Jets!
The 412th Fighter Group and Project Comet
May
of 1946 was not exactly the rosiest of times for the postwar Army Air Forces.
With the end of the in the Pacific nine months earlier, "Hap" Arnold's
mighty air arm had been reduced to a skeleton of its former strength.
Amid the remarkable technological advances of the past five years came
the AAF's first "practical" jet aircraft, the Lockheed's P-80A Shooting
Star. Arriving too late to see combat (although four production prototype
airframes were deployed to Europe before the war's end), initial production
orders of 3,500 aircraft at the time of V-J Day were slashed to a total
of 917 ships. The only unit flying the P-80 at operational strength
during this time was the 412th Fighter Group (Jet). The unit had
originally formed at Muroc in November 1943, flying the Bell P59A.
Now, two years later, it was equipped with the P-80, and moved to its new
home at March Field outside of Los Angeles, where the standard "triangle"
military runway layout had been altered to a single lengthened, widened
and strengthened runway.
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Col. Bruce K. Holloway taxies his P-80A, Rhapsody
in Rivets, PN-069.
(Photo: Ole C. Griffith) |
General
Electric "Type 1 Supercharger" America's First Jet Engine: Part II
In
April 1941, Major General H. "Hap" Arnold, U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Staff
for Air, visited England and was informed of the progress on the Whittle
engine. Upon his return to the States he started the wheels of science
rolling. His goal was the development of an American jet engine as a more
likely method, than the conventional reciprocating engine, for obtaining
an aircraft engine able to meet the Army goal of 4,000 to 5,000 horsepower.
As an element of this strategy. General Amold thought it was advisable
to procure from England the production rights, as well as the physical
article. He personally worked to get access and the rights to the Whittle
engine." Negotiations were conducted at the highest levels of both governments.
The concerns being that the Whittle engine was important to Rolls-Royce's
postwar commercial plans, but there was no assurance that the war would
end any time soon. Furthermore, the longer the war, the more likely
that jet propulsion would be important to the outcome. On this basis,
the British government licensed the Whittle engine to the U.S., providing
that it was provided "Most Secret" status and access to the technology
be strictly limited to necessary participants. The British agreed that
the limitations applied only to the Whittle engine and its improvements,
not to any parallel U.S. military or commercial program or project. The
General Electric Company was quite enthusiastic over its participation
in the project to manufacture the latest Whittle, the W.2B. They were selected
due to their experience and success with the manufacture of turbo-superchargers.
General Arnold gave instructions that "the first Whittle engine would be
completed in every detail, (as the W.2B) so that we would have something
that would work, and after they completed that article, they could go ahead
at will in an endeavor to improve upon it.” Even so, the Army did agree
to GE redrawing the plans to conform to U.S. and GE manufacturing practices,
while at the same time provide an automatic control system. As long as
the changes would not . . . . . .
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General Electric Type I-16
(photo: General Electric Co.) |
Goodyear's
Inflatoplane and Project Wagmight
In
Jay Leno style, ask the man on the street what aircraft Goodyear was responsible
for and the answer will be "The Goodyear Blimp." True, but there was much
more. Starting in the 1920s as the Goodyear Zeppelin Company, a division
of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, of Akron, Ohio, Goodyear built
the rigid airships the Akron and the Macon. Then, as the
Goodyear Aircraft Company, Goodyear built, under license from Chance Vought,
more F4U Corsairs than Chance Vought for our WWII Navy. They also
built most of the components for the WWII night fighter, the P-61 Black
Widow. Goodyear also built many blimps during WWII for the U.S. Navy
for antisubmarine patrol. Later, as Goodyear Aerospace, Goodyear was responsible
for many more aircraft components, simulators and training systems.
In 1987, Goodyear sold its Aerospace division to Loral, who in turn sold
it to Lockheed Martin Tactical Defense Systems in 1996, according to Mr.
Cary Dell, who served Goodyear Aerospace and Loral, and now serves Lockheed
Martin. Mr. Dell advises that Lockheed Martin now owns and operates
the whole business, lock, stock and barrel, even including Wingfoot Lake
and the blimp business.
While there is no lonager a Goodyear entity in the aricraft industry, it
should be know that in 1956 Goodyear Aircraft Co. merged their know-how
in the lighter-than-air end of things with their knowledge of fixed-winged
aircraft and came up with a very innovative craft, an inflatable airplane
that they called the Inflatoplane. . . . . . . .
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Final version of refined Model GA-468 over Wingfoot
Lake in Akron, OH.
(photo: Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company) |
Why
Didn't Levanevsky Arrive in America?
In
the last decade a large amount of material has appeared in the press about
the mysterious loss of Sigismund Levanevsky and his crew during a flight
across the North Pole to America in August 1937. Moreover, discussion has
basically covered one aspect: the likely locality of a crash or forced
landing of aircraft "USSR N-209" and possible versions of the searches
for it. Moreover they expressed very diverse hypotheses. One author
thought that the machine met its destruction on the ocean ice, another
in the Alaskan mountains, while a third surmised that the crew lost its
way and followed to Yakutia to search for it . . .
All these versions are of interest and merit study. There is another
matter. Not once was the question raised in publications: why, for all
that, did aircraft "USSR N-209" not reach the American continent? Is it
possible technical defects were the consequence rather than the cause of
the disaster?
In 1933, when the Tupolev TB-3 heavy bomber was being serially manufactured,
the idea was born to modernize the main design and to create, on the basis
of it, a new machine which possesed considerably more features. . .
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Aircraft
of the FAA and its Predecessors: Part II 1934-1940
Introduction
The history of the aircraft used by the American federal aviation regulatory
bodies has been generally overlooked in our efforts at documenting aviation
history. This is unfortunate because these agencies have operated, by rough
estimate, over 1,000 examples of 150 different aircraft types, including
several sole-example rarities. Variety ranges from early Bellancas and
Stinsons, through large fleets of surplus SNJs, DC-3s, and Beech 18s, examples
of the 1960s air carrier fleet, to the modern business jets operated today.
An attempt to document each of the aircraft used in this large fleet would
occupy much more space than is available for a project such as this. What
has been assembled here is a compilation of all the known examples of each
of the aircraft types operated by the FAA and its predecessor organisations.
The listing has been organized necessarily by aircraft type in the rough
chronological order that the first example of a particular aircraft type
was introduced into the agency fleet.
The compilation has been broken into six parts to follow the general incarnations
of the agencies: the Aeronautics Branch (1926-1934); the Bureau of Air
Commerce (1934- 1938) and the Civil Aeronautics Authority (1938-1940);
the Civil Aeronautics Administration (1940-1944); the Civil Aeronautics
Administration (1945-1958); the Federal Aviation Agency (19591967); and
the Federal Aviation Administration (1967-2000).
There
remain many holes in the documented evidence regarding these airplanes
but this effort is intended as a starting point and an attempt to get the
massive aircraft listing presented in a usable format. For those interested,
a listing of these aircraft is now presented, sorted by aircraft registration
number series at http://www.aerovintage.com.
Bureau
of Air Commerce, Department of Commerce 1934-1938
Great Depression took its toll on the Department of Commerce and, more
specifically, the budget for the Aeronautics Branch. The new Roosevelt
Admin-istration cut the Branch's 1933 budget by 17 percent, dropping funding
to $8 million. In September 1933, the budget was reworked to include provisions
that fourteen of the Department of Commerce aircraft would be placed in
storage with a reduction in the Aeronautics Branch personnel numbers from
200 to 170.
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Stinson SR-9FM (NC89) at
Juneau, AK in 1941
(Photo: Petrich via Ted Spencer Archive) |
Boeing
314 Special Missions
One
of the less publicized tasks of the Pan American Boeing 314 Clipper flying
boats during the years 1941 to 1943, was their use on U.S. Government "Special
Missions." Scheduled passenger services had begun on June 28, 1939, when
Captain R.O.D. Sullivan and his 11-man crew in the Dixie Clipper, NC 18605,
took the first 19 fare-paying passengers across the mid-Atlantic route,
from Port Washington, New York to Marseille in the South of France.
Refueling en route at Horta in the Azores and Lisbon in Portugal, they
arrived in Marseille on June 30. There soon followed increasing schedules
along this route and the following month on July 8, Captain Arthur E LaPorte
opened the Northern Route from Port Washington to Southampton, England,
via Shediac in Nova Scotia, Botwood in Newfoundland, and Foynes in the
Republic of Ireland.
With War in Europe, Pan American was forced to terminate their Northern
route from October 1939. During 1940/41, the airline was prohibited, by
the U.S. Neutrality Act, to operate through the Botwood and Gander Lake
refueling bases. The mid-Atlantic route continued, but was terminated at
Lisbon. There were problems. During the early survey flights. Captain
Harold Gray had noted the occasions of severe Atlantic sea . . . . . .
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Boeing A314, NC18609 in War drab
(Boeing photo via Peter Bowers) |
Fairchild's
Pegasus into Orbit
BACKGROUND—
On
May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy startled the world when he announced
before ajoint session of the U.S. Congress that "I believe that this nation
should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out,
of landing a man on the moon and returning safely to earth. " The National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) responded eagerly.
In July, NASA held the first of a series of conferences with representatives
of U.S. industry to discuss the problems involved with landing men on the
moon. Subsequently, NASA asked 15 corporations to submit proposals to build
a spacecraft system. Five responses were received in October, and in November
it was announced that North American Aviation, Inc., had been selected
as the prime contractor.
A major part of the project, by then known as Apollo, was the development
of the primary propulsion system, the multi-stage Saturn rocket.
Planned to be developed in phases (Saturn I, Saturn IB, and Saturn 5),
a series of 10 test vehicles were to be built and nine launched as the
Saturn
I, the tenth being a backup. The Saturn I was a two-stage vehicle
consisting of a S-1 first stage (eight built by NASA's Marshall Space Flight
Center at Huntsville, Alabama and two by the Chrysler Corp. at the NASA-owned
manufacturing plant in New Orleans, Louisiana) and a S-4 second stage built
by Douglas.
The highly successful first test flights in late 1961 through 1962 were
conducted with inert dummy upper stages, carrying about 85 tons of water
as ballast, capped with an Army Jupiter missile nose cone.
The fifth and subsequent launches of the series would carry a boilerplate
Apollo
module.
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Adventures
with Junior: Part III
Wun
Long Hop, Day One — December 1943 proved to be the busiest month I
had flown so far. We made only five trips across the Bay of Panama to Rey
Island or Jaque, but made four round trips to Aguadulce and one round trip
to David prior to Christmas. From the 11th to the 19th I copiloted
a C-45 to the States and back, then on the 20th and 21st as copilot on
a C-49B to Medellin, Colombia, and return. Back in Junior
on December 22 for trips to Chame and Chorrera looking for a generator
for David, on to Aguadulce and finally return to Albrook December 23, only
to repeat the same trips the following day. Christmas Day, 1943, was the
only day I didn't fly in December.
Two days after Christmas, Junior and I took Major Barren on our
longest round-trip yet. We were directed to proceed to Corinto, Nicaragua,
and return to survey the site for the possibility for its use as a radar
installation. Our orders read "TBMA Autzd" meaning in the Army shorthand
of the day "travel by military aircraft authorized." And of course Junior
was the "military aircraft" we would use. Another aircraft, larger
. . . .
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