CA and three in the Northwest, Kaiser developed methods for prefabricating and mass-producing Liberty Ships. Components were built all across the US and transported to shipyards where the vessels could be assembled in record time. During the war, a Liberty Ship could be built in a about two weeks at a Kaiser yard. In November 1942, one of Kaiser’s Richmond yards built a Liberty Ship (Robert E. Peary) in 4 days, 15 hours, and 29 minutes as a publicity stunt. Nationally, the average construction time was 42 days and by 1943, three Liberty Ships were being completed each day.

The speed at which Liberty Ships could be constructed allowed the US to build cargo vessels faster than German U-boats could sink them. This, along with Allied military successes against the U-boats, ensured that Britain and Allied forces in Europe remained well supplied during World War II. Liberty Ships served in all theaters with distinction. Throughout the war, Liberty Ships were manned members of the US Merchant Marine, with gun crews provided by the US Naval Armed Guard. Among the notable achievements of the Liberty Ships was SS Stephen Hopkins sinking the German raider Stier on September 27, 1942.

Initially designed to last five years, many Liberty Ships continued to ply the seaways into the 1970s; in addition, many of the shipbuilding techniques employed in the Liberty program became standard practice across the industry and are still in use today. While not glamorous, the Liberty Ship proved vital to the Allied war effort. The ability to build merchant shipping at a rate faster than it was lost, while maintaining a steady stream of supplies to the front was one of the keys to winning the war.

Source Document

While it can be agreed that the number of large transport airplanes, like the Goose, produced would never rival the number of “Liberty Ships”, I think it is easy for everyone to see that the concept of the Goose was the building block for what we refer to today as an “Air Bridge.” The “Air Bridge” concept was used effectively in Iraq, and Afghanistan, by the US military to support ground operations using the C-5, which looks like the Goose by the way, and the C-17.

Have a good weekend, stay close to family and friends, and remember all aviators/aviation enthusiast are “Gatekeepers of the Third Dimension.”

Robert Novell

March 20, 2026

Did You Know? – March 13, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 01:44:00 +0000

RN3DB

March 13, 2026

Good Morning and Happy Friday,

This week I want to share with you an email that I received from a friend. I think you will find this personal account very interesting and well worth keeping for a reference.

Enjoy………………………………

INTERESTING EARLY AMERICAN

AVIATION HISTORY

How many of you know that in 1910, mighty Martin Marietta got its start in an abandoned California church? That’s where Glenn L. Martin with his amazing mother Minta Martin, and their mechanic Roy Beal, constructed a fragile biplane that Glenn used to teach himself to fly.

It has often been told how Douglas Aircraft started operations in 1920 in a barbershop’s backroom on L.A.’s Pico Boulevard. Interestingly, the barber-shop is still operating.

The Lockheed Company built the first of their famous Vegas’ in 1927 inside a building currently used by Victory Cleaners at 1040 Sycamore in Hollywood.

In 1922, Claude Ryan, a 24 year old military reserve pilot, was getting his hair cut in San Diego when the barber mentioned that the ‘town’s aviator’ was in jail for smuggling Chinese illegal’s up from Mexico. Claude found out that if he replaced the pilot ‘sitting in the pokey,’ that he would be able to lease the town’s airfield for $50 a month – but he also had to agree to fly North and East – not South!

Northrop’s original location was an obscure Southern California hotel. It was available because the police had raided the hotel and found that its steady residents were money-minded gals entertaining transit male hotel guests.

Glenn Martin built his first airplane in a vacant church before he moved to a vacant apricot cannery in Santa Ana. He was a showman and he traveled the county fair, and air meet circuit, as an exhibitionist aviator. From his exhibition proceeds Glenn was able to pay his factory workers and purchase the necessary wood, linen, and wire.

His mother, Minta, and two men ran the factory while Glenn risked his neck and gadded about the country. One of his workers was 22-year old Donald Douglas, who was the entire engineering department. A Santa Monica youngster named Larry Bell, later founded Bell Aircraft which today is Bell Helicopter Textron, ran the shop.

Another part of Glenn Martin’s business was a flying school with several planes based at Griffith Park, and a seaplane operation on the edge of Watts where his instructors taught a rich young man named Bill Boeing to fly.

Later, Boeing bought one of Glenn Martin’s seaplanes and had it shipped back to his home in Seattle. At this same time, Bill Boeing hired away Glenn’s personal mechanic. Later, after Boeing’s seaplane crashed in Puget Sound, he placed an order to Martin for replacement parts.

Still chafing from having his best mechanic ‘swiped,’ a trick he later often used himself, Martin decided to take his sweet time and allowed Bill Boeing to ‘stew’ for a while. Bill Boeing wasn’t known to be a patient man, so he began fabricating his own aircraft parts, an activity that morphed into constructing entire airplanes and eventually the Boeing Company we know today.

A former small shipyard nicknamed ‘Red Barn’ became Boeing Aircraft’s first home. Soon, a couple of airplanes were being built inside, each of them having a remarkable resemblance to Glenn Martin’s airplanes that, interestingly had its own remarkable resemblance to Glenn Curtiss’ airplanes.

A few years later, when the Great depression intervened and Boeing couldn’t sell enough airplanes to pay his bills, he diversified into custom built speed boats and furniture for his wealthy friends.

After WWI, a bunch of sharpies from Wall Street gained control of the Wright Brothers Co in Dayton and the Martin Company in L.A. and ‘stuck them’ together as the Wright-Martin Company.

Wright-Martin began building an obsolete biplane design with a foreign Hispano-Suiza engine. Angered because he had been out maneuvered with a bad idea, Martin walked out taking Larry Bell and other key employees with him.

From the deep wallet of a wealthy baseball mogul, Martin was able to establish a new factory. Then his good luck continued, when the future aviation legend Donald Douglas, was persuaded by Glenn to join his team. The Martin MB-1 quickly emerged from the team’s efforts and became the Martin Bomber.

Although too late to enter WWI, the Martin Bomber showed its superiority when Billy Mitchell used it to sink several captured German battleships and cruisers to prove its worth. He was later court martialed for his effort.

In Cleveland, a young fellow called ‘Dutch’ Kindelberger joined Martin as an engineer. Later, as the leader of North American Aviation, Dutch became justifiably well-known.

Flashing back to 1920, Donald Douglas had saved $60,000, returned to L.A. and rented a barbershop’s rear room and loft space in a carpenter’s shop nearby. There he constructed a classic passenger airplane called the Douglas Cloudster.

A couple of years later, Claude Ryan bought the Cloudster and used it to make daily flights between San Diego and Los Angeles. This gave Ryan the distinction of being the first owner/operator of Douglas transports. Claude Ryan later custom built Charles Lindbergh’s ‘ride’ to fame in the flying fuel tank christened: The Spirit of St. Louis.

In 1922, Donald Douglas won a contract from the Navy to build several torpedo carrying aircraft. While driving through Santa Monica’s wilderness, Douglas noticed an abandoned, barn-like movie studio. He stopped his roadster and prowled around. That abandoned studio became Douglas Aircraft’s first real factory.

With the $120,000 contract in his hand, Donald Douglas could afford to hire one or two more engineers. My brother, Gordon Scott, had been schooled in the little known science of aviation at England’s Fairey Aviation, so he hired Gordon.

My first association with the early aviation pioneers occurred when I paid my brother a visit at his new work place. Gordon was outside on a ladder washing windows. He was the youngest engineer. Windows were dirty. And Douglas Aircraft Company had no money to pay janitors.

Gordon introduced me to a towhead guy called Jack Northrop, and another chap named Jerry Vultee. Jack Northrop had moved over from Lockheed Aircraft. And all of them worked together on the Douglas Aircraft’s world cruiser designs.

While working in his home after work and on weekends, Jack designed a wonderfully advanced streamlined airplane. When Allan Loughead [Lockheed] found a wealthy investor willing to finance Northrop’s new airplane, he linked up with Allan and together, they leased a Hollywood workshop where they constructed the Lockheed Vega. It turned out to be sensational with its clean lines and high performance. Soon Amelia Earhart and others flew the Vega and broke many of aviation’s world records.

I had the distinct pleasure of spending time with Ed Heinemann who later designed the AD, A3D and A4D. He told me how my Dad would fly out to Palmdale with an experimental aircraft they were both working on. They would take it for a few hops and come up with some fixes. After having airframe changes fabricated in a nearby machine shop, they would hop it again to see if they had gotten the desired results. If it worked out, Mr. Heinemann would incorporate the changes on the aircraft’s assembly line. No money swapped hands!

In May 1927, Lindbergh flew to Paris and triggered a bedlam where everyone was trying to fly everywhere. Before the first Lockheed Vega was built, William Randolph Hearst had already paid for it and had it entered in an air race from the California Coast to Honolulu.

In June 1927, my brother, Gordon, left Douglas Aircraft to become Jack Northrop’s assistant at Lockheed. While there, he managed to get himself hired as the navigator on Hearst’s Vega. The race was a disaster and ten lives were lost. The Vega and my brother vanished. A black cloud hung heavily over the little shop. However, Hubert Wilkins, later to become Sir Hubert Wilkins, took Vega #2 and made a successful polar flight from Alaska to Norway. A string of successful flights after that placed Lockheed in aviation’s forefront.

I went to work for Lockheed as it 26th employee, shortly after the disaster, and I worked on the Vega. It was made almost entirely of wood and I quickly become a half-assed carpenter.

At this time, General Motors had acquired North American consisting of Fokker Aircraft, Pitcairn Aviation [later Eastern Airlines] and Sperry Gyroscope and hired Dutch Kindelberger away from Douglas to run it. Dutch moved the entire operation to L.A. where Dutch and his engineers came up with the P-51 Mustang.

Interestingly, just a handful of young men played roles affecting the lives of all Americans….. as it initiated the Southern California metamorphosis, from a semi-desert with orange groves and celluloid, into a dynamic complex, supporting millions.

Although this technological explosion had startling humble beginnings, taking root as acorns in – a barber shop’s back room – a vacant church – and an abandoned cannery – but came to fruit on as mighty oaks.

(Source: Denham S. Scott, North American Aviation Retirees’ Bulletin)

I hope you enjoyed the look back at aviation history in the US as much as I did. Have a good weekend, be safe, and stop by again next week when we will talk about……………..

Robert Novell

March 13, 2026

Washington State Apples – Japan and “Upside Down Pangborn” – March 6, 2026

Robert Novell — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 04:37:00 +0000

RN3DB

March 6, 2026

Good Morning,

Welcome back to the 3DB. This week I want to talk about a man who flew the Pacific nonstop but did so with a few not so normal modifications to his airplane. The history of this gentleman was told to me by a friend in Oregon who has visited the small museum, commemorating the crossing of Mr. Clyde “Upside Down” Pangborn and his copilot, and I think you will find the story interesting and unique.

First, however, let’s talk a about how Washington Apples became a mainstay in Japan…………

Washington Apples and Japan

The most lasting memory of this flight was a gift from Clyde Pangborn to the people of Misawa City, Japan. Remembering the touching gift of five apples from the little Japanese boy on Sabishiro Beach prior to his departure on his historic flight, Pangborn arranged for the mayor of Wenatchee, Washington to send to his counterpart in Misawa City five cuttings from Washington State’s famed Richard Delicious apples.

The cuttings were grafted onto trees in Misawa City and within a few years, cuttings and seedlings were distributed to apple growers around the country. Today, Richard Delicious apples are grown throughout Japan and now you know the rest of the story.

Who is “Upside Down Pangborn?”…….

Upside Down Pangborn

Clyde Edward “Upside Down” Pangborn was born in Bridgeport, Washington, on October 28th, 1894, and after finishing high school, Pangborn attended the University of Idaho for two and a half years, where he studied civil engineering. In 1917, Pangborn answered a call for volunteers and enlisted in the Aviation Section of the United States Army Signal Corps as a cadet and learned to fly. After working temporarily as a flight instructor on Curtiss JN-4 Jenny, aircraft at Ellington Field in Houston, Texas, he was demobilized in March of 1919.

Pangborn, still interested in an aviation career, decided to pursue professional barnstorming. He began to make his living doing exhibition flying and aerial acrobatics at fairs, dedications, and other public events throughout the West Coast region. He was known as “Upside-Down Pangborn” because of his penchant for slow-rolling planes onto their backs and gliding upside-down. In 1921, Pangborn and partner Ivan R. Gates formed the famous Gates Flying Circus, which performed both throughout the country as well as internationally.

The show was very popular and between 1922 and 1928 Pangborn performed successfully without an accident/incident or personal injury and established the world record for changing planes in mid-air. During this period Pangborn had the good fortune to meet pilot Hugh Herndon, Jr., who would later accompany Pangborn on their famous transpacific flight.

For a complete profile on the man called “Upside Down” visit the National Aviation Hall of Fame where he was enshrined in 1995.

Now, let’s talk about the nonstop flight from Tokyo……………

Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon, Jr.

(First to Fly Nonstop Across the Pacific)

Clyde ‘Upside-Down Pangborn and his co-pilot Hugh Herndon, Jr., were under house arrest in Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel. Charged with espionage and making an illegal flight, they had been detained for seven weeks since landing in Tokyo on August 8, 1931. The two American airmen had strutted onto aviation’s world stage 12 days earlier. They had taken off from New York’s Roosevelt Field in a blaze of publicity, with high hopes of beating the around-the-world speed record set by one-eyed Wiley Post and his Australian navigator Harold Gatty.

Pangborn, a daredevil stunt pilot, was well-known in American aviation circles. He had been chief pilot and half owner of the fabled Gates Flying Circus until it closed down in 1928. His playboy co-pilot, an aviation novice, was better known in society circles. A Princeton dropout who loved the good life, Herndon was the son of Standard Oil heiress Alice Boardman. Anxious to see her son make a name for himself, the socialite had not turned a hair when he asked her for $100,000 to finance the flight.

Their hopes of beating Post and Gatty’s flight time had come to an end in Khabarovsk, Siberia, where, landing in a teeming rainstorm, their Bellanca Skyrocket Miss Veedol had slid off the runway and become hopelessly bogged down. Already well behind their strict schedule, and with no hope of taking off for several days, the despondent pair abandoned their world flight. They decided, instead, to salvage something from the trip by competing for a $50,000 prize offered by Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper for the first nonstop flight across the Pacific. They carried no maps of Japan, so Pangborn cabled the editor of the English-language Japanese Times, asking for a track and distance from Khabarovsk to Tokyo and requesting that the American Embassy obtain landing permission from the Japanese Aviation Bureau.

The field at Khabarovsk had dried out before their cable was answered, so Pangborn decided to take off before it was swamped again by threatening storms. Flying a rough heading for Japan, they received a radio message giving a track and distance and advising that landing approval was being sought. After landing at Haneda to get directions, they finally reached Tachikawa airport, where they were met by angry officials demanding to see their landing papers. Japan was at war with China and, understandably, did not take kindly to foreign pilots arriving unannounced and photographing military-restricted areas. Pangborn recounted: We were arraigned on three counts. That we had flown over fortified areas and that we had photographed these areas. True we didn’t have a flight permit with us, but we assumed it would be routine for our embassy to arrange it. As for flying over fortified areas and taking pictures, we were just tourists taking what we thought were pretty landscape shots.

Their seven weeks under house arrest gave Pangborn and Herndon the time to plan their transpacific attempt. They were also able to consider the efforts of the other teams, Japanese and American, that had already unsuccessfully competed for the Asahi Shimbun prize.

The Japanese decision to sponsor a Pacific flight had been sparked four years earlier by Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic triumph. Lindbergh’s New York to Paris solo flight had electrified the world. Overnight, the American had become an international hero–the most photographed person of his era. The Japanese believed that the first successful transpacific flight, which was a longer and more demanding undertaking than crossing the Atlantic, would help focus attention on Japan’s emergence as the industrial powerhouse of Asia–particularly if a Japanese pilot and plane were first across.

While the world still bathed in the afterglow of Lindbergh’s success, Japan announced its transpacific intentions. The Imperial Aeronautics Association declared that a Japanese pilot, flying in a Japanese-owned and -manufactured aircraft, would cross the Pacific. Shortly afterward, the Tokyo newspaper Mainichi Shimbun placed an order with T. Claude Ryan for an exact replica of Lindbergh’s long-range monoplane.

Delivered to Japan early in 1928, the Ryan NYP-2 (New York-Paris No. 2) was not purchased to attempt the Pacific flight. The original NYP had been built to Lindbergh’s specification to fly the 3,600 miles between New York and Paris–plus a few hundred extra for safety. The flight from Japan to America’s West Coast required an aircraft with a range of at least 4,500 miles.

Although the Japanese buyers may at first have thought it possible to extend the Ryan’s range, it seems more likely that the aircraft’s role was to act as a design guide for Japan’s Kawanishi Company to construct a similar but much larger, transpacific machine, designated the K-12 Nichi-Bei-Go). Two Ryans were ordered, one as a backup in case of an accident. The project folded, however, when flight testing proved that Kawanishi’s lumbering K-12 had neither the range nor the takeoff performance to make the transpacific flight. Red-faced Kawanishi officials hung one of the expensive white elephants from the factory ceiling beneath a banner proclaiming, How not to design or build a Special-Purpose Airplane.

Interest in the Asahi Shimbun prize did not diminish, even when Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew completed the first transpacific flight from Oakland, Calif., to Brisbane, Australia, in the Fokker F.VII/3m tri-motor Southern Cross in June 1928. The island-hopping flight, which did not qualify for the Japanese prize, was made in three stages; hence, it lacked the drama of a nonstop crossing.

The first nonstop Pacific attempt was made in 1930, when Canadian-born pilot Harold Bromley teamed up with Australian navigator Harold Gatty. Their aircraft was an elegant, 450-hp Wasp-powered monoplane manufactured by E.M. Smith and Company (Emsco) and named City of Tacoma–for the city that had sponsored the flight. Fully loaded, their Emsco had a still-air range of approximately 4,000 miles–500 miles less than they needed. To succeed they would require a tailwind. As this was more likely when flying east, the airmen decided to begin the flight from Japan. Taking off from a long, flat beach at Sabishiro, 370 miles north of Tokyo, they flew 1,250 miles, mostly in cloud, before headwinds forced them to turn back.

Daring young Japanese airman Seiji Yoshihara was the next to try. Yoshihara had made a sensational flight from Berlin to Tokyo in a tiny, open-cockpit Junkers A-50. He figured that the fuel economy of his airplane’s 85-hp engine would enable him to cross the Pacific. Equipping the Junkers with floats, Yoshihara took off on May 18, 1931, following the great circle route. He had covered almost 1,000 miles when the seaplane developed engine trouble, and he was forced to ditch in the Pacific. Miraculously, Yoshihara was picked up by a passing ship seven hours later.

Following Yoshihara’s gallant attempt, the Imperial Aeronautics Association announced additional prize money of $100,000 for a successful flight by a Japanese team. In the United States, a group of Seattle businessmen added a $28,000 sweetener to the $50,000 Asahi Shimbun prize. Their only stipulation was that the flight starts in Seattle and finish in Japan. This meant that prize money totaling $78,000 was now offered for non-Japanese teams–a fortune in those Depression days. It attracted Texan barnstormer Reginald Robbins and oilman Harold S. Jones, who had twice attempted a Seattle-Tokyo flight in their Lockheed Vega Fort Worth. Unfortunately, their shrewd plan to refuel from a Ford TriMotor tanker in the air over Alaska failed to work on both occasions. Another westbound attempt ended when a flier named Bob Wark was forced down near Vancouver, barely 100 miles from his starting point.

Following their aborted flight in 1930, Bromley and Gatty had left the Emsco in Japan to be sold. It was subsequently used in two further American transpacific attempts. The first ended when pilot Thomas Ash failed to get the Emsco off the sands at Sabishiro. For the second attempt, Los Angeles salesmen Cecil Allen and Don Moyle renamed the Emsco Clasina Madge. They took off from Sabishiro on September 8, 1931, while Pangborn and Herndon were still under house arrest in Tokyo. Long on courage but short on experience, Allen and Moyle got lost and, after flying aimlessly for more than a day, landed on Siberia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. The pair eventually headed on toward the United States with stops in the Aleutians and Alaska. The Clasina Madge finally reached Tacoma on September 25, 1931.

Pangborn and Herndon already had been tried in Tokyo’s district court. Found guilty, they were sentenced to 205 days hard labor or fines of $1,050 each. After paying their fines, Pangborn and Herndon revealed their plan to attempt the Japan to United States flight. Because of the recent failures, Japan’s Civil Aviation Bureau had restricted future flights to only approved aircraft. After days of haggling, approval was reluctantly given for Pangborn to attempt one overloaded takeoff from Japan.

They flew Miss Veedol to Sabishiro Beach on September 29 and made final modifications for the flight. Pangborn had worked out a clever plan to reduce drag and extend the Bellanca’s range. The idea had previously been used in 1919 by Australian Harry Hawker in an unsuccessful attempt to cross the Atlantic. The scheme involved removing the bolts holding the landing gear to the fuselage and replacing them with a series of clips and springs attached to a cable. By pulling on the cable following takeoff, Pangborn would jettison the whole structure. For the landing he attached steel skids to the Bellanca’s potbelly.

Pangborn explained: We determined that to make the trans-Pacific flight we would have to take off with the heaviest wing loading [fuel load] we had ever attempted with the Bellanca. Even then it was marginal that we would have enough fuel to take us the 4,500 miles to the U.S. west coast even at the most economical cruising speed. Studying the problem I calculated that we could increase our speed [by] approximately 15 miles per hour if we could rid ourselves of the drag of the fixed landing gear. On a forty hour flight that would be the equivalent of adding 600 miles to our range, and that might make the difference between success and failure.

At Sabishiro Beach the two Americans were guests of the nearby town of Misawa City. The mayor had publicly announced that fliers of any nation seeking such an honorable goal should be hosted in friendship. Not all Japanese were so friendly, however, as the airmen discovered when their painstakingly prepared flight charts were stolen. It appeared likely that the culprits were members of the radically patriotic Black Dragon Society, who for weeks had been violently speaking out against the Americans and their proposed flight.

Pangborn and Herndon obtained new charts and were finally ready to go on October 2. To save weight, they carried no radio, no survival equipment, not even a seat cushion, and limited their food to hot tea and some fried chicken. Even so, with 915 gallons of fuel and 45 gallons of oil on board, the Bellanca was still exceeding its allowable maximum operating weight by 3,400 pounds.

As Pangborn prepared to climb on board the Bellanca, a small Japanese boy rushed out of the crowd and presented them a gift of five apples from his father’s orchard. Pangborn appeared deeply touched. Misawa City, like his hometown of Wenatchee, Wash., was famous for its apples.

Miss Veedol used the takeoff ramp that local villagers had built for Bromley and Gatty’s earlier attempt. A hill of sand had been packed down by a steam roller and then covered with a runway of planks that led down to the beach. Working like a ski jump, its purpose was to give the overloaded airplane an initial burst of acceleration. Even so, the Bellanca had trouble gaining flying speed as it rolled down onto the wet beach.

With its 425-hp Wasp engine screaming at full power, the monoplane was only up to 60 mph with two-thirds of the beach gone. Pangborn had estimated that he required 90 mph for liftoff. As Miss Veedol approached a pile of logs that marked the end of the makeshift runway, Pangborn could be seen rocking the aircraft from wheel to wheel in an attempt to break the drag of the wet sand. He later recounted: I was determined to get off, or pile into those logs. We had permission for only the one attempt and in no way was I going to spend any more time in Japan.

The aircraft staggered into the air with 100 yards to spare. Flying straight ahead, wallowing near a stall, the fuel-bloated Bellanca inched up above the waves. When they had a safe margin of height, Pangborn turned slowly onto a heading of 072 degrees–heading toward the Aleutians.

Three hours out, on track and approaching the Kurile Islands, Pangborn was satisfied that everything was operating normally and jettisoned the landing gear. The main structure fell away but two of the gear’s bracing rods did not drop clear. Pangborn realized that they posed a real threat to a safe belly landing and that he would have to work them free during the flight. Devoid of 300 pounds of landing gear and its drag, Miss Veedol climbed to 14,000 feet, where it picked up a good tail wind.

The sun went down and they began to encounter airframe icing in the clouds. To stay clear of clouds, they climbed to 17,000 feet where conditions were smooth and ice-free. Pangborn decided this was the ideal time to try to get rid of the two dangling struts. Handing over control to Herndon, the steel-nerved airman put his flying circus wing-walking skills to good use. Struggling against the frigid 100-mph slipstream, Pangborn eased out of the cockpit and placed his feet on the broad strut that supported the Bellanca’s wing. Holding on for dear life with one hand, with the other he removed one of the offending brace rods. Pangborn clambered back into the cockpit, warmed himself, and then repeated the procedure on the other side. Through the night it was bitterly cold and he recalled that the water in our canteens, and even our hot tea, froze.

The first real position check was a volcano in the Aleutians, and the two men were delighted to see it loom directly below them. Pangborn remained at the controls, with Herndon responsible for keeping the main wing tanks topped up from the huge auxiliary cabin tank. This required him to transfer fuel with a hand-operated wobble pump. Twice he forgot the task. The first time he was able to pump fuel fast enough to keep the spluttering Wasp engine running. On the second occasion, Herndon’s carelessness nearly cost the men their lives when the propeller stopped dead.

The Bellanca was not equipped with an electric starter. Pangborn had no alternative but to dive the airplane in the hope of getting the propeller to windmill. Yelling at Herndon to start pumping, Pangborn steepened the dive, desperately trying to turn the propeller in the rarefied air. They had lost 13,000 feet and were only 1,500 feet above the ocean when it finally began to windmill and the engine burst into life again.

The only word of their progress during the whole flight came from an island in the Aleutians where an amateur radio operator radioed to America that he had heard an airplane passing over above the clouds. No one was quite sure of their final destination, though Pangborn’s mother was adamant that her son would choose his hometown Wenatchee, Wash., as his landing site. She was among 30 locals who maintained a vigil at its little airfield.

Pangborn sighted the tip of the Queen Charlotte Islands, off the northwestern coast of Canada and knew the worst of the navigation was over. He had been at the controls for more than 30 hours. Aware that the tricky job of belly landing lay not too far ahead of them, he decided to catch a few hours of sleep. He instructed Herndon to hold the current height and heading and to wake him when he saw the lights of a big city. That will be Vancouver, British Columbia, Pangborn yelled.

Once again Herndon’s inattention let them down. When Pangborn awoke some hours later, his cavalier co-pilot had wandered off course and missed both Vancouver and Seattle. Ahead of them was Mount Rainier. Pangborn decided to carry on inland to Boise, Idaho, which would also give them a new world’s nonstop distance record. However, two hours later, when it became evident the Boise area was covered in fog, they turned toward Spokane, Wash. When that destination appeared to be covered by low clouds, Pangborn decided to head for Wenatchee.

At 7:14 a.m. on October 5, 1931, the big red monoplane swooped in over the hills and circled Wenatchee’s little airfield, dumping fuel to reduce the chance of fire. Approaching slowly, Pangborn sent Herndon to the rear of the cabin, hoping that his weight would help hold the tail down during the landing. At the last moment he cut off the fuel and ignition switches and, as the Bellanca flared close to stalling, lowered it gently onto the ground. For a moment it was obscured by a cloud of dust; then, decelerating rapidly, Miss Veedol slithered to a stop, teetered for a moment and fell onto its left wingtip.

After being hugged by his mother and brother, Pangborn was amazed to discover that a representative of Asahi Shimbun was there to present the fliers with their $50,000 check. By some quirk of fate, the newspaper’s emissary had selected Wenatchee as their most likely landing point.

Among the little group that had waited through the night was Carl M. Cleveland, then a young reporter for the Wenatchee Daily World. He had commandeered the only telephone in hopes that he might get a world scoop. He was not disappointed: PANGBORN-HERNDON SPAN PACIFIC….BOY ARE WE GLAD TO GET HERE: PANGBORN PUTS IT….IT’S LIKE A DREAM COME TRUE. Cleveland’s hometown headlines were mirrored around the continent as he passed the story to his editor, who relayed Cleveland’s words to the wire services and the world.

The Asahi Shimbun prize was the only money awarded for the epic flight. As foreigners, Pangborn and Herndon were not eligible for the Imperial Aeronautic Association’s prize, nor did they qualify for the Seattle businessmen’s prize. From Pangborn’s point of view, worse was to follow. His relationship with Herndon was already strained, and their partnership quickly dissolved. Bickering between the two came to a head when Herndon and his mother, as financial backers for the transpacific flight, claimed the prize money and the cash realized from the sale of Miss Veedol. They gave Pangborn a paltry $2,500 for his efforts.

Pangborn vented his feelings in the Albany Times Union. “HERNDON INCOMPETENT SAYS PANGBORN,” blared the headlines. In the story that followed Pangborn disclosed that his co-pilot had known nothing of navigation because he had been romancing a girl instead of studying prior to their flight. He disclosed that Herndon had been little more than a passenger in Miss Veedol, stating, Out of the 200 hours we were in the air [since leaving New York], Herndon flew at most ten of those hours.

The nonstop transpacific flight eventually brought Pangborn other, more lasting rewards. He was honored with American aviation’s prestigious Harmon Trophy–joining other greats such as Charles Lindbergh and Jimmy Doolittle. And news came from Japan that, forgiven for his earlier transgressions, Pangborn had been awarded the Imperial Aeronautical Society’s White Medal of Merit.

Source Document

A unique story that history has forgotten but if by chance you are ever in Wenatchee, Washington take some time to go into town and visit the museum, dedicated to “Upside Down” Pangborn and his copilot, and the next time you are Japan and the apple you are eating has a familiar taste – take a minute to remember the contributions of Clyde “Upside Down” Pangborn’s contribution to the world of aviation.

Enjoy the video below and have a good weekend; however, remember that life is short. Keep friends and family close, stay true to your profession, and to those Aviators who will follow in your footsteps.

Robert Novell

March 6, 2026