Test Pilot, Charles Edward Fitzwater

     Charles E„ (Charlie) Fitzwater was born on July 27, 1920, in Buckhannon, West Virginia, and, after graduating from high school there, enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1940. When Pearl Harbor catapulted the U.S. into the war in 1941, he had already attained the rank of sergeant. When the Army announced it was accepting applications for pilot training, Charlie was in the line and was assigned to Aviation Cadets Pilot Squadron 51, Santa Ana Army Air Base, California, in November 1942. His records show that he was a graduate in Class WC-43F. Three sets of Orders, all dated June 23, 1943, show that on that date Fitzwater was commissioned as a second lieutenant, was rated as pilot and had received gunnery training in North American AT-6 Texan aircraft, and twin-engine training in Curtiss AT-9 Jeep and Cessna AT-17 Bobcat aircraft, and was to report for active duty to Yuma Army Air Field, Yuma, Arizona. From there he was assigned to report June 25, 1943, to Laughlin Army Air Field, Del Rio, Texas, for transition school on the Martin B-26 Marauder.
     The B-26 was the fastest medium bomber during the war and amassed a creditable combat record, but it was almost abandoned by the military several times, due to the loss of many aircraft during training. However, in Fitzwater's personal papers is a Certificate of Proficiency (undated) which shows that he "...successfully completed a course of instruction in . . . .   

The Al Williams Saga, Part III

     Grumman Gulfhawk—By the spring of 1936 Williams realized that his Curtiss Gulfhawk was unable to keep pace with his ever-evolving acrobatic maneuvers and rate-of-climb demands. After all, the Curtiss was based on a 1925 fighter plane design. The Curtiss Gulfhawk had been flown in virtually every major air event in the United States and had undergone many modifications in its metamorphosis from an ugly duckling to a handsome swan, but its days were numbered and it had to be replaced with a more contemporary aircraft.
     Williams was able to influence Gulf management to purchase a Grumman F3F naval fighter plane, modified to his specifications, to replace the faithful Curtiss Hawk.
     Delivery of 54 U.S. Navy Grumman F2F-1 naval fighters began in 1935. The craft was powered by a 650-hp Pratt & Whitney R-1535-72 Twin Wasp radial engine. Wingspan was 28 ft. 6 in. and length was 21 ft. 5 in. The maximum speed was 231 mph. With improvements, the last F2F-1 airframe was completed in spring 1935 as the XF3F-1 prototype, with a lengthened fuselage of 23 ft.-2 in., and increased wingspan to 32 ft. 0 in.
     Fifty-four F3F-1 fighters were ordered by the U.S. Navy on August 24, 1935. The F3F-1 was powered by a 700-hp R-1535-84 Pratt & Whitney Wasp radial engine. When Major Al Williams approached Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation at Bethpage, Long Island, New York, he knew what he wanted and discussed his requirements with the engineering staff. In the final analysis the new design was to have F2F wings (28 ft. 6 in. upper wing span and 26 ft. 0 in. lower wing span with a total area of 230 sq.ft.) and reconditioned XF3F-1 or modified F3F-1 fuselage (23 ft. 1-5/8 in. long). He required a larger rudder and elevator while the ailerons were enlarged by extending them further outboard by one wing rib space. The pilot specified that a single row, nine cylinder 850-hp Wright R-1820-GI Cyclone radial engine that could develop 1,000 hp at 2,200 rpm be installed in a blistered . . . . .

Douglas B-26 Invader, 
The Light Bomber of the Korean War June 1950 to July 1953

     THE KOREAN WAR has been called the "Forgotten War," but even less known is the night war fought by Far East Air Force (FEAF) aircraft over South and North Korea during the three-year air war on the Korean peninsula. The primary night intruder aircraft used was the Douglas B-26 Invader. The Douglas B-26 Invader was classified as a light bomber (medium bomber during World War II when the Boeing B-29 Superfortress was classified as a heavy bomber, reclassified as a medium bomber with the operational introduction of the Convair B-36 Peacemaker, listed as a very heavy strategic bomber), during the Korean War. It was pressed into combat service as a night interdiction bomber. The B-26 was used in an attempt to slow down the transport of military supplies and replacement troops by North Korea (later, by Chinese Communist military units) to the front fines, opposite United Nation (U.N.) forces. These night interdiction bombing/strafing targets were Communist trains (locomotives and railroad cars), railroad tracks (including the bridges over which Communist trains and trucks crossed moving to the front lines), and trucks.
     The lineage of the B-26 Invader used in the air war over Korea began in the fall of 1940, when the United States Army . . . . .

The Aircraft of Shell Oil Company in the 1930s

     Although Shell had set up the first aviation department in the oil industry in England in 1919, they were relatively .late comers to American aviation.
     During late 1929, Shell Oil Company in San Francisco hired Lt. John A. Macready to manage their new aviation department.
     In 1930, Shell was organized as follows in the U.S.: Shell Oil Co., Calif.; Shell Petroleum Corp., St. Louis; and Shell Eastern Petroleum Products, Inc., New York, affiliates of Royal Dutch Shell Group.
     Macready influenced Shell to hire Major Jimmy Doolittle in 1930. Doolittle and Jimmy Haiziip were to be aviation reps working out of St. Louis; Doolittle to head up the aviation department and be responsible for development of new aviation products. At this time the company had a tri-motored Fokker F-IOA (NC8010), piloted by Mr. Milt Girton.  Doolittle, however, urged Shell to buy him a plane as his new job would require a lot of traveling. Shell authorized $25,000 for a new Lockheed Vega in January, 1930.
     Shortly after starting with Shell, Doolittle was approached by an old friend, Jack Allard, President of Curtiss-Wright Export Co. to demonstrate company aircraft in Europe. After four months of flying Curtiss Hawks, he returned to Shell. After seeing European aviation firsthand, he realized our backwardness, he urged Shell to buy fast aircraft for racing and experimental work. 
     The first of these was a Travel Air Model R Mystery Ship, NR482N, that was delivered to Shell in April 1930 and was taken on a New England Air Tour by Jimmy Haiziip. He won a trophy for aerobatics in the new aircraft and later in the year, the ship was entered in the National Air Races held in Chicago. The Shell Mystery Ship was powered by a 400 hp Wright Whirlwind R-975 engine and wore race number 35. Jimmy Doolittle did a daily acrobatic routine while Jimmy Haiziip took over the pylon racing duties. Haiziip grabbed a win in the 1000 cu. in. event (183.36 mph) and placed second in the coveted Thompson Trophy race with a speed of 199.80 — only 2.11 mph off the winning speed. Some time after this, the racer was badly damaged in an accident and scrapped.
     During the same time, Jimmy Doolittle had a racer built up with the help of Parks Air College and his own money. Using the short racing wings from NR482N and the sixth Model R fuselage with undercarriage and empennage from the Wichita factory, the Racer went together at Parks Air College in 1931. Jimmy . . . . .

Development of the "Straight-Through" Turbojet Engine

     Following Dan Whitney's splendid presentation of "America's First Jet Engine, " in the Spring and Summer 2000 Journals, I should like to progress the story from this side of the "Ocean." 
     The Whittle engines described in Whitney's article are of the "Reverse-flow" type, that is, the airflow was folded back through the combustion chambers and then reversed again to exit through the turbine exhaust. Whittle chose this arrangement as he was aware of the problems which may have been encountered from having too long a center shaft, linking the turbine to the compressor.
     WHITTLE W2X AND W3Y—Frank Whittle's 1930 patented sketch showed a "straight-through" arrangement, and among Whittle's future concepts were the "straight-through" W2X and W3Y designs, noted in 1940.' In Britain, the early jet engine pioneers at Rover, de Havilland and Rolls-Royce went on to develop this "straight-through" arrangement, where the airflow was fed from the compressor direct to convergent combustion chambers and through the turbine to the exhaust. This meant a longer connecting shaft with a third bearing and a thermo-expansion coupling. The "straight-through" arrangement of combustion chambers also found favor in the General Electric 1-40/J33-GE design.
     Research has shown that the Lockheed P-80/T-33/F-94 series aircraft showed an interesting link in the development in Britain, the United States and Canada, of the "straight-through" arrangement of these early turbojet engines.
     ROVER W2B/26—The Rover Car Company in England had been selected in 1940, by the Ministry of Aircraft Production (MAP), to produce the Whittle W2B turbojet engine for the twin-engined Gloster Meteor fighter. Seeking to simplify the manufacture of the Whittle engine, Adrian . . . . .

Aircraft Photos by Emil Strasser, Part II

      From 1932 to the early 1990s, Emil Strasser was a prolific photographer of aircraft. Using box cameras and later a Kodak "Monitor," Emil captured much of the Golden Age of Aviation on his trips to the National Air Races at Cleveland and the airports in Ohio. In later years, when 616 film was no longer available, Emil used 35mm color slides for his aircraft images.
     Part II of the Emil Strasser collection will take us back to the 1930s again, and also to the National Air Races at Cleveland, OH, in 1946.  This collection is truly a treasure of aviation history, thanks to Gerry Liang for making it available to the AAHS.

Great Lakes 2-T-1 of Del-Mar-Via Flying Service, 1933.

The GE Schenectady Flight Test Center

       Previous articles in this series have  dealt with a number of flight testing projects undertaken at the GE SFTC. Here we will present some background information about the SFTC to lend historical perspective to the accounts of individual projects. Obviously this might better have been the first article of the series, but that's hindsight. From early in its history, the General Electric Company has had a tradition of fostering technical development. Moreover, GE management has often been quite liberal in continuing to support research having very tenuous commercial prospects. Historically, the result of these policies has been the diversification and expansion of technical capabilities within the company. The development of such broad engineering competence inevitably led to applications in the field of aviation and to company involvement in the flight testing of various types of equipment.
     The natural inclination of many scientifically oriented GE people to include the new science of aeronautics in their interests also played a substantial role in generating aviation related projects. No less a luminary than Charles P. Steinmetz, GE's electrical genius, was the enthusiastic leader of a group of mostly GE people that conducted gliding experiments in the Mohawk valley west of Schenectady, N.Y. in 1894. 
     The group formally organized a company they called "The Mohawk Aerial Navigation Company" and sold shares at two dollars apiece to finance the construction of an experimental man-carrying glider. Steinmetz, who emigrated from Germany to the U.S. in 1889, was undoubtedly familiar with Lilienthals' gliding experiments and probably also following those of Octave Chanute. (The term 'aerial navigation" was also used by Chanute and was apparently quite common at that time.)
     Steinmetz and company built and tested three gliders. The first, an . . . . .

The Fokker Aircraft Corporation of America

     Typical of the many aircraft companies which prospered in the '20s was the Fokker Aircraft Corporation of America. It was one of the most popular of the period.
     Sensing the coming developments in aviation in the U.S., which was far behind the Old World in this respect, Fokker came to America on an exploratory trip. The result was the formation of the Netherlands Aircraft Manufacturing Company of New York. This company was founded solely for the purpose of promoting and selling Dutch-built Fokker aircraft. Its first manager was Robert B.C. Noorduyn who came from the Dutch Fokker works in Amsterdam, a very able aeronautical engineer and administrator.
     The few aircraft orders received by this new company were executed by the Dutch plant at Amsterdam, Holland. Some of them were for military services which were intrigued by Fokkers's welded steel structures of great strength and light weight. 
     It was General William Mitchell, whose bomber group sank the "unsinkable" 28,000-ton German battleship Ostfriesland in 1921, who, after a visit to the Fokker works in Holland, recommended that 100 de Havilland DH-4 aircraft be rebuilt by replacing the wire braced wooden fuselage with welded steel assemblies. A request for bids was issued by the Air Service and, as Fokker was the only one experienced with this type of construction, they were awarded the contract which included other changes and modifications.
     To start working on this order, the Netherlands Aircraft Company leased the empty Witteman-Lewis Corporation facilities at Teterboro, New Jersey and the company changed its name to the Atlantic Aircraft Corporation with Noorduyn as general manager and A. Francis Arcier, who had been in charge of the British Handley-Page bomber program at Belfast, North Ireland, as chief engineer. 
     In the meantime, Fokker instructed his engineers in Holland to quickly modify a singled-engine F-VII to a trimotor configuration for entry in the coming Ford National Reliability Tour. 
     Fokker gave his team in Holland eight weeks to carry out this assignment. He also correctly specified that the two outboard engines were to be installed in the leading edge of the wing. Aerodynamically this location offered the least drag but involved a lengthy engineering project. However, Holland decided to follow the path of least foreseeable difficulties and . . . . . 

Flames to the Tail Feathers

      On June 12, 1948, I was flying an Eagle Air Freight DC-3 with a load of flowers on board. Our destination was Dallas, Texas with a fuel stop at Tucson or El Paso. The night held perfect weather but it was a pitch black, moonless night. At about 3 a.m., I was laying down in the aisle on some blankets we brought to rest on. This was normal procedure for non-skeds at that time when we were required to fly continuously for two or three days at a stretch. 
     All of a sudden as I lay there, all warm and dreaming a pleasant dream (surely of my wife), my sleep was interrupted by a frightening "Dobbie! Dobbie!" I leaped up into the left seat feeling very much aware that something was terribly wrong. There was a bright glow in the cockpit and my copilot was still screaming only this time he yelled "Fire! Fire!" Looking out the left window, I saw that the engine was a complete fire ball with flames extending out to the tail feathers. 
     I went through the emergency procedures: shutting the engine down and pulling the fire bottle. But there were no results. The fire was still burning furiously. Anyone flying during that period will remember the old Airways System that spaced emergency fields a couple hundred miles apart with rotating beacons. I knew that Red Rock Auxiliary field was nearby so I dumped the aircraft over and headed for Red Rock. I, of course, picked up speed and the fire began to look like a blow torch. Not wanting to tear off the wing, I started to slow up by pulling back on the wheel. Suddenly, the controls, both rudder and elevator, forcefully kicked out of my hands and the aircraft went into a very violent maneuver. I felt in my bones that the wing had come off.
     The cockpit filled with smoke, I couldn't breath or see. Knowing that if I just sat there, I would be a goner when we hit the ground, I decided to leave the aircraft and hoped to land on the roof of a house and fall through to mattress or perhaps to a big tree which would cushion my fall. But when I got my head and arms out of the window, I saw the wing. Miraculously, it was still there but minus an engine. Since I hadn't been able to feather the prop, I assumed the oil lines had burned . . . . .

Design and Development of the Douglas XB-42

     FOLLOWING CONSIDERATIONS OF efficient types of offensive military weapons, the Douglas Company proposed the construction of a new type bomber airplane to the United States Army Air Forces in May of 1943. At that time the war situation was just beginning to look up, but there was a long road still ahead. We had finally taken Guadalcanal, the North African campaign was just over, and the nation was striving mightily to produce the weapons needed for victory. Intense effort was being poured into aircraft production, but we were beginning to realize the difficulties inherent in large-scale supply by air. It appeared that one way of shortening the war would be by the overwhelming bombing of the enemy in his own backyard, but we had been pushed back so far that it might not be feasible to undertake the entire long-range bombing job with airplanes then available or soon to be available (B-29s) in the necessary concentration without seriously prejudicing our industrial facilities. Accordingly our search was for an efficient military weapon that would permit increasing the heavy long range bombing attack with minimum industrial effort. The foreseeable strategic situation required a minimum operating radius of at least 2,000 miles: Target-Tokyo.
     Normally, requirements for increased range or increased bomb load always result in large aircraft, a doubling of either range or bomb load resulting in far more than a doubling of airplane weights. The development of very long-range aircraft or aircraft with very large payloads entails the practical solution of a slowly converging series, as structural efficiency tends to stabilize with increasing size, as does aerodynamic efficiency. Demands for more horsepower grow ever higher because of physical limitations on size of operating bases and the requirement for an adequate level of performance; and these combine to require more fuel, more armament, more crew members, and thus more cumulative difficulties in overall design with increasing size.
     In the XB-42 we planned a big step in aerodynamic, structural, and power plant efficiency which would result in a drastic reduction in airplane size for a given range or bomb load. With high aerodynamic, structural, and power plant efficiency, it appeared that it should be possible to develop a small, high-speed . . . . .