Aviation History 2013-07

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A U.S. Marine Corps pilot comes in for a vertical landing in the second Lockheed Martin F-35B prototype (stories, P. 23 and 32).

24

The Dambusters

44

By Nicholas O’Dell Seventy years ago, an audacious British bombing mission unleashed a “dark picture of destruction” in Germany’s Ruhr valley.

32

38

By Robert Guttman In 1926 a crack team of U.S. Army airmen set out on a 22,000-mile adventure in open-cockpit amphibious biplanes.

Monster Singles

By Stephan Wilkinson This Big Ten gets the job done with one—engine, that is.

50

An Avro Lancaster of No. 617 Squadron, RAF, piloted by Henry “Dinghy” Young overflies Germany’s Möhne dam as its bouncing bomb explodes on the parapet, in a detail from Robert Taylor’s Last Moments of the Möhne (story, P. 24).

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6 8 14 16

Mailbag Briefing Weider Reader Extremes By Edward Phillips Beechcraft’s A17FS racer was denied its chance for glory.

Giving the Machine Gun Wings

18

Restored

The first forward-firing fighters inaugurated a new era in aerial combat.

20

Aviators

The Wee Bee

23

Letter From Aviation History Reviews Flight Test By Jon Guttman Aero Artifact

By Gavin Mortimer

The Luftwaffe’s Wooden Wonder

By Mark Carlson Intended as a jet-powered “People’s Fighter,” the Heinkel He-162 killed far more of its own pilots than the enemy.

Around Latin America in 133 Days

By Walter J. Boyne Building the world’s smallest airplane involved some huge challenges.

60 65

©The Military Gallery, California Lockheed Martin

66

By Brendan McNally A new life dawns for a longabandoned B-17E.

By Jon Guttman Luftwaffe ace “Bully” Lang downed 18 planes in one day.

JULY 2013

A Notice from the Editor Dear Subscriber, Some of you have recently reported suspicious phone calls or offers in the mail to renew your subscription to Aviation History magazine. Your uneasiness may be justified. While still rare, fraudulent mailings and phone calls are increasing. We have confirmed that criminal organizations are attempting to represent themselves as the Weider History Group, asking for a check or credit card number to renew your subscription. They take your money but cannot deliver the subscription.

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Discussion: At an estimated cost of $135 million per airplane, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter is the most expensive weapons program in U.S. history. When the fighter finally becomes fully operational, will it be worth the price tag?

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A captured Me-262 is test-flown over Ohio.

Saving the Me-262 After World War II, a group known as “Watson’s Whizzers” returned a handful of German jets to the air, helping to usher in America’s jet age. Flying Boats Cross the Pond In 1919 three big U.S. Navy Curtiss “Nancies” set out to conquer the Atlantic. Red Baron’s Lasting Legacy German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen’s fame remains undimmed more than nine decades after his death.

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MAILBAG Yamamoto Shoot-down Controversy Lives On

Regarding “Death by P-38,” in the May issue, there are inaccuracies in the conclusion to the sidebar about who actually shot down Isoroku Yamamoto. I wrote the article about the Yamamoto mission for the U.S. Air Force Museum years ago, and interviewed two surviving members of the mission, as well as others who had firsthand information. The mission report signed off by CO John Mitchell did give full credit to Tom Lanphier, but for years the controversy kept surfacing. Jack Jacobson (a member of the mission) felt that much of the problem had to do with Lanphier’s ego. Jacobson stated that “as there is absolutely no witness to what either Barber or Lanphier did, we have to accept what each guy said.” He believes the credit should be left at 50/50, although he added that “Lanphier was a very aggressive fighter pilot—if he had a shot he would have pursued it.” Still, the group backing Rex Barber in recent years got the American Fighter Aces Association to strip Lanphier of his credit, waiting several years after Lanphier had died. Barber’s claim got the support of the main board members of the AFAA, including Gerald Brown and Steve Pisanos, who admitted that the deflection shot version given by Lanphier would have been “difficult, but not impossible.” Besby Holmes (another mission member) said the action happened so fast that no one, including himself, could state exactly what happened. In 1992 Air Force Secretary Donald Rice upheld the shared-credit ruling of the Victory Credit Board, saying the “Glory should go to the team.” The Appeals Court ruling in 1996 stated that “no change in the record was needed to correct an injustice.” Time has upheld the original verdict of history, and the official books are finally closed. The only group that changed the credit was the AFAA, and officially Lanphier remains an ace. Frank Lorey Escondido, Calif. Author Don Hollway responds: It is my understanding that not only the AFAA but also the 6 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY JULY 2013

Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States has denied Lanphier credit for both the Zero and Betty he claimed on the Yamamoto mission. A representative of the Air Force Historical Research Agency confirmed to me that, decades ago and prior to the decisions you mention, the USAF Victory Credit Board and Air Force Board for the Correction of Military Records denied Lanphier his Zero, leaving his official tally at 4.5 victories. However, because neither Barber nor Holmes ever lost credit for Zeros they claimed that day (if they had, none of the three pilots would be aces), Lanphier’s claim has recently been reinstated. As far as the Air Force is concerned, his score once again stands at 5.5, including half credit for Yamamoto’s Betty.

reinstalled them in some of the squadron’s planes. He said the MiGs would generally sit back out of range of the .50-caliber M-2s and pop away with their 37mm guns—and one hit could knock down a B-29. He reported that the MiG pilots got quite a surprise after the new guns were installed, and stopped attacking from the rear. It would be interesting to see a picture somewhere that could confirm his story. Carl Grimm Hutchinson, Kan.

Another Wally “Gotcha”

Superforts vs. MiGs

I very much enjoyed Warren E. Thompson’s article “Superforts vs. MiGs” [May 2013], particularly his rundown of victories by B-29 gunners in the Korean War. There is one “victory,” however, that I doubt is included in those totals. On July 28, 1950, a Royal Navy Seafire from HMS Triumph was shot down by B-29 gunners after it apparently got too close for their liking. The British aircraft had reportedly been mistaken for one of the Russian piston-engine fighters, probably a Yak-9, then flown by the North Koreans. As a result, Royal Navy aircraft flew with black-and-white stripes on their wings and fuselages to distinguish them from Communist forces. Charles Jarrells Dayton, Ohio Just read your interesting article on B-29s vs. MiGs in Korea. I am old enough to have served in the USAF with some Korean War and even a few WWII vets. One was a Sergeant Evans, my crew chief in Radar Maintenance at the 793rd Radar Squadron in 1963. Evans had been in B-29s in Korea—I believe he was a radio operator. He told of a time when their squadron maintenance chief had flown to Guam to pick up some spare parts, and there in a warehouse were some of the 20mm tail guns that had been removed to lighten the B-29s for their missions over Japan. He brought a few back and

It might interest your readers to know that the first music from outer space was performed by two astronauts aboard Gemini 6. It was the Christmas season, and Wally Schirra [see “Aviators,” March] had included among his personal items a miniature harmonica made by Hohner called the “Little Lady.” Thomas P. Stafford, his fellow pilot, brought along small bells that might embellish a Christmas wreath. Just before they were scheduled to reenter Earth’s atmosphere on December 16, 1965, they reported seeing a command module with eight smaller modules in front. The pilot in the control module was wearing a red suit. Schirra broke out his harmonica and rendered “Jingle Bells,” accompanied by Stafford on his miniature sleigh bells. The harmonica and bells—see my photo attached [above]—are credited with being the first musical instruments ever played in space. They are enshrined at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Harvey Alley Grand Rapids, Mich. Send letters to Aviation History Editor, Weider History Group, 19300 Promenade Drive, Leesburg, VA 20176-6500, or e-mail to [email protected].

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Duck Hunt in Greenland

PHOTOS: U.S. COAST GUARD

Left: U.S. Coast Guard and North South Polar personnel cross a crevasse. Below: Robert Smith uses a hotwater “drill” to melt the ice.

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n November 29, 1942, a U.S. Coast Guard Grumman J2F-4 Duck crashed in bad weather on the Greenland ice cap, killing its pilot and radio operator as well as a USAAF B-17 crewman who was a passenger. The Duck had been involved in a complex, multi-service, air and ground attempt to rescue the crew of his crashed B-17. The wrecked Duck— wings torn off but fuselage intact—was spotted from the air eight days later, but there was no sign of life and a Coast Guard ground party twice was unable to find the wreck as the Greenland winter rapidly approached.

Aries was flown in 2008 and achieved enough hits that, two years later, the Coast Guard hired a company specializing in Arctic and Antarctic aircraft searches, North South Polar Inc., to put warm boots on frozen ground in another search for the Duck. No joy, unfortunately, but that expedition did narrow down the search area. Last year the Coasties went back for another hard look. Once again they were guided by North South Polar CEO Lou Sapienza, who had made his bones in 1992 as a member of the expedition that recovered the deep-under-the-ice P-38 today known as Glacier Girl. Following lessons learned from the Glacier Girl recovery, NSP used a high-pressure, hot-water-jet “drill” to burn a borehole 38 feet down through the ice, where a fisheye-lens optical viewer ringed by bright LED lights revealed what looked like World War II–vintage electrical wiring. A nearby borehole uncovered engine-compartment compoThe J2F-4 Duck takes off on a reconnaissance flight in 1942. nents that could well be Grumman parts. Success? Not yet. The Coast Guard will return to the site as soon as Over 70 years, the battered Grumman amphibian—and, presum- possible to actually recover the aircraft and, it is hoped, the assumed ably, the remains of its occupants—sank deeper into the ice and was human remains. (After all, it’s possible that the Duck crewmen surencased under dozens of feet of windblown snow, while the glacier vived the crash and attempted to hike out.) Whether the Duck will continued its imperceptible but inevitable march southward to the be recovered for restoration, for eventual exhibition as is or simply sea. The exact location of the crash site, once to retrieve the crewmen’s remains has not at best a penciled guess on a chart with few been determined. landmarks, became an increasing mystery. The amphibian and its three occupants But the Coast Guard needed to solve that are literally the tip of the iceberg, and we’ll mystery: The lost crewmen eventually became be recounting in an upcoming issue the “I have always understood two of the last three unrecovered Coast amazing story behind one of the largest, aeroplanes a lot better Guardsmen from any war America had deadliest and at best least marginally sucthan women.” fought. (The third had been buried in a mass cessful aviation search-and-rescue operagrave in the Philippines.) tions ever performed. –Anthony Fokker Stephan Wilkinson A magnetometer search using a Navy EP-3

Air Quotes

8 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY JULY 2013

LAS Contract Dispute Continues

A

HAWKER BEECHCRAFT

EMBRAER

contract for 20 light air support (LAS) airplanes destined for Afghanistan’s fledgling air force has stalled again, as Beechcraft Corporation filed suit against the U.S. Air Force to halt work on the project. This is Beechcraft’s third challenge to the $427.5 million contract, which the Pentagon awarded to Brazilian-based Embraer and its U.S. partner, Sierra Nevada Corporation. After the last challenge, Pentagon officials overrode the “stop work” portion of the protest to allow work on the planes to continue. Beechcraft’s latest action threatens Two Embraer A-29 Super Tucano turboprops, wearing Brazilian air force markings, fly on patrol. to stifle that progress. In the meantime, Embraer and SNC have signed a lease on a hangar at Jacksonville International Airport, where much of the assembly of 20 turboprop A-29 Super Tucanos is expected to be completed; SNC will build the avionics package at a Colorado facility. The turboprop has been in service in a variety of countries since the late 1990s. The debate extends an already lengthy process that on its surface was painted as a battle between American jobs and foreign corporate interests. Additionally, Beechcraft officials argued, their proposed aircraft would cost less. Embraer for its part pointed out that the Pentagon contract called for a “non-developmental, in-production aircraft.” Beechcraft’s proposed AT-6 did not meet that qualification as, at the time of Beechcraft is promoting its AT-6 over Embraer’s LAS design. the proposal, only two prototypes existed (the T-6 on which it is based, however, has an extensive and successful history). Citing “unusual and compelling circumstances,” Pentagon officials sided with Embraer, highlighting the fact that there is a time-sensitive need for the aircraft in Afghanistan, where NATO-led troops are already beginning to withdraw. The selection process, they noted, has already extended over two years, and the airplanes were expected to be delivered by 2014. Delays now threaten to disrupt American plans to leave Afghanistan. The loss of the contract comes at a difficult time for Kansas-based Beechcraft, which recently emerged from bankruptcy with a recovery plan specifically designed to focus on the turboprop business. What name—or names—did this peripatetic plane have? Martin A. Bartels Turn to P. 12 for the answer. WEIDER HISTORY GROUP ARCHIVE

MYSTERY SHIP

JULY 2013 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY 9

BRIEFING

Collier Goes to Curiosity

A RecordSetting Year 2012

was a memorable year for flight records, as confirmed by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. In addition to Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic 119,431-foot skydive on October 14, which broke Joseph Kittinger’s record from 1962, other record-breakers included:

E

very year the National Aeronautic Association awards the Robert J. Collier Trophy for “the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles, the value of which has been thoroughly demonstrated by actual use during the preceding year.” The winner for 2012 was NASA/JPL’s Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity Project, which delivered the Curiosity rover to Mars, where it is doing a variety of experiments designed to help us better understand ancient Martian environments. Two other NASA/JPL endeavors—the Voyager Interstellar Mission and Dawn asteroid probe—were also in the running. Other nominees were Felix Baumgartner, who set a world record by skydiving 24 miles, and the Red Bull Stratos Team that supported his effort; Lockheed Martin’s K-MAX unmanned aerial cargo system; the Gulfstream G650 highspeed, ultra-long-range business jet; and the U.S. Air Force’s MC-12 Project Liberty, which developed a twin-engine turboprop (modified Hawker BeechThe K-MAX craft King Air 350s and King Air unmanned aerial 350ERs) to provide intelligence, cargo system surveillance and recon support lifts a test load to ground forces in combat. in January 2010. 10 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY JULY 2013

JAY NEMETH/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

• • •

By the Numbers

The Dambuster Raid

LOCKHEED MARTIN

A self-portrait of the Curiosity rover on Mars.

NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS

•

The Gamera II, a humanpowered helicopter developed at the University of Maryland, which was pedaled to a 1 minute and 5 second flight, with power provided by Ph.D. candidate Colin Gore Dustin Martin’s 11-hourlong, straight-line distance flight Felix Baumgartner prepares of 474 miles in a Wills Wing T2C to begin his historic free-fall. hang glider A 599 mph west-to-east transcontinental dash by a Gulfstream G150 business jet Russia’s next-generation Mi-38 helicopter established five world records during the 14th World Helicopter Championship, held at Drakino airfield in Russia last August, including an altitude record of 28,280 feet without a payload

No. 617 Squadron was formed to target Germany’s Ruhr valley dams (story, P. 24). In the run-up to Operation Chastise, 617’s Lancasters dropped 2,288 practice bombs. On May 16, 1943, 19 Lancasters took part in the raid, each carrying a 9,250-pound Upkeep bomb. They succeeded in breaching two of the dams, the Eder and the Möhne. The Eder, Germany’s largest, was holding back 202 million cubic meters of water, while the Möhne held 134 million cubic meters. According to German reports: 1,294 people in the Ruhr valley drowned; 500 cattle and pigs were lost; 11 factories were destroyed, with another 114 damaged; 3,000 homes washed away; 25 bridges were submerged and another 21 were badly damaged. As for 617 Squadron, 8 of its Lancasters did not return. The Dambusters Memorial in Lincolnshire lists the 53 airmen killed in the raid.

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BRIEFING

MYSTERY SHIP ANSWER

SPIRIT AEROSYSTEMS CREATIVE SERVICES

What’s Up With Doc ?

Work on the B-29 is progressing, but it still lacks engines.

I

t’s been a slow recovery for the B-29 Superfortress known as Doc, but its vital signs now look good. After more than 40 years parked in the Mohave Desert, the vintage bomber was rescued and moved to Wichita by aviation enthusiast Tony Mazzolini. A variety of factors delayed progress on its restoration until earlier this year, when a group of local business leaders formed the nonprofit organization Doc’s Friends to raise funds to return it to flight. More at b-29doc.com.

What began as the Breese-Dallas Model 1 was conceived in September 1932 as a six-seat, all-metal transcontinental cargo plane by Vance Breese and Charles Dallas, with the help of engineers Art Mankee and Jerry Vultee—the latter of whom would later incorporate some of its design into his own V-1 single-engine airliner. With a length of 28 feet 4 inches and a 40-foot wingspan, the transport featured hydraulically retractable landing gear and a radial engine lifted from a Boeing P-12 pursuit plane, later replaced by an 800hp Pratt & Whitney SRB-1535 that gave it a maximum speed of 247 mph and a cruising speed of 210. On May 1, 1933, the airplane was sold to Charles Dallas and F.A. Culver’s Michigan Aircraft Company. In 1934 it was passed on to the Dallas-owned Select Motor Sales, then sold to the Lambert Aircraft Corporation, which redesignated it the Lambert Model 1344, only to sell it back to Select Motor Sales. In 1935 it was sold back to Breese, who backed having it play the role of a bomber in the film Storm Over the Andes, and subsequently wanted to enter it in the Bendix Trophy Race—though it did neither that year. In October 1936, the plane was sold to Jacqueline Cochrane, who planned to enter it in the Bendix Race until Wes Smith was forced to do a wheels-up landing in it. Cochrane then sold it in January 1937 to Paul Mantz’s Union Air Services, which immediately re-registered it for Mexico. From there, it was to be delivered to Colonel Roberto Fiero for use in the Spanish Civil War, but it crashed outside Mexico City on January 10. The ferry pilot, Cloyd Peart Clevenger, was subsequently jailed for violating the U.S. Neutrality Act.

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n November 25, 1963, just three days after the tragedy in Dallas, the U.S. Mint began work on the 90% Silver

Kennedy Half Dollar. It would prove to be one of the most popular half dollar designs in our nation’s history. Not surprisingly, when Americans discovered that the brand new Kennedy Half Dollar was the centerpiece of the 1964 U.S. Silver Proof Set, demand immediately soared through the roof!

By January 11th, 1964, the Mint was forced to halt orders for the 1964 Silver Proof Set, and eventually had to reduce the original maximum order of 100 Proof Sets down to just 2 sets per buyer in the face of such staggering demand. Finally, on March 12, even the limit of 2 sets was halted because the Mint received orders for 200,000 Proof Sets in just two days! Fifty years later, the 1964 Silver Proof Set is still in great demand. Why? Because this set is chock full of “Firsts”, “Lasts” and “Onlys”:

1964 Proof Set Firsts, Lasts & Onlys

✔ The FIRST year Kennedy Half Dollar Proof ✔ The FIRST Proof set to feature a former president on every coin ✔ The LAST Proof Set struck at the Philadelphia Mint ✔ The LAST year the Roosevelt Dime, Washington Quarter and Kennedy Half Dollar were struck in 90% silver for regular production ✔ The ONLY 90% Silver Kennedy Half Dollar Proof ever minted for regular production ✔ The ONLY Kennedy Half Dollar Proof struck at the Philadelphia Mint

As we approach the 50th Anniversary of JFK’s 1963 assassination this year, the 1964 U.S. Silver Proof Set is back into the spotlight again. Each set contains the 1964 Lincoln Cent and Jefferson

Nickel, along with three 90% Silver coins: the Silver Roosevelt Dime, Silver Washington Quarter, and the 1964 Silver Kennedy Half Dollar—the only 90% Kennedy Half Dollar ever struck for regular production.

Saved from destruction—but how many sets survived?

Collectors know that the key is to find those sets still preserved in the original U.S. Mint “flat pack” just as issued. And over the past 50 years, that has become more and more difficult! Since this set was issued, silver prices have risen from $1.29 per ounce to over $48 per ounce at the silver market’s high mark. During that climb, it is impossible to determine how many of these 1964 Proof Sets have been melted for their precious silver content. The packaging on thousands of other sets has been cut apart to remove the silver coins—so there is no way to know for certain how many 1964 U.S. Proof Sets have survived to this day.

Order now—Satisfaction Guaranteed

We expect our small quantity of 1964 U.S. Silver Proof Sets to disappear quickly, so we urge you to call now to secure yours. You must be satisfied with your set or simply return it within 30 days of receipt for prompt refund (less s/h). Limit: 5 per household. 1964 U.S. Silver Proof Set

$59.00 plus s/h

TOLL-FREE 24 HOURS A DAY

1-888-870-9343 Offer Code KPS158-01

Please mention this code when you call.

14101 Southcross Drive W., Dept. KPS158-01 Burnsville, Minnesota 55337

www.NewYorkMint.com

Prices and availability subject to change without notice. Past performance is not a predictor of future performance. NOTE: New York Mint® is a private distributor of worldwide government coin and currency issues and privately issued licensed collectibles and is not affiliated with the United States government. Facts and figures deemed accurate as of January 2013. ©2013 New York Mint, LLC.

WEIDER READER A sampling of decisive moments, remarkable adventures, memorable characters, Military History Does Camouflage Work?

World War II Taking the Fight to the Empire From “Camouflage,” in the May 2013 issue

World War I’s dazzle-painted ships—entire vessels covered with huge, jagged slashes and panels of black and white—seemed to bear the most counterintuitive of camouflages, making them as visible as zebras on a grassland rather than blending into the ocean or sky. But dazzle paint was actually a particularly vivid example of disruptive patterning. When the commander of an early U-boat peered through his scope at a target, dazzle paint was intended to transform a bow into a stern, to tilt funnels in conflicting directions, to make one big ship look like two smaller ones or a cruiser appear to be a freighter. Dazzle also concealed a ship’s vertical structures, the marks that enabled rangefinders to calculate distances. An attacking submariner needed to fix a target’s direction of travel, and doing so through a monocular periscope in a tossing sea is far harder than Hollywood makes it seem. But did dazzle camouflage really work? “In 1931, when German evidence had been sifted,” writes Guy Hartcup in Camouflage: The History of Concealment and Deception in War, “the verdict was that it was doubtful whether any submarine commander had misjudged his target’s course and speed through dazzle painting alone.”

14 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY JULY 2013

From “Forgotten Valor,” in the MayJune 2013 issue In April 1942, American flight crews rocked foes in the Philippines with surprise air attacks that made headlines—until news came of the even more spectacular Doolittle Raid on the Japanese Home Islands. The Philippines raid was stunningly successful: 11 B-25s hit Davao in the morning and four more in the evening, and four bombers pounced on Cebu. Despite anti-aircraft fire and fire from Zeros and seaplanes, the strafing B-25s stitched warehouses, docks and fuel dumps, mowing down men and sparking huge fires. The fat 500-pounders and shrapnel-spattering 100-pound fragmentation bombs with instantaneous fuses whistled down a symphony of destruction upon the Japanese. At Davao, 1st Lt. James McAfee saw three of five bombs—those with “Mother,” “Daddy” and “Sally” scrawled on them, after members of his family—obliterate a transport, a wonderful catharsis. “I was scared to death,” admitted one pilot, Major William Hipps. “But I’ve never had so much fun in my life.” They were the first Allied bombers to strike the Japanese and inflict real damage, as well as shock. When an enemy pilot sidled his plane up to Hipps’ aircraft over Davao, Hipps recalled: “He was so close we could see his face—and it just registered blank amazement. He didn’t seem to know where we came from or how we got there. He never found out either—the rear gunner got a direct hit on his motor, and a few seconds later he went down in flames.”

Vietnam A Wild Weasel Duels With SAMs From “Weasel vs. SAMs Over Dong Hoi,” in the April 2013 issue A hair-raising account of a 1968 Wild Weasel mission over North Vietnam epitomizes the convergence of courage and technology. The North’s air defenses included the Soviet-built SA-2 surface-to-air missile—a serious threat to American airpower. Loaded with sophisticated electronics and rockets, and crewed by pilots who developed tactics on the fly, two-seat F-105s became the workhorses of the Wild Weasel teams that ferreted out SAM sites in advance of bombing missions. Warren Kerzon was in a life-or-death duel, with two SA-2 missiles barreling toward his F-105. He pushed down and turned a bit to fly more on his side, but the SAMs remained locked on a spot inside his right windscreen, just forward of the canopy bow. They were closing fast, their “angular size”—the circle of light emanating from their engine flames— growing rapidly. He only took his eyes off them long enough to check his altitude, attitude and airspeed. He was descending; his altitude was fine, with a roll angle about 135 degrees (partially inverted), airspeed approaching the speed of sound. With only seconds to react, Kerzon had to calculate when to make the hard pull-up. Because of the close range of their launch, the SAMs were still in their acceleration phase and approaching at about 3,000 feet per second. The darkness added yet another degree of difficulty in judging how close the missiles actually were. If he made his move too soon, the SAM controllers could correct the missiles’ flight. If he moved too late, he and his electronics warfare officer, in the seat behind him, would be toast.

surprising encounters and great ideas from our sister magazines Military History Quarterly A Wolf in Gentleman’s Clothing From “Deadly Decorum,” in the Spring 2013 issue

British Heritage In Search of Bosworth’s Field From “Bosworth’s Battlefield: Then and Now,” in the July 2013 issue

During World War I, the German raider Wolf terrorized Allied shipping, destroying or disabling 30 freighters—including the threemasted whaler Beluga.

The true site of the Battle of Bosworth Field was recently pinpointed, as well as the spot where Richard III fell in combat.

On May 15, 1917, Captain Stan Cameron, an independent American merchant mariner, sailed Beluga out of San Francisco with a load of engine fuel. Accompanying Cameron was a crew of 10, as well as two unusual passengers—his 27-year-old wife, Mary, and their 6-year-old daughter, Juanita. Mary, who was Australian-born, was making the trip across the Pacific to see her parents for the first time in 10 years. At 2 o’clock on a July afternoon, the German steamer Wolf, the most audacious commerce raider of World War I, appeared on the horizon near New Caledonia. Hinged iron sections of the steamer’s bulwarks suddenly crashed down, revealing the barrels of two guns, and the Germans fired a warning shot across Beluga’s bow. Cameron and his family were about to become prisoners of war. Brought aboard the German raider, the Camerons were bewildered when a mess officer presented their daughter with a slice of cake. Wolf’s captain, the impeccably dressed Karl Nerger, appeared and apologized—in English—for their detainment, then directed the Camerons to an officer’s cabin and appointed one of his crew as their orderly. Like many of Wolf’s prisoners, Stan Cameron would develop a high regard for Nerger. The American came to see his captor as a “a thorough gentleman.” Cameron’s daughter, meanwhile, became the impish mascot of the crew and a regular companion for Nerger, who gave her the affectionate nickname “Wolfsplague.”

In 1934 Lord Raglan observed, “Harold fell on the fields of Hastings, Simon de Montfort at Evesham, Richard III at Bosworth Field; their deaths marked epochs in our history, yet who knows the spot where they fell?” Raglan had a particularly good point about Bosworth Field. That battle had marked the start of the Tudor dynasty and the end of the medieval era; yet not only did no one know where Richard III had fallen, no one could place Bosworth Field within 50 miles—until now. A team of British archeologists has definitively located the spot where Richard fell on August 22, 1485, taking the last remnants of English feudalism with him. Sponsored by The Battlefields Trust and Leicestershire County Council’s Museum Services, digs in the fields below Ambion Hill (15 miles west of Leicester) have garnered many artifacts, including a concentration of cannon balls and lead shot—unexpected for a battle that was formerly believed to have taken place before the widespread use of gunpowder. The previous best guess as to Bosworth Field’s location had been two miles closer to Ambion Hill, where Leicestershire County’s Bosworth Battlefield Park has commemorated the historic engagement since 1974. Many scholars had disputed that spot, however, and when the Guardian announced the new results in 2009, its reporter gleefully noted that the site was “surrounded by school parties still studying at least four wrong locations.”

Wild West Women Warriors From “The Other Magpie and The Woman Chief Were Crow Warriors of the ‘Weaker Sex,’” in the June 2013 issue Some American Indian women played significant roles in battles—both for and against the United States—during the late 1800s. When the Crows sent some 175 warriors to join Brig. Gen. George Crook on campaign in 1876, one warrior carried no rifle—only a belt knife and a coup stick made of a willow wand. The Crow war party and Shoshone warriors, both U.S. allies against the Lakotas and Cheyennes, covered Crook’s confusion at the June 17, 1876, Battle of the Rosebud and probably staved off outright defeat. The warrior with the willow stick counted coup on a Lakota and later took his scalp—one of only 11 taken by the Crows that day before the opponents withdrew. When the Crows returned home, the warrior with the willow wand—in a gesture emblematic of the generosity of the Crow people, and their occasional penchant for the grotesque—sliced the Lakota scalp into pieces so other warriors would have trophies to present to their women. That warrior, known as The Other Magpie, understood the importance of keeping women happy—she was one herself. Pretty Shield, a contemporary Crow woman who had remained at home during the fight, called this woman warrior “a wild one who had no man of her own…both bad and brave.”

To subscribe to any Weider History magazine, call 800-435-0715 or go to HistoryNet.com. JULY 2013 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY 15

EXTREMES

By Edward H. Phillips

Beechcraft’s Bulldog Denied its chance for glory, the pugnacious A17FS languished as a Òhangar queenÓ for much of its brief life

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NATIONAL ARCHIVES

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acing had always been in Walter plane competitive but also to assure compli- airplane, coupled with an acute lack of funds, Herschel Beech’s blood. He was an ance with airworthiness requirements stipu- forced Louise to withdraw from the Macincurable disciple of speed, that lated by Britain’s distinguished Royal Aero Robertson event late that month. The freeindispensable aeronautical asset his Club, responsible for administering the race. for-all class of the race, for which the A17FS friend Clyde V. Cessna had once proclaimed Chief among the changes was an increased was uniquely suited, was won by a twinwas “the only reason for flying.” Of all the maximum usable fuel capacity of 310 gallons, engine de Havilland DH.88 Comet. attributes the infant Beech Aircraft Company which would provide a nonstop range of up Perhaps it was just as well the A17FS didn’t claimed for its bullish, 690-hp Model A17F to 1,600 statute miles. That amount of fuel compete. The additional fuel tanks and their biplane in 1934, performance was at the top was considered the minimum required to complex system of aluminum tubing and of the list. feed the thirsty Wright radial, which easily selector valves, all of which would be subject With a maximum speed of 215 mph, the A17F was fast, and when the opportunity to enter the lucrative MacRobertson International Trophy Race came late in 1933, Beech jumped at the chance to claim the $50,000 first prize. He ordered chief engineer Ted Wells to build a second, more powerful A17F designed to win the grueling 12,000-mile race from London to Melbourne. Designated the A17FS, the biplane would be powered by a supercharged Wright SR-1820F3 9cylinder radial engine belting out a thundering 710 hp. Beech was confident that no The Bureau of Air Commerce purchased the A17FS for $15,000, but demanded a series of modifications. other competitor would be able to match the one-of-a-kind biplane gulped 40 gallons per hour while cruising. to serious vibration during flight, would have when it came to sheer power and speed. Five aluminum fuel tanks under the cabin greatly increased the chance of failure during Famed aviatrix Louise Thaden, who had set a floor would provide 187 gallons, and another the race. And neither Louise Thaden nor her number of women’s speed, altitude and en- set of tanks holding 127 gallons replaced the husband was trained in long-distance flying, durance records in the late 1920s, was en- aft cabin seats. let alone dead-reckoning navigation on a gaged to pilot the racer. Her husband, HerAs construction of the A17FS continued in global scale. Although disappointed at having bert von Thaden, a pilot and aircraft designer, the sweltering summer of 1934, Louise to withdraw, years later Thaden confessed would serve as co-pilot and navigator. Thaden spent weeks at the Beechcraft factory that she was “secretly glad we did not go. It Wells orchestrated a number of significant in Wichita, Kan., preparing for the challenge was without question a foolhardy enterprise systems modifications to the A17FS, increas- ahead. The SR-1820F3, which at $8,000 cost and a dangerous one.” ing maximum gross weight to 6,000 pounds, as much as a factory-fresh Beechcraft B17L, Despite temperatures that sometimes up from the A17F’s 5,200 pounds. The weight finally arrived early in September. Unfor- reached more than 100 degrees in the factory, gain was necessary not only to make the air- tunately, a series of delays in completing the workers finally put the finishing touches on

STAGGERWING MUSEUM FOUNDATION/WILLIAM THADEN AND PAT THADEN-WEBB/SPECIAL COLLECTIONS & UNIV. ARCHIVES, WICHITA STATE UNIV. LIBRARIES

the brutish Beechcraft and prepared for its maiden flight. Resplendent in a patriotic red, white and blue livery designed to leave no doubt as to the airplane’s nationality, the A17FS thundered into the blue Kansas skies late in September piloted by Robert S. Fogg, who had been flying the A17F. With his hopes of winning the MacRobertson race gone, Beech was anxious to sell the fire-breathing A17FS to generate much-needed revenue. But at $25,000 it would be a hard sell at best, and Beech knew it. Flight tests continued through the fall, with well-known local pilot George Harte, a friend of Beech’s, at the controls. As he gradually expanded the high-speed flight test envelope, Harte noted that the A17FS had a maximum speed of 230 mph and a cruise speed of nearly 220 mph—faster than most singleengine pursuit planes of its day. After Harte completed basic flight testing, the airplane was relegated to a dark corner of the factory and left to await its fate. Beech made calls, wrote letters and talked with potential buyers, but a sale was not forthcoming. In addition, he directed Ted Wells to launch a campaign to have the Bureau of Air Commerce license the aircraft under a Group Two approval, which was less demanding than the Type Certificate process and was often used by manufacturers to help sell oneof-a-kind airplanes. The Bureau, overwhelmed with certification work, was slow to respond to Wells’ plea. More weeks passed with no buyer stepping forward. Beech thought he had lassoed a buyer in November, but the sale never materialized. The A17FS gathered more dust to go along with its growing reputation as the company’s expensive “hangar queen.” Late in 1934, Beech Aircraft won a bid circulated by the federal government for an airplane “to educate the Bureau’s personnel in the performance characteristics and operation of new, high-speed aircraft equipped with the newest devices and instruments.” Although Walter Beech was elated to have sold the ship, he could not have foreseen the difficulties involved. In January 1935, James Peyton arrived at the factory to fly the aircraft. His boss, Alfred Verville, the Bureau’s chief of manufacturing inspection, had ordered him to peruse every aspect of the Beechcraft to ensure its airworthiness. After more than five months in storage, the A17FS returned to the sky on January

Aviatrix Louise Thaden stands beside the Beechcraft’s powerful Wright SR-1820F3 radial.

30. Peyton’s chief aim during a series of flights was to probe the airplane’s stability characteristics and ensure it was free of control surface flutter up to a never-exceed-speed of 313 mph. Verville’s primary concern was that the control surfaces, which were not statically balanced, might flutter at high airspeeds. Peyton gradually flew the airplane to higher and higher speeds in search of any tendency of the control surfaces, particularly the ailerons, to flutter. Initial excursions at airspeeds approaching 250 mph revealed no issues, but during a dive at 260 mph from 11,000 feet to 8,000 feet, the A17FS went wild. “All of a sudden the whole airplane seemed to quiver, then as I cut the throttle the left wing and tail fluttered vertically so hard that I felt the surfaces were about to leave the aircraft. The left wing fluttered vertically about 18 inches or more and the tail fluttered so bad that I strained my back holding onto the control column. The surfaces continued to flutter until the airspeed indicated 110 mph.” Fortunately, the airplane held together, and Peyton returned to the airfield without further incident. Confronting Wells, Peyton said he would not fly the A17FS again until the

flutter problem was resolved. After a series of modifications, the Beechcraft was cleared to resume testing, this time with another Bureau test pilot, Harold Neely. Those tests were completed successfully, and the Bureau accepted delivery of the biplane in July. But after less than a year in service, citing the high cost of operating the Beechcraft coupled with a need for frequent repairs, the Bureau withdrew the A17FS from flight operations in mid-1936 and it was put in storage at Queen City Flying Service in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Bureau later considered modifying the airplane to extend its service life, but those plans were abandoned. After an all-tooshort career, the obsolete, temperamental Beechcraft was struck from the inventory. Walter Beech had the biplane returned to the factory, but its subsequent fate remains a mystery. Rumors persist that it was sold to a buyer in California, where it was stored indefinitely, but there’s no evidence to support that contention. It is entirely plausible that the A17FS was dismantled at the factory and disappeared. Regardless of its fate, the bullish Beechcraft will always be remembered as an airplane that had no equal.
JULY 2013 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY 17

RESTORED

By Brendan McNally

Desert Rat Reborn A rare B-17E is slowly being brought back to life in an Illinois pole barn

18 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY JULY 2013

U.S. AIR FORCE

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Entering service in 1942, Boeing B-17E 41-2595 spent WWII as a trainer and transport.

ALL OTHER PHOTOS: LUCAS RYAN

hen word came in June 2011 that Liberty Belle, one of the few stillflyable Boeing B-17s, had burned after making an emergency landing in a cornfield near Aurora, Illinois, a sense of sadness and loss spread far beyond the warbird community. More than 20 years had passed since one of the venerable bombers had crashed, and in that time much had changed. With the last of the World War II generation now almost gone, B-17s have taken on nearmythic significance, becoming a touchstone that connects people with the past. Now another B-17 is being restored to flying condition not far from where Liberty Belle burned, inside a pole barn in Marengo, Ill. After lying in a Maine farmer’s field for 40 years, cut up and forgotten, the Flying Fortress known as Desert Rat is slowly being reborn. Restoring any warbird is costly and timeconsuming. A large, complex bomber is even more so. Whatever cannot be restored has to be remanufactured from scratch. If the builders are unable to fabricate a part it gets farmed out to an outside manufacturer, and that is nearly always expensive. This is why B-17 restorations are done either by rich individuals, foundations with millions of dollars behind them, or both. Of all the recent B-17 restoration projects, Desert Rat has to be the longest shot of them all. Desert Rat’s owner, Mike Kellner, is not a millionaire. He is in fact, among other things, an intermittently employed installer of custom hardwood floors. Kellner does not have a foundation, because he says that foundations are bound by very strict rules about where their tax-exempt money comes from, and should something go wrong—which Kellner says happens all too often—he could end up losing his bomber. So Kellner has positioned a barrel at the barn’s front entrance, where visitors drop fives and ones and the occasional $20. He says the take is so small, it’s barely worth bother-

So far, Mike Kellner and his friends have invested 20 years in reconstructing Desert Rat.

ing with. But he and his friends continue the work, mainly because they’re nice guys and Desert Rat is their passion. Kellner isn’t sure, for that matter, if Desert Rat is actually the B-17’s name. His team found it painted on the side of the fuselage, far from the nose, when they were removing a layer of paint. The name stuck. If you go to Marengo now, you’ll see a B-17E fuselage, more or less intact, but stripped to the skin and ribs and bristling like a porcupine with round plastic pegs called clecos, which keep the skin attached and aligned to the rib until they can be riveted

together. After working on the airplane for 20 years, having the fuselage finally together in one piece has provided a much-needed morale boost for the workers. “Right now we’re putting most of our effort on finishing up the nose section,” says Kellner. “We’re about 60 percent riveted on that. Same with the vertical fins: about 60 percent finished. We haven’t started riveting the rear fuselage yet. We’ve also started rebuilding the dorsal fin.” The plan has always been to get Desert Rat flying again. “It’d already be done if we just wanted it static,” explains Kellner. “You don’t have to worry about the right materials, heat

treating and all the other stuff you have to go through for an airworthy part.” He says his crew’s best recent accomplishment was stretch-forming a stabilizer bow: “It was a 300-hour job, making that one part. We worked on it about two months. I’d been pretty much unemployed, so I was able to put a lot of time into it.” Though Kellner’s crew does most of the stretch-forming, Alcoa makes all their extrusions.“A lot of them have to be bent and shaped afterwards,” he says, “and we do that with a series of presses.” Besides the donation jar, some of Desert Rat’s restoration has been financed via work on other warbirds. “We’ve made a lot of parts for other B-17s,” Kellner explains. “I’ve also made a set of T-28 wings, and now I’m looking for another job where I can help somebody else out. We just made the steel carriage/carrier tubes that go through the fuselage that the wings attach to. We made a run of them—I think we’ve got five sets that have been sold that are out there on some of the other airplanes. We’ve been doing a lot of stuff that’s going to keep these things going for years to come, that nobody’s made in probably 60 years.” When Kellner first found Desert Rat in 1984, all he knew about it was that its last owner had been a farmer with an airstrip and a Piper Cub franchise. An air base in Bangor was selling off surplus aircraft, and the farmer had bought the B-17 there, along with a B-25 and a P-47. But his interest in aviation didn’t involve preserving warbirds for future generations; dismantling airplanes and selling scrap metal was just a way of supplementing his farm income. “He gave it to his kids to scrap and keep the money,” says Kellner. “When they got to the B-17, they chopped the fuselage into about seven sections, and they beat up everything in between. Then they got older and started driving and dating, and it never got finished.” Nearly 40 years later Kellner heard about the bomber and drove to Maine to check it out. He found it in an overgrown field, with other fragments of dead airplanes. Kellner bought the chopped-up B-17 for $7,250, then spent the next seven years loading it aboard flatbeds and trucking it back to Illinois. Looking back, he observes that what he paid for the aircraft was about the cheapest part of the whole experience. For a long time everything was stored at an airport. But as the years passed, the rent kept

going up. Finally he decided to buy some farmland and build a barn, where he could do the restoration. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that the reconstruction started in earnest. After Kellner found the B-17’s data plate, he began piecing together the bomber’s remarkable story. It was B-17E serial number 41-2595, delivered to the U.S. Army Air Forces on April 14, 1942. The Flying Fortress spent its first year as a training aircraft, first with the 97th Bombardment Group, at Sarasota, Fla., then with other training units in Washington and Nebraska. In March 1943, it went to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, where it was used as a transport. That August, the decision was made to convert it to the XC-108 transport configuration and send it to India, where it would help fly supplies over “the Hump” to China. The conversion process should have been relatively simple—sealing the bomb bays; removing gun turrets, bomb racks and interior bulkheads; relocating the radio operator’s station; and installing a large cargo door where the port waist gunner’s station had been—but it took six months. In March 1944, the converted bomber departed MacDill Field, Fla., headed for India, a trip that should have taken no more than a few days. Instead it took two months. When one of the engines caught fire four hours out of Belém, Brazil, the pilot told the crewmen that they could bail out, but everyone decided to stay aboard. Ultimately the B-17 landed safely at Accra, in what is today Ghana. Despite repeated repairs, however, the aircraft kept breaking down. The Fort lasted only a few months in India, and according to Kellner, much of the time it operated satisfactorily on only three engines. It was apparently also hit by gunfire during that time, since there are signs of a repair to the airframe. In October 1944, the B-17 returned to the States. It spent the remainder of the war ferrying cargo between Maine and Labrador. In late 1945, it was declared surplus and sold to the Maine farmer. Now that Desert Rat’s fuselage is back together, people often ask Kellner when he thinks the B-17 will return to the air. “We always tell them, ‘On a Thursday—we just don’t know which Thursday,’ ” he says. He has a theory: “It will be ready when the weight of all the paperwork equals that of the aircraft.” That’s a lot of paperwork, but Mike Kellner claims it’s getting there.


When Kellner found the B-17, its fuselage had been chopped up into seven sections. Kellner replaces the plastic clecos, temporarily used to hold the vertical stabilizer together, with rivets.

Greg Papierz takes a break from riveting to survey Desert Rat’s fuselage framework.

With the fuselage nearing completion, work has recently focused on the nose section. JULY 2013 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY 19

AVIATORS

By Jon Guttman

18 Downed in a Day

Luftwaffe ace Bully Lang had several claims to fame in the course of his short, violent career

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WEIDER HISTORY GROUP ARCHIVE

or an air arm that joined its nation in November promised more of the same, the 17-victory record set over North Africa by ultimate defeat in World War II, the with eight victories on the 2nd, but the next JG.27’s famous Me-109 virtuoso, HansLuftwaffe left a remarkable legacy of day Lang outdid himself—and every other Joachim Marseille. military aviation records, starting with fighter pilot in the world. During a morning By the end of November, Lang had been the highest-scoring ace of all time, Erich patrol near Kiev he attacked a formation of credited with 101 victories in two months. Hartmann with 352 victories, and the most Il-2 Shturmoviks and their Yak-7 fighter es- On the 22nd he was awarded the Knight’s combat missions flown, 2,650 by Hans- corts at 9:31 a.m., and by 9:42 he had ac- Cross to the Iron Cross, and three days later Ulrich Rudel. Among the less remembered counted for four of the armored Il-2s and received the German Cross in Gold. Meanbut equally remarkable records were those set three Yaks. Around 1 p.m. he downed an La-5, while the Soviets continued their relentless by Emil Lang, including the most westward push, with the desperate enemy planes downed in a single day. Germans disputing every advance. Born in Talheim, Württemberg, On April 6, 1944, Lang downed an Lang was a track and field athlete La-5FN for his 144th victory, his last whose bulldog-like facial features in the East. Three days later he was earned him the nickname “Bully.” He reassigned to command of 9/JG.54 in became a commercial pilot with LuftFrance. He stood before Adolf Hitler hansa and was serving as a transport on May 5 to receive the Oak Leaves to pilot in the Luftwaffe when Germany his Knight’s Cross. Lang’s claim for a invaded Poland in September 1939. In P-38 (likely an F-5 photorecon ver1942 he transferred into fighters and sion) on the 28th officially opened his was assigned to the 1st Staffel (squadaccount in the West. ron) of Jagdgeschwader (fighter wing) The Allied landings in Normandy 54, or 1/JG.54, on the Russian Front on June 6 created a new sector that the early in 1943. Then 34, he was among Germans would label the Invasion the Luftwaffe’s oldest fighter pilots. Front—and into which 9/JG.54 was JG.54 had recently replaced its thrust to bolster the two beleaguered Messerschmitt Me-109s with the new wings stationed in France since the Focke-Wulf Fw-190A-4, a pugnacious Battle of Britain had ended, JG.2 fighter that seemed custom-made for “Richthofen” and JG.26 “Schlageter.” Lang, who used it to score his first two Here Lang proved just as deadly victories in early March 1943. After against the Western Allies as he had transferring to 5/JG.54, he downed a been against the Soviets in the East, MiG-3 on March 23, and in May starting with a P-51 Mustang near began steadily adding to his score, cul- Lang on the cover of the Berlin Illustrated Times in 1943. Bernay two days after D-Day and a minating in four P-39 Airacobras on Westland Lysander northeast of Caen August 1. On the 20th he was promoted to followed by an unidentified Soviet plane in a on June 11. At 7:29 a.m. on June 14, he command of the squadron. third sortie. During his fourth mission he had bounced P-47 Thunderbolts and by 7:32 had At that point JG.54 was involved in what a series of encounters starting at 2:16 p.m. shot down three of them, in the process passamounted to a fighting retreat across the east- that by 2:49 had doubled the day’s bag, with ing the 150 mark. He downed four more Musern Ukraine. Its pilots were conceding noth- two La-5s, two Yak-9s and five Il-2s. As he tangs on the 20th. ing, however, and in October Lang displayed returned to his airfield, his face blackened On June 28, JG.26’s commander, Lt. Col. typical bulldog tenacity, downing 10 oppo- with gunpowder and grime, a grinning Bully Josef “Pips” Priller, requested Captain Lang to nents on the 13th and 12 on the 21st, with a Lang thrust his fist in the air in triumph. He replace his transferred II Gruppe commander. total of 68 for the month. had brought the day’s total to 18, edging out His wider responsibilities notwithstanding, 20 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY JULY 2013

Bully showed no inclination of leading from behind a desk, and his ebullience re-energized morale among the group’s pilots. The air war over Normandy often involved low-altitude duels with elements of the RAF’s Second Tactical Air Force and the U.S. Ninth Air Force. These dogfights could be confusing, leading to mutual overclaiming, as on July 9, when Lang claimed three Spitfires in five minutes while his opponents, members of No. 453 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, claimed two Fw-190s—though in fact neither side suffered a loss. On August 25, JG.26 and the newly formed III/JG.76 intercepted two dozen P-38Js of the 474th Fighter Group that were attacking airfields near Laon, resulting in a low-level battle royal. The Americans claimed 18 Me-109s and three Fw-190s, but lost 11 P-38s on what they would call “Black Friday.” Of the 11 Lightnings claimed by JG.26, three were credited to Lang within a five-minute span. By August 26, Lang had brought his total to 173 victories in the course of 408 missions, in addition to which he had strafed and sunk a Soviet torpedo boat. The 28 victories he claimed in less than three months was also the Luftwaffe record for the Invasion Front.

By then, however, the Allies had broken out of Normandy and taken Paris. Bully Lang’s good luck streak was about to run out. On September 3, Lang reported that he was having difficulty raising the landing gear on his Fw-190A-8. After mechanics worked on his plane, he led a flight up from Melsbroek airfield, Belgium, at 1:20 p.m. Ten minutes later one of his wingmen, Sergeant HansJoachim Borreck, called out Thunderbolts at their backs. Lang climbed to the left and Lieutenant Alfred Gross also turned left. Borreck dived with two fighters on his tail, evading them with hits to his wing and engine, and force-landed at another nearby airfield, where he reported last seeing Lang’s plane in a vertical dive with its undercarriage extended. Gross later claimed to have turned on an attacking Spitfire and shot it down in flames before another unseen assailant shot him down. He bailed out, but his injuries sidelined him for the rest of the war. There have since been two claimants to Lang’s demise, both of whom had encounters in that area at the right time, but neither flew Thunderbolts. Three Mustangs of the 338th Squadron, 55th Fighter Group, claimed Fw-190s over Brussels, of which 1st Lt. Dar-

rell S. Cramer was the only one to positively report seeing his victim hit the ground and explode. Farther east, Spitfire Mark XIIs of No. 41 Squadron tangled with Fw-190s over Tirlemont, during which Warrant Officer Peter W. Chattin was shot down and killed, but Flight Lt. Terence Spencer, after taking hits in his tail, sent an Fw-190 down. Pilot Officer Patrick T. Coleman claimed a second Fw-190. The Germans reported that Lang’s plane exploded on impact at Overhespen, closer to Tirlemont than to Brussels. Regardless of where he went down, the effect of Lang’s death on morale was profound. On September 28, Priller submitted a request for Lang’s posthumous promotion to major, summing up the late ace: “Captain Lang is a fully motivated character, serious and calm in his demeanor, yet definitive and energetic when strength was needed. Very good attitude as an officer. Demands of himself first. He understands how to reach the men under his command correctly. Captain Lang possesses an exemplary concept of service, has initiative and talent for improvisation to a large degree, well rooted in National Socialist ideas.” The promotion never came through before the Third Reich itself died.


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JULY 2013 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY 21

LETTER FROM AVIATION HISTORY $400 Billion Fighter Fiasco

LOCKHEED MARTIN

The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (see “Monster Singles,” P. 32) is a case study in how not to build a modern military airplane. At a time when sequestration cutbacks have gutted some federal programs and compelled the FAA to announce the closure of 149 airport control towers, the F-35 has remained essentially bulletproof. As The Washington Post noted in a March 10 article titled “Too Big To Bail,” the Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin “have constructed what amounts to a budgetary force field around the nearly $400 billion program.” The F-35 fiasco is not so much an indictment of Lockheed Martin as it is a testament to the sad state of current U.S. military procurement. Because the program supports some 133,000 jobs spread across 45 states, with the prospect of almost double that number when full production commences, it enjoys unwavering support in Congress, despite continual budgetary overruns that have put it 70 percent over initial cost estimates. Most disturbing, as the Post points out,“Instead of building and evaluating prototype models A U.S. Air Force pilot flies the second F-35A prototype over Edwards AFB. before deciding to move forward with full-scale assembly, the F-35 is being mass-produced while it is still being assessed by pilots.” Those pilots recently reported serious flaws in the fighter. A February DoD evaluation report summarizing initial flight tests at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida of the Air Force’s F-35A version highlighted a litany of problems that needed to be resolved before pilot training could begin. These included significant issues with the pilot’s helmet-mounted display and ejection seat system, much higher than expected abort rates, maintenance difficulties, cold/hot weather issues and software shortcomings that severely restricted the flight test envelope. “The out-of-cockpit visibility in the F-35 is less than other Air Force fighters,” the report stated. One pilot commented that poor aft visibility “will get the pilot gunned every time.” And that’s just the Air Force version. Recent reports have revealed that the high temperatures generated by the vertical landing exhaust on the Marines’ F-35B STOVL version require special landing pads made of advanced refractory concrete or layers of aluminum alloy matting, so forget about initial claims that the fighter will be able to fly from“unprepared, forward operational airbases.” The Navy’s F-35C currently has no carrier capability, as the tailhook had to be redesigned and there are significant concerns about the carrier approach landing speed. Unlike the F-35A, the F-35B and C carry no internal cannon, requiring external gun pods—a throwback to the temporary solution cooked up for the F-4 Phantom during the Vietnam War. Under the Pentagon’s “buy before you fly” acquisition process, otherwise known as “concurrency,” the 65 F-35s already built, and those that come off the assembly line in the next few years, will require extensive retrofits that could cost as much as $4 billion, according to the Post. This ass-backwards method of airplane procurement was standard operating procedure for another government, that of Nazi Germany late in World War II (see “The Luftwaffe’s Wooden Wonder,” P. 38), but the Third Reich had no choice. At this point, it would seem, neither does America. With the average age of the military’s fighter fleet at an all-time high, and no other viable options, the F-35 has to work.


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The Dambusters

After 70 years, the bold British raid on Germany’s strategic river dams remains one of history’s most audacious bombing missions—a testament to ingenious engineering and the bravery of RAF aircrews By Nicholas O’Dell

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s a red flare curved into the Lincolnshire sky, the engines on 19 Avro Lancasters clattered to life and the black bombers began to move slowly out of their dispersals. The muffled roar that evening, May 16, 1943, was familiar to nearby residents. Operations were on again. RAF Scampton’s aircraft would likely be joining hundreds of others in another “maximum effort.” Where are our boys going tonight: Berlin? Hamburg? Some would offer a silent prayer for their safe return. The new squadron was in fact setting out, by itself, on one of the most remarkable missions of the war, using a unique new weapon. The operation was so secret that not even the ground crews, who had loaded the huge cylindrical objects under the fuselages that earned the planes the nickname “Scampton Steamrollers,” knew where they were going. At 9:28, Bob Barlow, one of many Australians serving with Bomber Command, 24 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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pushed the throttle levers fully forward, then moved his hand aside for flight engineer Sam Whillis to hold them in position. With such a heavy fuel and bomb load, any loss of power on takeoff would be disastrous. As the Lancaster gained altitude and the airfield disappeared behind his turret, rear gunner Jack Liddell would have breathed a sigh of relief. Just 18, he had falsified his age two years earlier to join the Royal Air Force, and was already a veteran of 30 missions when few bomber crews survived half that number. At the RAF’s No. 5 Group headquarters, Barnes Neville Wallis faced the longest night of his life. As assistant chief designer for the armament firm Vickers Armstrongs, he had conceived the mission plan. His research had shown that to produce each ton of steel, the Germans required thousands of gallons of water from several great Ruhr valley dams, the largest being the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe. Coal and armament production, hydroelec-

tric power and cities also depended on these sources. The largest conventional bombs would barely chip the concrete dams, assuming they could hit them from 20,000 feet. But, Wallis theorized, detonate enough high explosive in contact with the dam wall and the water would magnify the force, in the same way a torpedo with a relatively small explosive charge could sink a battleship. The paper he sent to leading scientific, government and military personnel, complete with formulas and calculations, produced either ridicule or indifference. It also resulted in a visit from a Secret Intelligence Service agent, who wanted to know why Wallis was sharing “vital and very secret” information. “Is it?” he replied. “When I showed it to the authorized people they said I was mad. I’m supposed to be a crackpot.” Years later, he discovered another possible reason for resistance to his ideas: He had been on a list of potential enemy agents. Inventors

With Guy Gibson’s Lancaster flying above to attract anti-aircraft fire, Henry “Dinghy” Young drops his “Upkeep” mine on the Möhne dam, in Robert Taylor’s painting Dambusters—The Impossible Mission.

Sir Barnes Neville Wallis recalled that when he first proposed his spinning skip bomb, “they said I was mad.”

in the pay of the Germans, the theory went, would submit ideas to scientific branches of the services and from their reaction deduce what was already being worked on. The government had earlier formed the Air Attack on Dams Committee, which concluded “an attack on the Möhne Dam is impracticable with existing weapons.” Wallis pleaded,“Give me time to find out how much RDX will blow a hole in the Möhne if it’s pressed up against the wall.” A 279-pound charge of the powerful new explosive destroyed a small, disused dam in Wales, from which he calculated that 6,000 pounds would punch a 50-foot breach in the Möhne. The total weight of such a mine would be less than 5 tons, which the four-engine Lancaster could easily carry to the Ruhr. But the problem of how to avoid torpedo nets guarding the dams and place the mines deep against the wall remained unanswered. Recalling that Admiral Horatio Nelson had ABOVE: ©THE MILITARY GALLERY, CALIFORNIA; INSET: ©UK HISTORY/ALAMY

sometimes attacked French warships by skipping cannonballs off the sea, Wallis experimented by catapulting marbles off water in a bathtub, and then from a boat on a nearby pond. From tests on larger projectiles at the Teddington ship research laboratory, near London, he calculated the distance a mine should be dropped from the dam, at what height and speed, and how much backspin would cause it to skip on the water and help it cling to the dam wall as it sank. On December 4, 1942, with Vickers test pilot Captain “Mutt” Summers at the controls and Wallis in the bombardier’s position, a modified Wellington approached the bombing range with a full-size inert mine slung beneath. Naval gunners, unable to identify the aircraft with its great bulge, opened fire, which Wallis considered “carrying official obstructionism a little too far.” As the aircraft leveled off, he pressed the release. To the gratification of skeptical observers, the mine broke

apart upon hitting the water, as did subsequent ones. Finally, in January 1943, a mine with a strengthened casing skipped 20 times, covering 1,315 yards. In mid-February, Bomber Command’s Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris, concerned that RAF resources would be diverted for Wallis’ scheme, wrote to the chief of the Air Staff, Charles Portal, that “the weapon itself exists only within the imagination of those who conceived it,” and called it “just about the maddest proposition as a weapon that we have come across.” When Wallis met with Harris on February 22, the air chief marshal’s reaction was hardly encouraging. “I’ve no time for you damned inventors,” he growled. “My boys’ lives are too precious to be wasted by your crazy notions!” However, after watching films of the model tests at Teddington and the successful full-size drops, Harris agreed to think about it. The next day Vickers’ chairman summoned JULY 2013 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY 25

PHOTOS: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM (LEFT: FLM 2333; RIGHT: 2342; FAR RIGHT: 2343)

From left: During a 1943 training exercise at the Reculver bombing range in Kent, one of No. 617 Squadron’s Lancasters climbs after

Wallis, telling him he’d been making a nuisance of himself and should stop further work on the project. Shocked, Wallis offered to resign. But just three days later, after Air Chief Marshal Portal overruled Harris’ objections, the inventor was again summoned and told,“Orders have been received that your dams project is to go ahead immediately with a view to an operation at all costs no later than May” (when the lakes would be full). It meant less than three months to perfect the mines, modify the planes and create and train a new squadron to do what had never been done before.

tralia, Canada and New Zealand. And the U.S.: 6-foot-3-inch “Big Joe” McCarthy and Henry “Dinghy” Young, so nicknamed because he had twice been picked up from his rubber raft after being shot down. Gibson addressed the men: “You’re here to do a special job, you’re here as a crack squadron, you’re here to carry out a raid on Germany which, I am told, will have startling results. Some say it may even cut short the duration of the war. What the target is I can’t tell you. Nor can I tell you where it is. All I can tell you is that you will have to practice low flying all day and all night until you know how to n March 14, 24-yeardo it with your eyes shut.” old Wing Commander In the days that followed, the Guy Gibson landed new No. 617 Squadron’s crews after a harrowing misgleefully flew across Britain at sion to Stuttgart. An engine in his previously forbidden hedgeLancaster had failed soon after hopping heights, buzzing towns takeoff, and with an 8,000and villages, down rivers and out pound bombload the aircraft to sea. As complaints flooded in, could not maintain altitude. Gibson tore them up. Gibson pressed on, and with the A practice mine hangs from its mount beneath Gibson’s bomber. Wallis couldn’t even tell Gibthree good engines shaking the son, who was to lead the raid, what Lancaster at full power, bombed the target at the most devastating of all time,” said the target was, as the wing commander was low level. It was his 173rd mission and com- Cochrane. Three days later at another meet- not on the list of those permitted to know. He pleted his third tour, a monumental achieve- ing the air vice-marshal told him that a spe- did show Gibson the films of his successful ment when few of his contemporaries lived to cial squadron was to be organized for the job. drops from the Wellington. “Well, that’s my finish one. Now he could look forward to en- “I want you to form that squadron,” he said. secret bomb,” he said. “That’s how you’re gojoying leave in Cornwall. “As far as aircrews are concerned, I want the ing to put it in the right place. Now, can you fly Instead, he received orders to report to Air best—you choose them.” Gibson selected 22 at 240 miles per hour, at 150 feet, over water?” Vice-Marshal Ralph Cochrane, 5 Group highly experienced crews from Britain, AusGibson took his crew to practice over Der-

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commander, who first congratulated him on the award of his second Distinguished Service Order (he already held the Distinguished Flying Cross). Cochrane then asked, “How would you like the idea of doing one more trip?” Thinking of the flak and fighters he hoped to avoid for a few weeks, Gibson hesitantly replied, “What kind of trip, sir?” “A pretty important one, perhaps one of

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releasing its spinning mine, which then bounces across the water toward the shoreline, closely watched by a group of observers.

went Water, a lake and dam in Derbyshire re- beach, a white dot bobbing about—Barnes ing that at that moment, at the raid’s height, sembling the Möhne. It proved difficult by Wallis waving his cap and dancing in the he might well be joining his faithful friend. More encouraging was the assigned identifiday, and impossible in the dark, to dive over pouring rain. cation, AJ-G, for his aircraft. They were the the surrounding hills and level out at the right ay 16 had been a fine, sunny initials of his father, whose birthday it was. height. Once they nearly went into the lake day. The hectic mission prepaFinally the time came to take off. Gibson’s and bombardier “Spam” Spafford said, “This rations were complete. At a final wave of nine Lancasters would attack the is bloody dangerous!” The solution was to fit briefing by Cochrane, Gibson Möhne. Once it was breached—if he surtwo spotlights under each plane, aimed to converge at 150 feet. Crews now found they and Wallis, the aircrews were shown scale vived—he would lead the aircraft that had not yet dropped their mines to could fly at night to within 2 feet the Eder. A separate wave of five of that altitude. More sobering planes would attack the Sorpe. was the fact that a Lancaster, flyFive reserves would bomb any ing straight and low and shining targets not destroyed. spotlights, would be a prime tarCrossing the North Sea at 60 get for anti-aircraft gunners. feet, aided by the spotlights, they Cochrane showed Gibson climbed to 1,000 feet over the scale models of the dams, the Dutch coast, then down again, first time he knew what they low enough sometimes to pass would be attacking.“You’ll be the under high-tension cables. With only one in the squadron to 40 minutes to go to the Möhne, know,” Cochrane said. “Keep it several aircraft had taken flak that way.” But three weeks from damage. An engine on John Hopthe raid’s scheduled date, mines good’s AJ-M was knocked out, continued to break up on hitting and Hopgood, rear gunner Tony the water; 150 feet was too high. “Can you fly at 60 feet above the Gibson (at door) and his crew board their Lancaster before the raid. Burcher and wireless operator John Minchin were wounded. At water?” Wallis asked Gibson. “If you can’t, the whole thing will have to be models of their targets, and enjoyed the rare 10:57, Vernon Byers’ AJ-K, in the second called off.” A Lancaster’s wingspan was more treat of a bacon and eggs meal. Some, with wave, was hit and crashed in the Waddenzee. than twice that distance. At that height, Gib- uncanny premonition, wrote final letters to Soon Bill Astell’s AJ-B was also lost. Barlow’s son thought, you would only have to hiccup their next of kin or said goodbye to friends in AJ-E, the first to take off and carrying rear and you would be in the drink, but he told other crews. The previous night, Gibson’s gunner Jack Liddell, crashed 13 minutes later. Wallis, “We’ll have a crack at it tonight.” On black Labrador, who often flew with him, had Its mine was recovered intact by the GerApril 29, a mine dropped from 60 feet been run over and killed: a bad omen. He mans, who unsuccessfully attempted to copy worked. The aircrew could see, down on the ordered his pet to be buried at midnight, feel- it as an anti-ship weapon. Three down. IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM CH 18005

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Mission partly accomplished: Just after David Maltby’s mine explodes on the Möhne dam, water gushes through a huge gap. The Eder and Sorpe dams were next.

At the Möhne, Gibson thumbed his transmitter: “I am going to attack. Stand by to come in to attack in your order when I tell you.” As his Lancaster sped across the lake, its two .303-inch forward machine guns engaged in an unequal duel with the dam’s battery of 20mm cannons, whose gunners wondered why the crazy British apparently had their landing lights on. With tracers whipping past, Gibson yelled to his flight engineer, “Stand by to pull me out of my seat if I get hit!” Spafford shouted “Mine gone!” and they rocketed over the dam. Gibson banked to see a gigantic white plume rise from the black waters. When it subsided, the dam was still there. Hopgood, wounded in the head earlier, attacked next. Shells hit a wing, and the mine fell away late, exploding on the power station. 28 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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Trailing fire, the Lancaster struggled for altitude as Hopgood yelled to his crew, “For Christ’s sake get out!” Minchin, his leg nearly severed in the earlier flak strike, crawled to the escape hatch. Without telling Hopgood, he had continued at his post with this terrible wound. Burcher clipped Minchin’s parachute on and pushed him out, then he and bombardier Jim Fraser followed. They were two of only three who became POWs out of the 56 of 133 airmen who did not return. (Minchin died from his wound.) “Mick” Martin bombed next, but a hit in the wing caused him to swerve, and the mine exploded short of the dam. With Gibson flying alongside to attract flak, Young attacked, his mine exploding on the parapet. Still the dam held. David Maltby, with Gibson and

Martin flying on each side, bombed accurately, and a few seconds later Martin’s voice filled their earphones: “Hell, it’s gone! It’s gone!” The lake water was crashing through a 100-yard gap. Burcher, lying in a field, his back injured, heard the roaring water. Wallis received the news with mixed feelings—elation that the first target had been destroyed, disappointment that it had taken four mines. (Gibson’s probably exploded on the anti-torpedo nets, blasting a hole for Maltby’s, the only one to hit the dam’s center.) On to the Eder. The lake was long and winding, rimmed by sheer, tree-lined hills, requiring a steep corkscrew dive with only seconds to level out, adjust altitude and speed and drop the weapon, then a maximumpower climb to avoid hills on the other side.

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY STEVE KARP

See Steve Karp's Dambuster illustrations come to life at www.HistoryNet.com/magazines/aviation_history

Wallis’ Bouncing Bomb The weapon, code-named “Upkeep,” was a cylindrical mine, 4 feet in diameter and 5 feet in length, containing 6,600 pounds of Torpex. It was carefully balanced so that a belt, driven by a motor in the aircraft, could spin it backwards at 400 rpm. Too big to fit into even the Lancaster’s capacious bomb bay, it was suspended from two brackets. It contained three Admiralty depth-charge detonators, set to explode at 30 feet underwater, and a self-destruct charge intended to operate 90 seconds after release.

Three waves of Lancasters crossed the North Sea at low level on the night of May 16-17, 1943. Eight of the 19 bombers would not return.

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the third and last POW survivor.) McCarthy and reserve pilot Ken Brown bombed the Sorpe dam, but, unlike the masonry Möhne and Eder, it was a massive earth structure with a concrete core. Wallis had hoped tremors from several mines would start leaks that would widen and cause it to fail, but two explosions proved insufficient. Eight tons lighter in bombs and fuel, the 10 surviving Lancasters hugged the ground at 260 mph in a race to get home. The coast was an hour away, and dawn was breaking. Several bombers suffered further flak damage. Young radioed that he was ditching yet again. After 65 missions his luck finally ran out; this time he was not in his dinghy.

A post-raid recon photo of the Möhne dam.

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Flying a big Lancaster in the dark and a gathering mist, it was incredibly difficult and dangerous. After six attempts, Henry Maudslay and Dave Shannon could not get their height and speed right in time to bomb. Finally Shannon succeeded, and the familiar geyser of spray rose at the dam wall. Maudslay came in too fast, the mine exploding on the parapet as his bomber flew over. He managed to nurse the damaged Lancaster, AJ-Z, for several miles before becoming a flak victim. On his fourth try, Les Knight, in the remaining plane, dropped his weapon, which bounced three times and hit. Once again the surviving crews watched in awe as a roaring torrent exploded out of the

Gibson, front and center, celebrates with No. 106 Squadron after a 1942 raid on Cologne.

breach. They could see the lights of vehicles, desperately trying to escape, turning green as the water rolled over and snuffed them out. Unknown to Gibson or those at Scampton, of the five aircraft assigned to the Sorpe, only Joe McCarthy’s got beyond the Dutch coast. The others, together with most of the five reserves, had been shot down, hit power lines or returned with equipment problems. Gibson, and Control in England, called Astell, Barlow, Byers, Louis Burpee and Warner Ottley several times, but they were all dead. (Freddie Tees, Ottley’s rear gunner, had a miraculous escape. Blown clear when AJ-C crashed and the mine exploded, he became 30 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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Wallis met the survivors at Scampton. When the extent of the losses became clear, he was distraught, saying, “If I’d only known, I’d never have started this.” Martin took him aside and explained that seeing sudden death was nothing new to the men of Bomber Command, and few had expected to survive the war. It could have been worse: There were no losses to enemy night fighters. A communications breakdown had caused the nearby German base at Werl to continue its night flying training. Other fighters were unable to locate the incoming and outgoing aircraft at their extremely low altitude. The Ruhr valley, which had been enduring

a trial by fire, now experienced one by water. Roaring torrents, racing at 50 feet per second, swept away buildings, power stations, hightension lines, bridges and railroad viaducts, including the ones carrying the main Dortmund and Frankfurt lines. Factories in Gelsenkirchen, Dortmund, Hamm, Essen, Bochum and beyond were destroyed or damaged; many others had no water or electricity. Fifty miles away, coal mines and airfields were inundated. The industrial area of Kassel was underwater. Canal banks were washed away, and barges—crucial conduits for coal, munitions and aircraft parts—sat grounded on the bottom. Steel production was affected for the rest of the year. The official German report called it “a dark picture of destruction,” and estimated it was equivalent to the loss of production of 100,000 men for several months. Armaments minister Albert Speer was confident that German skill and discipline, and the ruthless use of slave labor, would rectify the worst damage and restore lost production within months. The surviving dams could maintain a reduced water and power supply. If the Sorpe had also been breached, Speer said, “Ruhr production would have suffered the heaviest blow.” Water spills through the Eder dam’s breach.

RAF Bomber Command veteran Nicholas O’Dell last wrote for Aviation History about jet engine developer Sir Frank Whittle (March 2012). Further reading: The Dam Busters, by Paul Brickhill; Enemy Coast Ahead, by Wing Commander Guy Gibson; A Hell of a Bomb, by Stephen Flower; and The Men Who Breached the Dams, by Alan Cooper.

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Build Your Own Dambuster Lanc

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evell of Germany’s 1/72nd-scale Avro Lancaster B Mk. III “Dambuster” (kit 80-4295) has been called the best model of the British bomber ever produced. The 2009 release, a reworking of the “Lanc” from 2007, can be built as a standard bomber, but also includes the modifications needed to build one of the 19 “special” aircraft used in the Ruhr valley dams raid. First assemble the pilot, flight engineer, bombardier, navigator and radio operator positions. There’s some controversy about what color the crew areas should be painted, but it’s generally agreed that the sidewalls and floors should be “British interior green.” There are nearly 30 parts to the crew area, including a table for the navigator and decals for the pilot’s instrument panel, flight engineer’s post and radio operator’s equipment. Note that most of these details will be hidden once the fuselage sides are closed. With the crew positions complete, glue the special bomb bay part and the spars that hold the wings and horizontal stabilizers into place in one fuselage side. Next the instructions call for cementing the windows that run down the length of the fuselage, but installing them now will pose difficulty during painting, so skip this step. Instead, fit and solidly glue the fuselage sides together. This is important, as the bomber’s long wings will put strain on this joint. Then glue together the top and bottom sections of the wings and horizontal stabilizers and attach them to the fuselage. There are two Rolls-Royce Merlin engines that fit into each of the inboard engine nacelles. Displaying these engines requires an arduous task: cutting out inspection panels. But even with the panels removed, it will be difficult to see the tiny Merlins in the completed model. Assemble the interior of the wheel wells and the outboard engine nacelles. You’ll need to do some cutting and fitting to assure that the nacelles fit snugly into the undersides of the wings. The Lancaster was camouflaged on the fuselage underside in flat black, FS-37038, up to the window line, as well as the undersides of the wings and horizontal stabilizers and both sides of the twin vertical tails. The topside should be camouflaged in an irregular pattern of RAF dark green and dark earth, ANA-617. Whether the bomber’s camouflage pattern should be hard-edged or soft is another controversial choice. On the special Dambuster Lancs, the ventral and dorsal turrets were removed to save weight. Revell has supplied plugs to fill those spaces. The nose gunner’s turret has replicas of twin Browning .303s, while the tail gunner has a quad mount of the same caliber machine guns. Paint these “gunmetal,” then fit them into their respective glazings, which should be assembled with white glue. Paint the tires very dark gray, FS-36076, with flat black hubs. Mask the pilot’s greenhouse cockpit canopy and gunner’s turret glazings, then paint them to blend into the surrounding pattern of the fuselage camouflage. Next fill the windows along the fuselage sides with “Micro-Krystal Klear” (this takes the place of the supplied windows). The drum-like 9,250-pound “Upkeep” bomb should be painted anthracite gray, then mounted on a pair of supports fitted into the sides of the bomb bay. Use silver to paint the motor that gave the bomb its backspin and bounce. Also paint the two underside spotlights silver to replicate the lighting used to judge altitude. This kit provides markings for three of the aircraft from No. 617 Squadron that participated in the Ruhr dam raids on the night of May 16-17, 1943. Among them is AJ-G, flown by Wing Commander Guy Gibson, the mission leader. Dick Smith DICK SMITH

Hitler ordered 27,000 workers and slave laborers to clean up the damage and repair the Möhne and Eder dams. Over Speer’s objections, 10,000 were diverted from building the Atlantic Wall defenses. At the postwar Nuremburg trails, he stated: “The transfer of these workers…into Germany amounted to a catastrophe to us on the Atlantic Wall.” Allied soldiers wading ashore at Normandy, encountering half-finished coastal defenses, were major beneficiaries of the raid. The surviving “Dambusters” found themselves famous at home and in the U.S., where Winston Churchill was visiting President Franklin Roosevelt. Thirty-three medals were awarded, making No. 617 the most highly decorated squadron in Bomber Command. Guy Gibson received the Victoria Cross—one of only 23 awarded to the 125,000 RAF Bomber Command crewmen in the war— before leaving for a lecture tour in America. On his return he chafed to get back on operations. Reluctantly, the RAF acquiesced. On September 19, 1944, serving as master bomber for a raid on München Gladbach, he circled in his Mosquito above the target at low altitude, ignoring flak and directing the bombing before transmitting:“OK, chaps, that’s fine. Now beat it home.” Minutes later he crashed in Holland. The Dutch buried him there. For the rest of World War II, 617 Squadron flew as a special operations, precision-bombing unit, dropping the heaviest conventional bombs of the war, Barnes Wallis’ 6-ton Tallboy and 10-ton Grand Slam. Today the squadron operates the Tornado GR4 fighterbomber in the ground attack, anti-shipping and reconnaissance role. RAF Scampton is now home to the RAF’s aerobatic team, the Red Arrows. All subsequent commanding officers used Guy Gibson’s old office. From its window one can see a small grave, that of his Labrador. The station’s museum has photos of the dams, and one of Gibson’s caps. It’s just a 20-minute bus ride from Lincoln, whose great cathedral was a welcome sight to aircrews returning from Germany.


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MONSTER SINGLES When it comes to the world’s biggest airplanes, multiengine giants get all the attention, but this big 10 gets it done with one By Stephan Wilkinson

PHILIP MAKANNA/©GHOSTS

The Vietnam War Flight Museum keeps this Douglas A-1D flying today. A true single-engine heavyweight champ, the Skyraider remained in U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine service for nearly 30 years.

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he most effective way to design an airplane is to put the strongest possible engine on its nose if it drives a prop, or bury it somewhere with an exhaust nozzle in the tail if it’s a jet. (Pusher-prop advocates may argue for an aft mounting, but they’re in a distinct minority.) Throughout aviation history, however, the most powerful available engines rarely had the necessary beans to get the job done for large, heavy airplanes, which typically required anywhere from two to 12 engines. Aside from the fact that multiple engines usually—but not always—mean redundancy of power in the event of an engine failure, multiengine airplanes are an inelegant solution to the problem, necessitating everincreasing weight, complexity and drag. Charles Lindbergh chose the singleengine Spirit of St. Louis for just this reason,

while several of his transatlantic competitors opted for “safer” multiengine airplanes. The twin-Allison Lockheed P-38 was powerful and fast but nowhere near as agile as the P-51 or Spitfire. The twinengine Messerschmitt Me-110, intended to be a super Me-109, was a laughable failure as a day fighter. Which is why engineers have to this day pushed the purity and efficiency of singleengine designs. After all, multiengine airplanes simply multiply the possibility of an engine failure. Here are some of their most effective solutions—10 of the heaviest (based on MTOW—maximum takeoff weight) single-engine airplanes ever built and flown. And no, we’re not counting the various multiengine test aircraft that occasionally flew on one experimental engine mounted on a nose or wing. Sorry, they weren’t singles.

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PHOTOS: U.S. AIR FORCE

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hirty-five tons toted by just one engine is the all-time weight-lifting record, thanks to the most powerful engine (43,000 pounds of afterburning thrust) ever installed in a fighter. The F-35 needs that payload and then some just to carry the newsprint and legislative documents devoted to the controversy surrounding an airplane that, if successfully adopted by the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marines, and the foreign customers for which it’s intended, will be the most expensive weapons program in U.S. history. Building supercarriers is sofa-crack money compared to the $397 billion that 2,443 units of this puppy, plus as much as an estimated $1 trillion in maintenance costs over the fleet’s lifetime, will set back taxpayers. Because the Lightning II comes in three flavors—conventional land-based, STOVL and carrierready—Lockheed Martin claims that it will replace just about every combat airplane in the inventory from the A-10 to the B-2. Critics complain that it is range-challenged, slow and not particularly combat-capable. But there’s no doubt that it is the supreme single-engine heavyweight.

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U.S. AIR FORCE

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t was all about the Bomb in the 1950s, when the F-105 was designed and first delivered. Nobody envisioned dogfights, Top Guns, no-fly zones or ground-support missions. The focus was on airmailing that one monstrous nuclear weapon, destination Moscow. So the F-105 was born as a “fighter” with a bomb bay—the heaviest singleengine airplane the Air Force had ever conceived and to this day the largest operational single flown by any air force in the world. Despite its size and weight, the F-105 was a Mach 2 airplane at altitude and in 1959 set a world speed record of 1,216 mph over a 62-mile circuit. The nukes that it was intended to carry weren’t particularly heavy, typically running just over a ton, but they were lengthy; one was only 8 feet long,

but the others ran in the neighborhood of 12 feet. The F-105’s nearly 16-foot-long bomb bay provided ample room, though it was used for extra fuel tankage rather than the externally carried iron bombs that Thuds dropped on North Vietnam, where nearly half of the 833 F-105s produced were lost.

PHOTO BY SERGEY SKRYNNIKOV/FOXBATFILES.COM

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he shovel-nosed MiG-27, a hardened ground-attack variant of the MiG-23, was in some ways a smaller Soviet version of the twin-engine General Dynamics F-111. Both airplanes were big, bloated and swing-wing (and a substantial portion of the MiG-27’s weight was in the heavy and complex variable-geometry-wing mechanism). Both were undistinguished in

service. And both had awkward animal nicknames: Aardvark for the F-111, Platypus for the MiG. The only serious action MiG-27s ever saw was during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and while flown by the Sri Lankan air force against Tamil Tiger rebels. Cuba, Iran and Kazakhstan operate MiG-27s to this day, and Russia has dozens parked where they once awaited NATO tanks.

U.S. AIR FORCE

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ou might imagine that this wraith-like spybird, a delicate-to-fly powered sailplane, is a lightweight. You’d be wrong. The airframe was designed and manufactured for lightness within the limits of the tough operating conditions in which the U-2 was intended to fly, but the empty airplane in its most recent configuration still weighs 14,300 pounds— half a ton more than a World War II de Havilland Mosquito twin. Add to that a pilot and enough jet fuel to fly for 12 hours, plus all the sensors, cameras and other electronics that a U-2 needs to do its job, and you end up with a 25,700-pound additional load to be lifted—64 percent of the airplane’s maximum takeoff weight. (A Learjet 40’s payload plus fuel is 34 percent of its MTOW, a typical 747’s is 45 percent, an F-15’s is 53 percent.) U-2s may be delicate to fly, but they are in fact tough heavyweights as well.

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WEIDER HISTORY GROUP ARCHIVE

n the late 1940s, Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union, with an enormous land-based military, decided it needed a navy competitive with Western fleets. This meant carriers and aircraft for their decks, so Tupolev was ordered to create a longrange, heavy-hauler, naval strike aircraft. The result was an odd-looking mid-engine turboprop single with two huge counterrotating props pinwheeling on the nose like a beanie’s afterthought. When Stalin died in 1953, naval development was substantially scaled back (Nikita Khrushchev thought aircraft carriers were nasty, expensive, vulnerable Western weapons not suitable for the Soviet Union), and the Tu-91 was quickly converted into a land-based attack bomber. When Khrushchev first saw it at a “reveal” of new military aircraft, he laughed it straight into the scrapyard—which didn’t take long, since only two prototypes were built.

U.S. NAVY VIA STAN PIET

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hose who judge an airplane purely by the numbers wonder why the Mauler wasn’t chosen over the smaller, simpler Douglas Skyraider as the U.S. Navy’s 1950s shipboard attack workhorse. Those who flew both aircraft knew the Martin was a lousy design, with truck-like handling, a loaded takeoff run too long for a carrier and flaws that made it difficult to land on a deck. The former called it Able Mabel, the latter preferred Absolute Monster. Still, the Mauler did lift what has been unofficially judged to be the heaviest load ever lofted by a piston single: just over 7 tons of pilot, gas, torpedoes, bombs and 20mm cannon shells, for an over-gross takeoff weight of 29,332 pounds. A short-lived electronic countermeasures version, the AM-1Q, stuck an ECM operator into a windowless pit inside the fuselage behind and below the pilot—easily, though mercifully briefly, one of the worst flying jobs in the Navy.

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U.S. NAVY

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any warbird enthusiast websites, apparently unaware of the Martin Mauler, tout this enormous Grumman as the biggest piston single the Navy ever operated. Close but no cigar; this postwar TBF Avenger successor comes in second. Though the Navy originally contracted with Grumman to produce the Guardian as a traditional torpedo bomber, by 1945 that was a thoroughly outmoded offensive concept, and the airplane instead became an anti-submarine hunter-killer. Two antisub airplanes, in fact: The AF-2W hunter carried the search radar and a crew of ASW technicians, the heavier AF-2S killer was loaded with depth charges, bombs and a homing torpedo. The two flew as a team—not a very efficient use of manpower or equipment. The twinengine Grumman “Stoof”—the S2F Tracker, configured to both find and destroy subs—soon replaced the Guardian. But it took two engines to do it.

AKG IMAGES/RAI NOVOSTI

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f Burt Rutan was a Russian living in the early 1930s, he might have designed this graceful record-setter. With a fuel-fat wingspan greater than a B-17’s and an 850-hp V-12 engine, this airplane was laid out by a team led by Andrei N. Tupolev (ANT comes from Tupolev’s initials). The ANT-25 made its first epic flight in September 1934, a round robin over the Soviet Union— 7,712 miles nonstop, unrefueled, in 75 hours. What would have been a record was disallowed because the airplane had to land short of completing the closed course. In June 1937, the ANT set its world distance record, Moscow to Portland, Ore., via the North Pole: 5,670 miles in 63 hours 25 minutes. Conspiracy theorists claimed one airplane made the takeoff and that a second—only two ANT-25s were built—had been spirited to Canada to fly the final leg and land. Three weeks later, the same airplane flew 7,100 miles from Moscow to San Jacinto, Calif., and landed in a pasture with sufficient fuel to reach Panama.

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lackburn flew this monster just 21 years after the Wrights limped into the air, so naming it Cubaroo perhaps made more sense in 1924. After all, this was a company that named one of its models the Blackburn Blackburn. The Cubaroo was powered by a 1,000-hp Napier engine named Cub, so that at least made sense. The Cub was an X engine, the top two of the four banks of cylinders in a conventional vee and the bottom two…well, imagine that the engine was so heavy it squashed the bottom two banks sideways, like a gymnast doing an extreme split. The Cub weighed more than a ton, so this is not entirely unlikely. The Cubaroo was intended to be a long-range torpedo carrier. Since torpedoes also weighed a ton, the airplane’s size, gross weight and enormous wingspan (88 feet) were all in aid of that mission. At the time, the Cubaroo was the largest, and perhaps ugliest, singleengine airplane in the world.


RAF MUSEUM, HENDON

PHILIP MAKANNA/©GHOSTS

t’s nice to award Guinness prizes to oddball Navy heavyweights that never cut the mustard, but the beloved Vietnam War Spad is the true heavyweight champ, if you factor in utility, combat record and longevity. Seven different models were produced in 28 different configurations, and it stayed in Navy, Marine and Air Force service for nearly 30 years. Those who flew it say it handled like a fighter—not surprising, since the A-1 was designed by the brilliant Ed Heinemann, godfather of the Dauntless, A-20 Havoc, A-26 Intruder and A-4 Skyhawk, among others. The Skyraider served splendidly in the Korean War as well as Vietnam; in the latter conflict, the old-timers shot down two MiG-17s, stunning a pair of North Vietnamese pilots who probably thought they’d flown into a World War II movie. The Skyraider’s strengths were endurance—nearly six hours for a loaded combat mission—as well as its huge ordnance load and ability to survive battle damage. Today Spads are warbird favorites, prized by collectors for their sheer size and rumbling radial-engine character.

Frequent contributor Stephan Wilkinson suggests for further reading: American Attack Aircraft Since 1926, by E.R. Johnson; Skyraider: The Douglas A-1 Flying Dump Truck, by Rosario Rausa; Dark Eagles, by Curtis Peebles; and Thud Ridge, by Jack Broughton and Hanson Baldwin. JULY 2013 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY 37

The Luftwaffe’s WoodenWonder Had it been produced in greater numbers, Heinkel’s jet-powered He-162 could have helped the Germans prolong World War II By Mark Carlson

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y the summer of 1944, as the U.S. Army Air Forces’ massive daylight bombing campaign decimated the Third Reich’s war industry, the Luftwaffe was but a shadow of its former self. Despite the impressive combat record of Germany’s Me-109 and Fw-190 fighters, the loss of experienced pilots, fuel shortages, reduced training time and the destruction of factories had greatly reduced the Luftwaffe’s effectiveness. At the same time, burgeoning Allied resources allowed the U.S. and Britain to fill the skies with warplanes that soon flew largely unchallenged over the enemy homeland. In desperation, the crumbling Third Reich sought a technological edge through the development and deployment of “wonder weapons” such as the sleek Me-262 Schwalbe (Swallow), the first German production jet fighter. The Me-262 hadn’t initially been considered for mass production after its first flight with jet engines in July 1942, but General der Jagdflieger Lt. Gen. Adolf Galland wanted it to be given top priority as an air superiority fighter. 38 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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Several factors made that impractical. Despite its impressive speed, the Me-262 required highly advanced materials that were in short supply and thousands of man-hours to build. Its twin Junkers Jumo 004 engines had a very short service life, requiring frequent overhauls. Slow acceleration and limited range were also problems for the new jet. Given these difficulties, late in the war armaments minister Albert Speer proposed building a huge fleet of simple, agile and fast single-engine jet fighters using steel and wood rather than advanced alloys and aluminum. The German Ministry of Aviation (Reichsluftfahrtministerium, or RLM) sent out a request for proposals to several top firms on September 8, 1944, including Messerschmitt, Junkers, Blohm & Voss and Heinkel. Not surprisingly, Messerschmitt passed on the project right away, favoring the Me-262. Junkers also bowed out. Blohm & Voss submitted a design for the P.211, featuring a jet engine buried in the fuselage with a nose air intake. But the time required to build each aircraft was too long for the hard-pressed Luftwaffe. Ernst Heinkel was well ahead of the com-

petition. His special projects branch director Siegfried Günter had already envisioned a simple, single-engine jet fighter, designated the P.1073. In a paper presented on July 10, 1944, he wrote that “air superiority is dependent not only upon the number of single-seaters but also upon the speed of the single-seat fighter. Should enemy jet fighters be deployed, the Me-262 could not be counted on for air superiority, because its unswept wings and the placement of its engine nacelles give too much resistance—at low altitudes, its fuel expenditure is quite large and its range quite small. For these reasons, it is necessary to concentrate on a single-seat aircraft with the least possible amount of equipment and not limit fuel to so small a portion of the overall weight.” The P.1073 had a tubular frame fuselage and wings, twin rudders and retractable landing gear. Its reliable BMW 003 axial-flow turbojet was dorsally mounted, with the exhaust nozzle vented above the stabilizers. Günter’s team redesigned the 1073 to fit the RLM’s needs. Heinkel’s lead prompted the RLM to award that firm the contract on ABOVE: WEIDER HISTORY GROUP ARCHIVE; OPPOSITE: DAN PATTERSON

A head-on view of the He-162 at the RAF Museum in Hendon provides a dramatic perspective on the dorsally mounted engine. Opposite: American pilot Bob Hoover flies a captured He-162.

the Messerschmitt. But while Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring wanted the jet to be flown by Hitler Youth in defense of the Fatherland, it was immediately obvious that would never work. Though the He-162 was very nimble, only experienced pilots could safely fly it. Four days later, while demonstrating the aircraft for RLM and Luftwaffe officials, Peter was making a high-speed pass when catastrophe struck. The aileron on the port wing tore off, taking part of the wing with it. Peter was killed in the crash. Investigation showed the glue used in wing construction was inadequate under high-speed aerodynamic stresses. The BMW turbojet, which required frequent maintenance, was fitted into a streamlined pod just behind the bubble canopy. While this had several advantages, it was a concern to the pilots, since it would be nearly

impossible to bail out without being forced against the gaping jet intake. The design therefore incorporated an ejection seat, fired by an explosive cartridge triggered by the pilot on the right armrest. Production of the He-162 began while the second prototype was still being tested, with speeds limited to 310 mph. Some of the teething problems could only be alleviated via hastily conceived modifications. The He-162’s pitch instability, for example, resulted in the addition of lead ballast in the nose,“drooping wingtips” and strengthened wings. The third and fourth prototypes were tested in midJanuary 1945, even as the production line was up and running—an indication of the pressure the Luftwaffe was under to get the Volksjäger into frontline service. The original specifications called for twin

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

October 19. The airplane was officially named the Volksjäger (“People’s Fighter”), and designated the He-162. Postwar examination of RLM documents would reveal that the number 162 had been used to deceive Allied intelligence into thinking the plane had been under development for some time and was a proven quantity. Heinkel’s Rostock Flugzeugwerke team went to work, and in the remarkably short span of 74 days the prototype He-162 V-1 rolled out of the factory. It weighed just over 6,180 pounds fully loaded, with a third of its weight consisting of wood. Heinkel test pilot Gotthard Peter made the maiden flight on December 6, reaching nearly 500 mph—only 50 mph slower than the Me-262. The BMW 003’s 1,700-pound thrust gave the He-162 a far better power-to-weight ratio than that of

The U.S. Army found this underground assembly line near Hinterbrühl, Austria. It reportedly produced 40-50 Heinkel jets per month.

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COURTESY OF HARALD BAUER NATIONAL ARCHIVES

SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG/ALAMY

Harald Bauer was an He-162 factory pilot.

Left: This He-162A-2 (also shown on P. 38) arrived in the U.S. in 1945. Right: Col. Herbert Ihlefeld commanded the first Volksjäger unit.

MK 108 30mm cannons mounted in the nose, each loaded with 50 rounds of ammunition, resulting in the grandly named Kampfzerstörer, or Bomber Destroyer. When the heavy recoil from that armament proved to be too much for the diminutive fighter’s frame, the He-162A-2 was armed with twin MG 151 20mm cannons, each with 120 rounds. The first jet off the regular production line was an He-162A-1 on January 28, 1945. By early February, Heinkel reported it had 71 fuselages finished and 58 more on the assembly line, well below what the RLM had de-

manded. The delay was due to the decentralization of the German aircraft industry driven by the Allies’ strategic bombing campaign. While some of the work was done at the Heinkel factory and Junkers’ Bernberg plant, Speer decided that final assembly would be performed by forced labor at underground sites such as the Nordhausen Mittelwerke facility in the Harz Mountains. The RLM organized a special testing unit, Erprobungskommando 162, to evaluate the Volksjäger at Rechlin, near Berlin. Lieutenant Colonel Heinz Bär, a 221-victory ace, took de-

livery of several He-162s in February. While tests revealed serious stability problems, one pilot reported that the Volksjäger was “a firstclass combat aircraft.” After overseeing a hurried evaluation of the new jet, Bär was transferred to Jagdverband 44 to fly Me-262s. In mid-February, Jagdgeschwader 1 (JG.1) was reorganized as the first operational Volksjäger unit. Its pilots all had previous experience in Fw-190s or Me-109s. Command of JG.1 was given to Colonel Herbert Ihlefeld, a veteran with 123 victories. Two groups of 50 aircraft each, designated I/JG.1 and II/JG.1,

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Power plant: One BMW 003E-1 or 003E-2 axial-flow turbojet Wingspan: 23 ft. 7½ in. Length: 29 ft. 81∕3 in. Height: 8 ft. 61∕3 in. Weight: 3,666 lbs. empty; 6,180 lbs. maximum takeoff weight Maximum speed: 553 mph at sea level; 562 mph at 19,690 ft. Cruising speed: 491 mph at sea level; 521 mph at 19,690 ft. Range at full throttle: 242 miles at sea level; 385 miles at 19,690 ft. Armament: Two 20mm Mauser MG 151 cannons with 120 rpg.

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fighters, and time should not be wasted training new pilots. “In March 65 of us were attached to the Heinkel works in Rostock and Marienehe,” Bauer recalled.“We were Werkespiloten, factory pilots.” Their first job was to make sure the new jets were safe for combat airmen. “We were at the very bottom of the Luftwaffe’s stable of pilots. The Luftwaffe wanted to make sure there was no sabotage, so we were told to put each plane through a 20-minute test of climbing, diving and so on. Then the Luftwaffe inspector put an ‘Ac-

FRANK MORMILLO/PLANES OF FAME

were assembled at Rechlin. JG.1 took delivery of its first He-162s at the Heinkel airfield at Marienehe. Instructed by Heinkel pilots, the fighter wing’s members learned how to fly the new jet. After just 20 minutes at the controls, they were deemed ready for combat. Meanwhile production of the Volksjäger proceeded rapidly, with nearly 200 completed by the end of March 1945. The Luftwaffe had set an impossible goal: 1,000 He-162s built per month by the end of June. What was it like to fly Germany’s wooden jet? Harald Bauer, who served as a Heinkel factory pilot, provided some insights during a recent interview. After being wounded while serving as an anti-aircraft gunner, Bauer was assigned to a Luftwaffe training unit.“It was in Stendal and Rechlin, north of Berlin,” he recalled. “We went from the Arado 96 to the Focke-Wulf 190. We were each paired with an experienced fighter pilot, who showed us how to fight the Allied bombers. We weren’t supposed to take on the fighters. The base was under constant threat of air attack, and sometimes we didn’t have fuel to fly more than a short hop. After landing, we pushed the planes back into the woods and put netting on them.” Bauer’s time in the Fw-190 was cut short due to a landing mishap. “I stepped on the brakes too hard on a landing and put it on the nose,” he said. In early March the Luftwaffe decided experienced pilots were needed for its new jet

A cockpit view of the He-162 that Hoover flew, now at the Planes of Fame Museum.

cepted’ stamp on the aileron.” Bauer and his comrades then delivered the He-162s to the JG.1 bases.“We were told to fly at a certain altitude, at a certain speed and just get it there. After delivering a plane, we were to hitch a ride on a transport or a truck or take a train back to the Heinkel works. I think I personally ferried about 10 or 15.” Bauer’s last flight in a Volksjäger began on March 23. “I took one north to deliver to the base at Parchim, north-northwest of Berlin,” he remembered. “The Allies were bombing the base, and the Reichsjägerwelle, the fighter communications radio, told me to go to Varel and wait until morning. The next morning, the 24th, I was told to take off and get clear. American bombers were coming. I climbed into the plane and got off the ground. I didn’t even think of trying to fight. There was no ammunition in the cannon.” Twenty-five B-17Gs of the 490th Bomb Group were approaching Varel that day. In the nose of the lead Fortress was navigator Lieutenant Bob Durkee, who spotted several planes taking off and called on escorting P-51 Mustangs to “Get those bogies down there.” Bauer did his best to evade, but suddenly he saw “red tracers coming down on both sides of the cockpit. Then one hit the engine, came through the canopy and buried itself in my leg. The ejection mechanisms weren’t installed until after we delivered the planes, so I had to either bail out or crash-land. I’d heard horror stories of pilots being banged against

ILLUSTRATION BY STEVE KARP

Heinkel He-162A-2

discard a damaged Volksjäger in favor of a new aircraft just off the assembly line. I/JG.1’s mission was to attack low-flying Allied fighters. On April 19, a captured RAF fighter-bomber pilot claimed during interrogation that he had been shot down by a jet aircraft. His description matched the He-162. Colonel Ihlefeld, JG.1’s commander, attributed the victory to Cadet Günther Kirschner, but the cadet was unable to put in for the credit, as moments later he was shot down and killed by a Hawker Tempest. First blood was officially drawn on April 26, when a Staff Sgt. Rechenbach shot down a de Havilland Mosquito, confirmed by two other pilots. The sergeant was killed the same day. On May 4, 2nd Lt. Rudolf Schmitt claimed a Hawker Typhoon (in fact a Tempest), but a German flak unit put in a counterclaim and was credited with the victory.

up for the formidable Me 262 it could conceivably have helped the Luftwaffe to regain air superiority over Germany had it appeared on the scene sooner.” Former Volksjäger pilot Harald Bauer ended up in the United States following the war, where he resumed his aviation career. Since his mother was American-born, he was eligible to join the U.S. armed forces. In March 1952 Bauer joined the U.S. Navy. At the height of the Cold War, he flew Lockheed EC-121 Super Constellation radar aircraft attached to an early-warning squadron at Elmendorf, Alaska. “Our job was to test the Soviet air force’s response time when they detected U.S. aircraft,” he said. After that tour, Bauer was told that he would have to qualify for carrier operations if he wanted to remain in the Navy. “I said auf Wiedersehen,” he said, laughing. “I don’t land on postage stamps in

NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM

that huge BMW engine intake, and didn’t want to try it. One of the Heinkel mechanics had told me that if we just turned the plane over, we could jump out safely. But the engine intake was still right there, waiting.” He brought the crippled fighter down in a meadow. “The He-162 did not glide well; it fell like a rock. But I got it down. And when I realized I was OK and was trying to get out, I heard an American voice saying, ‘That sonof-a-bitch is still alive.’ ” Bauer had bellied into a field behind American lines. The U.S. 2nd Armored Division had crossed the Rhine River the night before, and the pilot looked up to see tanks and troops approaching. He was taken to a hospital, where the doctor pulled a .50-caliber bullet out of his leg. “He told me it had probably been spent by passing through the engine and canopy,” Bauer recalled, adding, “He let me keep it.”

“White 23,” now in the collection of the National Air and Space Museum, was reportedly flown by Colonel Ihlefeld, JG.1’s commander.

Of the 65 factory pilots assigned to fly He-162s to JG.1, there were only about five left at war’s end. “None of them were lost to combat,” said Bauer. “They died or crashed during ferry flights or learning to fly them.” On April 7, 134 B-17s bombed Rechlin, forcing I/JG.1 to move to another base at Leck in Schleswig-Holstein, close to Denmark. In mid-April the I/JG.1 pilots began combat operations. Though they had had little time to become skilled with their new mount, they were pitted against the Allies’ best planes and pilots. The He-162 did offer at least one advantage: Its simple construction and design allowed for quick repair and replacement of the engine and other vital components. Where battle damage would have grounded most other German planes for days or weeks due to a lack of replacement parts, JG.1 could

The war in Europe was ending at that point. JG.1’s pilots continued to fly right up to May 5, when British forces occupied Leck. In all, JG.1 lost 13 planes and 10 pilots, mostly due to accidents rather than combat losses. If fighting had continued for a few months longer and Heinkel had continued producing He-162s, Allied fliers would have seen something terrifying in the skies over Germany: hoards of sleek, nimble jet fighters capable of running rings around the bomber formations. After the war, British, American and French air forces captured the remaining He-162s and flew some of them. Legendary British test pilot Captain Eric “Winkle” Brown judged the jet “an innovative concept that was quite tricky to operate.” He called it “an unforgiving aeroplane,” but noted that it was an effective gun platform, and “as a back-

the middle of the ocean.” He went on to work for the Associated Press, United Press International and United International Pictures. Today he’s a member of the Estrella Warbirds Museum in Paso Robles, Calif. Several He-162s are now on static display in museums around the world, including a fully restored Volksjäger at the Planes of Fame Air Museum, in Chino, Calif.
Mark Carlson’s book Flying on Film: A Century of Aviation in the Movies 1912-2012 was recently published by BearManor Media. Further reading: Heinkel He 162: From Drawing Board to Destruction, by Robert Forsyth; Heinkel He 162, by David Myhra; Heinkel He 162 “Volksjäger,” by Heinz J. Nowarra; and Wings of the Luftwaffe, by Captain Eric “Winkle” Brown.

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Around

Latin America in 133Days

In 1926 a crack team of U.S. Army airmen set out in amphibious biplanes on a 22,000-mile marathon flight to 23 countries By Robert Guttman

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GOODWILL FLIGHT/©1979 KEITH FERRIS

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he Four Loening OA-1A amphibians had just flown over the Andes from Chile on February 26, 1927, arriving in Buenos Aires, Argentina. En route to nearby Palomar Field, a crewman of the OA-1A dubbed Detroit inched out onto the lower wing to release his plane’s damaged landing gear. But as the amphibians, flying in a tight diamond formation, approached the airfield and peeled off to land, Detroit suddenly veered off course and plowed into another of the Loenings, New York. The two aircraft spun toward the ground, locked together in a death spiral. Just that quickly, the Pan American Goodwill Flight, an ambitious effort to advance U.S. aviation interests in Latin America, descended into tragedy. During the 1920s, in the face of mounting European influence, the U.S. government sought to improve diplomatic and business relationships in Latin America. The American aviation industry was likewise concerned about the prospect of falling behind the Europeans in both export sales and in the operation of commercial air routes to and within South America. As a result, in 1926 Army Air Corps chief Maj. Gen. Mason Patrick, who had previously backed the Army’s 1924 around-the-world-flight, proposed a goodwill flight around South America. Since no one had ever circumnavigated the continent by air, Patrick argued that such a flight would be a public relations coup for the Air Corps and the aviation industry, a diplomatic boost for U.S. foreign relations and a positive step toward promoting U.S.–Latin American business in general. From an aviation perspective, Patrick believed the Pan American Goodwill Flight would not only provide valuable training experience for the Air Corps, but could also double as a survey mission, to pinpoint prospective airline routes between North and South America. In addition, it would showcase improvements in U.S. aircraft technology. The planned 22,000-mile flight through 23 countries, to be carried out by five aircraft, was an extremely ambitious undertaking for its day. To lead the 10 airmen, Patrick chose Major Herbert A. Dargue, one

Keith Ferris’ painting depicts the Pan American Goodwill Flight’s five OA-1As flying low off the coast of South America, on their unprecedented mission of international diplomacy.

of the Army’s most experienced pilots. Since few aviation facilities were available in Latin America, the pilots selected for the project had to be trained mechanics as well. Their motto became “No Work, No Ride.” The airmen were expected to divide their time between flying, maintaining their aircraft and attending innumerable dinners, ceremonies and public relations events in the countries they visited. Captain Ross G. Hoyt was assigned to handle the complex administrative, diplomatic, logistical and operational details involved. Three months prior to the flight’s departure date, Hoyt dispatched a team of six officers to South America. They visited the proposed stops, where they selected land and water landing areas and secured the best available maps. They also stored advance shipments of tools, engine spares, paint, hoist chains, propellers, tubing, lumber, sheet metal, 50,000 gallons of gasoline and 5,000 gallons of lubricants. In addition to Major Dargue, the pilots chosen for the flight were

Captains Ira Eaker, Arthur McDaniel and Clinton Woolsey, and 1st Lts. Muir Fairchild, Ennis Whitehead, Bernard Thompson, Charles Robinson, John Benton and Leonard Weddington. The team members were all well qualified for the mission. Whitehead, who had served as an Army test pilot in France and in 1921 participated in Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell’s demonstration of aerial bombardment on the former German battleship Ostfriesland, was appointed the flight’s supply officer. Fairchild had been a bomber pilot in World War I. Eaker had served as commanding officer of the air station in the Philippines, subsequently leading the 5th Aero Squadron and then becoming executive assistant to the Office of the Air Service in Washington. Designed by Grover Loening, the flight’s OA-1A two-seat amphibious biplanes were considered extraordinary for their time. The seaplane float was faired into the bottom of the fuselage, so that the two were a single unit. A pair of landing wheels were arranged to retract

into the sides of the float while in the air or in the water, making the OA-1A one of the first production airplanes with retractable landing gear, as well as the first truly practical amphibian. A tail skid, fitted to the rear of the main float, doubled as a stabilizing skeg when the plane was maneuvering in the water. Additional floats were fitted beneath the lower wings. A 400-hp Liberty V-12 engine, mounted upside down to allow sufficient room for the propeller to clear the main float, provided power. The engine drove a new-type metal propeller, the three blades of which were adjustable in pitch. Unlike subsequent controllable-pitch propellers, however, the Loenings’ airscrew pitch had to be adjusted on the ground rather than from the cockpit during flight. Each of the five planes was named after an American city. Dargue and Whitehead piloted the expedition’s flagship, New York; McDaniel and Robinson flew San Antonio; Woolsey and Benton Detroit; Thompson and Weddington St. Louis; and Eaker and Fairchild San Francisco. JULY 2013 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY 45

The Loenings and their crews line up at Kelly Field, Texas, at the start of their journey. Below: The Goodwill Flight stationery letterhead.

PHOTOS: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

After three months of intensive training, the Pan American Good- the Magdalena River, Dargue said, “Imagine our relief and delight to will Flight departed from Kelly Field near San Antonio, Texas, on see the good old St. Louis come roaring in!” December 21, 1926. The lengthy journey was to be completed in rela“We couldn’t get her ashore,” Thompson explained, “so we decided tively short stages. No less than 75 stops in 23 Latin American and we’d just as well break her up trying to fly as to hang on until she went Caribbean countries would be made during the course of their adven- to pieces under us. So we just gave her the gun and bounced from ture around South America, back through the Caribbean and up the wave to wave till a big one threw us about fifty feet in the air. That was U.S. East Coast, finally finishing in the capital city. our chance! We nosed over the next incoming roller, and here we are!” Since the airmen lacked detailed maps of many of the regions where “The battered old St. Louis plainly showed a beating,” Dargue wrote. they would fly—and some sparsely populated areas were not yet “Its radiator was bent and leaky and the steel propeller was twisted like mapped at all—they plotted their basic a scimitar.” Nevertheless, the men managed route using maps furnished by the National to repair the plane and continued their aerGeographic Society. They also relied on nauial visits to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile. tical charts provided by the Naval Hydrographic San Antonio was laid up on a beach in Ecuador Office. Intended for ship navigation, these were highly for 19 days due to a bad thrust bearing, and did not detailed when it came to the shapes of coastlines and harrejoin the flight for a month. While they awaited delivery of bors, but included little information about inland topograa new engine from Panama, McDaniel and Robinson amused phy. When they flew across Mexico to the Pacific Coast, up the themselves by climbing the surrounding trees and picking Magdelena River in Colombia and over the Andes from Chile to Ar- coconuts to keep them from falling and pounding holes in their gentina, the aircrews had to rely on information gleaned from local biplane’s fabric wings. “A flyer’s education is constantly expanded,” sources. As they traveled, they made notations and marked important commented Dargue. topographical features on their charts, all of which would later prove The only country to which they didn’t fly was Bolivia. “The altitude useful in planning future commercial air routes. of the Bolivian flying field was somewhat higher than we cared to The flight began by following the Gulf of Mexico’s coastline to Tam- climb our heavy planes,” explained Dargue. Instead they traveled by pico and Vera Cruz. The OA-1As then crossed over to the Pacific side train to the Bolivian capital of La Paz, where they received a hero’s welof Mexico and made their way down to Panama. During their New come anyway. Once there, Dargue remarked, “What interested us very Year’s Day flight across Mexico, they encountered strong tailwinds. much as aviators was the excellent flying of the Bolivian Army airmen, Major Dargue recounted: “Borne by a howling gale, we made that taking off from a field 13,500 feet above sea level!” 150-mile hop in 75 minutes flat, including the climb south of Mount The flight eventually did cross the Andes, at an altitude of 12,000 Zempoaltepec, more than 11,000 feet high! With feet, hundreds of miles farther south, in a 650the wind twisting our tails, we raced over mile nonstop passage from Valdivia, Chile, to swamps, jungles, and mountains.” They then Bahía Blanca, Argentina. The airmen faced their reentered the Caribbean for a side trip up Andes passage with some trepidation. “To poke Colombia’s Magdalena River as far as Girador. our noses into those dark heights, where steep Returning to Panama, the fliers proceeded south walls or unseen peaks might any instant leap along South America’s west coast. from the gloom to wreck us, was no pleasing Over the Gulf of Darien, Thompson and prospect,” Dargue noted. Weddington in St. Louis signaled they were havDuring that challenging flight, made in bitter ing engine trouble. As the Loenings neared the cold, thick clouds, heavy turbulence and low visColombian coast, St. Louis began to lose altitude. ibility, San Francisco’s engine lost power due to “I gave it up for lost,” Dargue wrote. “I did not carburetor icing. “We had either to take our see how any plane could alight in such tumbling parachutes and jump out or else nose the plane seas and not be pounded to pieces.” But hours Ira Eaker flew in San Francisco and down and trust blind luck not to crash on some after the other amphibians reached the mouth of served as the flight’s official historian. invisible peak,” Eaker wrote. “For 8,000 feet we

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LETTERHEAD: COURTESY OF SCOTT AND MARSHA HINSCH

PHOTOS: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Detroit powers toward the shoreline at Paita, Peru, shortly after the arrival of sister amphibians New York, San Francisco and St. Louis.

Colombians help to moor Detroit at Girador, on the Magdalena River. The beat-up St. Louis had yet to make its belated, dramatic arrival.

slid down through obscurity. Each second, we knew the next might be our last. But that day the air gods were kind. Like a glimpse of paradise, through a cloud gap a lake appeared below us.” That lake pointed the way to a pass, which Eaker followed to the plains of Patagonia. On their arrival at Buenos Aires, the airmen initially landed in the harbor and refueled. They soon took off once more, headed for an official reception at the military airfield in nearby Palomar, accompanied by three Argentine warplanes. The cable controlling Detroit’s landing gear retraction mechanism had broken during the water landing, but Woolsey and Benton elected to take off anyway, with the gear rigged in the retracted position. The fliers had practiced an emergency procedure for extending the wheels manually in midair, which involved one of the crew climbing out onto the lower wing. The whole formation was just beginning its landing approach when suddenly, for reasons that are still not altogether clear, Detroit turned right across the path of New York, which had just begun to turn left.

“After seeing the Detroit turn up and away and going apparently far to my left rear,” reported Dargue, who was piloting New York,“I glided gently downward and started a very slight turn to get in a position to make a landing. My attention was given to locating, over the right side of my plane, an Argentine flyer who had passed diagonally beneath me. “It was only a matter of seconds when I glanced up and to the left. I caught a flash of black and yellow slightly higher and just off the rear of my left wing. “Then we crashed.” The two planes became entangled in midair. In a letter to his wife, Ennis Whitehead, who was in New York’s rear cockpit, described what happened next: The planes fell as one for a few seconds…spinning quite fast. Maps, tools and spare parts were flying out of both cockpits of the New York….In a second or two the way was clear and I unbuckled the [seat] belt. Some-

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thing went out of the front cockpit, but whether it was the Major [Dargue] or some papers I couldn’t be sure….It was difficult to keep from being thrown out bodily but I did manage to throw myself, giving a shove with my right foot as I went overboard. The stabilizer of the New York gave me quite a rap on the right instep and bruised and cut the ankle a bit. Also something hit me across the back of the neck. I was falling head down and spinning a bit in the air but located the New York. I had my right hand on the ripcord but the New York made a turn of her spin and it seemed to me that if I pulled the ripcord that my descent and forward speed would be checked and the New York might hit me. I waited until the New York turned away from me in her spin and jerked the ripcord….The New York passed directly under me in her next turn of the spin. It was about 100 feet below me. The Detroit was at least 200 feet near the ground at that time and hit the ground quite a little before the New York. I located another parachute which was descending faster than myself. Also it had several bad tears in the panels. I still did not know for sure who it was for I thought Major Dargue opened his chute too soon and got caught in the tail as he left. That did happen, but the parachute was his. He landed before me and ran towards the planes which were 150 yards away. As soon as I landed I got free of my chute and went to the planes. I stopped en route and looked at the name on the other chute and then knew that Woolsey and Benton were dead for I had watched the air carefully during my descent and knew that no other parachutes were out….Detroit had hit first and burst into flames…Benton had fallen free and was about 75 yards from the wrecks which were within 50 yards of each other. Major Dargue was terribly shocked and broke down completely. I quieted him as best I could and got a guard around the wrecks. Eaker came over along with Fairchild, Thompson, and Weddington in a few minutes. Eaker and I took Dargue to the military field and to the club. Fairchild came with us and we talked Dargue into going into the Plaza Hotel with Eaker.

Clinton Woolsey (left) and John Benton died in the midair collision.

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Ennis Whitehead (left) and Herbert Dargue survived that accident.

The airmen join Argentines in surveying the wreckage of Detroit.

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Accounts of the accident vary among the witnesses. According to an article by Eaker, written 50 years after the event for the September 1976 issue of Air Force magazine, Woolsey deliberately went down with Detroit because he refused to abandon his friend Benton, who had removed his parachute before climbing out onto the wing to lower the broken landing gear. “Woolsey was sitting on his chute and could have saved himself,” Eaker wrote. “Instead, he elected to stay with the plane, since Benton was on the wing without his chute. I have never witnessed a more courageous self-sacrifice.” But in his letter Whitehead recalled the mishap differently: “Neither [Woolsey] nor Benton had been wearing their parachutes regularly and of course in order to climb forward Joe [Woolsey] had to go out with no parachute on. He had time of course to put on his chute after he got back into the cockpit.” So according to Whitehead, it was Woolsey, not Benton, who climbed out to release the gear, and both of Detroit’s crewmen were actually seated in their respective cockpits at the time of the crash. Whitehead also speculated that Detroit’s sudden turn might have been due to a control failure, or Woolsey “might just have been demonstrating the maneuverability of the plane for he liked to do that when he came into a stop. He was a fine pilot but as we say almost too good. I have seen him do some showy stuff this trip. That is always fine as long as one gets away with it. He might have turned his plane rapidly and neglected to look for the New York....” He also staunchly maintained that the accident “was in no way the fault of Major Dargue.”

NATIONAL ARCHIVES; ABOVE: COURTESY OF SCOTT AND MARSHA HINSCH

While Whitehead recuperated from his injuries, the The Pan American Goodwill Flight, constantly in two remaining Loenings, St. Louis and San Francisco, the news during the five months when it was taking continued on, their crews still devastated from the loss place, was quickly eclipsed by Charles Lindbergh’s nonof their comrades. After an 800-mile side trip to Parastop solo transatlantic flight just three weeks later. San guay’s capital, Asunción, they stopped in Montevideo, Francisco did make one more notable flight on June Uruguay, where San Antonio rejoined the flight. The 13, when it transported Lindbergh—newly returned three amphibians then headed up the east coast of from his Paris triumph and a Washington reception— Brazil. They landed in the French, Dutch and British from Mitchel Field on Long Island to New York City. Guiana colonies, as well as in Venezuela, where WhiteEaker once again served as San Francisco’s pilot for head and Weddington (whom Dargue had replaced in that jaunt, but he let Lindbergh take the controls and St. Louis) met them in a Loening the pair had picked land in the harbor, his first water landing. up in Panama. Following the curving line of the AnSeveral members of the Goodwill Flight went on to Ennis Whitehead’s DFC. tilles across the Caribbean, they stopped at numerous distinguish themselves in the Army Air Forces. HerWest Indian island nations, including the Virgin Isbert Dargue would eventually be promoted to major lands, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba, before general. He was killed in a crash on December 12, 1941, while flying to flying from Havana to Miami and continuing up the East Coast. Hawaii after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. On May 2, 1927, the Army pilots finally finished their 22,065-mile Ennis Whitehead, who became deputy commander of the Fifth Air journey at Washington, D.C.’s Bolling Field. They were welcomed by a Force in New Guinea in July 1942, has been credited for much of the huge crowd, including President Calvin Coolidge, who presented the Allies’ success against the Japanese in the Southwest Pacific. He asDistinguished Flying Cross to each of the fliers and announced post- sumed command of the Fifth Air Force in June 1944, supporting Genhumous awards for Woolsey and Benton. These were the very first eral Douglas MacArthur’s Philippines campaign. Whitehead finished American DFCs ever awarded—so new, in fact, that the aviators had his military career as a lieutenant general. to make do with certificates, pending the medals’ being struck. They Muir Fairchild spent World War II in Washington. He eventually were also awarded the MacKay Trophy, the highest honor for Ameri- became vice chief of staff of the Air Force, with a four-star general’s can military aviation achievement. rank, before he died in 1950. Although the flight had a positive effect on U.S. relations with South Arguably the most famous of the Pan American fliers, Ira Eaker America, it took a toll on the men and machines involved. “There was commanded the Eighth Air Force from its beginnings in early 1942 a banquet every night given by the American colony or by the officials until December 1943, when he was transferred to command the Ninth of the country,” Eaker noted. “These usually lasted, with the dancing and then the Fifteenth Air Force. Retiring as a lieutenant general, Eaker that habitually followed, until midnight. So, to bed by midnight for was retroactively awarded a fourth star in 1985.
four hours of sleep before the 4:00 a.m. call for a new day of flying, mechanical maintenance, and social or protocol events....Captain Frequent contributor Robert Guttman consulted Herbert Dargue’s 51McDaniel remarked near the end of our flight that we had danced page account in the October 1927 issue of The National Geographic more miles than we had flown.” Only San Francisco completed the Magazine while researching this article. He also drew from a previously entire journey without a breakdown. Today it is on display at the unpublished letter by Ennis Whitehead that was generously provided by National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va. Whitehead’s grandson Scott Hinsch Jr. and Scott’s wife, Marsha.

From left, Charles Robinson, Arthur McDaniel, Whitehead, Dargue, President Calvin Coolidge, Eaker, Muir Fairchild, Bernard Thompson and Leonard Weddington in Washington, D.C. The airmen hold certificates representing America’s first Distinguished Flying Crosses.

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GIVING THE

MACHINEGUN

WINGS

Air combat came of age during World War I with the invention of devices that allowed fighter pilots to “point and shoot”

In May 1915, Roland Garros’ third shoot-down made the front page of a French newspaper.

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n April 1, 1915, Roland Garros took off in a MoraneSaulnier L from an airfield in northern France, planning to play an April Fool’s Day trick on the Germans. The Frenchman soon spotted a two-seater Albatros B.II reconnaissance plane and approached it head-on—no doubt much to the German pilot’s surprise. The Morane-Saulnier challenging him was a single-seater, without an observer in the rear armed with a rifle, as was the German observer. Perhaps the Albatros pilot never even saw the gas-operated Hotchkiss machine gun fitted in front of Garros before the Frenchman opened fire. As the bullets passed through Morane-Saulnier’s propeller arc and into the Albatros, the German pilot slumped dead over the controls and the aircraft dropped out of the sky, the observer helpless in the rear cockpit. On that day, as American World War I pilot Arch Whitehouse later wrote: “Roland Garros had given the machine gun wings. His fantastic device gave birth to a new and most deadly weapon, providing the military forces with a lethal piece of armament. It made the airplane as important a war machine as the naval dreadnought.” Garros was 26 when he became the first pilot to down an enemy airplane with a machine gun firing through the propeller. Described by a contemporary as possessing “a liquid eye and an olive skin,” the young Frenchman had gained his pilot’s licence in 1910 and that year competed in Britain, France and the United States 50 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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By Gavin Mortimer

flying a Demoiselle, a bamboo-and-fabric monoplane that aroused much hilarity at exhibitions. The British aviation journal Aero reported that “the whole attitude and jerky action of the machine suggest a grasshopper in a furious rage.” Garros soon graduated to the Morane-Saulnier H, a monoplane designed by Raymond Saulnier and the Morane brothers, Léon and Robert. In September 1913, he flew it across the Mediterranean Sea from France to Tunisia in what The New York Times described as “one of the most notable feats in aviation.” Garros returned to Europe a hero, but already his aerial fame was being overtaken by events. Earlier in 1913, the First Balkan War had ended with a resounding victory over the Ottoman Empire for the combined forces of Serbia, Greece, Montenegro and Bulgaria. During the conflict Bulgaria used aircraft to conduct reconnaissance missions over enemy lines, also dropping two bombs—by hand—on Odrin, Turkey. Aircraft designers were now awakened to the airplane’s military potential, and the race was on to create a plane capable of more than just scouting. The real challenge was armaments, which would exercise the ingenuity of both Raymond Saulnier and Swiss engineer Franz Schneider in 1913. A Morane-Saulnier Nm’s spinnered airscrew features trimmed-down prop blades inboard of steel bullet deflectors.

TOP: LEEMAGE/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES; ABOVE: ©SCIENCE & SOCIETY PICTURE LIBRARY

NATIONAL ARCHIVES COURTESY OF JON GUTTMAN

Garros stands in his Morane-Saulnier H, in which he became the first to cross the Mediterranean Sea by airplane on September 23, 1913.

Garros’ friend Eugène Gilbert examines a modified Morane-Saulnier L that Garros flew, equipped with a forward-firing gun and deflectors. JULY 2013 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY 51

Schneider had worked for the French manufacturer Nieuport before joining the German Luft-Verkehrs Gesellschaft (LVG) firm. In July 1913, he patented an “interrupter” gear, so named because when the pilot pressed the gun trigger a series of mechanical linkages interrupted firing until the propeller blade was clear. But the German military was unimpressed with Schneider’s work, refusing even to loan him a machine gun for testing.

T

SERVICE HISTORIQUE DE L’ARMÉE DE L’AIR B81 558

he Germans might have been more receptive had they known that Saulnier was conducting similar experiments in France. He was in fact wrestling with the same problem confronting Schneider: The structural design of front-engine aircraft restricted the use of machine guns to a three-quarter rear field of fire by an observer sitting behind the pilot. Saulnier knew the solution lay in inventing a device that allowed the pilot to operate a forward-firing

arrival at his squadron of two Bristol Scouts: “These Scouts were far ahead in performance of anything the Germans had in the air at this time, but the trouble was that no one had accurately foreseen developments as regards fitting machine-guns so that they could be used with any effect from single-seater machines. The Bristol in No. 3 Squadron was fitted with two rifles, one on each side of the fuselage, shooting at an angle of about 45 degrees in order to miss the air-screw.” In December 1914, Garros paid a visit to his old friend Saulnier and asked him to fit metal deflector plates to the propeller blades of his Morane so that he could mount a Hotchkiss gun at the front of his cockpit. Garros then spent the first few weeks of 1915 familiarizing himself with his new weapon. But he soon discovered there was a downside to Saulnier’s invention, as described by McCudden after No. 3 Squadron took delivery of a Morane-Saulnier Nm with a frontmounted Lewis gun. “[It] had a piece of steel fixed on each blade

A photo of Jules Védrines’ Morane-Saulnier Nm in September 1915 shows one of the wedge-shaped bullet deflectors on his propeller.

machine gun. He balked at experimenting on an interrupter gear because with open-bolt machine guns such as the Hotchkiss and Lewis, the ammunition had no “uniform period of ignition.” This unpredictability could lead to hang-fire failures (an unexpected delay between a weapon being triggered and the bullet actually firing) and the possibility of a bullet hitting the propeller. Instead Saulnier fixed wedge-shaped steel deflector plates to the propeller blades where the arc crossed the line of fire of a front-facing gun. The French military loaned him a Hotchkiss machine gun, and initial trials went well, with only superficial damage to the prop. But ultimately Saulnier’s invention also met with disdain. The French, like the Germans, still believed aircraft didn’t require heavy armament. When World War I began in July 1914, neither country was equipped for an offensive aerial war. Nor were the British. Fighter ace James McCudden, who would have 57 victories at the time of his death on July 9, 1918, began the war as a mechanic with No. 3 Squadron. In his memoirs, completed shortly before he was killed in a flying accident, McCudden described the

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directly in front of the muzzle of the Lewis gun,” wrote McCudden. “So that the occasional bullets that hit the propeller were turned off by these hard-steel deflectors—as they were called. The deflectors took off almost thirty percent of the efficiency of the propeller, so that for the smallness of the machine and its ample power (80-hp Le Rhône) it was not very efficient in climb and speed.” By the end of March 1915, however, Garros had gained sufficient confidence in the deflector plates to test them in an operational flight, so he embarked on the April 1 patrol that ended in his victory over the Albatros B.II. The shoot-down made the front page of the Salt Lake Tribune on April 10, when the paper carried an eyewitness account of the encounter from Major Raoul Pontus: “Presently the crackling of a quick-firer showed the Frenchman judged himself sufficiently near to take the offensive. Could the German escape? It seemed difficult, for Garros shot forward in great bounds, getting nearer and nearer, but the German observer used his carbine freely and it seemed that a bullet might strike the Frenchman. Suddenly a long jet of white smoke

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gushed from the German machine and then a troops had fired on it following my order to little flame, which, in an instant, enveloped open fire. We shot at him from a distance of the whole aeroplane. Notwithstanding the only 100 meters as he flew past. After he had extreme peril the pilot took to flight but his thrown his bomb at the train he tried to effort to escape soon was converted into a escape, switching his engine on again and horrifying downward plunge.” climbing to about 700 meters through the The day after the Tribune’s report, Garros shots fired by our troops. But suddenly the attacked another two-seater, an Aviatik B.I, plane began to sway about in the sky, the whose observer emptied his Mauser pistol at engine fell silent, and the pilot began to glide Garros. The Frenchman claimed a victory, the plane down in the direction of Hulste but could not get it confirmed. The next day [northeast of Courtrai].” he claimed another unconfirmed success Other reports made no mention of a train, over an LVG Scout, and on April 15 he disattributing Garros’ problems to engine failure patched another Aviatik. Garros’ lethal as he was strafing German troops in the stretch continued on the 18th, when he shot trenches. Either way, the Frenchman mandown an Albatros as his third confirmed vicaged to nurse his Morane-Saulnier away from tim—earning him a citation for the Legion of Courtrai before eventually landing in a field. Honor and an invitation to address the DiHe leapt out of the plane and tried to destroy rectorate of Military Aeronautics. it, but the wing fabric and spruce framework Suddenly the French authorities were des- British Sergeant Tony Bayetto sits in the were damp and wouldn’t catch fire. Then the perate to learn more about Saulnier’s inven- cockpit of a Morane-Saulnier N “Bullet.” pilot spotted an approaching enemy patrol tion. With the benefit of hindsight, one might and fled, evading his pursuers but leaving his expect they would have done their best to ensure their new secret precious machine in German hands. weapon didn’t fall into enemy hands. But perhaps their belief in Garros was soon captured by Württemberger cavalrymen, one of Garros’ invincibility explains why they allowed him to take off alone whom told the Schwabishen Merkur newspaper that their prisoner on April 18 for yet another patrol. “was a good-looking, dark-haired Frenchman with a high white foreAccounts vary as to what exactly happened as Garros approached head, a slightly crooked nose and a small black beard. With his lips the Belgian town of Courtrai, four miles from the French border. pressed together he looked at us in wide-eyed amazement.” The capAccording to the leader of a detachment of German soldiers guarding ture of the most famous flier of the war made headlines around the the railway line, Garros attacked a southbound train approaching on world. The French paper Le Temps described how “the news has the line between Ingelmunster and Kortrijk.“Suddenly the plane went caused a great emotion in France…because his exploits have made into a steep dive of about 60 degrees from a height of about 2,000 him the terror of the Germans.” meters to about 40 meters from the ground,” wrote the German. “As When members of the German army air service inspected the the plane had swooped down over the train the Bahnschutzwache Morane-Saulnier, they couldn’t believe their luck. Within days Garros’

Anthony Fokker stands at right while a German pilot prepares to fly a Fokker E.I armed with a 7.92mm machine gun and interrupter gear.

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PHOTOS: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Lieutenant Kurt Student taxis for takeoff in a Fokker E.III. Student scored three of his six aerial victories while piloting Eindeckers.

airscrew had been transported to the workshop of Dutch aviation engineer Anthony Fokker.

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okker had learned to fly at age 20, and just two years later, in 1912, he started building airplanes. At first business was slow, but then came war. As Fokker wrote in his memoirs: “In the desperate struggle to keep the business afloat I had joyfully sold my planes to the German army…Holland had preferred French aeroplanes; England and Italy hardly responded to my offers; in Russia I was put down by the general corruption, and only Germany seemed to give me a civil reception, albeit not with open arms. As a young man of twenty-four, I wasn’t very interested in German politics and cared not where it would lead. I was Dutch and neutral.” As the money rolled in, Fokker began improving the performance of the monoplane he had first designed in 1912. Unlike the wooden Morane-Saulnier, Fokker’s machine was made of welded steel tubing and powered by an 80-hp Oberursel engine. Fokker recalled that on April 20, 1915, two days after Garros’ capture, he was summoned to Berlin, where he collected the deflector plates salvaged from the Morane-Saulnier, along with a Parabellum machine gun, then returned to his workshop. He later described the French design as “very cunning,” but he believed it could be improved. Within two days Fokker and his team of engineers had produced a synchronized gear whereby the machine gun’s rate of fire was controlled by the propeller’s revolution, so the bullets avoided hitting the blades. “We placed a cog on the prop, that lifted another rod with a spring that released the firing cock of the machine gun,” Fokker explained. “The prop passed a given point 2400 times a minute, so with this machine gun that fired 600 rounds per minute we needed only one cam on the prop. The pilot had a lever that enabled him to make contact between the cam on the propeller and the firing mechanism. That was all.” On April 22, Fokker took his design to Berlin, and the next day gave a demonstration to a group of air service officers, using a gun fitted to a monoplane pulled by an automobile. All went well, and Fokker assumed he would receive instructions to fit the synchro54 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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nization gear to all German aircraft. He noted, however, “In my overconfidence I had not taken into account the conservatism of the military mind.” The officers demanded to see the system in action in the air, so Fokker obliged them, but “still they weren’t happy and stated that the only way to test the gun was that I, not a German nor a soldier, would go to the front and shoot down a plane with it myself. Without leaving me any choice I was packed off to the front…[where] I was issued a uniform and an identity card, styling myself Lieutenant Anton Fokker of the German Air Force. In this manner I flew for several days, two or three hours a day, looking for an Allied aeroplane. Then one day I saw a Farman two-seater coming out of a cloud at 800 meters below me. At last I could show off the capabilities of the gun and I dived towards it.” As he closed in for the kill, Fokker later claimed, his conscience got the better of him, and he broke off his attack. He returned to Douai, where he “quit the front line flying business.” Fokker said he had a furious row with Flieger Abteilung 62’s commanding officer, insisting that as a citizen of a neutral country he refused to be responsible for the death of a French pilot. As a compromise, Fokker offered to teach a German pilot how the synchronization gear worked. “Lieutenant Oswald Boelcke, later to become Germany’s first ace, was assigned to the job,” Fokker recalled. “The next morning I showed him how to manipulate the machine gun while flying the plane, watched him take off for the Front, and left for Berlin. The first news which greeted my arrival there was a report from the Front that Boelcke, on his third flight, had brought down an Allied plane. Boelcke’s success, so soon after he had received the new weapon, convinced the entire air corps overnight of the efficiency of my synchronized machine gun. From its early skepticism headquarters shifted to the wildest enthusiasm for the new weapon.” By July 1915, the synchronization gear had been fitted to Fokker’s single-seater M.5K Eindecker. Equipped with its forward-firing Parabellum, the monoplane—known as the Fokker E.I—became the German air service’s first fighter. Flying an E.I on August 1, Max Immelmann shot down a Oswald Boelcke, among the first Eindecker aces, developed a set of aggressive fighter pilot tactics.

man Experimental F.E.2b, that was responsible for the death of Immelmann on June 18, 1916. Boelcke, having notched 40 victories, was killed in October of that year, and in November acting command of his Jagdstaffel 2 passed to his protégé, Manfred von Richthofen. Boelcke had schooled Richthofen in his “dicta,” a set of aggressive tactics by which fighter pilots hunted rather than patrolled. The Germans reasserted their dominance in the air in the spring of 1917, but by the end of the year they were struggling to manufacture an adequate number of airplanes due to metal and rubber shortages. Richthofen had raised his score to 80 when he was killed on April 21, 1918, just a couple of weeks after Roland Garros rejoined the air war. The Frenchman had escaped from a German POW camp in February 1918 and made it back to his homeland. Desperate to atone for his failure to set fire to his secret weapon nearly three years earlier, he reenlisted in his old squadron and scored his fourth victory. But on October 5, Garros was shot down and killed while flying a Spad XIII. By war’s end, Fokker was much in demand—except by his own government. Unwanted by the Dutch, he opened a factory in the U.S., and by the end of the 1920s was America’s largest civil aircraft manufacturer. Only the introduction of the all-metal Douglas DC-1 in 1933 ended the Dutchman’s dominance in American aviation. Yet for all his achievements in civil aviation, it was in the military sphere that Anthony Fokker showed his greatest foresight. As James McCudden wrote of the Fokker E.II in 1918, “I must admit that the enemy deserves credit for first realising the possibilities of the scout type of aeroplane firing ahead, and for getting such machines in action before we had any machines ready to counter them.”
Gavin Mortimer is the author of Chasing Icarus: The Seventeen Days in 1910 That Forever Changed American Aviation. Recommended reading: The Origin of the Fighter Aircraft, by Jon Guttman; Sharks Among Minnows, by Norman Franks; Early German Aces of World War 1, by Greg VanWyngarden; and Aces High: War in the Air Over the Western Front, 1914-18, by Alan Clark.

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British two-seater, and by the end of that summer Royal Flying Corps pilots were referring to themselves as “Fokker-fodder.” Not only did the Allies have no answer to the front-firing Eindecker, but at that point they had no pilots equal to Boelcke or Immelmann. Both men were brilliant technicians, with Immelmann inventing his famous climbing turn and Boelcke always attacking head-on, out of reach of his opponent’s gun. “To see a Fokker just steadying itself to shoot another machine in the air is, when seen close up, a most impressive sight,” wrote the RFC’s McCudden, who was fortunate to survive several such encounters. “For there is no doubt that the Fokker in the air was an extremely unpleasant-looking beast.” For the rest of 1915, the Germans ruled the skies over the Western Front. French bombing sorties into German territory were halted in the face of the “Fokker scourge,” and British pilots’ morale dipped low, as they lost 49 pilots and observers to Fokker E.Is in the year’s last two months. Had McCudden not been sent back to England for training at the Central Flying School in January 1916, he might have been added to the list. As it was, when he returned to France in July, McCudden found superiority in the air war had shifted back in the Allies’ favor. The French had introduced the Nieuport 11 Bébé sesquiplane (a biplane with the upper wing chord greater than the lower) in early 1916, which soon ended the Fokkers’ dominance. Small and swift with a good rate of climb, it was armed with a Lewis gun on the top wing firing over the propeller arc. The British quickly took delivery of a number of Nieuports, and over a four-day period at the end of May 1916, 19-year-old Albert Ball shot down three German aircraft while flying an up-powered Nieuport 16. By this time the British had an impressive airplane of their own, the de Havilland D.H.2. Initially labeled the “spinning incinerator” because of a series of fatal spin accidents during training, the D.H.2 pusher proved agile and maneuverable in the right hands. Since the plane’s engine was in the rear, the Lewis gun in the nose had a clear field of fire for the pilot and, more important, an unlimited rate of fire. Yet it would be another British pusher aircraft, the two-seater Far-

A German mechanic examines the above-wing Lewis gun mounting on a Nieuport 16 after the fighter was captured on May 22, 1916.

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TheWee Bee In the late 1940s, a group of moonlighting engineers set out to build the world’s smallest piloted airplane By Walter J. Boyne

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eople have been fascinated with giant airplanes throughout aviation history, naturally focusing on such standouts as Sikorsky’s Ilya Muromets, the World War I ZeppelinStaaken R.VI, the Hughes Hercules flying boat, the Convair XC-99 and the current champion, the Antonov An-225. Public interest has even extended to some real clinkers, such as the early-1930s Kalinin K-7, to which Photoshop gave a new lease on life a few years ago, portraying it with cannon-filled turrets worthy of a battleship. Small aircraft, by comparison, have flown under the radar. There have been many of these, especially during the earliest days of kit-built airplanes, when some very tiny, if improbable, planes were offered to buyers through magazine classified ads. Later, however, some excellent versions of small, economical aircraft, such as the Heath Parasol, appeared on the scene. Interest in small airplanes increased during the Great Depression, when designs like the Pietenpol Camper and Corben Baby Ace received plenty of publicity and a degree of popularity. Paul Poberezny’s three articles in Mechanix Illustrated on his reinterpretation of the Baby Ace in 1956 gave that design a well-deserved boost. Almost all these smaller aircraft had wingspans in the 25-foot range and gross weights ranging from 500 to 1,000 pounds. None of them, however, was ever called “the world’s smallest airplane.” The media spontaneously accorded that title to a diminutive aircraft called the Wee Bee in 1948, long before it was actually com56 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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pleted. A group of Convair engineers in San Diego, intent on creating the smallest possible plane that could carry a pilot, developed the design, and it caught the public fancy. The late 1940s and early 1950s were intoxicating times in the aviation industry, when new and improved airplanes appeared across America almost every month. The idea to build the world’s smallest man-carrying aircraft originated with Ken Coward, whose original concept called for a balsa plane with an empty weight of 70 pounds. Coward joined forces with other Convair experts— Karl Montijo, James Wilder, Tom Bossart, A.B. Mandeville and Bill Chana—to explore the possibilities of extremely small aircraft. Although Coward was the designer, Chana took a leading role in the project. Chana had been smitten with aviation at the age of 6, built award-winning model airplanes and studied aeronautical engineering at Purdue University. Determined to become a pilot, he went to work for Consolidated Aircraft in San Diego in June 1941. He served as a flight test engineer on an incredible series of aircraft, including the XB-24, XB-32, XPB4Y-2, XC-99, TBY-2, XF-92A, XFY-1 Pogo and the XF2Y-1 Sea Dart, in addition to Convair’s commercial airliners. He wanted to become a U.S. Army Air Forces pilot too, but couldn’t meet the physical requirements after suffering major burns in the crash of an XB-32. Like Chana, the other engineers in the group were all engaged with ultra-secret programs during the day. Sundays they reserved for their families, but they devoted evenings and Saturdays to their own projects. Building

the world’s smallest piloted plane became their challenge. The group quickly decided that balsa was probably not the best material for the project, especially since tons of war-surplus aluminum sheet were available. The tools needed to fashion it were readily obtainable as well. As engineers, they were well aware that while it is fairly easy to scale up an aircraft, it is far more difficult to scale it down, something that many who have attempted to build three-quarter-scale versions of World War II fighters have discovered. The difficulty is that while the dimensions go down linearly, areas go down by the square. They came to an agreement on a preliminary design, an all-metal monoplane with the pilot lying prone atop a girder-like fuselage. They opted for a prone position for a number of reasons, including drag and weight reduction. The elevator control was beneath the pilot, but at relatively the same position as in a conventional aircraft, while the rudder pedals were in slots on the top of the fuselage. An initial tail-dragger landing gear design was changed to tricycle gear built of spring steel rather than aluminum sheet. With hydraulic brakes and nose-gear steering, the Wee Bee was relatively sophisticated compared to other planes of its day. The effects of reducing scale soon became apparent, however. While a Cessna 150 with a 32-foot-plus wingspan could taxi comfortably on stiff spring steel landing gear, it was different for a very small aircraft. What’s more, the difference in reaction to the spring steel gear made “feeling out” the controls while taxiing

Top: Engineer Bill Chana demonstrates that the Wee Bee was “small enough to be lifted by a man.” Middle, left and right: James Wilder, left, watches a test pilot prepare for the first flight, lying prone atop the fuselage and fitting his feet onto the rudder pedals. Bottom, left and right: William Bouck’s chin rests on a cushion behind the windscreen as he takes off.

TOP: WALTER BELLAMY/EXPRESS/GETTY IMAGES; ALL OTHER PHOTOS: PETER STACKPOLE/TIME LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES

the primary test pilots, to check control effectiveness. Other challenges included testing various angles of incidence of both the wing and the tailplane, trying various flap angles and obtaining a more powerful engine. Chana, by now a licensed pilot with 250 hours’ flying time, summoned his courage and skill on September 26, 1948, and hopped the little airplane into the air. He flew for less than 100 feet at an altitude of about one foot. Though it didn’t count as a first flight, it was the most encouraging effort thus far. Montijo, a far more experienced pilot, made a few hops, and both men agreed that the 18-hp drone engine lacked sufficient power to enable the plane to climb out of ground effect. While the aircraft did not seem difficult to control, Chana felt no urge to do steep turns. Even as the group struggled to get their diminutive craft into the air, its fame was spreading. Mechanix Illustrated ran an article on the Wee Bee, as it was now called, and both Universal and Paramount News Reel companies wanted to film a demonstration flight. Coward and his team felt they were almost but not quite ready for this. Montijo, who weighed 190 pounds, was clearly too heavy to make the flight, so they asked Bill Bouck, their hangar landlord, to take his place. At 140 pounds, Bouck cut 13 percent off the Wee Bee’s approximately 480-pound gross weight. On November 20, Bouck, who had practiced the day before, flew the Wee Bee up and down the runway at about 30 feet, satisfying the newsreel cameramen. Film of that demonstration was shown in theaters across the country, also spreading its fame abroad. Though the pilot with parachute had to be strapped in by ground crew, he could make an emergency release in flight. But given the low altitudes at which the Wee Bee was generally flown, the use of a parachute was problematic. The pilot’s chin rested on a thick pad,

and the instruments were at eye level. Control reactions were eventually similar to those of lightplanes of the period, although this took some tuning to achieve. The biggest challenge had been getting a sufficiently powerful engine. Chana solved this by driving to Ream Field in San Diego, where the Navy stored target drones. He walked into the hangar and identified himself to the Navy officer behind the counter. The man listened sympathetically, then told Chana to drive to the building’s back door. There the Navy officer loaded a brand-new 28-hp Kiekhaefer O-45-3 engine into his trunk. Evidently the hangar held dozens of surplus drone engines, and the officer knew that one more or less in the inventory wouldn’t matter. The Wee Bee was already quite famous for an airplane that had not really made anything more than runway hops. The new engine made it possible for Montijo to make the first official flight on March 12, 1949. Chana and Coward held the aircraft back physically during the run-up, then walked to the halfway point on the 6,000-foot runway at Brown Field. Montijo duly started his takeoff roll, and by the time he passed the cheering Chana and Coward he was at an altitude of 40 feet and climbing. Montijo turned right, moving out into the traffic pattern, but he was still flying so low that he disappeared behind rough ground to the north of the field. They could not see or hear the airplane and were about to summon emergency help when Montijo appeared in the distance on final approach. After landing, Montijo told them that he had flown the pattern at 150 feet and 70 mph. The first flight was both satisfying and revealing. It was obvious that the Wee Bee was not wee enough, and that both weight and drag would have to be reduced to make the aircraft practical. To address the weight problem, Montijo went on a diet.

COURTESY OF PAM CHANA

the Wee Bee difficult. Test pilots couldn’t determine the effect of the aileron during fast taxis because the landing gear was so stiff. There were also other, similar, scale anomalies. The engineers worked together initially as Ken S. Coward & Associates, then were briefly called Beecraft Aviation Associates before becoming Bee Aviation Associates, with Chana as president. Group members had naively assumed that building a small aircraft would be relatively easy, but when problems cropped up, their experience as engineers made them extra cautious. As a result, the project was stretched out and included many redesigns. They tackled the 15-foot wing first. Once that was completed, the San Diego Tribune Sun published an article on the project. The early publicity started the little airplane on its way—not to fortune, but to a measure of fame well before its first flight. Working with diligence and enthusiasm, the engineers managed to get the aircraft (initially dubbed the Pee Wee) ready for taxi tests by August 1948. Those and subsequent tests would reveal a long series of unanticipated problems that had to be resolved before a genuine first flight could be attempted. The first problem arose when the tail skid began carving up the asphalt runways of El Cajon’s Gillespie Field. A tail wheel was substituted, which helped the runways but not the taxiing, for the little aircraft wanted to ground loop whenever it reached 45 mph. It was also evident that the recycled Kiekhaefer O-45-1 target drone engine chosen for the plane was not generating enough power. The change from tail-dragger to tricycle gear cured the ground-looping tendency. Given the plane’s small size and light weight, crafting a nose wheel and moving the main gear was relatively easy. The nose could now be lifted off the ground at 30 mph, allowing Bill Chana and Karl Montijo, who served as

A small-scale lineup at San Diego’s Montgomery Field invites comparisons among (from left) the Wee Bee, Honey Bee and Queen Bee.

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COURTESY OF PAM CHANA

Chana, who initiated a series of changes to improve the Wee Bee’s performance, takes the miniature aircraft up to 1,600 feet in 1950.

Reducing drag was a bit more difficult. The wing incidence was substantially changed, from 5 to 19 degrees. The nose gear strut was shortened, and a new Sensenich propeller mounted. Fairings were installed on the junctures of the wing to the fuselage and the engine to fuel tanks. On the next test flight, on April 20, Montijo’s lost weight and decision not to use a parachute reduced the gross weight by 5 percent. That 10-minute flight saw the airplane reach an altitude of 400 feet—an improvement, though clearly not enough for commercial sales. It garnered additional publicity, however, and after a more convincing test flight by Montijo, an agreement was made to ship the Wee Bee to the United Kingdom to appear at airshows in London and Belfast. The group worked swiftly to further improve performance, adding wingtips that increased the span to 18 feet, and fixing the flaps in the up position. Thus modified, it was shipped to England via Queen Mary, with the crew following in a TWA Constellation. Despite Gatwick Airport’s Marston mat steel runway, the demonstration flight—the Wee Bee’s sixth official flight—went well before an appreciative audience. Bad weather canceled the flight at Belfast. The next public demonstration was at the 1949 National Air Races in Cleveland. Montijo made a seven-minute flight that delighted

the crowd, and two grand old picture magazines, Life and Look, ran a feature that helped to further spread the Wee Bee’s fame. Coward demonstrated his sales pitch that “the Wee Bee was big enough to lift a man and small enough to be lifted by a man” by wrapping his arm around the airplane and lifting it off the ground. Even after seven flights, however, the Wee Bee still needed improvement, so Chana took charge of a final series of fixes to increase performance. The wing incidence was altered again, from 19 degrees to 12, along with other changes that included a handle to lock the brakes, modifications to the control settings and reduction in control cable friction. The newsreel companies were still smitten with the Wee Bee, and Chana made a series of flights for them on March 11, 1950, achieving a top speed of 82 mph. The Wee Bee’s 13th and last flight came on April 20, 1950. The group had submitted an unsolicited proposal to the U.S. Air Force for a military version called the Military Mite, armed with six underwing rockets. This proposal called for folding wings for ground transportation and a guarantee that the aircraft could take off and land on any road. Chana went all out on this demonstration flight, making 60-degree banks to the right and left, flying figure eights over a highway and delivering a low, high-speed pass. Unfor-

tunately, the Air Force was not interested. The Wee Bee then began life as a static exhibit at airshows before it was eventually put on display in the newly opened San Diego Aerospace Museum. Sadly, when an arsonist set fire to the largely wooden structure, the Wee Bee was destroyed. A replica can now be seen in the new San Diego Air and Space Museum in Balboa Park. The group that developed the Wee Bee went on to other projects, building far more conventional aircraft. The first was the very attractive and long-lived Honey Bee, followed by the handsome four-place Queen Bee. Both of those airplanes had potential, but competition and the economy kept them from being produced in quantity. All the group’s engineers went on to productive careers in the industry, with Bill Chana (who died on August 3, 2012) in particular distinguishing himself in a variety of important jobs. There is no doubt that after conquering all the challenges presented by building the world’s smallest aircraft, any subsequent task seemed easy to them.
Contributing editor Walter J. Boyne is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, former director of the National Air and Space Museum and author of more than 50 books on aviation. He notes that YouTube has a film of Bill Chana, whom he knew well, “flying the Wee Bee like a pro.”

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REVIEWS BOOKS ON A STEEL HORSE I RIDE: A History of the MH-53 Pave Low Helicopters in War and Peace by Darrel D. Whitcomb, Air University Press, Montgomery, Ala., 2012, $81, free PDF download available at aupress.au.af.mil. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that On a Steel Horse I Ride is worthy of a Pulitzer Prize based on the depth and breadth of its research, the quality of its writing and the importance of its subject. In 769 factfilled, emotion-charged pages, Darrel Whitcomb presents the 40-plus-year saga of the Sikorsky MH-53J Pave Low helicopter. Only someone with his combat flying experience and dedicated research capability could have written this book, and only the Air University Press would have had the good sense to publish it in such polished form. The MH-53J Pave Low is truly a steel horse of legendary might, assigned to the most difficult tasks in combat, and capable of pulling them off time after time, war after war. The ability to do so rests of course upon the air and ground crews that operated them, and their adaptability to new conditions, climates and equipment. Fielded by the Air Force Special Operations Command, the Pave Low was used by the famous 1st Special Operations Wing, whose motto is “Any Time, Any Place.” They were also flown by the 58th SOW and the 352nd and 353rd Special Operations groups in actions around the world. Whitcomb pulls the reader into the cockpit with him while describing the risky missions that made the Pave Low famous. He also manages to detail the origins of the aircraft, its serial development to meet new combat challenges and its operational history. In lesser hands, the intricate and often bureaucratic background to this development might be boring, but Whitcomb makes it as interesting as the combat action. The author lays out the life story of the Pave Low and its operators in detail. He supplements this with six information-filled 60 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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appendices, a useful list of abbreviations, a 24-page bibliography of impressive depth and a detailed index. The book is admirably illustrated with photos emphasizing individual personnel, as well as key locations and aircraft, and buttressed with maps of the theaters in which the Pave Lows flew their missions. You would be hard-pressed to find a more thoroughly researched, all-encompassing work about an aircraft and its military history. Whitcomb’s book ranks with Dennis Jenkins’ masterpiece Space Shuttle: The History of the National Space Transportation System, and definitely sets the bar much higher for aviation authors. Walter J. Boyne NAVAL AVIATION IN THE KOREAN WAR: Aircraft, Ships and Men By Warren Thompson, Pen & Sword, South Yorkshire, UK, 2012, $50. Thank goodness for books like this that reduce the extent to which the Korean War has become a forgotten conflict. Prolific author Warren Thompson takes us through the war from its dark early days to the peak of combat and into the stalemate of the armistice. In doing so, he focuses on the remarkable way in which the U.S. Navy managed to spring back into action after the agonies of post–World War II downsizing. Initially the Navy fought with what it had— a few carriers largely equipped with a pistonengine force, guarded by early Grumman F9F Panther jet fighters. As understrength as that force was, it caught the North Koreans at their most vulnerable points, at first slowing, then stopping and reversing their advance. As the U.S. went on with what was termed a “police action,” the Navy built up its strength with new aircraft, additional personnel and more vessels. Thompson makes good use of personal interviews and memoirs to give readers insights into the hazards of the very different types of missions flown. He has wisely confined this book to the Navy, noting that the Marines’ efforts during this period deserve a book of their own. Three invaluable appendices add details that should prove interesting to buffs and

researchers alike. The first lists carrier deployments by ship, air group, squadron, aircraft type and tail code—details that are especially important for modelers, but also allow readers to see the increase in strength and in the variety of types. The second appendix is sad, showing aircraft lost by date, type, squadron and carrier. It’s a doleful toll, made even more explicit via a table showing the monthly losses. The third appendix details air-to-air victories by Navy pilots over the enemy. As is usual with Thompson’s work, this book is a joy to read and an invaluable research tool. Walter J. Boyne BRITISH EXPERIMENTAL COMBAT AIRCRAFT OF WORLD WAR II: Prototypes, Research Aircraft and Failed Production Designs by Tony Buttler, Hikoki Publications, Manchester, UK, 2012, $56.95. When Lord Beaverbrook became British minister of aircraft production in May 1940, World War II was going very badly for Britain. Consequently, one of his first acts was to restrict aircraft production, at least for the short term, to five critical types: the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane fighters, and the Bristol Blenheim, Armstrong-Whitworth Whitley and Vickers Wellington bombers. It was a Draconian measure, but it arguably helped to increase the supply of the most critically needed aircraft types at the conflict’s most desperate stage. Beaverbrooks’s drastic measure materially hampered the development of many aircraft, but the advancement of new planes never came to a complete halt. In fact, during 1941 many useful new types entered production, including the Hawker Typhoon, Short Stirling and de Havilland Mosquito. British Experimental Combat Aircraft of World War II is a lavish new compendium of the projects that were being pursued in Britain in the course of the war. It demonstrates that despite the harsh restrictions imposed during 1940, the British aviation industry still managed to produce projects every bit as advanced, as imaginative and sometimes

as bizarre as those created in Germany and the United States. Not all these aircraft failed because they weren’t good. Some of them, such as the turret-armed fighters and the “cheap-andcheerful” war emergency home-defense fighters, went nowhere because of changes in operational requirements. Among the latter was the Miles M.20, the first fighter to include a blown, single-piece bubble canopy, which was way ahead of its time in 1940. Others, such as Short’s enormous Shetland flying boat, which was intended to replace the Sunderland, were simply too large to justify mass production. A few, such as the Supermarine Spiteful, the intended successor to the immortal Spitfire, and the equally spectacular Martin-Baker MB-5, simply came too late. Another fighter, the Hawker Tornado, failed solely due to a poor choice of power plant, but was subsequently massproduced with a different engine under another name, Typhoon. British Experimental Combat Aircraft of World War II is a must for anyone interested in aviation, particularly those with a taste for the rare and the strange. Its price tag derives from the fact that it is large-format and lavishly illustrated, almost a “coffeetable book.” But this treasure trove of the sublime and the bizarre is meticulously researched and packed with information that is probably available nowhere else in a single volume. Robert Guttman

CLASSICS

THE WIND AND BEYOND: Theodore von Karman, Pioneer in Aviation and Pathfinder in Space by Theodore von Karman with Lee Edson

Brilliant aerodynamicist Theodore von Karman set out to write his autobiography late in life, with the help of science journalist Lee Edson. When von Karman died in 1963 at age 81, the manuscript was only three-quarters completed. Fortunately, Edson persevered and the book was published four years later. Since the story is told in the first person, the reader gains a sense of intimacy with JULY 2013 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY 61

von Karman himself. Given his old-world charm, befitting a native of late-19th-century Budapest, his engaging style resonates from its opening paragraph. Inklings of von Karman’s genius were apparent in childhood, when as a boy he correctly calculated six-digit multiplication problems within seconds. He went on to study at the University of Göttingen under Ludwig Prandtl, the doyen of fluid mechanics. In March 1908, after von Karman received his doctorate, he witnessed a flimsy Voisin aircraft taking off at dawn—a sight that inspired him to focus his talents in the emerging field of aviation. As director of the Aerodynamics Institute at the Technical University at Aachen, von Karman published a groundbreaking paper on the law of turbulence. He was lured to the California Institute of Technology in 1930, sufficiently in advance of Nazism’s ascendance to escape the horrors that befell many in Europe. At Caltech he headed the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, which operated a state-of-the-art wind tunnel. During World War II, von Karman and his colleagues fostered the still-new science of rocketry, spurring the founding of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His insights and expertise made him one of the fathers of the American missile and space programs. In 1944 Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces, asked von Karman to prepare a blueprint for the service’s future. With his customary energy and drive, the scientist submitted a comprehensive report the next year,“Toward New Horizons,” which laid out a plan for supersonic flight, missiles, precision munitions, satellites and much more that ensured U.S. air superiority for more than the next half-century. After the war, he remained in demand at leading universities around the world, receiving 29 honorary doctorates. His many awards included the first National Medal of Science, presented at the White House. Every page of this superb classic is infused with von Karman’s humanity. As his narrative makes clear, he was not simply a clever technician but a man of character whose vision advanced the aerospace sciences and fostered international cooperation. Fittingly, this autobiography ends with a hopeful von Karman quote that “science will overwhelmingly use its power only for good.” Philip Handleman 62 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

JULY 2013

AIRWARE

By Bernard Dy

Fly the Swiss Alps A new German sim picks up where Microsoft left off

M

icrosoft quickly gave up on its Flight product, a more casual approach to flight simulations (see the July 2012 “Airware”). It’s clear that Bill Gates has bigger fish to fry in his push to maintain relevance in the competitive landscape of consumer technology. In 1981 Flight Simulator was one of Microsoft’s few products. In 2013 Flight barely gets a thought compared to Windows 8, tablets and enterprise databases. That’s why it’s fortunate that PC pilots can now play aerofly FS ($40, aeroflyfs.com), a German product with roots as a radio-controlled aircraft simulator that has evolved into a full-fledged flight sim. Like Flight, aerofly FS gives the player a single detailed region of the world to fly in: a 15,940-square-mile area of Switzerland. It also has Flight-like missions and achievements that incrementally teach the simulation’s operation and flying basics, as well as reward accomplishments. Unlike Flight, aerofly FS isn’t free, but it gives players a decent stable of aircraft, including common types such as the Cessna 172 Skyhawk and Extra 330 LX, plus some interesting and rare sim birds like the Sopwith F.1 Camel and the Swift S-1 and Schempp Hirth Discus gliders. The McDonnell Douglas/Boeing F-18 Hornet is here too, but it’s an unarmed version, included for speed and aerobatics fun. Overall, this is an impressive sim. Though it doesn’t have the same user interface polish that the Microsoft titles do, it’s well con-

structed, with stunning scenery and fully articulated flight surfaces. At times the controls are touchy, as if you’re flying a very light model plane. Rudder effects remain strong even when I expected them to be less so at high speeds. The damage model is not very detailed, especially in dealing with ground mishaps. But I liked that departures vary depending on the aircraft, and aerofly FS does a good job of giving each plane a distinctive character. Landing is difficult until you get the hang of each aircraft. The Cessna seems to get one of the better treatments in terms of modeling, graphics and sound, while some other planes are less detailed. All have good virtual cockpits, although the amount of instrument modeling is not as robust as seasoned sim fliers may have seen in other packages. Veteran sim pilots will miss the ability to fly anywhere in the world, configure weather conditions and use air traffic control. It’s unclear too if the game’s extensibility will inspire a third-party products market like Flight Simulator did. But aerofly FS isn’t without unique features, including the ability to turn on visual cues of thermal drafts, a handy aid for learning to fly the gliders. Sim controls are also accommodating and feature easily configured support for joysticks and the TrackIR head-tracking view system. There’s room for growth here, but flight sim fans should be pleased with this plucky new entry.


o t N trac on C

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FLIGHT TEST

By Jon Guttman

More Power!

Thinking Small

Can you name the airplanes that tried to achieve more with bigger or more powerful engines…or even more engines (not always successfully)?

A. B.

1. Gee Bee R-2 C. 2. Junkers Ju-52/3m 3. Curtiss-Wright AT-9

D.

4. Liberty DH-4

E.

5. Spad XVII

F.

6. Grumman F8F-2 Rare Bear G. 7. Tarrant Tabor 8. Nieuport 16

H.

9. Caudron C.461

I.

10. Salmson-Moineau SM.2 J.

Aces in a Day

1. Which of the following was an attempt at a small lightweight airplane in 1909? A. Antoinette IV B. Pou de Ciel C. Blériot XI D. Demoiselle 2. Who tried to create a tiny “Ford Model T of the air” in 1933? A. Alberto Santos Dumont B. Henri Mignet C. Roland Payen D. Emile Dewoitine 3. Which of these lightweight WWII fighters had the lowest loaded weight? A. Caudron C.714 B. Curtiss-Wright CW-21B C. Yakovlev Yak-3 D. Heinkel He-162 4. Which is currently the world’s smallest jet airplane? A. Chagnes Microstar B. Microturbo Microjet 200 C. Bede BD-5A D. Sub Sonex JSX-1 5. Which of the following biplanes has the smallest wingspan? A. Pitts Special B. Meyer Little Toot C. Payne Knight Twister D. Smith Miniplane

Can you match the fighter pilot and his one-day record to the plane in which he achieved it? 2. Hawker Hurricane Mark I

C. Clive R. Caldwell—5

3. Sopwith Camel

D. David McCampbell—9

4. Mitsubishi A6M3 Zero

E. René Fonck—6

5. Fokker D.XXI

F. Marmaduke Pattle—6 ∕3

6. Brandenburg C.I

G. Takeo Okumura—9 ∕2

7. Supermarine Spitfire Mark IXE

H. Jorma Sarvanto—6

8. Dewoitine D.520C

I. Henry Woollett—6

9. Spad XIII

J. Richard J. Audet—5

10. Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat

1

1

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARK DREFS

Answers: More Power! 1.F, 2.E, 3.J, 4.D, 5.B 6.C, 7.I, 8.G, 9.H, 10.A

B. Julius Arigi—5

Aces in a Day A.8, B.6, C.1, D.10, E.9, F.2, G.4, H.5, I.3, J.7

1. Curtiss Tomahawk Thinking Small 1.D, 2.B, 3.A, 4.C, 5.C

A. Pierre Le Gloan—5

JULY 2013 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY 65

AERO ARTIFACT

This letter, bearing stamps and cancellation marks from the nations visited by the Pan American Goodwill Flight (story, P. 44), was signed by the eight airmen who survived the 22,065-mile journey. Group leader Major Herbert Dargue composed the message certifying that the letter had been carried over the entire distance. Some 350 such postal covers made the trip; this one was carried by U.S. Army Air Corps 1st Lt. Ennis Whitehead. Commenting on the covers in The Stamp Collector magazine, Major Dargue said, “We each believe that our mission was fully accomplished, and that the transport of air mail will some day be as common throughout South America as it is, today, in the United States.”

66 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY JULY 2013

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