Aviation History 2015-05

PILOTLESS COUGAR ON THE LOOSE + C-46 BELLY LANDING

Wildcat Warrior

First Marine Corps ace Marion Carl took to the air like a fish to water

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unsung aircraft design geniuses

Dive bomber pilot’s Pearl Harbor payback

Forgotten Defenders Army Air Forces on Guadalcanal MAY 2015 HistoryNet.com

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FEATURES Stu Goldspink pilots a Hawker Hurricane Mk. XIIB sporting an unusual paint scheme over England in July 2014 (story, P. 18).

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The Natural

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The Other Cactus Air Force

By Barrett Tillman Many consider first-ever U.S. Marine Corps ace Marion E. Carl the greatest Marine aviator of all time.

By Lawrence Spinetta

Flying B-17s and outdated Airacobras, U.S. Army Air Forces airmen played an important role in defending Guadalcanal.

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Drafting Table Aces

By Stephan Wilkinson

These nine all-but-forgotten designers were responsible for some of the most significant aircraft in aviation history.

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Pearl Harbor Payback

By Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

Dive bomber pilot John Bridgers headed a massive air assault on the Japanese fleet during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

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Forgotten Transatlantic Odyssey

By Derek O’Connor

Two Portuguese airmen set out from Lisbon in 1922, hoping to complete the first east-west transatlantic flight by an airplane.

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Cougar on the Loose

By Craig A. Thorson

How a U.S. Navy wingman managed to “steer” a pilotless F9F-6 out to sea and away from crowded San Diego.

DEPARTMENTS 7 8 14

Mailbag Briefing Extremes

By Richard Bruce

The Ryan Vertiplane used blown flaps for near-vertical takeoffs.

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Aviators

By Herb Fisher Jr.

A routine check flight in a C-46 Commando turned into a seven-hour ordeal. Cover: Conrad Huffstutler flies his FM-2 Wildcat during EAA AirVenture in 2013. First Marine Corps ace Marion Carl scored 16.5 of his 18.5 WWII kills in Wildcats (story, P. 22).

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Restored

By Jon Guttman

A Hawker Hurricane earns puzzled looks with its Finnish air force markings.

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Cover: Paul Bowen Photography Above: ©John M. Dibbs/The Plane Picture Co.

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Letter From Aviation History Reviews Flight Test By Jon Guttman Aero Poster MAY 2015 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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China Lake Museum Foundation

EDITOR IN CHIEF Roger L. Vance

Through the U.S. Naval Museum of Armament and Technology, the China Lake Legacy continues:

The Foundations’ objective is to help raise funds for: • The construction or renovation of a new museum building outside the base security area • Support campaign fund raising activities • Support operating expenses. The goal is to raise $5M over the next two-three years. The Foundation is aggressively seeking donor support from Aerospace Corporations, Private Foundations, State and Federal Funding sources, individuals, and Founder/Donor/Contributor Pledges.

The China Lake Museum Foundation, a 501© (3) organization, directly supports the Museum in preserving and displaying the irreplaceable legacy of technology and weaponry for naval aviation’s defense of our Nation.

Vol. 25, No. 5 EDITOR

Through displays, education and community events, the Museum explains to the public the extraordinary heritage of the Navy’s achievements in the air warfare and other areas, with a special focus on China Lake and its military-civilian-industry teamwork, which has continued to lead the nation’s defense and technological excellence for nearly seven decades.

http://www.chinalakemuseum.org/donate.htm

May 2015

Carl von Wodtke Nan Siegel Dit Rutland Jon Guttman Martin A. Bartels Guy Aceto

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www.HistoryNet.com Discussion: As the number and quality of potentially restorable warbirds dwindles, the debate over historical authenticity continues. Does it matter if a restored airplane contains mostly remanufactured parts, and at what point does it deserve to be called a “replica”? Aviation History Magazine is on Facebook 4

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Relentless in Battle F6F Hellcat pilot David McCampbell (above) twice achieved “ace-in-a-day” status, and became the U.S. Navy’s top gun. Cactus Air Force U.S. Marine aviators prevailed over the Japanese defenders on Guadalcanal in August 1942. The Unconventional Burt Rutan Dreamer, designer, builder, pilot and salesman, Rutan has always been able to weigh all aspects of engineering choices.

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Concerning the article “Luftwaffe’s Last Blow!” in the March issue, I have never understood the German High Command’s reasoning for launching this operation. In 1944 the Luftwaffe desperately needed to regain air superiority over the battlefield. Somehow or other they arrived at the idea that the way to obtain this goal was to destroy at one fell swoop the maximum number of Allied aircraft based in France and Belgium. One of the fallacies espoused about gaining air superiority is that you accomplish this by destroying a certain number of enemy aircraft. You don’t win aerial superiority by destroying enemy aircraft; you win it by causing such trauma to the enemy’s aircrews that they can no longer fly in combat. By 1944, both the Allied and Axis nations could within days replace lost aircraft. What could not be replaced within days were the pilots. It took over 100 times longer to train a pilot to fly an aircraft than it did to build one. The bottom line: It was not the number of enemy aircraft you destroyed that won you control of the air over the battlefield, but the number of enemy pilots you rendered unfit for combat. Charles H. Bogart Frankfort, Ky.

Cold War Memories The “Cold War Airpower Laboratory” article [March] brought back a lot of memories. My dad was assigned to the 20th Tactical Fighter Wing at RAF Wethersfield as an F-100 nuclear weapon technician in 1957. RAF Sculthorpe had RB-50s and WB-66s. The Brits love airshows, and my dad and I went to many of them. At every show there was a flyover of an RB-50 with three F-100s hooked up behind. In 1959 my dad was transferred to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, again supporting nukearmed F-100s. Every 90 days a new squadron from the continental U.S. would rotate into Incirlik. Deploying them to Incirlik and then back home took a lot of tankers and transport aircraft, including the C-124s and C-130s mentioned in the article. There was a lot going on at Incirlik during that

time besides the F-100s and U-2s (I bagged Gary Powers’ groceries and delivered the Stars and Stripes to his trailer home). Navy Neptune/EA-3 and Air Force RB-47 spy planes were frequently seen there. Jim Schofield Oklahoma City, Okla.

The Lost Squadron I read with great interest your story about “The Lost Squadron” [January], which brought back memories of my own experience flying solo into a storm. I was part of an A-26 squadron (12 planes) crossing the Pacific when I had an engine problem while leaving Tarawa. The other 11 planes went off without me, and I followed two hours later. Having zero experience in flying through a tropical storm, I chose to fly through it rather than around (as the other planes had done). My A-26 got tossed around like a dry leaf in a tornado. Between the turbulence, rain and blinding lightning, I had great difficulty keeping the plane right-side up. My instruments said I was OK, but it didn’t feel that way. Then the worst thing happened: I developed serious vertigo. At times I thought we were flying upside down even though the instruments said we were not. Somehow we made it to Eniwetok in one piece. That experience, though it was the most difficult flying of my life, ended far better for me than it did for most members of the “Lost Squadron.” Robert L. Wieman St. Paul, Minn.

Noisy Mercators I was really shocked that you published a very good story about the forgotten Martin P4M Mercator [“Cold Warrior,” January]! When I’ve told people about the noisiest airplane ever to serve at Sangley Point, in the Philippines, their usual response is, “What is that?” I served there from 1952 through 1954 as a communications officer. When the P4Ms took off, you couldn’t hear anything else. They always buzzed the field when they returned, with their R-4360s and J33s going full blast. With little fuel and their noses

down to maintain altitude, they were a real sight to behold! Don Goehler Issaquah, Wash. SCOTT GERMAIN/IMAGES OF LIGHT & LIFT

Germany’s Operation Bodenplatte

Restored Vega I was quite surprised and pleased to see the article “Rescued From the Weeds,” by Stephan Wilkinson, in the January issue [“Restored”]. While it was quite a few years ago, I recall having Wilkinson as a passenger here in our affiliated Airpower Museum’s 1931 Stinson JR-S. His kind words about the Antique Airplane Association being a vigorous group are very much appreciated, as I am now into my 90th year—having spent 61 of them trying to keep the AAA, Inc. functional. I had the pleasure to view the latest restoration of the Vega DL-1 [above] on July 26, 2014, when the new owner stopped in en route to the EAA Oshkosh fly-in. The restoration by Rick Barter was far better than the one that my team had finished in 1969. Wilkinson mentioned that the Vega had served as a corporate transport for the Morrell Meat Packing Company. The John Morrell Company no longer has a plant in Ottumwa, though that was where the original plant was located. As the FBO at what was the former Ottumwa Naval Air Station in the early 1950s, I both serviced and hangared the Morrell aircraft—and was well acquainted with Morrell’s aviation department. A big thank you for bringing back some great memories. Robert L. Taylor President, Antique Airplane Association, Inc. Ottumwa, Iowa Send letters to Aviation History Editor, Weider History Group, 19300 Promenade Drive, Leesburg, VA 20176-6500, or e-mail to [email protected].

MAY 2015 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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BRIEFING

Third Time’s the Charm? Two crashes and three makeovers transformed a Bristol Bolingbroke into a Blenheim Mk. IV—and now a Blenheim Mk. IF night fighter.

B

ritain’s most star-crossed restoration project is back in the air—a Bristol Blenheim that over several decades suffered a streak of unspeakably bad luck but kept coming back for more and is today the world’s only airworthy example. The Blenheim was originally designed as a corporate twin. For its time, the airplane was fast—a 250-mph top speed in an era when the Royal Air Force’s first-line biplane fighters were almost 30 mph slower—and the military quickly latched onto it as a light bomber. By the beginning of World War II, however, the Germans had picked up the pace, particularly with the Messerschmitt Bf-109, and the Blenheim was in over its head. The Brits still love the old bird, though, for it was the first RAF airplane to bomb the advancing Wehrmacht in Europe, first to sink a U-boat, and the first airplane to be fitted with radar and used as a night fighter (by far its most Ten years later, that airplane also crashed at Duxford, again the successful role) to make the first-ever radar night kill. In the spring of 1987, a volunteer crew completed a painstaking result of pilot error—ran out of gas on short final. Time for a third 12-year restoration of a derelict Canadian-built Blenheim, called rebuild, this one by Duxford’s professional firm Aircraft Restoa Bolingbroke. One month after its first flight, the airplane was ration. With a first flight last November 19, this re-reincarnation totaled in a crash during an airshow at Duxford, England, when the has the latest Blenheim as a rare Mk. IF night fighter, with an allpilot botched a touch-and-go that he had already been forbidden glass nose. The only original Mk. I greenhouse that could be found had been used in the late 1940s by a prescient Bristol engineer who to attempt. turned it into an electric minicar. The car So what did the demoralized volunteer AIR QUOTES was found among his effects and donated to restorers do? They picked up the pieces and tackled a second complete restoration. “Any damned fool can criticize, Aircraft Restoration, where it was used as a pattern to build a new nose. There weren’t many usable pieces left, so a but it takes a genius to design From now on, let’s hope the world’s only second Bolingbroke hulk was acquired and it in the first place.” airworthy Bristol Blenheim is flown by serithe team put together another Blenheim –Edgar Schmued ous pros. Mk. IV, this time doing the job in just five CHIEF DESIGNER, NORTH AMERICAN AVIATION Stephan Wilkinson years and flying the aircraft in 1993.

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A V I A T I O N H I S T O R Y MAY 2015

PHOTOS: ©2014 ASHLEY STEPHENSON

Immaculate Restorations

A rare Daimler Benz DB 605 engine was the inspiration for MeierMotors’ Me-109G-2 project, which started out as an Ha-1112 Buchón.

PHOTOS: MATTHIAS DORST

Buchón being converted by MM into a Messerschmitt Me-109G-2, complete with a rare DB 605 engine in place of the Buchón’s RollsRoyce Merlin 500. The other is a Fiat G.59 two-seat trainer, also a Merlin-engine version of a DB 605–powered airplane, the Fiat G.55 single-seat fighter. Yagen is having his G.59 rebuilt as a G.55. Meanwhile the Meier brothers have begun what will be the most extensive restoration they have ever attempted: the world’s oldest operational Me-109, an early E-1 model that flew during the final stages of the Spanish Civil War. It is currently little more than a filigree of corroded and rusted metal, but there’s no doubt that MeierMotors is up to the challenge. Stephan Wilkinson

MYSTERY SHIP

ROBERT F. DORR

M

ost restoration shops are pretty zip-lipped about their warbird projects, in part because they consider such info proprietary and in part because they don’t have the time for self-promoting. An exception is the German shop MeierMotors, which thanks to PRman/webmaster Matthias Dorst has flooded warbird forums with photos of MM’s restorers at work on Me-109s and Fw-190s, Spitfires and Sea Furies, Yaks, P-51s, a Corsair, Pilatus P-2 and Noorduyn AT-16 (Canadian-built AT-6). Founded in 2006 by the brothers Achim and Elmar Meier— Achim a talented warbird pilot, Elmar a fastidious technician—the two-man company built on the Meiers’ well-established reputation as Yakovlev specialists and today is staffed by two dozen artisans and apprentices. MeierMotors, located in southern Germany, could be the set for a Saturday Night Live skit parodying German OCD: a hangar floor that could double as a dining table, medical-clinic cleanliness, technicians in matching uniforms, rollaway chests filled with tools nestled in foam rubber. One rule is said to be that no tool touches the floor, and each is returned to its nest before another is put to use. Dorst’s own photos reveal this to be an exaggeration, but the working tools are at least arrayed in rolling trays rather than on the deck. This is also a restoration facility that has never seen a piece of bare aluminum it doesn’t want to hit with a handful of Simichrome and a buffer. Its several P-51D restorations seem to be made of silver, and if paint is necessary, it is compulsively perfect. Two of MM’s most important current projects are for Virginia warbirder Jerry Yagen’s Military Aviation Museum, in Virginia Beach. One nearing completion is a Spanish-built Hispano Ha-1112

Can you identify this sleek jet fighter from the 1940s? Turn to P. 12 for the answer.

MAY 2015 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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BRIEFING Components of the storied B-26B Marauder Flak-Bait await preservation and reassembly at the Udvar-Hazy Center’s Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar near Dulles International Airport.

A

Smithsonian Treasures on Display

media preview for the January 24 open house at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center provided an opportunity to check out projects underway at the nation’s official air and space restoration and preservation facility. For the first time since it was retired after World War II, the Martin B-26B Marauder Flak-Bait will be reassembled for display at the center (the forward fuselage section had been exhibited at the downtown D.C. museum for decades). Other projects currently housed in the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar include the only Horten Ho-229 “bat-wing” jet bomber in existence, a Pearl Harbor veteran Sikorsky JRS-1 amphibian, the Apollo Telescope Mount backup for the Skylab missions and a portion of the NASA Langley Research Center’s 30-by-60-foot wind tunnel. And in the Emil Buehler Conservation Laboratory, conservators are working on the 11-foot studio model of the starship Enterprise used in the original Star Trek series, which has languished in the downtown museum gift shop since 2000. Next year it will take a place of honor in the newly upgraded Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall during the museum’s 40th anniversary celebration.

Above: A radiography unit borrowed from the National Zoo takes X-ray images (right) of the starship Enterprise TV studio model, revealing interior details such as a light fixture.

The Horten Ho-229’s center section will be mated to its wings.

A giant turbine blade from NASA’s 30-by-60-foot wind tunnel.

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A V I A T I O N H I S T O R Y MAY 2015

PHOTOS: CARL VON WODTKE

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BRIEFING MYSTERY SHIP ANSWER

Former hostages and rescuer reunite near Secord’s C-130 in 2013.

Herk Rescue Reunion

O

n November 24, 1964, Mrs. Marilyn Wendler was an 11-year-old missionary’s daughter scrambling aboard a U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules piloted by Captain Mack Secord, of the 464th Tactical Airlift Wing. The Hercules she climbed aboard in Stanleyville that day was one of 12 C-130s used to rescue 800 Belgians from Simba rebels in the Congo. Belgian paracommandos had jumped or airlanded that morning from USAF Herks to snatch the hostages from certain death. Fifty years later, Secord and Wendler (inset above) attended a November 20, 2014, reunion of the evacuees in Miami. Also in attendance were brothers Ken, Paul, John, David and Tim McMillan, who had watched machete-wielding Simbas slaughter their father, Hector, before the paracommandos arrived. It’s likely, though uncertain, that the McMillans were also jammed into Secord’s aircraft. Wendler saw Secord mentioned in the rescue account included in Joseph E. Dabney’s book Herk: Hero of the Skies, and contacted him on the off chance that he had been her “gallant knight” in 1964. She invited Secord, who earned a DFC for his role in the rescue, to attend the Miami reunion. The Herk that Secord flew is now on display at the Museum of Aviation in Warner Robins, Ga.

Rescued from Congolese Simba rebels, freed hostages board the C-130 at Stanleyville in 1964.

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A V I A T I O N H I S T O R Y MAY 2015

At a time when most airplanes had props, Lockheed’s XF-90 had a pointy nose and swept wings. It looked ready to blast off for the moon. In 1946 the U.S. Air Force ordered two XP-90s, to compete with the XP-88 built by McDonnell and the XP-86C from North American. The “X” meant experimental, while the “P” for pursuit was changed to “F” for fighter in 1948. The competition was for a “penetration fighter” to fly strategic missions into the Soviet Union. McDonnell’s entry was a superstar. The North American aircraft, redesignated XF-93, was a dud. The XF-90 performed somewhere between the two. Its 4,100-poundthrust Westinghouse J34-WE-15 turbojet, like many early jet engines, proved disappointing. Even with two of them, the XF-90 rarely reached the 680 mph claimed in the brochure. When afterburners were added, the redesignated XF90A was still inadequate, except as the personal jet of the airmen in the “Blackhawk” comic books. Test pilot Tony LeVier made the first flight, on June 3, 1949. Then General Curtis LeMay, the new Strategic Air Command boss, shook up the Air Staff by opposing a new strategic fighter. A year later the Korean War changed Air Force requirements, so no penetration fighter was ever produced. Two XF-90s conducted extensive flight tests long after the “century series” of more advanced jet fighters was well along in development. One XF-90 was scrapped. The other spent time as a ground target, to measure the results of atomic weapons during atmospheric tests. The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force plans to display the survivor in its new Cold War gallery. Robert F. Dorr

TOP PHOTOS: COURTESY OF MACK SECORD; ABOVE: MUSEUM OF AVIATION, WARNER ROBINS, GA.

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EXTREMES

By Richard Bruce

STOL Testbed Ryan Aeronautical’s Vertiplane used thrust directed downward by huge wide-span flaps to achieve near-vertical takeoff

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early 60 years ago I was a member of the Ryan Aeronautical team that created a little-known short takeoff and landing aircraft, the VZ-3 Model 92 Vertiplane, for the U.S. Army. It was an era when any conceivable idea found funding and every aircraft manufacturer was building some type of concept aircraft, when a small group of talented and versatile employees could take on any task. Those days are long gone. Developed in response to the Army’s need for a medium-speed liaison plane that could operate without runways, the Vertiplane was an updated version of the YO-51 Dragonfly, the firm’s 1940s venture into STOL aircraft. It joined an illustrious line of Ryan aircraft that included the M-1 in the 1920s, the ST in the ’30s, the FR-1 Fireball and Navion in the ’40s and the X-13 Vertijet in the ’50s. I arrived at Ryan in 1957. My wife wanted to get out of our small town in Ohio, so early that year I sent a résumé to every aircraft company west of the Mississippi. I received only two responses: a form letter from Sandia, in New Mexico, saying “no interest” and another from Ryan Aeronautical offering me a job if I could pass a physical. We put the house on the market, loaded up our three children and headed for San Diego. At the time I already had nine years’ experience working on aircraft. After graduating from the Air Force Aircraft and Engine Mechanics School at Sheppard AFB in Texas in 1952, I’d done maintenance on T-6s, T-33s and C-47s, and also served as a crew chief and flight chief on F-51s and F-84Es and -Fs. I started work at Ryan in April, on the last day the Convair Sea Dart was flown in San Diego Bay. We watched the demonstration from an upstairs room during new employee indoctrination. Also on that day, Ryan was celebrating the first 14

A V I A T I O N H I S T O R Y MAY 2015

Above: The VZ-3 Model 92 in its final configuration, with open cockpit and tricycle landing gear. Right: The original “Reynolds Wrap Special” was a tail-sitter with a fully enclosed cockpit.

full transition of the X-13 from vertical to horizontal flight at Edwards AFB. Dozens of union production employees were being laid off on the day I started, making me wonder what I was getting myself into. But I was to work in the nonunion engineering department, a completely different world from the production line. Positions in the engineering development shop were much-sought-after jobs, and I was very fortunate to have been hired through the mail, sight unseen. The Vertiplane was a super-lightweight aircraft—the engineers nicknamed it the “Reynolds Wrap Special.” There were only about a dozen men on the project, all seasoned aircraft builders, the best in the business, and eager to teach me. Even though I had nine years on the flight line, I had never

constructed an airplane other than models as a kid. My first job on the Vertiplane was manufacturing the wing with the help of Ray Palmer, an experienced aircraft builder. Other groups of two built the other components. I was surprised to see that, except for being made of aluminum, it was in many ways like building a model airplane. My next job was to fashion the large air

TOP: NASA; ALL OTHER PHOTOS: ©PF-(SDASM1)/ALAMY

deflectors located on the tip of each wing. My partner, Ollie Peterson, used the rivet gun while I “bucked” the rivets. The aluminum skin was so thin that the rivets could easily be punched through the aluminum. That’s why the same two men always worked together on any particular component. You had to know just what your partner was going to do and how much pressure he was going to use with the rivet gun or the bucking bar. The blueprints called for the last several rows of rivets to be “blind” rivets. Not as strong as bucked rivets, these were installed from the outside with a special gun. Ollie and I figured out a way of “closing out” the panels with regular rivets by making special slim bucking bars, each one tailor-made for a rivet location. The design engineer, draftsman and managers couldn’t figure out how we did it, and we didn’t tell them. These end plates served as structural supports for the large flaps, and confined the propeller slipstream to the flaps for better STOL efficiency. When extended, the flaps directed the propeller’s slipstream downward to provide vertical lift for takeoff. Everything about the Vertiplane was lightweight. I don’t recall any structural part using anything thicker than .012 or .016 aluminum. Even the approximately 7-foot-long engine tailpipe weighed only 14.6 pounds. The firewall was made from .002-inch type 321 stainless steel, spotwelded to a corrugated sheet of the same material. It had an exhaust deflection device in the tail that aided with flight control. The Vertiplane was 27 feet 8 inches long, with a wingspan of 23 feet 5 inches and a gross weight of just 2,600 pounds. It was powered by a single 1,000-hp Lycoming T53-L-1 gas turbine engine turning two three-bladed wood propellers mounted on wing pods. It could take off and land in two plane lengths. The wingtips were made from balsa wood, which meant that every visitor tended to push his or her thumbnail into the balsa, just because it was easy to do. We had to fabricate new tips on a regular basis to keep the wings presentable. Feeling a little playful one day, I sawed the head off a very large bolt and glued it onto the fuselage, then screwed a likewise large hex head nut on the bolt threads and glued it to the opposite side of the fuselage.

It looked as though a bolt went all the way through the fuselage. Everyone invariably walked around the plane several times until they caught on. When company founder T. Claude Ryan, who regularly visited the shop, saw it, I thought I would surely be fired, but he just laughed and never said a word about it. After two years of testing at the Ryan facility, the Vertiplane was moved to the Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, in California, for additional tests. On January 21, 1959, Peter Girard piloted it on its first flight there. During test flights at Moffett, Girard flew the Vertiplane at speeds as low as 15 knots and as fast as 110 knots, and descended at rates of 1,600 feet a minute at idle power settings. Hovering was never attempted. Following a crash on February 13 during its 13th flight at Moffett, the Vertiplane was returned to Ryan for repairs. As usual, things were really hopping at the factory, and there were very few people with experience on the aircraft available to work on it, or even any place to put it. It was finally relegated to one corner of a hangar in the south end of Ryan’s facility, and I was tasked with rebuilding its wing. A stress engineer was assigned to monitor, inspect and accept all my work. After a few days of making the trip to the far end of the plant to look at my repairs, he finally told me to just go ahead and repair it and let him know when I was finished. “You know as much about it as I,” he commented, “and you don’t need me.” There was another crash in March 1959 and yet another in February 1960, when the NASA pilot ejected at 5,000 feet and the aircraft was virtually destroyed. During that rebuild, significant modifications were made. A lightweight Martin Baker ejection seat was installed, the enclosed cockpit became on open cockpit and the fuselage was extended by a foot forward of the wing. The landing gear was also modified and strengthened. As originally built, it was a tail-sitter; the modifications allowed it to rest on tricycle gear or use the original taildown position. After the rebuild was finished, the modified Vertiplane went back to NASA. Testing continuing into late 1962. The aircraft is now located at the U.S. Army Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker, Ala. 

T. Claude Ryan (left) confers with engineers.

The original Vertiplane readies for takeoff.

The VZ-3 lies crumpled after it crashed.

The rebuilt Vertiplane rests on its tailwheel.

NASA tested the STOL aircraft through 1962.

MAY 2015 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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AVIATORS

By Herb Fisher Jr.

Buffalo, We Have a Problem A routine factory check flight for a new transport turned into a seven-hour ordeal that ended with a belly landing

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n August 6, 1942, a clear azure sky dawned over Buffalo, N.Y. That morning my father, Herbert O. Fisher, chief production test pilot for the Curtiss Wright Corporation, was assigned to test-fly the second production example of the C-46 Commando transport for 1½ hours, to ensure all was in proper working order prior to acceptance by the U.S. Army Air Forces. Dad also had another assignment that day, serving as liaison and tour guide for Clive “Killer” Caldwell, an Australian P-40 double ace who was visiting the Curtiss plant. Caldwell, a public relations representative for Curtiss, was there to evaluate a new model of the Warhawk, the rugged fighter that had always brought him safely home despite bullet holes and missing pieces. The two men had a lot to talk about. Dad knew every rivet of the Warhawk and had logged hundreds of hours in various P-40 models. His daily assignment, along 16

A V I A T I O N H I S T O R Y MAY 2015

Above: The second production C-46 lies on the runway on August 6, 1942, after its landing gear failed to properly extend and lock into place. Left: Curtiss Wright chief production test pilot Herbert O. Fisher.

with his staff of pilots, was to tear the wings off every P-40 leaving the plant. They all knew that the lives of brave young fliers like Caldwell depended on them. On August 5, the chief test pilot and the ace enjoyed dinner at one of Buffalo’s finest restaurants. An instant camaraderie developed, and they went on to a favorite airport watering hole for a few scotches. While they were relaxing, dad asked if Caldwell would

like to get the feel of a 20-ton transport he was scheduled to check out the next morning around 7. The Australian accepted, though he also mentioned having a prior engagement—breakfast at 8 and a 10:30 tee time at an exclusive golf club with several Curtiss executives. Dad told him: “No problem, we’ll take it up for an hour or so and be back early. The company driver and vehicle will be waiting.” Caldwell arrived promptly as dad was completing a preflight inspection that morning. Several tons of ballast were loaded, the fuel was topped off and Curtiss Wright technicians brought aboard their equipment. Caldwell took the right seat as my father went through the checklist.

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF HERB FISHER JR.

After the run-up, dad told him: “It’s your airplane. I’ll be following you with my controls. Line up on the centerline and do not be gentle....Pour the coals to the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 radials and make ’em scream.” The Australian accelerated down the runway and lifted off. “Take it out over the lake,” dad told him, “and I’ll begin my checkout routine.” After about 45 minutes Caldwell took back the controls, and my father gave him headings to line up with runway 23. The ace had some fun maneuvering the big beast around the sky. On the four-mile final, dad began to set up the landing configuration. A mile or two out, he hit the landing gear lever. They could hear the gear motors running, but got no green lights. They checked the breakers, then recycled the gear several times, but still no luck. Finally dad called the tower to say they were going around. (Note the first 100 or so C-46s weren’t equipped with a manual gear-extension crank in case of hydraulic failure. Also, the landing gear legs would normally completely lower and then slide into the down and locked position. This aspect of the design complicated the situation.) My father circled the field several times, trying to troubleshoot the problem while on the radio with company engineers. He also did several flybys 50 feet off the deck while engineers and technicians, gathered on runway 23’s centerline, scrutinized the Commando. They spotted massive streaks of hydraulic fluid on the underside of one wing, the tail and the belly. Meanwhile the

techs on board opened up inspection plates and began disassembling the floorboards over the wing roots, looking for the problem. As for Caldwell, he seemed unperturbed by the unfolding drama, though before long he exclaimed, “Hey mate, I just missed my tee time!” Over the course of an hour the radio barked orders from the Curtiss “stuffed shirts,” suggestions dad had already tried. He then performed a series of aerobatics— maneuvers certainly not recommended for the big C-46—in an attempt to get the landing gear to lock down. By this time they’d been circling for more than five hours. The techs aboard had by then rigged a makeshift portal so they could dump hydraulic fluid into the Commando’s system. Unfortunately, there was no supply of fluid on board. A CW-22 was sent up with a tech in its rear seat holding a fivegallon jerry can of hydraulic fluid attached to the trainer’s airframe by 300 feet of cable. The idea was to fly above the C-46 so the tech could lower the can down to dad, who would try to reach outside the large left-seat window and pull it inside. But every time the can got close, the slipstream around the Commando’s nose pushed it outside his reach. Concerned that the can and cable might become wrapped around the left prop, dad tried shutting down the engine, but it made no difference. Then they decided to use the rear fuselage door. Everyone on board could hear the can bouncing off the top of the fuselage during several attempts, all of which failed. At length the cable got wrapped around the vertical and horizontal stabilizLeft: Fisher briefs the press. Below: Luckily, there were no injuries when the Commando’s gear collapsed.

ers. Fortunately, the rudder and elevators were only marginally affected. In a brief written account of the incident Caldwell titled “The Longest Day,” he described watching the “nightmare attempt to supply a drum of oil from another aircraft. With no parachute I was appalled to see this thing swaying about on the end of a string between our airscrews then go bumping down the side to entangle the empennage. This prompted me to ask Herb how many hours he had and was comforted by the answer expressed in impressive thousands.... “My own flying at this stage totaled a mere 800 hours all up but did include eleven very hazardous arrivals—one due to lack of technique, the others to enemy action or structural failure. “Feeling I knew a bit about this sort of thing it now belatedly occurred to me to enquire of Herb with all those thousands of hours just how many crash landings he’d had. I was dismayed when he quite happily told me none.” The Commando had been aloft for about seven hours, and fuel was getting low. By then the Buffalo radio stations had notified the public there was a huge crippled transport in “desperate trouble” overhead, with some predicting it might crash in flames. About 50,000 locals gathered around the airport perimeter, eager to witness a hometown disaster. My father radioed, “About the only way out of this is a belly landing….I am on a 10-mile final, will save the engine by shutting down once I have the runway made.” The Army Air Forces major who supervised all acceptance flights informed him, “Don’t worry about engines, keep the power on in case you need to go around.” Dad responded, “As you wish—and could you make sure a fire extinguisher or two are handy?” The C-46’s gear collapsed as it gently touched down on the runway, and the big transport came to a grinding halt. Dad shut down all systems, then everyone aboard deplaned. There were no injuries, no fire. Caldwell and dad became lifelong friends. As the years rolled by, the Australian pilot was a frequent houseguest at the Fisher home in Kinnelon, N.J. And the premium scotch continued to flow each and every time he visited.  MAY 2015 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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RESTORED

By Jon Guttman

Multinational Hurricane Originally built in Canada, Phil Lawton’s Hawker fighter incorporates backstories from Britain, the USSR, Rhodesia and Finland

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uilt in Canada and restored in England, a Hawker Hurricane returned to the sky in July 2014 sporting markings utterly alien to anyone who associates the fighter with its iconic role as the Royal Air Force’s mainstay during the Battle of Britain. Instead of British cockades, it wore blue swastikas on white disks, and the serial number of the last Hurricane to serve in the Finnish air force. By now you’ve probably asked, “What the hell?” If so, take a deep breath and ask a more pertinent question: “How on earth?” The answer begins at the Canadian Car and Foundry, which built Hurricane Mark XIIB R30040, a license-produced version of the British Mark IIB, in mid-1941. This variant upgraded the Hurricane Mk. I’s 880-hp Rolls-Royce Merlin III V-12 engine to a 1,280-hp Merlin XX, and was produced in two versions: the Mk. IIA with eight .303inch Browning machine guns in the wings,

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A V I A T I O N H I S T O R Y MAY 2015

and the Mk. IIB with 12 wing-mounted weapons. Given the Royal Canadian Air Force serial no. 5487, this particular Mk. XIIB flew coastal defense sorties from Gander, Newfoundland, with No. 127 Squadron until a night training flight on November 22, 1942, in which Flight Sgt. A.R. Taylor crashed into a snowdrift near Indian Bay Pond. Taylor suffered minor injuries; the airplane was written off in March 1943. After decades on the scrapheap, the Hurricane’s remains were bought by Hawker Restorations in 1990 and shipped to Classic Aero Engineering at Thruxton, in Hampshire, England, which worked on them from 2002 to 2011, when the firm went out of business. At that point Phoenix Aero Services, also at Thruxton, took over. “As a kid I used to put together scale model aeroplanes,” said Phillip Lawton, who as director of Phoenix Aero Services now assembles the real thing. In 2006 he

The restored Hawker Hurricane Mark XIIB returns to the air with Finnish markings in July 2014 over Hampshire, England.

had purchased a partly completed Mk. XIIB, but found the previous restorer’s work so substandard that “the whole project, which included a large quantity of original Canadian parts and spares, was put into storage.” Components from that plane were combined with the fuselage, center section and engine bearer of the newly acquired Canadian Hurricane to produce a flyable aircraft. Lawton had considered cannibalizing a British Mk. IIB he’d also acquired (Z5207), but found it to have so many more original parts than the Canadian that “the decision was made to start afresh on Z5207 and rebuild an ‘English’ Hurricane.” The Gloster-built Hurricane had been flown from the aircraft carrier Argus on September 7, 1941, to land at Vaenga, Russia,

©JOHN M. DIBBS/THE PLANE PICTURE COMPANY

WEIDER HISTORY ARCHIVE ©JOHN M. DIBBS/THE PLANE PICTURE COMPANY

The original Finnish Mk. IIB, HC-465, in 1948.

BARRY CONWAY

The rebuilt cockpit of RCAF serial no. 5487.

The plane now has a 1,650-hp Merlin engine.

JEFF LAWTON

(Polish) squadrons, RAF, before it was shipped to Russia and assigned to the 152nd Fighter Aviation Regiment (IAP). During a reconnaissance flight on February 16, 1942, Lieutenant Feodor G. Zadorozhny suffered engine failure, force-landed on Lake Tuoppajärvi and made his way back to friendly territory. Soviet aircraft strafed the plane two days later, putting 25 bullet holes in it, but the Finns recovered it. Their State Aircraft Factory replaced its engine and eight-gun wings with the engine and 12-gun wings of Z3577, a Hurricane IIB of the 769th IAP that had been downed on April 6, along with a de Havilland propeller salvaged from one of the Mark Is. By the time HC-465 became operational, the Finns had retired their Hurricanes from first-line service. It was used as a trainer and target tug at Kotka from March 16 through May 31, 1944, then grounded to waste away like all but one of its Mk. I cousins. Clive Davidson flew Lawton’s Finnishmarked Hurricane from England to Finland, accompanied by the owner flying a T-6 Texan as a “support plane.” Besides working out a flight itinerary of several days, they had to deal with some European countries’ ban on swastikas as provocative Nazi symbols, notwithstanding Finland’s adoption of the blue swastika as an air force marking in 1918, long before Adolf Hitler came to power. By 2014, however, Germany had relaxed its ban, provided the swastika was displayed in a historically correct context. On August 9, then, Hurricane HC-465’s Anglo-Canadian surrogate made its public debut at Finland’s Tour de Sky International Airshow, an annual two-day event that is rotated among various Finnish airports. It was hands down the star of the show, surprising and delighting the air-minded Finns, a good many of whom had forgotten that their air force had ever used Hurricanes. Afterward Lawton put the fighter—back in Rhodesian livery—up for sale, but took it off the market in late August, “planning on selling the project Hurricane G-BYDL to finance its running.” Then, however, he reported: “In November 2014 G-CBOE was sold to a German collector, along with G-BYDL and all the spares, plus my Texan. I’m closing Phoenix Aero, and probably restarting restoration work in Finland at some time.” One can only speculate on what rara avis will turn up as his next project. 

The aircraft in Rhodesian Air Force markings.

MKFI

where it served in No. 81 Squadron, 151 Wing, before being presented to the Soviets. Long after the war ended, a Swiss buyer purchased the Hurricane, but it was subsequently returned to Britain under the civil registration G-BYDL. In 2009 Phil Lawton acquired the plane and also met Dave Anson, whose father, Peter Anson, had flown Z5207 off Argus, and who still had his father’s flight log, with a wealth of useful information. The Canadian Hurricane’s cockpit was restored to its original appearance, but Lawton had a 1,650-hp Merlin 24/500 installed as the power plant, driving a Hamilton Standard 23E50 airscrew. The project required the work of six mechanics and cost 1.5 million Euros. Finally, having been cleared by the Civil Aviation Authority’s Safety Regulation Group, the Hurricane—in an aluminum finish with Rhodesian Air Force markings and civil registration G-CBOE—took off with Stuart Goldspink at the controls on July 16, 2014. “The idea of painting CBOE in Rhodesian colors was that it was low cost, different and would allow a potential customer to repaint it at minimal cost,” Lawton explained. So why the change to a Finnish finish? “I have lived in Finland since 2008,” he said. “From a marketing point of view it’s easier to get airshow bookings with a unique color scheme....The plane flew for the first time on July 16 in Rhodesian colors, was repainted over the following weekend, completed its test program the following week, received its permit on the 25th and was ferried to Finland the following week.” The markings temporarily applied to the Hurricane authentically represented the only Mk. IIB ever to serve in the Finnish air force, bearing the national code HC-465. And therein, too, lies a tale. Late in Finland’s Winter War with the USSR, Britain belatedly sold the Finns 12 Hurricane Mk. Is in March 1940. Two crashed en route, and the rest fought in the Continuation War, scoring 5½ victories for the loss of one to groundfire, three in fatal crashes and two damaged. Hurricane I HC-452, in which 2nd Lt. Resko Ruotsila scored 2½ victories, survived to go on static display at the Aviation Museum of Central Finland in Tikkakoski. As for HC-465, it has as dual a pedigree as the plane representing it. Hurricane Mk. IIA Z2585 flew with Nos. 56 and 316

The repainted Hurricane taxis for takeoff.

MAY 2015 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

19

GENERAL JOHN PERSHING tells his remarkable story Awarded the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for history!

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AV505C

LETTER FROM AVIATION HISTORY

By Carl von Wodtke

Preserving Icons

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What’s the difference between a restored airplane and a replica? How far should a restorer go to preserve original components, and do remanufactured parts make a warbird less authentic? How much of the aircraft needs to consist of original components, or parts from the same type, for it to be considered a restoration rather than a replica? These are questions the warbird community has grappled with for decades, but as the number and quality of original airframes dwindles over time, they have gained a greater sense of immediacy. Three stories in this issue underscore the difficulties inherent in modern warbird restorations. In “Restored” (P. 18), Jon Guttman traces the convoluted path of a Hawker Hurricane Mark XIIB from scrapheap to flying status. The 12-year effort required components from two different Hurricanes as well as some remanufactured parts, topped off by two distinctly different paint jobs. In “Briefing,” Stephan Wilkinson reports on the return to flight of a thrice-restored Bristol Blenheim (P. 8) and profiles MeierMotors (P. 9), a specialist in resurrecting rusted warbirds to squeaky-clean, like-new appearance. Two of the German restoration shop’s current projects, for Virginia Military Aviation Museum owner Jerry Yagen, involve restoring and converting existing airframes to similar though different types. Of course there is another whole level of this process that doesn’t involve airworthiness considerations, one at which the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum excels. That approach, focusing on conservation and preservation, was recently on full display at the museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles International Airport (story, P. 10). In the center’s 48,000-square-foot Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar, all the components of the celebrated Martin B-26B Marauder Flak-Bait have been gathered for restoration and reassembly. But in keeping with the museum’s mission, the estimated 5½-year project will entail far more cleaning and conserving than restoring and replicating. As NASM restoration specialist Anne McCombs notes of the bomber’s fabric-covered rudder, which is in poor condition, “On most airplanes I would simply remove this and replace it with new fabric; however, in this case, because the airplane has such a storied past, we’re trying to save the original fabric and keep it on the airplane.” McCombs reports that the museum is experimenting with techniques to accomplish that, using similar fabric in equally bad condition from another aircraft. “We’re going to be learning as we go,” she says. Upstairs in the Emil Buehler Conservation Laboratory, they’re working on another iconic craft, this one familiar to legions of Star Trek fans: the starship Enterprise studio model used in the original TV series. It’s being treated with the same care as the priceless historical artifact Flak-Bait, since it represents a pop-culture touchstone for many Americans who grew up in the 1960s, this editor included. Using a radiography unit borrowed from the National Zoo, they’re X-raying the model to see how it’s constructed and to identify any structural features that require special attention before the model is displayed in the revamped Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall at the downtown museum in July 2016. “Our overall goal is to strive for preserving the original artifact,” chief conservator Malcolm Collum says of the effort. “One of the goals of preservation and conservation is to try to improve the stability of the artifact for long-term display, but to try to alter it as little as possible from the original materials. “Being a conservator is sort of like following the same Hippocratic oath as being a doctor,” continues Collum. “These are all our patients: We try to treat them with an equal amount of care, with ‘do no harm’ as our main mantra. This model did so much to really engage the public with space exploration, it’s hard to put in words. People get emotional around it.” I’ll say.  PHOTOS: CARL VON WODTKE

Top: Smithsonian restoration specialist Anne McCombs points to damaged fabric on the rudder of the B-26B Flak-Bait. Above: Peter Flowers, a technician from the National Zoological Park, examines the starship Enterprise TV studio model in the Emil Buehler Conservation Lab.

“Our overall goal is to strive for preserving the original artifact.” –Malcolm Collum, chief conservator

MAY 2015 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

21

Back from Guadalcanal, Captain Marion Carl smiles from the cockpit at Naval Air Station Anacostia, Washington, D.C., in November 1942. Opposite above: Carl rips through a formation of Japanese B5N2 bombers from the light carrier Ryujo, in Roy Grinnell’s painting First Marine Ace.

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THE NATURAL Few pilots took to the air as easily as Marion Carl, who remains the consensus choice for the greatest Marine Corps aviator of all time BY BARRETT TILLMAN

NATURAL-BORN AVIATORS ARE EXTREMELY RARE. Humans aren’t designed to operate in three dimensions, and learning to adapt to the vertical normally requires study, determination and practice. The innate ability to excel in flight is a gift granted to very few. Marion Eugene Carl had that gift. Descended from Scandinavian immigrants, Marion Carl was born in a tent near tiny Hubbard, Ore., in November 1915. He lost his father as a youngster, and as the family’s second son, assumed many of the duties on the family farm. But Carl soon began envisioning a future far beyond the Willamette Valley. As he later said, “I never had any affection for a cow.” OPPOSITE: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; ABOVE: ©ROY GRINNELL

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recognized that a year of teaching nascent golden-wingers could enhance his own mastery of his craft. As an instructor, he would leave indelible impressions on many of his students, including Dakota farmboy Joe Foss, who at one point cadged a ride with Carl during an unscheduled night hop. As Foss later recalled, Carl indulged in some nocturnal aerobatics, then asked the aviation cadet how he liked it. “Fine, sir,” Foss burped. Then, as he related, “I upchucked the soles of my shoes.” Their paths would cross again far, far from Pensacola.

C An F4F-3 of Marine fighter squadron VMF-221 sits derelict on Midway after being hit by Zeros. Carl, in Wildcat no. 24, shot down one of those A6M2s for his first victory, on June 4, 1942.

Carl enrolled in Oregon State College in nearby Corvallis, studying aeronautical engineering while in Army ROTC. Along the way he earned a private pilot’s license, soloing a Taylor J-2 Cub in the nearly unheard-of time of 2½ hours. Upon graduation in 1938, he resigned his Army commission to apply for Navy flight training. At the time, this was an all-or-nothing gamble, as students who washed out went to the fleet as sailors. But Carl possessed a brand of confidence just this side of arrogance, and he felt certain he could complete the course. He received his wings of gold and a Marine Corps commission in December 1939. Marion wanted fighters, and he literally raced to Quantico, Va., to take the only available seat in Fighting Squadron One (VMF-1). He reveled in flying Grumman F3F biplanes, especially aerobatics, tactics and gunnery. Though he impressed commanders with his exceptional ability, his laid-back attitude occasionally caused problems. Carl once told the story of “supervising” a detail at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during a gunnery exercise. Apparently while overseeing the bore-sighting of some F3Fs’ guns, he did what wise lieutenants have always done: said “Carry on, Sergeant.” With that he lay down for a nap, ignoring the engine noise and gunfire. When the squadron CO came by, the result was additional noise directed in Lieutenant Carl’s direction. After a year in “Fighting One,” Carl returned to Pensacola, Fla., as a flight instructor. While he didn’t relish his new assignment, he

arl’s next orders proved more to his liking. He joined VMF-221, flying Brewster F2A-3 Buffalos on the West Coast, where he again served under Captain Harold Bauer, whom he had known at Quantico. Their earlier relationship had been coolly professional, and by this time both were mature aviators. “Indian Joe” Bauer was considered perhaps the finest talent in Marine aviation, which meant there was a faceoff to determine the pecking order. As Carl recalled it, “I finished inverted below the crest of a hill without either of us having gained an advantage.” Thereafter, mutual respect grew into friendship. On being promoted to major, Bauer rolled out to command his own squadron, and VMF-221 continued training. On December 7, 1941, Major Verne McCaul’s unit was alerted for immediate transfer to Midway Atoll. The Buffalos rode USS Saratoga to Midway later that month. The ensuing period, involving hours of dull patrols, was pure boredom for then-Captain Carl. To liven things up, he once slowrolled for an entire circuit of the lagoon. His wingman, obliged to follow him, was not pleased. Late in May 1942, things began to perk up. VMF-221, then under Major Floyd Parks, received some F4F-3 Wildcats, and Carl’s division took four of them. As it happened, he only had a few hours in the Grumman before the Japanese arrived. Early on June 4, more than 100 Japanese carrier aircraft staged an attack to neutralize Midway’s defenses, anticipating seizure of the atoll—part of a wider scheme to draw the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s carriers into a decisive battle. Radar gave the Marines enough warning to scramble before the enemy planes arrived, with the Wildcats and Buffalos clawing for altitude. By then a 26-year-old professional with 1,400 hours in the air, Carl would need all his expertise to survive that day. After the initial interception, he was jumped by an A6M2 Zero. As he later noted, “The metallic resonance of bullets striking your airplane cannot be mistaken for anything else.” He pulled into a tight turn, gaining enough time to dive vertically for a cloud. The Zero followed, and Carl abruptly slewed his Wildcat into an uncoordinated skid, forcing the enemy pilot into an overshoot. Carl got a quick sight picture and triggered a burst. Under negative Gs all four guns jammed, but

LATE IN MAY 1942, THINGS BEGAN TO PERK UP. VMF-221, THEN UNDER MAJOR FLOYD PARKS, RECEIVED SOME F4F-3 WILDCATS, AND CARL’S DIVISION TOOK FOUR OF THEM. HE ONLY HAD A FEW HOURS IN THE GRUMMAN BEFORE THE JAPANESE ARRIVED.

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NATIONAL ARCHIVES

A lineup of Wildcats stands ready at Henderson Field during the deadly land-sea-air struggle for Guadalcanal.

Left: Carl, now with VMF-223, poses with an F4F-4 at Henderson Field. Center: From left, Majors John Smith and Robert Galer with Captain Carl, after all three were awarded the Navy Cross on November 4, 1942. Right: Technical Sergeant R.W. Greenwood checks out the cockpit of an especially prolific Wildcat in which several Marine pilots scored victories—Carl among them.

the Japanese pilot disengaged. Carl tugged on the charging handles and got three guns working, then began stalking a lone Zero, diving into its pilot’s blind spot. Closing the range, he recalled, “The fighter took a concentrated cluster of .50-caliber hits and dropped into a spin. It never recovered.” Decades later, historians concluded that his victim was an enlisted pilot from the carrier Kaga. When the Americans landed again, Midway was a wreck. The fuel storage tanks were ablaze, and the squadron area had been leveled. Carl’s F4F was holed but still operational, as was one Buffalo that returned undamaged. The others were unserviceable. Worse, 15 of the 25 fighters that had scrambled that morning were missing. “Red” Parks and 13 of his pilots were gone forever.

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Later that day Carl and Captain Bill Humberd scrambled in response to another alert—two planes against an unknown enemy. This time it turned out to be a false alarm: Douglas SBD-3s from the carrier Hornet were coming to roost at Midway. Word soon got around that squadrons from Yorktown and Enterprise had destroyed all four Japanese carriers and sunk a cruiser before the enemy withdrew. Yorktown succumbed to damage on June 7, but overall the Battle of Midway was a stunning victory for the Americans and a turning point in the war. Though VMF-221 had been decimated, Carl demonstrated the emotional fortitude that would sustain him throughout his combat career. On the 6th he confided to his journal, “Feeling ready for another fight.” That next fight was 10 weeks away.

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Lt. Col. Carl with Gene May alongside the Douglas D-558-1 Skystreak. Carl and designer Ed Heinemann believed it could exceed the speed of sound, but the Navy was unwilling to fund another flight. Inset: Carl (far left) also hoped to go into space, but at 6-foot-2 was told he was too tall.

DURING THE LATE 1940S, WHEN THE NAVY AND AIR FORCE WERE COMPETING TO BECOME THE FIRST TO EXCEED THE SPEED OF SOUND, CARL WAS AMONG THE NAVAL AVIATORS ASSIGNED TO THE DOUGLAS D-558-1 PROJECT, FLYING THE RED SKYSTREAK TO A WORLD RECORD 650 MPH IN AUGUST 1947.

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arl and a few other Midway survivors were quickly reassigned to VMF-223, formed by John L. Smith, a newly promoted major who had never commanded a squadron. A tough, rawboned Oklahoman, Smith faced a serious challenge: preparing a new, mostly green outfit for combat before the end of August. The squadron focused on the basics—tactics and gunnery—while sorting out the new F4F-4 Wildcats. Additionally, the Marines qualified for carrier operations, an indication that they would likely be headed for a forward deployment in the near future.

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On August 20, Major Smith led 19 Wildcats off the short deck of the escort carrier Long Island with Lt. Col. Richard Mangrum’s dozen SBD Dauntlesses of VMSB-232. The flying leathernecks duly arrived over their advanced base on the northern plain of Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, becoming plank-owners in the “Cactus Air Force.” “Cactus” was Guadalcanal’s code name during Operation Watchtower, America’s first offensive of World War II. The Solomons were strategically positioned either to interdict or protect sea lanes from Samoa to Australia, and the Allies aimed to prevent the

PHOTOS: USAF FLIGHT TEST CENTER ARCHIVES

Japanese from expanding their bases in the area. When Carl arrived, however, the new airfield on Guadalcanal—named for Major Lofton Henderson, who had died at Midway—was within range of enemy artillery. Land-based bombers frequently attacked from Rabaul, some 600 miles northwest. Smith’s men lived under tents or shelter halves, eating canned food and Japanese rice, and performing aircraft maintenance in the open. On the 24th VMF-223 tied into a formation of Nakajima B5N2 bombers from the light carrier Ryujo plus twin-engine G4M1 Bettys. In a prolonged engagement, Carl gunned down four enemy airplanes, becoming the Marines’ first ace. Later that day planes from Saratoga sent Ryujo to the bottom. In all, Smith and company claimed 20 kills and probably got 12, losing one pilot. That day set the pattern for the CAF, which relied on coastwatchers for warnings of inbound raiders. As Carl explained: “We needed about 45 minutes to start up, take off and climb to altitude to intercept the bombers. I liked to attack from an overhead position because directly above the target you were mostly immune to return fire. The tail gunner might get a shot at you as you dived past, but if you did it right, by then he was dead.” On August 26, Marion was entering Henderson Field’s landing pattern when he was attacked by an audacious Zero pilot. Antiaircraft gunners protected the Wildcat, but as the enemy fighter made off Carl firewalled the throttle and cranked his wheels back up, determined to chase down the Japanese pilot. The Zero reversed course, approaching the F4F from overhead. The Marine flier accepted his challenge. He pulled into a near-vertical climb with maximum power, tracking the Zero for a full deflection shot. It was an all-or-nothing gamble: If he missed, the Zero would have him cold. But Carl didn’t miss. The enemy fighter exploded, showering parts along the beach. Later reports would show the pilot was Lt. j.g. Junichi Sasai, a 27-victory ace of the Tainan Kokutai (naval air group).

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arl and “Smitty” were soon engaged in a friendly rivalry for top score in the Cactus league. By September they were neck and neck at about a dozen each when Marion’s plane was hit by an unseen Zero, and he had to abandon ship. Five days later he returned to Henderson, reportedly demanding that Brig. Gen. Roy Geiger ground Smith for a comparable period. Besides his natural skill and frequent opportunities for combat, much of Carl’s success at Guadalcanal was based on his ability to sleep anywhere, ignoring ambient noise as he had at Guantanamo. That knack, combined with rugged Nordic stamina, kept him alert and eager for combat. When VMF-223 rotated out of Guadalcanal in early October, Smith and Carl were America’s leading aces, with 19 and 16.5 victories, respectively. “John L.” received the Medal of Honor, while Carl, promoted to major in early 1943, took over the squadron. Back at El Toro, Calif., Carl re-formed VMF-223, which was reequipped with Vought F4U-1 Corsairs. By that time he had married 19-year-old model Edna Kirvin, whom he met during a bond tour in New York. Their time together was limited. The squadron returned to the Pacific in July 1943, arriving at Vella Lavella, in the

Solomons, in November. Late that year the Allies began a campaign against the Japanese naval air bastion at Rabaul, on New Britain, in which VMF-223 regularly participated. Carl downed two more planes in December, running up his total to 18.5. But after the loss of noted Marine aces Greg Boyington (captured in January 1944) and Bob Hanson (killed in February), Carl’s tour was cut short. He was assigned to the first class at the Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Md., where he remained through the end of the war. By then Carl’s cockpit skills were legendary. While flying an F7F Tigercat at Patuxent River in 1945, he was jumped by an F8F Bearcat. The two Grummans chased each other around for a time, neither managing to gain an advantage. After landing, the Bearcat pilot, Lieutenant Alexander Vraciu—the Navy’s fourth-ranking ace—called operations and asked who had been flying that F7F. On hearing it was Lt. Col. Carl, he said, “Oh, that explains it!” It shouldn’t have been possible for the bigger, heavier Tigercat to maneuver with a well-flown Bearcat, but Carl had managed it. Carl relished testing a variety of aircraft. He became the first Marine to land a jet on a carrier and the second leatherneck to fly helicopters, though he didn’t apply for an official helo rating until much later in his career. During the late 1940s, when the Navy and Air Force were competing to become the first to exceed the speed of sound, Carl was among the naval aviators assigned to the Douglas D-558-1 project, flying the red Skystreak to a world record 650 mph in August 1947. He and Douglas designer Ed Heinemann were confident they could exceed Mach 1, but the Navy was unwilling to spend another $50,000 per flight. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager broke Carl’s record in the Bell X-1 two months later. Carl went on to command the Marine Corps’ first jet squadron, VMF-122, flying McDonnell FH-1 Phantoms in 1948. But he later returned to flight testing, and in 1953 piloted Douglas’ sleek white D-558-2 to a record 83,235 feet and an unofficial speed record of 1,100 mph.

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hat could be considered Carl’s ultimate test came one night in 1949, when he lost his electrical system—radio, lights and most instruments—while flying an F9F-2 from Los Angeles to San Diego. Then the engine quit. Rather than point the nose west and pull the handle, he accepted the challenge. He took advantage of excess altitude to buzz the North Island tower, hoping operators would illuminate the runway. But when there was no response from the tower, as he explained, “I pulled up from my pass at the tower and wrapped the Panther into a 270-degree turn. Everything was alright until the base leg, when the windscreen froze over. I had to skid the plane so I could look out one side, but I made a successful deadstick landing.” Carl hiked back to the tower and told the crew to arrange for a tow. The duty officer laconically answered, “Oh, I thought that was just somebody flat-hatting!” With additional success came the inevitable setbacks. In April 1952, Carl logged his second emergency jump while testing the Grumman AF-2 Guardian anti-submarine aircraft. Without a recovery tail chute, the plane entered a flat spin. He pulled the

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On occasion, for example, he would transhandle, but the ejection seat failed, forcport the wing’s band to performances via a ing him to bail out manually. It took him Douglas C-54 transport. two attempts before he got out at the last His final assignment was as inspector second. He landed in the splash of the general of the Marine Corps from 1970 Guardian, and was initially thought to have to 1973—a dead-end position engineered died in the incident. by rivals competing for a third star. Major Later that same year Carl landed short General Carl retired with 13,000 hours in in an F9F-5 that was beset by fuel and flap the cockpit, about twice as much flying time problems, fracturing a vertebra. He recovas his most active contemporaries. ered from that mishap, but the Panther had In retirement, he settled into life as an to be written off. avid outdoorsman in his native Oregon Carl also became a player in the covert near Roseburg, enjoying hunting, fishing action integral to the Cold War. Commandand hiking. Those who met him then were ing VMJ-1 in 1954, he was tasked by the usually astonished to learn about his miliPacific Fleet with conducting clandestine tary background, in part because he was recon missions over China, watching for extraordinarily quiet, almost to the point of hostile actions toward Taiwan. The squadCARL ALWAYS INSISTED shyness. In fact, Carl described aerial comron flew photo versions of the McDonbat and milking cows in the same tone. He nell F2H Banshee, and though Carl had EDNA GOT HIM HIS answered the phone with “This is Marion,” no experience with the mission, he trusted FIRST STAR, BUT HE and seldom if ever described himself as his subordinates. He flew armed escort for LIKED TO THINK THAT “General Carl.” the “photo Banos,” which were intercepted HE EARNED THE Approaching age 80, Carl showed signs by MiG-15s on one occasion. After exerSECOND ON HIS OWN. of impending Alzheimer’s—a concern to cising some world-class evasive aviating, Edna, as well as their daughter and son. he was surprised to find his wingman still Though his condition worsened as time with him. Later that lieutenant confided, went on, it didn’t prevent him from rescuing a boater who nearly “Colonel, I wasn’t about to lose you over China!” While leading Marine Air Group 33 in 1956, Carl enjoyed dog- drowned in the Umpqua River near the Carls’ home. On the night of June 28, 1998, a 19-year-old intruder broke into fighting all comers in free-for-alls over Southern California, even though full colonels were officially discouraged from indulging their house. When 82-year-old Marion confronted the criminal in such frivolities. He favored Douglas’ sporty F4D Skyray for its while trying to protect Edna, he was killed by a shotgun blast. climbing power and agility. At one point he was busted when a The murderer was caught in California, brought back to Oregon, junior birdman reported a particularly aggressive “Ford” pilot convicted and sentenced to death. In 2012, however, Oregon’s wearing a red flight suit—a gift from Grumman test pilot Corky governor suspended all executions, and the following year a judge ordered a new sentencing hearing. Meyer. Carl never wore it again. Wearing his dress blues, Maj. Gen. Marion Carl was buried in In the late 1950s Marion became interested in the nascent manned space program. Given his flight test background, he was Arlington National Cemetery. He rests there among fellow illustrimore than qualified, but his NASA career was scuttled before it ous Marines, including Joe Foss, Ken Walsh and Greg Boyington. Roseburg’s municipal airport was subsequently renamed Major began because at 6-foot-2 he was too tall for the cramped confines General Marion E. Carl Memorial Field. In 2001 Carl was inducted of a Mercury capsule. The Marine slot went to John Glenn. As a brigadier general, Carl took the 1st Marine Brigade to into the National Aviation Hall of Fame. MCAS Kaneohe, Hawaii, South Vietnam in 1965. While there, he continued flying nearly was also rededicated in his name in 2009. The late general’s impressive honors—21 combat decorations, everything in the inventory: A-4s, F-4s and F-8s, but mainly H-34 helicopters and UH-1 gunships. He relished the opportunity to triple-ace status and all the flight-test records—remain an inspirasupport Marine infantry, but like most military professionals was tion to modern aviators. But even taken as a whole, they can’t define not impressed with President Lyndon Johnson’s conduct of the the man. Had Marion Carl never flown in combat or strapped into war. Long afterward Carl commented, “My biggest job was pre- an X-plane, he would still have been that rare phenomenon: a natural-born airman. And a natural gentleman.  venting us from doing something stupid.”

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arl always insisted Edna got him his first star, but he liked to think that he earned the second on his own. In 1967 he assumed command of the 2nd Aircraft Wing at Cherry Point, N.C. Disappointed with the 9-to-5 attitude he found there, he tightened up the discipline considerably—resulting in some resentment—but also continued flying.

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Arizona-based aviation writer Barrett Tillman has authored more than 50 books and 650 magazine articles. His latest book is Forgotten Fifteenth: The Daring Airmen Who Crippled Hitler’s War Machine. With Maj. Gen. Marion Carl he penned Pushing the Envelope: The Career of Fighter Ace and Test Pilot Marion Carl, which is recommended for further reading.

U.S. MARINE CORPS

MODELING

BUILD MARION CARL’S WILDCAT I n the January 2005 issue we highlighted Lieutenant James Swett’s Grumman F4F-4. Now you can use that same kit to build a model celebrating the career of first-ever World War II Marine Corps ace Marion Carl. Tamiya’s 1/48th-scale F4F-4 Wildcat was released in 1994, and after more than 20 years is still rated the “best of the best” in any scale. It’s regarded as an award-winner out of the box, with no aftermarket additions, though this kit can be built into a museum-quality model with a few extras. The cockpit is complete without additions, but Eduard has produced a set of etched details (interior set FE246) that makes this front office even more realistic. First paint the cockpit interior green, FS-34151. Clip the etched pieces from the pre-painted fret and glue them to the instrument and side panels. Note the set includes a detailed throttle quadrant and full seat-harness parts. With the cockpit finished, cement the landing gear bulkhead to the front of the cockpit. Then cement the completed assembly to one of the fuselage sides. While waiting for these parts to set solid, insert the horizontal stabilizer pieces into place and glue them from the inside of the fuselage sides. Once all these components are set, cement the fuselage parts together. Spray the gear compartment and upper portion of the landing gear insignia white, FS-17875. Paint and attach the intercooler to the inside of the gear compartment. Tamiya has reproduced the wings with a somewhat overstated rivet pattern. Some light sanding will tone down the rivets before you position the upper portion of the wings and then glue them to the fuselage. Note that if you’ve attached the wings properly, there’ll be no need to clean up these seams later. Once the wing-top parts are dry, glue the bottom section into place, being careful not to damage the

TOP: DICK SMITH; BOTTOM: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Left: An F4F-4 flown by Carl and other Marine aviators—the aircraft on which this issue’s model is based—awaits another mission on Guadalcanal.

spindly upper landing gear assembly. The Pratt & Whitney R-1830-66 Twin Wasp engine has been adequately replicated by Tamiya, but a resin version of the 1,200-hp power plant is available from Quickboost (QB 48-013). Paint the engine cylinders steel, then dry-brush with black to bring out the details. Next spray the crankcase light gray, FS-16495, and dry-brush it with silver to show wear from maintenance. Next paint the interior of the cowling insignia white and set aside. When the engine parts are dry, cement them to the front of the fuselage. Do not attach the cowling at this time. The basic airframe construction is now complete, but you still have to assemble the lower portion of the landing gear and paint it gloss black, FS-17038. Marine Wildcat tires were very dark gray, an indication of the harsh conditions in which these aircraft served. Tamiya’s “NATO black” provides a good contrasting shade here. The six .50-caliber wing guns are poorly represented in this kit. I drilled out the positions and inserted individ-

ual pieces of Minimeca 1.2mm x 20mm stainless steel tubing into the wings. Next assemble the long-range drop tanks and paint them light gray, FS36495, to coincide with the Wildcat’s underside camouflage. The topsides of land-based Marine F4F-4s were painted blue-gray, FS35189. Once you’ve finished the painting, apply a coat of acrylic floor wax to provide a glossy base for the decals to adhere to. The simple markings for Carl’s aircraft are from Cutting Edge decal sheet CED-48120. This model has appeared in some publications with significant weathering and wear. But it seems doubtful that a crew chief would allow a high-scoring ace’s aircraft to look scruffy, regardless of the conditions under which it served. Yours will appear to be well maintained. Finish by painting the canopy and windscreen parts and cementing them to the fuselage using white glue. Finally, paint the propeller flat black, FS-37038, with insignia yellow tips. Dick Smith

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THE OTHER CACTUS AIR FORCE Although accounts of the defense of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal typically focus on Marine Corps air and ground units, the contributions of the Army Air Forces were also vital to victory BY LAWRENCE SPINETTA

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“Why the hell do we want to take some little place nobody’s ever heard of?” complained a young U.S. Marine preparing for an August 7, 1942, amphibious assault on Guadalcanal, one of six islands in the Solomon chain in the South Pacific. The island’s geographic obscurity had led the leatherneck to dismiss its strategic value. But the six-month campaign that followed reversed the course of the Pacific War. The outcome was anything but assured. Immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces overwhelmed the Philippines, Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, Wake Island, New Britain, the Gilbert Islands and Guam. Still reeling from the onslaught, America managed to halt the Japanese advance at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Even so, the Japanese made a diversionary feint north, attacking Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and seizing Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians before pushing deep into the 30

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South Pacific, flooding the Solomon Islands with tens of thousands of troops. On July 5, Allied coastwatchers reported that Japanese forces were building an airfield on Guadalcanal, threatening the Allies’ lifeline to Australia. Concerned, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) directed Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Chester Nimitz to intervene. The landing was hurriedly planned and carried out with such meager resources that troops dubbed it Operation Shoestring. Worse, the operation was poorly led. Vice Admiral Robert Ghormley, whom Nimitz appointed commander, South Pacific, spent most of his time holed up in his headquarters on another island and failed to set foot on Guadalcanal. To prevent a debacle, Nimitz, citing the admiral’s uninspiring and indecisive leadership, would replace Ghormley with the more focused and aggressive Vice Adm. William F. Halsey on October 18.

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Left: B-17Es taxi onto Henderson Field before a January 9, 1943, sortie. Above: A P-400 of the 67th Fighter Squadron.

troops, supported by aerial firepower from Marine, Navy and AAF planes, turned the tide of the battle. These joint efforts, which succeeded by only the narrowest of margins, turned Guadalcanal into “the graveyard of the Japanese army,” according to a Japanese general on the island. Another Japanese flag officer observed, “Japan’s doom was sealed with the closing of the struggle for Guadalcanal.” While all the services were indispensable to victory, the Army Air Forces’ contributions are the least known. The requirements of global war forced it to prioritize other theaters. Moreover, the Navy-dominated command structure of the South Pacific confined the AAF to a supporting role. Nevertheless, operating within those constraints, it wore out its men and machines in the combined effort to seize and hold the island.

What stopped the Japanese? Much of the credit belongs to the indomitable fighting spirit of the American servicemen. Heroes such as Lt. Col. Lewis B. Puller and Major Joseph J. Foss fought valiantly. “Chesty” Puller, commander of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, earned his third Navy Cross in a three-hour firefight against a Japanese regiment that October. Marine ace of aces Joe Foss of fighter squadron VMF-121, one of six aviators to earn the Medal of Honor during the Guadalcanal campaign, shot down 26 Japanese airplanes. However, individual acts of bravery do not explain why the brutal conflict gradually yielded a decisive U.S. victory. The answer lies in the record of all the services. Army Air Forces bombers struck enemy strongpoints, such as Rabaul, and ships bound for Guadalcanal. Navy cruisers and battleships further choked Japanese reinforcement and resupply. Finally, Marine and Army ground

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t the outset of the war, President Franklin Roosevelt directed the JCS to focus on Germany while conducting a holding action against Japan. His “Europe First” strategy resulted in understrength AAF units in the Pacific operating outdated equipment. Case in point, 67th Fighter Squadron pilots on Guadalcanal flew the Bell P-400, an underpowered export version of the P-39 Airacobra that was ill-suited for high-altitude combat. Upset with the airplane’s limitations after the first dogfights, 1st Marine Division commander Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift told Ghormley, “P-400s will not be employed further except in extreme emergency; they are entirely unsuited.” Army Air Forces chief General Henry “Hap” Arnold, however, rejected Vandegrift’s call for more and better aircraft. Arnold thought seizing and holding the Solomons was necessary but was unwilling to take resources away from the AAF’s primary effort, the destruction of German industry. He told Vandegrift to get by with the forces he had and to expect a trickle of reinforcements. MAY 2015 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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Left: U.S. Navy Seabees and Solomon Islanders lay Marsden matting at Henderson Field. One of the field’s defenders, an F4F-4 Wildcat, sits behind them at right. Right: Easily installed and repaired, the steel matting was especially appreciated by B-17 crews.

Arnold complained about the command arrangement in the South Pacific, expressing disdain over having to cede operational control of AAF units to Ghormley, a ship captain. General George Marshall, Army chief of staff, brokered a compromise with Halsey. Major General Millard Harmon was appointed commanding general of U.S. Army forces in the South Pacific. He arrived in theater on July 29, one week prior to the start of the Guadalcanal offensive. Arnold told Harmon he was responsible for protecting AAF interests. That meant restricting operations in the South Pacific to those necessary to support the strategic defensive. As such, Harmon could expect to receive “second-string” players and equipment. That second-string team, however, would rise to the occasion. In September 1942, pilots flying P-400s, an aircraft Vandegrift initially categorized as unsuitable, repeatedly strafed a Japanese force that

came within 1,000 yards of overrunning the airfield. An elated Vandegrift greeted the pilots on landing, saying: “You’ll never read it in the papers but that P-400 mission of yours at Bloody Ridge saved Guadalcanal.” Shortly thereafter, in a letter to his wife, the general wrote: “[Our pilots] have been doing a superb job and licking hell out of the Japs. When you see these boys go up and know what they are doing, it makes you proud to have them with you.”

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-17s were the first to spring into action against the Japanese on Guadalcanal. The 11th Bombardment Group hacked a primitive airstrip from the jungle on Espiritu Santo, 640 miles southeast of Guadalcanal, as a temporary staging field. The JCS plan called for seizing the runway on Guadalcanal and lengthening it to accommodate bombers. But

Left: Marine armorers hang ammunition belts out to dry before the next mission at Henderson. Right: After positioning an improvised jack beneath the wing of a damaged P-39 Airacobra, Army mechanics undertake repairs to its landing gear.

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frequent enemy attacks prevented anything other than sporadic bomber operations from the island. Seabees battled to keep the runway open using prefabricated Marsden matting and pre-positioned dump trucks carrying loads measured to fit the size of the expected craters, but they rarely succeeded in making the runway viable for large aircraft. Fighters, on the other hand, were better able to taxi around craters and take off in shorter distances. Vandegrift’s forces landed on Guadalcanal after a week of preparatory bombing. They quickly secured the airfield, although a lack of planning meant supplies piled up on the beach in disarray. Fortunately for the fledgling landing force, the Japanese were slow to counterattack. They believed the purpose of the invasion was to destroy the airfield and then withdraw. When the Japanese realized the Americans were there to stay, they rushed reinforcements through “the Slot,” the seaway between the New Georgia Islands on the west and Santa Isabel and Choiseul to the east. Japanese and American reconnaissance aircraft fought for the high ground above the Slot, trying to determine each other’s order of battle. On September 6, a B-17 exchanged shots at 200 yards with a massive Japanese flying boat. Battered, the B-17 limped home. The next day, an enemy round penetrated the oil tank of another B-17’s no. 1 engine, causing a fire. The crewmen shut down the engine and bravely elected to continue their mission, spending 30 minutes strafing enemy barges. On September 9, another B-17 was not so lucky. It did not survive its aerial encounter, bursting into flames and crashing on Rendova Island. Despite the loss, Ghormley preferred B-17s over Navy PBYs for surveillance. With its considerable firepower, the Flying Fortress was better able to cling to enemy convoys and survive. For instance, Captain J.E. Joham orbited above a convoy for 30 minutes while dodging Japanese planes and flak. Fighters shot away the B-17’s tail surfaces, but the Flying Fort downed three of them in the process. Badly damaged, the bomber was able to limp 600 miles back to Espiritu. Before departing, Joham accurately reported the enemy convoy’s location to the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing on Guadalcanal, which readied its torpedo and dive bombers for an attack. At first, Ghormley prohibited B-17s from carrying bombs, to give them more range and endurance for surveillance. He partially relented after AAF crews begged for bombs to hit ships moving down the Slot, allowing some planes to carry half a payload of 500-pounders. B-17 crews quickly discovered that hitting targets in combat was far more difficult than in practice runs during training. Only a few had had the opportunity to practice against the Navy’s target ship Utah when the group passed through Hawaii en route to Espiritu. Now they faced destroyers and cruisers that could, in the words of bombardiers, “turn on a dime,” causing bombs to land 100 to 200 feet off target. Initial results were predictably poor: Less than 2 percent of bombs hit their intended targets. Crews suggested their low success rate was due to fatigue from grinding 12-hour sorties. They also cited a lack of ordnance mass. AAF tactics called for a nine-plane attack, which was impossible to assemble given the squadron’s size and maintenance woes. “We felt that we were doing pretty well if we got six airplanes together,” remarked one pilot. Even so, on August 25 a flight of B-17s scored a lucky hit that sank the destroyer Mutsuki. Unlike Maj. Gen. George Kenney, who embraced skip-bombing U.S. MARINE CORPS

in the Southwest Pacific, Harmon refused to deviate from highaltitude tactics because he didn’t want to lose crews to what he called the “sacrificial nature” of skip-bombing. Low-altitude attacks also required more fuel, without which his bombers couldn’t complete their long return trip to Espiritu. One Navy officer derided the AAF’s high-altitude attacks as “sniping.” Despite meager box scores, however, bomber attacks played an important role in limiting Japanese naval action. Even if they didn’t achieve direct hits, the bombers caused enemy convoys to disperse, making them more vulnerable to subsequent torpedo and dive-bomber attacks. Additionally, they passed intelligence on Japanese fleet movements to Navy ships, improving the effectiveness of the American blockade.

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o avoid being slowly strangled by a tightening noose of American air and naval forces, the Japanese planned a major ground offensive for October 1942. They assembled two divisions—nearly 17,500 troops—and planned to send them south aboard the “Tokyo Express” through the Slot. A key part of their plan was taking out the airfield on Guadalcanal, which the Americans had christened Henderson Field in honor of Major Lofton Henderson, who died leading a dive-bomber attack at the Battle of Midway. Preventing American airpower from flying from Henderson would mean a safer journey through the Slot for Japanese transport ships, allowing them to mass troops and supplies to overrun the Americans. The Japanese added 85 fighters and bombers to Rabaul’s strength, and on October 12 launched multiple waves of planes to pound Henderson. The second wave caught American fighters on the ground, destroying or inflicting damage on scores of them. The next night, the sound of a small enemy aircraft overhead awoke troops on Guadalcanal. The scout dropped three flares—red at the west end of the airstrip, green at the east and white in the center. Shortly thereafter, a massive bombardment force consisting of two battleships, a light cruiser and eight destroyers, which had

On November 2, 1942, a Japanese bomber scored a direct hit on this SBD-3, which had been concealed in a coconut grove.

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slipped up to Guadalcanal under cover of darkness, opened up on the airfield at a distance of 16,000 meters—point-blank range in terms of naval fire. An 80-minute salvo followed. The Japanese walked fragmentation shells, specifically designed to destroy land targets, across the airfield in a perfect pattern. “All over the field, aircraft went up in clouds of smoke and flame,” wrote an AAF historian. “In hundreds of foxholes and improved bomb shelters, men clung to the ground, cursing, praying, and in some cases, going out of their minds.” The bombardment heavily damaged both runways, burned most of the aviation fuel stockpile, destroyed 48 of the 90 aircraft on the field and killed 41 men. The shelling temporarily stopped at 3 a.m., resuming at daybreak along with attacks by waves and waves of bombers. Japanese artillery, nicknamed “Pistol Pete” by the Americans, also intermittently rained down on the airfield. Seabees worked for hours to repair the runway. By midafternoon, they succeeded in patching it up enough for four fighters carrying 300-pound bombs and three P-400s loaded with 100-pounders to take off. They found the Japanese task force off Santa Isabel Island, but heavy anti-aircraft fire and violent maneuvers rebuffed their attack. The lack of fuel limited the American counterattack. Two hours later, however, someone remembered a pair of abandoned B-17s, victims of a previous Japanese artillery attack. Airmen siphoned their tanks to get enough gas for another four P-400s to get airborne. Meanwhile, Japanese artillerymen resumed shelling the airfield. Pilots, with parachutes strapped on, waited in nearby foxholes. Between explosions, they made a dash for their planes but did not reach their cockpits before the next volley caught them in the open. Luckily, Pistol Pete missed and the pilots sped their P-400s crazily down the runway, dodging craters while explosions literally opened new holes behind their aircraft. The “Klunkers” staggered and wobbled as they lifted off, barely clearing the trees. The situation was desperate. A Marine colonel visiting the 67th Fighter Squadron headquarters warned: “We don’t know whether we’ll be able to hold the field or not. There’s a Japanese task force

The troopship Yamatsuki Maru and a Type A midget submarine lie grounded in Kamimbo Bay after the battle for Guadalcanal.

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of destroyers, cruisers and troops transports headed our way. We have enough gasoline left for one mission against them. Load your airplanes with bombs and go out with the dive bombers and hit them. After the gas is gone we’ll have to let the ground troops take over. Then your officers and men will attach yourselves to some infantry outfit. Good luck and good-bye.” At midnight on October 14, Japanese transports anchored 10 miles from Henderson Field, pouring more than 10,000 troops and supplies ashore. Gas was on the way, if the Americans on Guadalcanal could hold out. Starting on the morning of the 15th, Harmon arranged for a stream of Douglas C-47s to serve as a lifeline. Each transport ferried 12 drums of aviation fuel, enough to keep a dozen fighters airborne for an hour. In addition, personnel scoured the beachhead for any stray caches of fuel that might have been overlooked. By the end of the day, the Americans had accumulated 400 drums, replenishing their fuel stocks. During the lull in flying due to the lack of gas, crew chiefs worked diligently to patch up battered planes. In one four-ship, three aircraft had damaged machine guns while the fourth was unable to carry bombs. Pilots joked about their worn-out machines: “Well, [we thought] they would scare the hell of out the Japs anyway— keep them running. Maybe some of them would break their necks diving into holes.” Pilots belted their own ammunition, while armament crews, lacking munitions carts, endured the backbreaking work of carrying and hoisting 500-pound bombs onto bomb racks. They did this on empty stomachs, forced to subsist on hardtack and cold hash for more meals than the men would care to remember.

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he Americans braced for a major assault, which occurred on October 23-25. Fortunately, Harmon had convinced Ghormley that Guadalcanal needed to be reinforced with more ground troops if the Allies were to defend the island against the expected Japanese offensive. The timely arrival of 2,837 men from the Army’s 164th Regimental Combat Team on October 13 bolstered the beleaguered Marines. When the attack came, the Americans buckled but did not break. Shrieking Japanese threw themselves against the Marine and Army defensive lines around Henderson Field. Enemy squads reached the crest of the ridge overlooking the airstrip before falling back due to withering fire. After the attack, 600 enemy dead lay in front of Army positions, and even more in front of Chesty Puller’s Marines. Five Zeros and seven enemy bombers circled over Henderson, apparently waiting for their landing signal after receiving word that the Japanese had overrun the airfield. Instead, eight F4F-4 Wildcats left the muddy field and shot them all down. Still, the Japanese did not give up. On November 12, they sent a convoy of 11 transports, escorted by an equal number of destroyers, carrying an estimated 18,000 to 35,000 fresh troops, enough to swamp Guadalcanal’s defenders. On the 14th, TBF Avengers scored two torpedo hits on the Japanese battleship Hiei, which had been left dead in the water from naval hits the night before. B-17s also relayed the location of the convoy to dive and torpedo bomber pilots, who proceeded to inflict more damage. AAF airmen teamed with their Marine brothers to engage in the wild melee. Hiei was

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

A B-17 departs to bomb Japanese targets on December 19, 1942, overflying a Marine detachment that is en route to a mopping-up operation against remaining enemy troops close to Henderson Field. Guadalcanal would be declared secured on February 9, 1943.

finally abandoned and sank that evening, the first Japanese battleship to be lost in action. The cooperative effort led Foss to remark, “You fellows can play ball on our team any day.” By November 15, only four troopships that ran the American air and naval gantlet had reached Guadalcanal; the others were sunk or gutted by fire. Seeking to exploit the tactical victory, the Americans launched a ground offensive supported by additional airpower. The precarious situation on Guadalcanal convinced the JCS to maintain 72 heavy bombers, 57 medium bombers and 150 fighters in the South Pacific. It also gave birth to the Thirteenth Air Force. Harmon wrote Arnold that the existing command structure made it “impossible for me as Commander of all Army forces to exercise directly the command responsibility of air units that is required and necessary to insure their preparedness, proper distribution, and accomplishment of operations to the extent of which I am responsible.” Arnold agreed, establishing the new command in January 1943. A regular flow of reinforcements, including more capable planes such as newer models of the P-39 and new Lockheed P-38F Lightnings, began arriving shortly after the birth of the Thirteenth Air Force. This was a welcome relief for tired crews flying worn-out equipment. Veterans were stretched to the breaking point after months of combat. Indeed, a flight surgeon warned that one-third of the enlisted men and more than half the flying officers required immediate relief “if they are to be salvaged for further useful service.” As the American offensive gained momentum, AAF fighters

AP PHOTO/U.S. NAVY

hammered enemy positions, prepping the battlefield for a final ground offensive to push the Japanese off the island. Fighters raced up and down the beaches and jungles of Guadalcanal, bombing, strafing and harassing the Japanese. Vandegrift used AAF airpower to destroy enemy positions that blocked the path of his Marines. Meanwhile, bombers destroyed enemy supply depots and prevented scattered resistance from gathering critical mass. The American offensive quickly outdistanced ground supply lines. Not willing to give the enemy any respite, Harmon directed his B-17 crews to find novel ways to resupply troops from the air. They wrapped 15,000 pounds of ammunition and supplies in canvas and burlap, fastened improvised parachutes and dropped them out windows and bomb bays of their aircraft. Organized enemy resistance came to an end on the afternoon of February 9. The Japanese abandoned all those who could not reach beaches to be taken aboard the Tokyo Express. While the ground forces temporarily relaxed, the Army Air Forces did not. Its crews immediately set their sights on Japanese strongholds in the northern Solomons.  Colonel Lawrence Spinetta commands the U.S. Air Force’s RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV fleet. For further reading, he recommends: The Army Air Forces in World War II, Volume Four: The Pacific, Guadalcanal to Saipan: August 1942 to July 1944, edited by Wesley Craven and James Cate.

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DRAFTING TABLE

ACES

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©TYSON V. RININGER/TVR PHOTOGRAPHY

NINE UNSUNG DESIGNERS WHO CONCEIVED SOME OF THE WORLD’S MOST SIGNIFICANT AIRCRAFT BY STEPHAN WILKINSON

In July 2010, DC-3s gather in Rock Falls, Ill., for the 75th anniversary of the iconic transport. Above right: Chief engineer Arthur E. Raymond had a strong hand in the design of every airliner Douglas built from the DC-1 through the DC-8.

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he red carpet for great aircraft designers has been trod by names that may not be household fare but certainly are known in every hangar. Kelly Johnson, Ed Heinemann, Jack Northrop, Burt Rutan, Igor Sikorsky, the expat Alexanders de Seversky and Kartveli. Willi Messerschmitt, Claude Dornier, Ernst Heinkel and Kurt Tank. R.J. Mitchell of Spitfire fame, Geoffrey de Havilland and A.V. Roe. Mikoyan and Gurevich, Sukhoi and Yakovlev, Antonov and the father-and-son Tupolevs....It helps that famous airplanes bore most of their names. Virtually all these men also designed warplanes, which certainly fosters public recognition as well. Yet there is another level of aeronautical engineers of great accomplishment whose exploits are known largely to the cognoscenti, the enthusiasts, the insiders. Many of these designers worked in general aviation—what the public broadly considers to be lightplanes—and many simply never sought publicity or broad public approval. Here are nine whose names deserve to be better known.

Arthur E. Raymond Never has so famous an airplane had so anonymous a lead engineer. Though he would have been the first to point out that it was a team effort, Arthur Raymond is credited with designing the Douglas DC-3, an airplane that is on everybody’s list of the 10 most important aircraft ever to fly. In fact Raymond, the company’s chief engineer, had a strong hand in every airliner Douglas built from the DC-1 through the DC-8; his contribution to the DC-4 was also particularly important. Raymond graduated from Harvard in 1921—the only major league aircraft engineer to attend the college far more famous for producing presidents—and went on to get his aeronautical engineering degree at MIT. His first Douglas job was as a lowly metal fitter, and when Donald Douglas contacted MIT in search of a good engineer, he was told that exactly that person was already working in his fabrication shop. Raymond spent the next 35 years at Douglas, the only aircraft company for which he ever worked. After his retirement in 1960, Raymond became a NASA consultant on the Gemini and Apollo projects. With a reputation for integrity and the ability to deal frankly with powerful people, he was charged with overseeing outside contractors. Nor did his repu-

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tation fail him when Boeing asked for a huge subsidy to develop a supersonic transport. Raymond, a lonely voice amid a babble of speed fans in the aviation industry, helped to convince the government that a supersonic airliner would never earn a dime, and the Boeing project died. While he was still at Douglas, Raymond and Donald Douglas helped found the controversial RAND neoconservative think tank, which was initially a division of Douglas Aircraft formed to advise the USAAF. Arthur Emmons Raymond died in 1999, two days shy of his 100th birthday.

Richard W. Palmer Dick Palmer designed one of the most beautiful airplanes ever to fly, and also one of the uglier ones. The first was the famous Hughes H-1 racer, the second the long-forgotten Vultee XP-54 “Swoose Goose.” Palmer, a quiet and studious CalTech grad, originally worked for Howard Hughes as a young Lockheed engineer in the early 1930s to extensively clean up and modify the Boeing 100A—a civilianized Army Air Corps P-12/Navy F4B—that the oil-patch multimillionaire was using as his first air racer. Hughes liked Palmer’s After setting a transcontinental speed record in 1937, Howard Hughes (left) shakes hands with Richard Palmer, who designed the Hughes H-1 (below) in which he achieved that feat. Palmer was also responsible for the far less successful twin-boom, pusher-prop Vultee XP-54 “Swoose Goose” (right).

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work, so he commissioned him to design and engineer the H-1. As usual, Hughes, neither a designer nor an engineer, took much of the credit for that work himself, as he later would with the Lockheed Constellation. In fact, his main contribution was laying out the parameters for his team: to design an airplane that would fly faster and higher than anything else in the world at the time. For awhile, the airplane was generally referred to as the “Palmer racer,” which couldn’t have made Howard happy. When Hughes landed at Newark Airport in January 1937 after setting a transcontinental speed record in the H-1, he was greeted by Palmer, to whom he said, “I knew she was fast, but I didn’t know she was that fast.” Thanks to Palmer, the H-1 was at the time the world’s most aerodynamically refined aircraft. It would be the last non-military-derived airplane to set an ultimate world speed record. Palmer went on to work for Vultee, where he designed the handsome but unsuccessful P-66 Vanguard fighter and the particularly successful BT-13 Valiant basic trainer—the “Vultee Vibrator” flown at some point by virtually every World War II Army Air Forces pilot. Palmer’s swan song—well, goose song—was the XP-54, a huge, gawky, twin-boom, gull-winged, pusher-prop single with a complex 24-cylinder, air-cooled Lycoming H-2470—basically two horizontally opposed flat 12s, one atop the other, driving a common crank between them. The engine was a failure and so was the Swoose Goose.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: GETTY; AVIATION HISTORY COLLECTION/ALAMY; KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Edward J. Swearingen Lifelong Texan Ed Swearingen didn’t come to design airplanes via an aeronautical engineering degree, a test pilot career or a tech school education. An eighth-grade dropout, Swearingen first became an A&P mechanic and then an innovative electronics technician as well. He worked with warbird modifier Dee Howard turning Lockheed PV-1 Venturas into Howard 500 hotrod business planes, and then joined Bill Lear’s new company to help create some of the earliest advanced bizjet autopilots. Swearingen started his own performance-modifications company, and as a consultant to Piper Aircraft converted the Comanche single into the Twin Comanche, one of the handsomest and most successful light twins of the 1960s-70s general aviation boom years. But Ed’s most widely recognized design was the Swearingen Merlin turboprop, a Beech King Air competitor that ultimately was substantially stretched to become the Fairchild Metro commuterliner—a cramped, tube-fuselage speedster known to some as the Texas Tampon. Swearingen also designed the SX-300 kitplane, a short-coupled little 300-hp homebuilt that was the first of a new generation of high-performance, high-horsepower, amateur-built superplanes. His final design, the SJ30, was a light and fast sweptwing bizjet intended to be owner-flown, which after bouncing between investors from Dubai to China, has finally found itself a U.S. owner and potential manufacturer in Utah. Until the day Swearingen died in May 2014, however, he remained fascinated by the possibility of a truly supersonic business jet, for which he had completed the plans.

TOP & INSET: WEIDER HISTORY ARCHIVE; ABOVE: PAUL BOWEN PHOTOGRAPHY

Eighth-grade dropout Edward Swearingen (left) applied his hands-on knowledge to designing the SX-300 (above), ushering in a new generation of highperformance kitplanes.

Emivest Aerospace recently announced plans to manufacture Swearingen’s last design, the SJ30, a light, fast business jet.

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Fred E. Weick

Roy LoPresti (left) was an expert in aerodynamic cleanup, exemplified by his Fury (above), a rework of the 1946 Globe Swift that wrung an extra 60 mph out of the original design.

Leroy P. LoPresti Nobody ever called him that. He was Roy to all who knew him. LoPresti spent six years as an Air Force pilot, including a stint during the Korean War followed by work as a fighter test pilot at Wright Field—not the norm for aeronautical engineers—and he was also unusual in being a spacecraft designer as well as an airplane guy. While working for Grumman in the 1960s, LoPresti became responsible for much of the engineering of NASA’s LEM—the Apollo Program lunar excursion module. LoPresti’s specialty was imaginative aerodynamic cleanup and refinement—finessing the tiny details that can turn just another airplane into a speedy contender. His best-known reworks were the Mooney 201 and 231, which converted an aging 1955 design into a serious competitor among four-seat, single-engine retractables to this day. LoPresti also designed the pressurized, six-seat Mooney 301; though only one prototype was built, the project was taken over by a French consortium and eventually sired the Socata TBM700/850/900 line of multimillion-dollar turboprop singles. As vice president and chief engineer of Beech Aircraft, LoPresti oversaw creation of the technologically advanced Beech Starship, a sweptwing, pusher turboprop canard of composite construction. The Starship was a commercial disaster—Beech built more than 50 of them but sold only 11—yet it remains an airplane legendary for its futuristic lines and the nothing-ventured-nothing-gained boldness of the concept. During the dozen years before his death in 2002, Roy ran LoPresti Speed Merchants, a small family company—today called LoPresti Aviation—that specializes in the modification and aerodynamic cleanup of a variety of production lightplanes. His most unusual yet characteristic project: the LoPresti Fury, a thorough reworking of an elderly two-seat retractable taildragger, the Globe Swift, an airplane that first flew in 1946. LoPresti found another 60 mph in the old bird through airframe and power plant modifications. Speed merchant indeed. 40

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Weick was a child of the 19th century whose aeronautical accomplishments date back to the early 1920s. He worked with Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, yet his later designs are flying even today. Some of his concepts, such as the original Piper Cherokee and the first purpose-built crop-duster, have helped shape 21stcentury aviation. Weick led the development of the NACA cowling, a subtle but remarkably effective reshaping of radial engine covers that greatly reduced drag, enhanced cooling and added substantial speed to airplanes that had previously used cowls simply as sheetmetal rings to hide the greasy bits and catch leaking engine oil. From the early 1930s through WWII, however, virtually every airplane with radial engines wore Weick’s NACA cowlings, from the earliest DC-2s to the biggest Super Constellations. In 1934 Weick and a cadre of off-the-clock NACA engineers came up with the Weick W-1A, a garage-built attempt to make a safe, unspinnable, easy-to-land lightplane. Weick didn’t invent tricycle landing gear—Glenn Curtiss had put a nosewheel on even his earliest crates—but the tri-gear W-1A would lead to the first modern airplane that eventually turned taildraggers into vintage curiosities. That revolutionary lightplane was the twin-tail ERCO Ercoupe. The Ercoupe had no rudder pedals and was steered like a car, by a wheel. Okay, call it a yoke, but the airplane was so easy to fly that it was initially sold in department stores such as Macy’s and J.C. Penney. Weick joined the faculty of Texas A&M after WWII, and there he designed what would become the Piper Pawnee—an efficient, crashworthy alternative to decades of war-surplus Stearmans converted into crop-dusters. With few exceptions, every “aerial applicator” built since Weick’s original Pawnee has followed his singleseat, high-cockpit, low-wing, hopper-forward formula. After developing the NACA cowling, Fred Weick (right) went on to design the ERCO Ercoupe (below), renowned for its docile handling characteristics.

TOP PHOTOS: WEIDER HISTORY ARCHIVE; BOTTOM INSET: NASA; BOTTOM: PAUL BOWEN PHOTOGRAPHY

Left: A Thorp T-18 flies over Wisconsin during AirVenture 2012. Above: John Thorp’s design for a “flying motorcycle,” the Lockheed Little Dipper, with its pusher cousin, the Big Dipper. Below: Milo Burcham stands next to test pilot Tony LeVier, in the Little Dipper’s cockpit.

Yet Weick’s most ubiquitous contribution to aviation is what many would consider his most mundane: co-designership of the original Piper PA-28 Cherokee, which has gone through dozens of iterations—single- and multi-engine, stretched and other variants—some of which are still being produced today.

John W. Thorp Though John Thorp was responsible for the preliminary design of the post-WWII, super-long-range Lockheed P2V Neptune patrol bomber, his heart lay with lightplanes. He has been called the greatest lightplane designer in America, and the list of his 14-odd major designs spans five decades, from the 1930s to the ’70s. Best known among them is the ubiquitous Thorp T-18 homebuilt. More than 400 are flying, and in 1976 a T-18 made the first successful round-the-world jaunt by a homebuilt. The T-18 was the original simple, all-metal, amateur-built airplane designed to be easier to construct than the typical rag-and-tube experimental. Thorp began the project when he chanced upon a junkyard selling hundreds of surplus 125-hp Lycoming ground-power units for $100 apiece and decided to modify one of his late-1930s paper designs around that power plant. But the most successful of his projects was the Piper Cherokee, which he and Fred Weick brought to fruition together. Thorp did the basic design, Weick then prototyped it for production, and

ABOVE LEFT: ©TYSON V. RININGER/TVR PHOTOGRAPHY; TOP & BOTTOM RIGHT: LOCKHEED MARTIN

both men cooperated to complete the Piper project. One unusual feature of the Cherokee is that rather than a separate elevator it has an all-flying horizontal tail, a concept that Thorp had used in many of his designs from the early 1940s on—before Bell put one on the X-1 to enable it to go supersonic, and before North American added one to the F-86 Sabre to make it more maneuverable. There are several stabilator patents of differing design, but one, held by Lockheed, bears Thorp’s name. During WWII Thorp designed the tiny, single-place Lockheed Little Dipper, intended to be a STOL “flying motorcycle,” so simple to operate that an untrained infantryman could fly it. The idea went nowhere, but it did briefly produce the Big Dipper, an attractive two-seater with a pusher prop on the tail that Lockheed briefly considered for postwar civil production. Thorp’s two-place 1945 Sky Skooter is still around, recently FAA-certified under Light Sport Aircraft regulations, and in 1958 the basic design morphed into the mini-twin Wing Derringer two-seater. Like his friend Fred Weick, Thorp also designed an aerial applicator: His Fletcher FU-24 looks like a relatively conventional lowwing monoplane with a huge slab of a cranked, high-lift wing, and a large chemical hopper behind the single-seat cockpit. Boasting a better cargo-per-horsepower ratio than the standard competition, the FU-24 was manufactured in New Zealand until 1992, some with turboprop engines. And they all have stabilators.

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Ted R. Smith

Designed by Stelio Frati, the SIAI-Marchetti SF.260 has served with a number of overseas air forces. This one, flown by owner Dan Mairani with Steve Holifield over California’s Sierra Nevada in April 2010, wears Irish Air Corps markings.

Stelio Frati A gnomelike Italian hidden behind thick, heavily tinted Godfather glasses, Stelio Frati was nonetheless a clear-eyed giant among light-airplane designers. Frati is revered by many European aviation enthusiasts, though few Americans outside the ranks of homebuilders have ever heard of him, Italy being well down the aviation food chain. Frati’s most successful airplane, the SIAI-Marchetti SF.260, was essentially an aluminum version of his all-wood F.8L Falco, with fighter-style tip tanks and a swept tail. The SF.260, also fully aerobatic, was used as a trainer and counterinsurgency attack plane by a number of European, South American and African air forces; some even had Allison turboprop engines. If the Falco was Frati’s most iconic design, the SF.260 was his most popular, with nearly 900 sold. More than 30 Frati designs have been built, flown and certificated—a stunning accomplishment for an engineer who worked entirely as a freelancer, never for an aircraft company, and rarely had a staff of more than six. His Falco and SF.260 are invariably called Ferraris of the air, but in fact his methodology was closer to that of Englishman Colin Chapman, the Lotus racecar designer who worshipped lightness and simplicity. Frati’s designs include a WWII radio-controlled winged bomb; sailplanes; a motorglider; a number of small jets; two-, three- and four-seat singles; several piston twins; a big utility twin; and a turboprop commuterliner. Some sold well, some not at all, but Stelio Frati was at his drafting table drawing yet more of them until the day he died at the age of 91 in 2010. 42

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The deservedly famous Ed Heinemann is credited with the design of the Douglas A-20 Havoc and A-26 Invader (later to be redesignated as the not-a-Martin-Marauder B-26), but Ted Smith sat at his right hand and did much of the engineering, learning how to design a high-performance shoulder-wing twin. It would stand him in good stead, for Smith went on to design some of the strongest, best performing, high- and mid-wing twins of the 1960s and ’70s, many of which are still flying. Smith went from Douglas to Aero Commander, where he engineered the eponymous line of twin-engine business planes that have been called the first all-new twins intended for corporate rather than personal use. His high-wing Commander line ultimately grew to include a mid-wing jet that eventually was manufactured by Israel Aircraft Industries as the Westwind, thus known to many of its pilots as the Yom Kippur Clipper. The piston twins ended up being built by North American Rockwell, where Bob Hoover’s airshow aerobatics with a Shrike Commander made the plane famous enough that it is now on display in the National Air and Space Museum. Smith went on to form his own company to build an unusually fast mid-wing twin, the Ted Smith Aerostar, which was acquired in 1978 by Piper Aircraft. More than 1,000 had been manufactured by the time production ended in 1984. At the time of his sudden death from a heart attack in 1976, Smith was working on the plans for a turbofan version of his Aerostar design. He was ahead of his time as always; since no suitable small engine as yet existed, the Aerostar Jet didn’t fly until 2010.

Legendary pilot Bob Hoover puts his Shrike Commander through its paces. The high-performance twin, originally designed as a business plane by Ted Smith, is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center.

TOP: ©TYSON V. RININGER/TVR PHOTOGRAPHY; BOTTOM: WEIDER HISTORY ARCHIVE

Richard Vogt specialized in unusual designs that the Luftwaffe generally wasn’t interested in, though his Blohm & Voss Bv-138 flying boat proved to be a mainstay of the German navy.

Richard Vogt Burt Rutan and Richard Vogt would have had lots to talk about, for several of Vogt’s creations for the Luftwaffe, particularly the asymmetric Bv-141, were just as inventive and unconventional as Rutan’s rules-stretching oddities. During 1944 Vogt also designed a swivelwing jet fighter, the Bv-202, much like what Rutan developed as an oblique-wing test plane for NASA in 1979. And Vogt’s P.170 threeengine bomber proposal had three fuselages, one at each wingtip and one in the middle with a cockpit at the extreme rear. Vogt had briefly served as a World War I pilot, though he never saw combat. As a teenager, he was taken under the wing of Ernst Heinkel, and after WWI he became close to Claudius Dornier, who sent him to Japan for a decade to represent his company at Kawasaki, a licensed builder of Dornier types. Vogt designed several successful Kawasaki single-engine aircraft for the Japanese Army Air Service. He also trained a young engineer, Takeo Doi, a university classmate of Zero designer Jiro Horikoshi who became one of Japan’s most famous aeronautical engineers and designed the Ki-61 Tony. But Vogt’s most memorable work was for the German company Blohm & Voss, for whom he limned the Bv-141 recon aircraft, the unique configuration chosen to give its observer and gunner nearly unobstructed fields of view. Vogt’s three-engine Bv-138 flying boat, the navy’s main long-range patrol and reconnaissance airplane, was the German PBY, and his six-engine seaplanes, the Bv-222 and -238, were true Teutonic giants, vastly heavier than the better-known Messerschmitt Me-323 Gigant. Vogt came to the U.S. as part of Operation Paperclip—the wholesale importation of talented German engineers after WWII—and joined the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB, where he proposed such possibilities as escort fighters attached to a bomber’s wingtips for a free ride to the combat area. He went to

TOP: ©INTERFOTO/ALAMY; BOTTOM: ©DIZ MUENCHEN GMBH, SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG PHOTO/ALAMY

The asymmetrical Bv-141 reconnaissance plane offered its crew an unprecedented field of view, but never reached production.

work for Boeing in 1960 and investigated “twisted wingtip fins,” a concept that he had patented in 1951. Further refined, they became the now-familiar Whitcomb winglets seen on many airliners and corporate jets.  Contributing editor Stephan Wilkinson cites several personal connections to the designers he pays homage to here. The first airplane he bought was a brand-new 1968 Alon Aircoupe, a slightly modernized version of Fred Weick’s ERCO Ercoupe. Wilkinson built and owned for five years one of Stelio Frati’s best-known designs—a Sequoia F.8L Falco—and he even journeyed to Italy to spend time with him. And in his first stint as a company pilot, he flew a Ted Smith–designed Aero Commander Shrike. “Its separate carlike door to a closed-off cockpit plus the massive, up-from-the-floor, bomber-type yoke made me feel like the ace of the base,” he reports.

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PEARL HARBOR PAYBACK “IT WAS THE LARGEST FORMATION OF PLANES I HAD EVER SEEN,” SAID U.S. NAVY DIVE BOMBER PILOT JOHN D. BRIDGERS OF THE BATTLE OF LEYTE GULF, “…AND THE AMAZING THING WAS THAT THEY WERE ALL FOLLOWING ME!”

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BY THOMAS MCKELVEY CLEAVER

On Sunday, December 7, 1941, recently commissioned Ensign John D. Bridgers had just graduated from flight training in Pensacola, Fla. A 1940 graduate of East Carolina Teacher’s College, he had hoped to go on to medical school, but his family was still dealing with the effects of the Depression. “In North Carolina, a beginning teacher received a monthly salary of $96.50,” Bridgers recalled. “From this salary one was expected to house, clothe and feed one’s self as well as suffer pension withholdings and pay taxes. While contemplating that, I learned I could make $105 per month in the Navy as an aviation cadet with board, lodging and clothing furnished. In a year, if successful in flight training, I would be commissioned an ensign in the Naval Reserve with a $250 per month salary, again with lodging provided and an allowance for food, and with a half month’s bonus for flight pay. Further, after four years, the reserve aviator would receive $1,000 per year bonus—$4,000. To a son of the Depression, these seemed princely arrangements, and the flight bonus would provide a nest egg if I needed more college before medical school.” On hearing the news that interrupted the New York Giants football game he was listening to with his father on December 7, however, Bridgers said, “I knew all my 44

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plans had just been put on hold.” A week later new orders sent Bridgers to bomber squadron VB-3 at Pearl Harbor aboard SS President Hoover. “As we pulled into Pearl Harbor, I recalled having seen a newsreel by the Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, maintaining that little substantial damage had been done to the Pacific Fleet by the Pearl Harbor attack. We saw the waters were still oil covered as we passed the still grounded USS Nevada in the channel. In the harbor were more derelicts, including the capsized USS Oklahoma, the sunken USS West Virginia and the remains of the blasted USS Arizona. It was evident there had been grievous hurt inflicted by the enemy. I made a promise to myself as I viewed this destruction that I would repay the investment the Navy had made in me one day by doing something to avenge this.” VB-3 remained behind when the aircraft carrier Saratoga left for the West Coast after being torpedoed on January 11, 1942. New pilots could complete advanced training. In early April, the squadron went aboard Enterprise. “We sailed northwestward and, in the vicinity of Midway Island, our group was joined by another task group that included the USS Hornet,” Bridgers said. “Her flight

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Opposite: The Japanese carriers Zuikaku (left) and Chitose (right background) come under assault by Task Force 38 aircraft during the Battle of Leyte Gulf on October 25, 1944. Above: Among the attacking Americans was Lieutenant John D. Bridgers of VB-15 from USS Essex, shown here flying a Curtiss SB2C-1 Helldiver.

deck was fully loaded with Army Air Force B-25 medium bombers. We learned we were going to sail within several hundred miles of Japan. Then the B-25s, under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, would take off from the Hornet, bomb targets in Japan and fly on to China.” On April 20, 1942, Bridgers qualified as a carrier pilot: “Out in mid-ocean, thousands of miles from anywhere, I became carrier qualified in the SBD. To add to my confidence, it was decreed I would fly the oldest and most expendable airplane in the squadron; they would take everything of value off and ballast it with sandbags. I was to make three approaches. The first two would be waved off, and then, if my third approach was decent, I would be given a cut. With a larger than usual crowd of onlookers, I made one of the best carrier landings I would ever make.” Upon VB-3’s return to Hawaii, the squadron was ordered aboard Yorktown, which had just returned from the Battle of the Coral Sea. The pilots were awestruck when they saw the damage the ship had sustained. They left with construction workers still aboard. “One repair was a large metal plate covering a hole in our ready room through which a bomb had penetrated to the lower decks during

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the Coral Sea battle,” he noted. “My first operational sortie from a carrier at sea, other than my brief qualification flight from the Enterprise, was a four-hour, 150mile search flight,” Bridgers continued. “As fate would have it this was my only contribution to the Battle of Midway. What I remember the most about that particular mission was the thin parachute cushion I was sitting on caused me inordinate discomfort during that flight, a good part of which we spent circling the ships waiting to come back aboard. I was hurting so much I thought little about my pending second carrier landing. I just wanted to be able to stand up and ease the pain in the seat of my pants.” On June 4, Bridgers had a ringside seat for the fight to save Yorktown: “The planes from the fourth Japanese carrier [Hiryu] found us before we found their ship, and in short order we were under attack. We pilots had no duties other than sitting in our ready room. Unable to see out, we became more and more tense with nothing to release this. This was by far the toughest experience I had during the war. Our guns began shaking the ship and we figured enemy planes were closing in. We gathered around the plate patching the ready-room deck after one fellow said, ‘Surely light-

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Left: Struck by torpedo bombers on June 4, 1942, and then torpedoes from the sub I-168 on the 6th, USS Yorktown heels over. Below: Yorktown’s crew—which included Bridgers—prepares to abandon ship.

“THERE WAS A TREMENDOUS EXPLOSION AND I WAS LIFTED BODILY WHAT FELT TO BE A FOOT OR MORE OFF THE DECK. I NOW KNEW WHAT A TORPEDO HIT FELT LIKE.”

Douglas SBDs warm up for takeoff from Enterprise in February 1942, two months before Bridgers qualified aboard the carrier.

ning won’t strike twice in the same place!’ The response was, ‘But do you think the Japs know that?’ Just as quickly, we dispersed to our empty desks, and in short order the ship was struck by a couple of bombs. The overhead was the underside of the flight deck, so we felt considerable jolts and the lights blinked out, replaced by the dim red glare of battle lamps, and smoke was immediately evident. In a few minutes we were released to move topside and survey the damage. By now, our ship was dead in the water.” Bridgers was confronted with the cost of war when he saw bodies covered with tarpaulins. Yorktown was able to get underway and bring planes aboard, but then came warning of a second strike. “I observed many had been injured in the first strike because they were standing upright and were either hit by flying debris or knocked against projecting fittings. This must have been noticed by the others, for all of us immediately lay prone on the deck, a precaution well worthwhile. Next, there was a tremendous explosion 46

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and I was lifted bodily what felt to be a foot or more off the deck. I now knew what a torpedo hit felt like. Almost immediately it was evident the ship was listing to one side and was once again dead in the water. Word was passed to abandon ship. Large life rafts were thrown over the side and the grim business got underway. I walked across the deck trying to decide when I would go, secretly hoping someone would change their mind about the whole affair. I passed Captain [Elliott] Buckmaster, and he told me to hurry and get off the vessel. Several minutes later, I passed him again and he said: ‘Son, I thought I told you get off this ship. Now get moving!’” Once in the water, Bridgers encountered a wounded sailor, whom he took under tow. After what seemed a long time, the destroyer Hughes picked them up. The survivors returned to Pearl Harbor, where Bridgers had to deal with some personal problems: “Months earlier, when I shipped out from Norfolk, my main suitcase had been left behind. In it were my orders and pay records. On first reaching Pearl Harbor they refused to open a new record until I had some confirmation of my orders. I wrote Norfolk and a validated copy along with a reconstructed pay record was waiting for me aboard Yorktown when we sailed. Unfortunately, these were lost along with my size 14-AA shoes. When we got back, they again refused to issue my back pay on just my say-so. It was another month before I was reentered on the regular payroll, and it was several years before I got the back pay I had missed.” A week later, Bridgers was assigned to scouting squadron VS-6, aboard the recently returned Saratoga. “I was now on the traveling squad,” he said, “though still on the bench.” He flew his first combat mission on August 7, 1942, supporting the invasion of Guadalcanal. For the next three months he was intimately involved with that fateful struggle, flying in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, and later from the island itself during the worst days of September and October, following Saratoga’s second torpedoing on August 31 (see related story, P. 30).

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At the beginning of 1943, Lt. j.g. Bridgers went back aboard Saratoga with VS-6, now redesignated VB-13. He departed Saratoga in June, with orders to commission VB-15 at Norfolk, Va. He and two fellow Saratoga veterans, Lieutenant Niles Siebert and Lt. j.g. Barney Barnitz, formed a core of experience for the new squadron, with Bridgers assigned as engineering officer. Among the crop of fresh-caught ensigns in VB-15 was Bridgers’ boyhood best friend, Warren Parrish. “I was assigned to lead the second division,” Bridgers said. “Warren had entered and finished flight training while I had been in the Pacific. He claims that I told the skipper that since I had taught him everything he knew, they might as well place him on my wing. Warren and Vincent Zanetti flew my wing. For reasons no longer recalled we labeled ourselves ‘The Silent Second.’” In early November, the first SB2C-1C Helldivers arrived. Engineering Officer Bridgers was at the forefront of the struggle to tame the “Beast”—he had to confirm that more than 800 modifications had been made to each airplane. “I was to come to know well the mechanical intricacies of the Beast,” he said, “and particularly appreciated the aphorism that the SB2C had three less engines and one more hydraulic fitting than the B-17.” In December 1943, they went aboard Hornet, and were soon aware they’d landed in the proverbial “hornet’s nest.” The carrier’s captain, Miles Browning, was universally hated as “the most illtempered officer in the Navy.” He insisted the Helldivers use only 400 feet of deck for takeoff, a difficult feat for the underpowered Beast. During the trip to Hawaii, VB-15 lost six crews and eight airplanes in accidents. Air Group 15 was put ashore in Hawaii, excoriated by Browning as being unready for combat. Just prior to its departure for Hawaii, VB-15 received a new CO, Lt. Cmdr. Jim Mini, a former Annapolis football player with combat experience in VF-6. He was checked out by Bridgers. Learning to land the SB2C without benefit of shore training was difficult; Mini crashed into the barrier on his first two landings. “Jim Mini was the worst pilot in the squadron, and the best officer,” Bridgers said. “We all soon loved him despite the fact he was nearly always a moment away from disaster in the cockpit.” After a six-week training marathon, AG-15 passed its operational readiness inspection and went aboard the new carrier Essex, departing for the western Pacific on May 3, 1944. During the summer of 1944, the group supported the invasion of the Marianas. Fortunately for VB-15’s SB2C crews, they missed the “Mission Beyond Darkness,” during which more than half the Helldivers involved were

lost when they ran out of fuel returning to the fleet. On August 26, Essex arrived at Eniwetok and VB-15 received new SB2C-3 Helldivers, distinguished by a four-bladed prop and 200 additional horsepower. “Those 200 additional horses mattered,” noted Bridgers. “Our takeoffs were no longer so adventurous.” Under the command of Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., Task Force 38 commenced its spectacular sweep of the Philippines in September. On the 22nd, after Air Group 15 found a convoy of 42 enemy ships, TF 38’s planes sank 18 and damaged several others. By late September, Halsey reported that Japanese defenses in the southern Philippines had been destroyed. The invasion of Mindanao was canceled, and the invasion of Leyte was moved up to late October. In mid-October, Halsey struck Okinawa and Formosa, wiping out enemy air forces staging there, though Japanese pilots made wild claims of sinking 11 aircraft carriers, two battleships, three cruisers and one destroyer, while damaging eight additional carriers, two more battleships, four other cruisers and 14 more destroyers in the great “Battle of the Formosa Sea.” The Japanese command believed this, setting up the greatest naval battle in history. On October 24, 1944, the strongest Japanese surface fleet to ever put to sea was spotted in the Sibuyan Sea, headed toward the San Bernardino Strait and the invasion forces in Leyte Gulf. Newly promoted Lt. Cmdr. Bridgers was now VB-15’s executive officer. “Our squadron launched two divisions,” he said, “the first led by Mini, who was also acting as target coordinator for our air group. We flew west through heavy cumulus clouds in which the overall strike group became separated, though our air group managed to stick together. We flew across the southern tip of Luzon and out over the inland waters. Commander Mini sent a division of fighters to scout

Top: VB-15’s “Silent Second” division, with Bridgers at lower left. Above: The Silent Second makes a training flight over Maui.

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“SUDDENLY, FROM BENEATH THE CLOUDS STEAMED A DREADNOUGHT OF VAST PROPORTIONS, THE LARGEST I HAD EVER SEEN.” …THE 68,000-TON MUSASHI Left: Deck crewmen trundle 500-pound bombs to SB2C-3s aboard a carrier in the Pacific. Note that these up-powered Helldivers were equipped with four-bladed props. Right: Crewmen ready an SB2C-1C of VB-15 for takeoff from USS Essex in May 1944.

to the south. In short order, a message came back, ‘Jesus Christ, the whole Jap fleet’s down here!’ We headed there at 15,000 feet, above scattered clouds. The skipper’s division was slightly ahead and off to starboard when suddenly the enemy announced its presence with a large spread of variously colored bursts of radar-directed AA fire through the clouds, clustered around the lead planes. Commander Mini radioed he was preparing to attack a battleship, and directed me to turn east and concentrate on another battleship, which he promised I would see as soon as I reached the edge of the cloud bank I was over. “Suddenly, from beneath the clouds steamed a dreadnought of vast proportions, the largest I had ever seen.” Bridgers had just set eyes on the 68,000-ton Musashi, which along with sister ship Yamato was the largest battleship ever constructed. “Multiple streams of tracer fire came up and the battleship’s deck blossomed with muzzle-blasts from larger AA guns, the source of the colored

bursts of smoke in the sky, all of which were augmented by similar fire from her screening vessels. We entered a power glide down to 12,000 feet, keeping our target in sight, then I signaled to attack. I pulled up slightly across Warren Parrish. I gradually steepened into my dive and opened my dive flaps. It was every man for himself, and suddenly I had my hands full. I started my dive stern-to-bow on the target, but my Helldiver was twisted around in a violent skid, which I couldn’t control with full rudder pressure and trim-tab adjustment. In this condition, my aircraft was away from its flight path and the trajectory my bomb would follow after its release. I figured if this was how it was to be, then my greatest dropping error would be a deflection laterally. I did my best to skid down across the length of the ship in order that my major dropping fault would be fore and aft. In hundreds of dive-bombing runs I’d made, I’d never experienced this type of wild gyrations. The anti-aircraft fire was coming from all quarters, from ships large and small.

From left: Zuiho smokes and sinks off Cape Engaño; a photo sequence shows Ise firing on attackers and taking a near miss.

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“My dive, rather than being a smooth and even descent, had been a wild, spiraling ride, thanks to the as yet unexplained skid. I released my bomb at 2,500 feet as usual, but with a sense of fruitlessness, knowing my aim was guesswork at best. I broke my dive, closed my dive brakes and in a full power glide headed for low altitude just above the wave tops, which we always thought was the safest place in a hostile environment. To my surprise, the plane once more flew with good trim and easy control. Fleeing the enemy ships, I couldn’t see what happened to our target, but the anti-aircraft puffs in the air and the splashes in the sea off our port and starboard let me know the Japanese were still in business.” Warren Parrish’s dive was more controlled. In an almost vertical plunge, he dropped his bomb right amidships on Musashi, and at pullout went so low his prop sent up salt spray from the ocean’s surface. Parrish had to climb to get over a Japanese destroyer, all the while taking fire from 37mm and 20mm AA. The other five dive bombers soon found Bridgers. All were relieved to see their aircraft were intact. “None of our other planes were to be seen,” Bridgers said. “As we headed home, the pieces began to fall into place. My gunner, Bob Cribb, revealed what had happened in our dive: He saw my dive brakes had opened on only one side, which accounted for the wild ride in the dive and that the flight returned to normal after my pullout.” Returning to Essex, Bridgers found himself serving as the acting squadron commander, since Mini had ditched near a destroyer, which picked him up. Within hours Bridgers learned he would lead VB-15 to strike the Japanese carrier force the next morning. Task Force 38 launched aircraft at 0550 on October 25. “Our group tactics called for the whole unit to form on the dive bombers,” Bridgers noted. “After launch, in the blackness of the early morning, we climbed toward 18,000 feet, with the torpedo bombers forming up behind and below us at 8,000 feet as the fighters divided into four-plane sections and weaved several thousand feet above the formation. Our CAG, Commander [David] McCampbell, was the target coordinator for the entire strike. Just as the sky started to brighten, we were the first group at the form-up position and started to circle, but in short order the other groups fell in behind. It was the largest formation of planes I had ever seen, much less in which I had flown, and the amazing thing was that they were all following me! I asked Cribb if he had any idea how many aircraft

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The crew of Zuikaku, last survivor of the Pearl Harbor attackers, abandons ship after VB-15 finished off the carrier on October 25.

were with us and he answered, ‘I lost count when I got to 225.’ There were probably in excess of over 400 planes from all the carriers in the task force. As I rolled out to take the heading toward the Japanese, the entire strike force was following me.” Over the Japanese force—actually a decoy unit centered around four aircraft carriers with practically no planes left on their decks— Bridgers bombed the light carrier Chitose. “Starting my line-up on the bow as my aiming point, I carried my attack down to 1,500 feet before I released my bombs and was low over the water before I leveled out. I found myself completely surrounded by enemy ships and had not noticed the intense AA fire until then. I weaved between the ships, maintaining whatever distance possible from each. I kicked my plane up on one wing and saw two splashes close aboard the carrier’s port side and smoke coming up through its flight deck.” Bridgers flew a second strike that day, in which VB-15’s Helldivers delivered killing blows to the carrier Zuikaku, last survivor of the Pearl Harbor attackers. “As I flew home,” he recalled, “I thought to myself that the Navy’s investment in me had been repaid.”  This article is adapted from Thomas McKelvey Cleaver’s new book Fabled Fifteen: The Pacific War Saga of Carrier Air Group 15, published in hardback by Casemate Publishers and as an e-book by Pacifica Press. See also his “Relentless in Battle” in our July 2014 issue.

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FORGOTTEN

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NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM

IT TOOK THREE FLOATPLANES AND 79 DAYS, BUT A PAIR OF PORTUGUESE AIRMEN SUCCEEDED IN CROSSING THE SOUTH ATLANTIC BY AIR FIVE YEARS BEFORE LINDBERGH’S FAMOUS FLIGHT BY DEREK O’CONNOR

Navigator Rear Admiral Gago Coutinho and pilot Commander Sacadura Cabral meet with Brazilian officials after arriving in Pernambuco, on Brazil’s east coast, on March 30, 1922.

A The Fairey IIID Lusitânia taxis on the Tagus River as it sets out from Lisbon on its transatlantic flight to Rio de Janeiro on March 30, 1922.

©BETTMANN/CORBIS

At 0655 hours on March 30, 1922, the heavily laden Fairey IIID floatplane Lusitânia lifted off from the Tagus River at Lisbon, bound for Rio de Janeiro. At the controls in the open cockpit was 40-year-old Portuguese navy Commander Artur de Sacadura Cabral, with Rear Admiral Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho, 53, as his navigator and occasional copilot. If they reached Rio within one week, the airmen would share a £4,000 Portuguese government prize for the first flight by Portuguese or Brazilian aviators between the two capital cities. Cabral and Coutinho planned to make the flight in four main stages. The first would take them from Lisbon to the Canary Islands, off the West African coast. From there they would fly to the Cape Verde Islands. The third and most difficult stage would carry them to the Brazilian archipelago of St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks, where a Portuguese warship with refueling facilities would be stationed. Locating this tiny speck in the equatorial ocean would be a supreme test of Coutinho’s navigational abilities. If all went well, the final stage, after reaching the island of Fernando de Noronha and flying down the east coast of Brazil, would land them in Rio— and earn them a place in the record books. Their British Fairey IIID was a tried and tested floatplane with a record of dependable service in the RAF and Fleet Air Arm. Powered in this instance by a 375-hp Rolls-Royce Eagle engine, it had a top speed of about 106 mph and a normal still-air range of 550 miles. Lusitânia’s wingspan had been extended from 46 to 62 feet and its fuselage lengthened to accommodate extra fuel tanks in the center section. Additional fuel would also be carried in the floats, extracted via wind-driven impeller pumps. Taking off fully loaded with 330 gallons aboard would require all of Cabral’s skill, as the Fairey’s floats were of a very basic design, with no “step” to induce separation from the water. What’s more, the plywood-covered floats tended to leak. Coutinho planned to use naval techniques to navigate across the featureless ocean, relying primarily on a specially modified sextant with an artificial horizon of his own invention when the actual

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Clockwise from below: Coutinho with his sextant; Lusitânia comes to grief on April 18; the airmen’s island-hopping route across the Atlantic; and the replacement Fairey IIID Santa Cruz arrives in Rio.

PORTUGAL Lisbon

FLIGHT ROUTE Atlantic Ocean

Las Palmas

Porto-Praia

Fernando de Noronha Recife BRAZIL

Salvador de Bahia Porto Seguro Vitoria

Atlantic Ocean

Rio de Janeiro

“WE MUST HAVE BEEN ABOUT 690 MILES FROM THE ROCKS AND WE horizon was invisible. Smoke bombs would be employed to calculate drift. They were hoping for, but not relying on, help from favorable trade winds on either side of the equator. The first day went well, with the airmen alighting at Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands, at 1530 hours after covering 900 miles in 8½ hours. But then the weather turned against them. It was April 2 before the flight resumed, though storms soon forced them down again into the nearby Bay of Gando. Two more bad weather days passed before they could continue, heading out across the 800 miles of ocean to St. Vincent in the Cape Verde Islands, which they reached after almost 11 hours. Adverse weather forced them to remain in St. Vincent until April 17, by which time they had exceeded the one-week requirement for the Portuguese government’s prize. On, then, for the short flight to Porto-Praia, another of the Canaries, before heading south the next

day on the long transoceanic stage to St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks— assuming they could find them in the vast South Atlantic. Cabral later described what happened several hours into the flight: “The wind continued to weaken and the fuel consumption remained, at least, around 20 gallons per hour....We must have been about 690 miles from the Rocks and we didn’t have more than eight and a half hours of fuel left. To get there we needed to make 80 miles per hour and our speed was 72 miles per hour. The logical, the prudent thing to do would have been to turn back, but that would have left a bad impression. I confess that for me this was the most bitter part of the Lisbon-Rio trip, because for nine and a half hours I was never sure we had enough fuel to complete the trip.” Cabral’s doubts proved to be unfounded. After a 1,045-mile, 11 hour 20 minute flight, with their fuel almost exhausted, they located the rocky archipelago. But while alighting on the heavy

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seas one of Lusitânia’s floats was damaged and the aircraft began to sink. Fortunately their guardian angel, the Portuguese navy sloop Republica, was close at hand to rescue the exhausted airmen. The sloop then took them to Fernando de Noronha to await the arrival of a replacement floatplane that, with national prestige now at stake, was hurriedly shipped from Portugal. Patria, a slightly modified Fairey IIID, arrived on May 6. Five days later, intent on completing the whole distance, Cabral and Coutinho left Fernando de Noronha and backtracked to St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks—only to run into a major storm that forced them to turn around 15 miles short of the archipelago. While the airmen were battling atrocious conditions on their return to Fernando de Noronha, their engine failed, forcing them to ditch in the ocean. As the floats began taking in water, they were surrounded by a posse of hungry sharks. Fortunately, as Coutinho recalled, “When they realized that the plane wasn’t edible, they went away.” Meanwhile Republica’s crew had transmitted a wireless distress call requesting all ships in the area to keep an eye out for the missing floatplane. Nine long hours passed before the increasingly desperate airmen were found by the British freighter Paris City, which took them on board and Patria in tow. Next day the freighter rendezvoused with Republica, which tried unsuccessfully to winch the damaged floatplane aboard. Back yet again at Fernando de Noronha, it was not until June 5 that the indomitable pair resumed their flight, this time in another Fairey IIID, Santa Cruz, sent out on presidential orders aboard a Portuguese warship. By stages they then flew down the east coast of Brazil, via Recife, Salvador de Bahia, Porto Seguro and Vitoria, finally arriving in Rio de Janeiro to a heroes’ welcome on June 17. In their various aircraft, Cabral and Coutinho had covered some 5,200 miles in 79 days, but with an actual flying time of 62

hours and 26 minutes and an average speed of 83.5 mph. They had completed the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic Ocean. Moreover, they had also made the first east-to-west crossing of the Atlantic using a heavier-than-air craft. It was a magnificent feat of courage, endeavor and, decisively, navigational expertise. Britain’s Flight magazine trumpeted: “Our old allies the Portuguese were ever good navigators at sea. They have now proved to be equally to the front in air navigation and we feel proud to think that two British firms have been associated with them in the historical flight to South America.” King George V sent a fulsome message of congratulations to the Portuguese president. Sacadura Cabral did not survive very long to enjoy his celebrity. In November 1924, Flight reported that the pilot had disappeared over the English Channel while on a delivery flight from Holland to Portugal in the single-engine Fokker floatplane he had intended to use in a round-the-world flight attempt. Although wreckage from the Fokker was found, the bodies of Cabral and his mechanic were never recovered. As for master navigator Gago Coutinho, he lived on, loaded with honors, until 1959. Their achievement has been largely forgotten, though not in Portugal. The meticulously restored Santa Cruz, which carried the airmen on the final phase of their flight, is now on display at the Museo de Marinha in Lisbon. There is also a commemorative fullsize replica of a Fairey IIID floatplane close to the waterfront of the Tagus River, where it all began.  Frequent contributor Derek O’Connor writes from Amersham, Bucks, UK. For further reading, he recommends: Through Atlantic Clouds, by Clifford Collinson and Captain F. McDermott; and The 91 Before Lindbergh, by Peter Christopher Allen.

DIDN’T HAVE MORE THAN EIGHT AND A HALF HOURS OF FUEL LEFT.”

Left: The restored Santa Cruz is preserved at Lisbon’s Museo de Marinha. Right: A full-size replica, representing all three of the Fairey floatplanes that took part in the South Atlantic crossing, commemorates the feat on the banks of the Tagus in Lisbon.

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A Grumman F9F-6 of U.S. Navy fighter squadron VF-112 flies over the Sierra Nevada. On March 26, 1954, Lt. j.g. James Maccoun of VF-112 bailed out of his F9F-6 during an air-to-air gunnery practice mission—but the Cougar kept flying.

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COUGAR ON THE LOOSE A TRICK DEVELOPED DURING WORLD WAR II AVERTED POTENTIAL TRAGEDY IN THE SKIES OVER SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA BY CRAIG A. THORSON

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COURTESY OF BOB JELLISON

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When Germany launched its first V-1 “buzz bomb” against London on June 13, 1944, Britain was ill-prepared to deal with the new threat. Anti-aircraft guns and barrage balloons initially proved ineffective, as did the use of fighters to intercept and shoot down the swift, pulse-jet equipped V-1. Soon, however, brave RAF pilots developed new techniques to battle the buzz bombs. One involved positioning the wing of their aircraft inches below that of the V-1, a maneuver that aerodynamically pushed the wing of the V-1 up, overrode its gyros and sent it tumbling to earth. That same maneuver, known as “toppling,” would play a role in a remarkable peacetime incident a decade later. The morning of March 26, 1954, broke sunny and clear in San Diego, Calif., with calm winds, unlimited visibility and a forecast high of 66 degrees. By all accounts, it was shaping up to be an idyllic day for flying. As Lt. j.g. James Maccoun settled into the cockpit of his brand-new Grumman F9F-6 fighter at Naval Air Station Miramar, north of the city, and Aviation Electronics Technician 3rd Class Norman Brunn climbed aboard his Sikorsky HO4S-3 anti-submarine helicopter at Naval Auxiliary Air Station Ream Field, to the south, neither could have had the slightest notion how the fates would soon bring them together. Navy fighter squadron 112 (VF-112), based at Miramar, had recently returned from a six-month tour of duty in the western Pacific aboard the aircraft carrier Kearsarge. The CO of the squadron was Commander Steve Morrison, whose son Jim would gain fame more than a decade later as the lead singer of The Doors. On that March morning, four of Morrison’s pilots were preparing for an air-to-air gunnery practice sortie: flight leader Lt. j.g. Clarence “Van” Vandenberg, Lieutenant Averill, Ensign Bruce Huntley and Maccoun. Having flown the F9F-5 Panther during their previous deployment, they were in the process of transitioning to the upgraded F9F-6. The -6 variant that the quartet of pilots were strapping into retained the same power plant as its -5 predecessor, but featured a longer fuselage, swept wings and tail and a new feline name: Cougar. The fighters’ four 20mm cannons would not be fed with live ammunition that morning. Instead, gun camera footage would be used to score the shooting abilities of three of the pilots, pitted against a fourth towing a gunnery banner. The four Cougars, their shiny new gloss sea blue paint gleaming in the morning sun, taxied to the active runway and took off in two-ship elements. Maccoun and Huntley, with the gunnery banner attached to Huntley’s aircraft, took off at 10:26, followed a few minutes later by Vandenberg and Averill. All four turned south toward the gunnery range near the Coronado Islands, about 15 miles off the coast of Mexico’s northern border.

NATIONAL NAVAL AVIATION MUSEUM

About that same time at Ream Field, Brunn, a sonar operator trainee with helicopter anti-submarine squadron 2 (HS-2), and his trainer, Sonarman 1st Class G.W. “Ham Bone” Hamilton, were climbing into the passenger compartment of their Sikorsky. HS-2 had been established two years earlier as the first anti-submarine warfare helicopter squadron on the West Coast. Its mission that day would be to familiarize Brunn with the finer points of the then-fledgling business of detecting submarines using the helicopter’s sonar equipment. The pilots—Lt. Cmdrs. R.H. Crowder and M.A. Stone—lifted off and turned west, out over the blue Pacific. While Maccoun and Huntley climbed their F9F-6s south past San Diego Bay minutes after departing Miramar, they nearly had to abort their mission. The gunnery banner, a flat nylon cloth with a radar reflector at the front, had been attached to the Cougar’s dive brakes by several hundred feet of cable. As Huntley recalled, “The tow cable broke and the banner was lost, leaving about 8 feet of cable connected.” A quick decision was made to use Huntley’s aircraft itself as the target, and he momentarily extended his speed brakes, shedding the remaining cable and then continuing on to the practice area where the other three pilots would work on their “shooter” skills. Huntley reported, “I left Coronado Island at 10:37 on a [south-

In March 1954, an F9F-9P photoreconnaissance version of the Cougar assigned to composite squadron VC-61 overflies Naval Air Station Miramar, where VF-112 was also based at the time.

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Above: VF-112’s patch. Right: Ensign Bruce Huntley (back row, third from left), Lt. j.g. “Van” Vandenberg (fifth from left), Commander Steve Morrison (back row, sixth from right) and Maccoun (front row, third from left) appear in this VF-112 photo.

Top: VF-112 was transitioning from F9F-5 Panthers in 1954. Above: A Cougar lands at Miramar. Differences in handling between the straight-wing Panther and the sweptwing Cougar likely added to Maccoun’s problems in recovering from his spin.

erly] heading for simulated gunnery, myself acting as target [while] Maccoun broke off to join the firing group.” As flight leader, Vandenberg would make the first gunnery pass. “South of the [Coronado] islands with the [target] aircraft at 15,000 feet, I initiated my run from about 21,000 feet with [Maccoun] just above and [left] of my position,” Vandenberg recalled.

Maccoun described what happened next: “I started a gentle turn to follow [Vandenberg] down on a low G run [with] 90 percent power on and an indicated airspeed of 190 knots. As soon as I had approximately 30 degrees of bank the plane stalled. Forward pressure did not check the stall. I leveled the wings [while] adding more forward stick. The plane continued in a stall, buffeting as the nose continued in a steeper dive until I was near vertical. After a loss of 5,000 to 6,000 feet, I informed the flight leader of my predicament [when] the plane began spinning to the right.” Vandenberg reported that as he pulled up from his run past Huntley’s target aircraft, “I heard [Maccoun] call that he was in an uncontrolled stall and saw [his] aircraft in a spin at approximately 15,000 feet.” Maccoun focused on attempting to recover control: “I tried forward stick and a slight amount of opposite rudder [with] no results and then released everything. I noticed my airspeed approaching 250 knots [and] dropped the speed brakes in order to keep from gaining excessive speed and as a possible method of recovery from the spin.” As his Cougar continued spinning past 11,500 feet, “The plane started to spin tighter. I don’t know the exact number of spins, but at least three complete ones before the wrap up feeling hit me. At this point I called and said I was getting out. I pulled the pre-ejection lever [to jettison the canopy], positioned my body and feet, and pulled the [ejection seat] curtain.” Vandenberg, Huntley and Averill could do nothing but watch as Maccoun’s aircraft spun down toward the waves. Twenty-two minutes after takeoff, Maccoun broadcast, “I’m leaving it.” “I saw the canopy jettison, glittering in the sun, at 10,000 to 8,000

In the seconds that followed, he saw the pilotless Cougar was 56

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TOP LEFT: NATIONAL NAVAL AVIATION MUSEUM; ALL OTHER IMAGES COURTESY OF BOB JELLISON

feet,” Vandenberg said. “I turned away to see my instruments [and] didn’t see the seat eject.” Thinking that Maccoun was still inside the plunging jet, Vandenberg dived after it. As he did so, something unexpected happened. Maccoun’s aircraft, which had dropped to near vertical, suddenly began to level out and then started to climb again. “I called to [Maccoun] thinking him still in the aircraft, [but] did not receive an answer,” the flight leader said. “I pulled alongside his plane and saw that the seat and pilot were gone. By that time, the plane was back to 8,000 feet. The strange thing was that this plane had come out of the stall and spin with such good trim and was flying so evenly.” Too evenly, as Vandenberg quickly noted. In the seconds that followed, he saw the pilotless Cougar was now slowly descending, headed directly toward San Diego. Huntley was then at 15,000 feet, orbiting the area where he believed Maccoun had ejected. The flight leader instructed Huntley to broadcast a Mayday, continue his orbit and coordinate rescue efforts while Vandenberg stayed with the wayward Cougar, which continued descending toward the heavily populated shore. Thinking fast, Vandenberg then maneuvered his fighter to the right of the pilotless Cougar: “I eased under the [right] wing of [Maccoun’s] plane and brought the tip of my [left] wing up close so that the air flowing over the top of my wing pushed against [the bottom of] his. I didn’t touch the wing—just the air flow did it.” In the course of a tense 12 minutes that seemed like an eternity, Vandenberg repeated the toppling maneuver several times, allowing the vortices from his wingtip to slowly and gently turn the other

Cougar 180 degrees, until it was on a southwesterly heading. “I wanted to make it crash at sea,” he said. Vandenberg would continue to herd the pilotless plane away from the coastline for 55 miles. “Finally,” he recalled, “I got down to 800 feet, pulled away and let the plane go.” There were no witnesses as the shiny new F9F-6, with only 71 airframe hours, plunged into the Pacific 25 miles off Ensenada, Mexico. After ejecting, Maccoun had released himself from his seat. He free-fell to around 4,000 feet before pulling his ripcord. “I hit the water and unbuckled the chest strap,” he said. “I inflated my raft and crawled in putting out a dye marker.” High above him, Vandenberg was returning from steering the wayward fighter out to sea and just about to rejoin Huntley when he spotted the green dye marker, two miles west of where Huntley was orbiting. “I dove down to check,” said Vandenberg, “and found [Maccoun] sitting in a life raft waving.” Huntley recalled, “I immediately started orbiting that spot and

Right: Naval Auxiliary Air Station Ream Field, home to helicopter squadron HS-2 in March 1954. Below: A Sikorsky HO4S-3 of HS-2.

now slowly descending, headed directly toward San Diego. PHOTOS: U.S. NAVY

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Left: Norman Brunn relaxes in the cockpit of an HO4S. Below: Brunn, with the rest of the crew, received a Sikorsky Helicopter Rescue Certificate after they plucked Maccoun from the drink.

Scanning the cabin, Brunn and Hamilton hurriedly devised a plan. “We tied the helicopter tie-down ropes together and made a loop at the lower end.” directed rescue while Vandenberg returned to base due to low fuel.” Alerted by the Mayday, and aware that a pilot was in the water, helicopter pilots Crowder and Stone headed toward the scene, notifying Hamilton and Brunn to be prepared to pull the downed airman aboard. The situation presented the chopper crew with a dilemma, however. Despite many requests, HS-2’s helicopters had not been outfitted with external rescue hoists. Using the sonar gear to bring the pilot aboard was also out. “The sonar gear was deployed through a hole in the [fuselage floor],” Brunn explained. “We couldn’t raise the pilot by the sonar cable, as the hole was too small to bring him through.” Scanning the cabin, he and Hamilton hurriedly devised a plan. “We tied the helicopter tie-down ropes together and made a loop at the lower end.” They would try to use this makeshift rig to haul Maccoun aboard through the sliding side door. Maccoun had been bobbing in his life raft for a little more than 30 minutes when he heard the rhythmic whump, whump of the approaching HO4S—guided toward him by the circling jets until Crowder and Stone sighted his bright-green dye marker. “Our pilots did a great job of hovering and we got the line over to him,” recalled Brunn. “After he was in the loop, he gave a thumbs-up.” 58

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With Hamilton stiffly braced on one side of the open door and Brunn on the other, the two men hauled Maccoun aboard handover-hand. “He was cold and wet, [with] no obvious injuries,” Brunn said. “As it was too noisy to converse, he nodded his thanks and we headed to land.” Depositing Maccoun ashore minutes later, the Sikorsky headed back out to sea to continue its training mission—just another day at the office. The story of the pilotless Cougar and Vandenberg’s quick-thinking action to turn it away from the city made headlines across the nation. He became something of a local hero, and the mayor of Coronado awarded him the key to the city. For their improvised rescue efforts, Norm Brunn and the entire HO4S crew received the “Winged S” Helicopter Rescue Certificate from the Sikorsky Corporation. That program had been initiated in 1950 in order to “Honor those who perform rescues flying a Sikorsky helicopter in acknowledgment of their humanitarian efforts.” To date, an estimated 2 million lives have been saved by Sikorsky helicopters. The award was well deserved, but the helicopter crewmen and the rest of their squadron were also about to receive something far more important to them. It turned out that Lieutenant Maccoun was the son of retired U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. William E. Maccoun. According to Brunn, “It wasn’t long after the rescue we were finally outfitted with [external rescue] hoists.” In his view, there was a direct connection between the son of an admiral being rescued with lengths of rope tied together and the helicopters of HS-2 finally being equipped with rescue hoists. “We needed an advocate, and apparently Admiral Maccoun stepped up,” said Brunn. “Bless him!”  Craig A. Thorson previously wrote about the first U.S. Marine Corps helicopter transport squadron, HMR-161, in our May 2012 issue. That article, “Marine Chopper Salvage,” won the 2013 General Roy S. Geiger Award for best feature about Marine aviation, presented by the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation. Further reading: Grumman F9F Panther/Cougar, by Brad Elward.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF NORMAN BRUNN

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REVIEWS BOOKS F4F WILDCAT AND F6F HELLCAT ACES OF VF-2 by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, England, 2014, $22.95. F6F HELLCAT ACES OF VF-9 by Edward M. Young, Osprey Publishing, 2014, $22.95. Although their wartime colors may not be as bright as those of U.S. Army Air Forces units, U.S. Navy squadrons amassed impressive fighting records during World War II, and it’s encouraging to see the Osprey “Aircraft of the Aces” series doing justice to two of the most distinguished. Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, who also recently published a history of Air Group 15 (reviewed in the March 2015 issue), takes a comprehensive approach in F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat Aces of VF-2 that chronicles the fighter squadron from its origin in 1921 through its last combat tour in September 1944. Color profiles reflect this scope with a selection of interwar aircraft that were not necessarily flown by future aces—a throwback to the now discontinued “Aviation Elite Units” series. Still, plenty of aces and their aircraft are represented, including F4F-3 participants in the Battle of the Coral Sea, Medal of Honor recipient Commander Edward H. “Butch” O’Hare’s F6F-3 as an air group commander and Commander William E. Dean’s Hellcats. Besides being the squadron’s leading ace with 11 victories, VF-2 commander Bill Dean made a policy of assigning pilots to missions equally in order to maximize everyone’s combat time. The result was that out of 40 pilots in VF-2’s last tour, a record 28 became aces. A long-established expert on U.S. naval aviation, Edward Young starts F6F Hellcat Aces of VF-9 with a Brewster F2A-3 Buffalo and some F4F-4s with which the squadron entered combat aboard the carrier Ranger during Operation Torch in November 1942, 60

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but his narrative builds serious momentum with the unit’s assignment to the new carrier Essex. Starting with the October 5-6, 1943, raid on Wake Island, VF-9’s Hamilton “One Slug” McWhorter became the first carrier-based Hellcat ace, and went on to be the first carrier-based Hellcat double ace over Truk on February 17, 1944. Among the many other paladins whose aircraft are depicted is Eugene Valencia, whose fourman “mowing machine” wrought havoc on kamikazes during the Okinawa campaign. He survived the war as the Navy’s third-ranking ace with 23 victories. For anyone who believes the Hellcat has been neglected, these two books should help address that deficiency immeasurably. Jon Guttman OPERATION KE: The Cactus Air Force and the Japanese Withdrawal From Guadalcanal by Roger and Dennis Letourneau, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md., 2012, $42.95. Roger and Dennis Letourneau select a neglected topic and tell an unfamiliar story in a very solid, carefully planned way, putting all the foundation blocks in place before beginning the main edifice. They write enthusiastically about a totally uncharacteristic Japanese military action, Operation Ke, the successful evacuation of 10,000 troops from their losing position on “Starvation Island.” Their well-researched work unblushingly shows the possibilities provided by Internet sources. The book begins with an analysis of Japanese and American forces, examining their aircraft, tactics, training and logistic challenges. It details the combat actions leading up to the fighting on Guadalcanal before narrating the events of Operation Ke. Historians sometimes attribute that successful evacuation to the failure of U.S. forces to exploit their opportunities by preventing the Japanese withdrawal or killing more of the troops being evacuated. But the Letourneaus make a case for the evacuation being the result of atypical Japanese thinking and planning. Japan’s leaders agreed to try to

rescue the troops for use elsewhere rather than requiring them to die fighting. The importance of that decision is underlined by the fact that the loss of Guadalcanal was a watershed moment in the Pacific War. Had the Japanese learned from their success, they might have suffered fewer losses in some later battles. The authors adopt an informal style that includes footnote asides and contemporary references (e.g., citing a popular diving site for sunken ships). I must admit to being a little off-put by their use of sporting terms for chapter headings (“Blitzing the Quarterbacks” or “The Half-Time Show”), but that is purely a matter of taste and doesn’t detract from the book’s value. Though Operation Ke is a bit pricey and focused on events often forgotten, it’s a valuable addition to Pacific War history. Walter J. Boyne THE UNSUBSTANTIAL AIR: American Fliers in the First World War by Samuel Hynes; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; New York, N.Y., 2014, $26. From the literary provenance of the title alone, you know this will be a different kind of book about American airmen in World War I. The title chosen by Samuel Hynes, a literature professor emeritus at Princeton who served as a Marine aviator in World War II, is drawn from Shakespeare’s King Lear, and portends a magisterial treatment of the daring young men who soared in hostile skies far from home a century ago. The earliest U.S. volunteers in the French air service, or Aéronautique Militaire, came disproportionately from the Ivy League. Of the first seven, who formed the nucleus of the legendary Lafayette Escadrille, three were from Harvard and one from Yale. When America officially entered the war, participation by Ivy Leaguers mushroomed, involving such notables as Kenneth MacLeish, brother of future Pulitzer Prize– winning poet Archibald, and Quentin Roosevelt, son of the former president. To be sure, the expanding cadre of American combat pilots included its share of distinctly non-blueblood grade-school drop-

outs like ace-to-be Eddie Rickenbacker. But it is mostly the letters and diaries of the fliers from America’s elite universities that Hynes relies upon to explain the air war’s adventures and ordeals. His deft weaving of these cultivated first-person accounts throughout the narrative paints an insightful and poignant portrait. Regardless of pedigree, Hynes celebrates them all as knights of the air who managed to balance the inevitable fatalism resulting from the horrors of war with a sense of romance about the milieu of wartime flying. The Unsubstantial Air masterfully illuminates the first major air war and the American pilots who helped to win it. Philip Handleman B-52 STRATOFORTRESS: The Complete History of the World’s Longest Serving and Best Known Bomber by Bill Yenne, Zenith Press, Minneapolis, Minn., 2012, $40. We were overdue for an updated history of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. This is it. If you’re a buff of the BUFF—the “big ugly fat fellow,” as crews call the B-52 when speaking politely—you’ll want this volume. Bill Yenne, a seasoned author on military and aviation topics, gives us a high-quality, profusely illustrated account of the design, development, modification and operational and combat use of the B-52. He begins with nascent engineering efforts in the 1940s and takes us up through today, when 76 of the 744 Stratofortresses remain in service after more than half a century of full-time duty. To the extent it can be done, this volume delivers the whole story between two covers. In that respect, it fills a vacuum left when earlier B-52 histories written by reviewers in this magazine—Walter J. Boyne and me—went out of print. The B-52 isn’t going out of service and doesn’t need to. According to squadron commander Lt. Col. David Leedom, each of the BUFFs in the Air Force Reserve’s 93rd Bombardment Squadron has about 17,000 hours on its airframe; some of the reservists at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., also pilot airliners that have routinely accumulated 60,000 hours.

Yenne’s narrative covers Cold War nuclear alerts, bombing missions in Vietnam, specialized duties such as carrying the X-15 rocket plane aloft and of course bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s an excellent selection of mostly color photographs, cutaway drawings, diagrams and tables. Appendices give us a full roster of B-52 squadrons, variants and serial numbers, making this a handy reference to have on your shelf. Robert F. Dorr TWIN MUSTANG: The North American F-82 at War by Alan C. Carey, Pen and Sword, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, UK, 2014, $24.95. The F-82 Twin Mustang was “one of the oddest” postwar U.S. military aircraft and has been overlooked, Alan Carey writes. Designed for long-range warfare against Japan, it evolved into a night fighter but did plenty of day flying as an escort for Strategic Air Command and in combat in Korea. Lest we forget, an F-82 chalked up the first U.S. aerial victory in the Korean War. What’s most extraordinary, as revealed in the narrative accompanying this picture book, is how few components were interchangeable between the F-82 and the P-51 Mustang that inspired it. The F-82 had different dimensions, different structural materials and redesigned flight surfaces. This smallish, softbound, reasonably priced volume offers about 150 images that give us a comprehensive look at the 272plane F-82 fleet. In addition to portraits of aircraft, there are close-ups of add-on equipment, including an underslung radar pod and two experimental gun packages. Appendices provide useful reference information, such as differences among major models, as well as a tally of Korean War kills and casualties. Carey gets the details right and rightly treads with care on the myth that the North Koreans used Lavochkin La-7s and La-9s in Korea: They didn’t. That first air-to-air kill, scored by pilot Lieutenant William A. “Skeeter” Hudson and radar operator Lieutenant Carl Fraser, widely reported as a Lavochkin, was actu-

ally a two-seat Yakovlev Yak-11. This is a fine addition to Carey’s body of work and to anyone’s aviation library. Robert F. Dorr Legion Condor by Raúl Arias, Lucas Molina and Rafael Permuy, Schiffer Publishing Ltd., Atglen, Pa., 2013, $79.99. There has been ample literature on aircraft and airmen of the Condor Legion, Germany’s contingent of volunteers sent to aid the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. What is often overlooked, however, is that in actuality the Legion Condor, to use the German terminology, was a larger multiservice outfit, incorporating armor, anti-aircraft artillery and even naval units with the more-publicized air element. In Legion Condor, Raúl Arias, Lucas Molina and Rafael Permuy present the history of all the formation’s contingents, along with 1,100 photographs. Even with such comprehensive treatment, most of this hefty volume is devoted to the aircraft, old and literally brand new, that all underwent their first operational acid tests over Spain. Color aircraft profiles and a selection of memorabilia and artifacts round out an epic-size treatment of the pioneers who gave Adolf Hitler’s blitzkrieg its first dress rehearsal. Jon Guttman THE VANDERSARL BLÉRIOT: A Centenary Celebration by Javier Arango and Philip Makanna, Ghosts, San Francisco, $30 plus $10 shipping. From July 1909 on, Louis Blériot’s Channel-spanning monoplane enjoyed wide popularity and wide production by others, with or without a license. Unique among the Blériot XI copies was one constructed near Denver, Colo., by Jules “J.J.” and Frank VanDersarl. Equally unusual, their one-of-a-kind creation survived to be restored to a modestly airworthy state by

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Xavier Arango’s Aeroplane Collection at Paso Robles, Calif., in time to make its first flight in more than a century on November 3, 2012 (see “Restored,” March 2014 issue). In The VanDersarl Blériot, Arango describes every step of the process, with details captured by renowned aviation photographer Philip Makanna. With a press run of 2,000, of which 1,000 are available to the general public via ghosts.com, The VanDersarl Blériot represents a very focused variation on aviation books aimed at a niche market. But for enthusiasts of aviation’s pioneer era who appreciate the aesthetic of a handmade airplane given coffee-table treatment, plus a wealth of information on a true rarity… well, you know who you are, and you will want this book. Jon Guttman TALES OF THE 319TH by Joseph W. Connaughton, The Ardent Writer Press, Brownsboro, Ala., 2014, $29.95. Part history, part memoir, Tales of the 319th chronicles World War II as author Joseph Connaughton and others in the storied bomb group experienced it, in the air and on land, in Africa, Europe and the Pacific. With the keen focus of a bombardier/navigator, Connaughton charts the history of the 438th Squadron, from its hurried beginnings—in July 1942 at Barksdale Field, where green recruits were inspired to learn they’d be flying with five veterans of the Doolittle Tokyo Raid— to the final days in Okinawa, when seasoned airmen, preparing for the invasion of Japan, instead celebrated the war’s end and eagerly planned for peace. (One airman, Donald Slayton, confided to Connaughton that he wanted to go home to Wisconsin and be a private bush pilot.) These carefully curated stories, one of which Connaughton told in the pages of this magazine (“Operation Mallory Major,” November 2009), are accompanied by a wealth of charts and photos. They trace the squadron’s lows (a snowbound plane in Goose Bay, on the ill-fated northern crossing to the UK) and highs (Martin B-26s tak62

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ing off six abreast: the famed “Col. Randy’s Flying Circus”). This is warfare, up close and personal. Connaughton, 20 and fresh out of training, was anxious to begin combat service, but what he saw the day he landed in Naples sobered him: the bombed-out harbor, GIs feeding starving children from their own mess kits, a pilot cradling his dead bombardier. By his side, Connaughton’s pilot intones, “Welcome to combat, Joe.” Connaughton re-creates Colonel Joseph “Randy” Holzapple’s patient and relentless training regimen, which led to the best accuracy record in the Mediterranean theater, and the intense coordination between bombardier and pilot that contributed to the success of Operation Mallory Major, knocking out 22 bridges on Italy’s Po River. An intense humanity shines throughout. Bob Hope, in North Africa on his first overseas USO trip in August 1943, jokes in front of the B-26 Big Ass Bird. On Christmas Eve 1944 in Corsica, Connaughton listens to a choir on the radio singing “Silent Night” in German and muses: “Why, I wondered, were we at war with these people....They must be a lot like us.” Two days later the crews were in their Marauders, bombing again, many worried they’d “buy the farm” just when they had orders to return home. And yet, once home, Connaughton signed up to follow Holzapple to the Pacific, mastering the Douglas A-26 and chalking up a total of 47 missions. Like Don Slayton—who later gained fame as “Deke” with the Mercury Seven astronauts—the men of the 319th had the Right Stuff. Suzanne Charlé

during World War II. Above and Beyond, currently being shown in selected theaters and at film festivals, chronicles the lesserknown saga of a handful of veterans who in 1948 smuggled aircraft and lent their wartime experience to a new nation whose existence was in jeopardy from its very inception: Israel. Under an arms embargo while 50 million Arabs from five countries swore to drive its 600,000 people into the sea, Israel initially fought without an air force until the small cadre of foreign airmen created one—and played a disproportionate role in saving the Jewish state. Interviews with eight Americans and one South African bring those desperate days back to life. “I was risking my citizenship and also jail time,” said former U.S. Army Air Forces pilot Gideon Lichtman. “They asked me how much I wanted to get paid,” George Lichter recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t need any pay.’ I thought I’d be home in a month or two. I really thought we would lose.” “Jewishness to me didn’t mean anything,” said USAAF pilot and future screenwriter Harold Livingston. “I was an American. But the idea the Jews were going to fight I found exciting. It was about time.” The filmmakers, who include Steven Spielberg’s sister Nancy, clearly wanted to focus on the human factor, while there were still protagonists alive to tell their stories, and they describe their adventures with individuality and verve. That alone makes Above and Beyond an invaluable documentary about a remarkable band of brothers whose heroics and sacrifices at a critical moment truly made history. Jon Guttman

FILM

CLASSICS ABOVE AND BEYOND produced by Nancy Spielberg, Playmount Productions, 2014

American fliers have a tradition of getting involved in other people’s wars, from mercenaries in Mexico’s revolution and the Lafayette Escadrille of World War I, to volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and Sino-Japanese wars, to the RAF Eagle squadrons and the Flying Tigers

SLIDE RULE: The Autobiography of an Engineer by Nevil Shute “Most of my adult life, perhaps all the worthwhile part of it,” Nevil Shute wrote, “has been spent messing about with airplanes.” Many of those involved in the early days of aviation have written memoirs, but few have combined an intimate knowledge of the

nascent aviation industry with the writing talent demonstrated by Shute. Born in Britain in 1899, Shute became famous as a novelist, producing such wellreceived works as On the Beach, A Town Called Alice and No Highway. Prior to emigrating to Australia and embarking upon a successful career as a fiction writer, Nevil Shute Norway, as he was originally named, was a well-known British aircraft designer. Slide Rule is the autobiography he wrote about his life in the aviation industry up until 1938. During the 1930s Shute worked for Airspeed Ltd., designing a series of successful aircraft culminating in the well-known Oxford twin-engine trainer, hundreds of which were used to train Royal Air Force bomber pilots during World War II. His description of the establishment of Airspeed Ltd. says a lot about how difficult things were for a newly created aircraft company during the Depression. Shute’s earlier career working for Vickers, however, will undoubtedly be of more interest to modern readers. While there, he worked with legendary engineer Barnes Wallis on the design and construction of the R-100 airship, which was the successful commercially produced contemporary of the government-built R-101. R-101 crashed on its maiden flight, resulting in the abrupt termination of the entire British lighterthan-air program. Meanwhile, the lessremembered Vickers-built R-100 flew across the Atlantic Ocean and back again, but it was retired and scrapped due to the loss of its government-built rival. Shute not only worked on R-100’s design and construction, he also participated in its transatlantic voyage. What’s more, he was privy to details about the disastrous R-101. Shute has much to say in comparing and contrasting the rival airships, and he explains in detail what went wrong with R-101, and why. What emerges is a cautionary tale about the pitfalls inherent in large-scale industrial projects, particularly when they are controlled by bureaucrats rather than by competent administrators and engineers—with conclusions that are still relevant today. Those in charge of today’s aerospace projects would do well to peruse Slide Rule. Robert Guttman

From the Editors of American History magazine.

‘

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FLIGHT TEST

By Jon Guttman

Dive Bombers vs. Ships

When they scored, dive bombers often scored big during World War II. A

F

B

G

1. What sank the German light cruiser Königsberg—the first major warship victim of dive bombers—on April 10, 1940? A. Blackburn Skuas B. Blackburn Rocs C. Curtiss Helldivers D. Vought Chesapeakes

2. What airplane scored hits on the Royal Navy aircraft carrier Illustrious, nearly sinking it in January 1941?

Let’s Be Civil Can you identify the classic design in private aviation?

Naturals

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Cessna 140 Spartan 7W Executive North American Navion Zlin Z42M Aeronca Champion

6. de Havilland DH.60 Moth 7. Piper TriPacer 8. Klemm KL-26 9. Santos Dumont Demoiselle 10. Stampe SV.4

Match the reputedly “natural-born” pilot to the aircraft with which he’s most associated.

A. Werner Voss B. George Beurling C. Ernst Udet D. Richard Bong E. Han Decai F. William G. Barker G. Georges Guynemer H. Hiroyoshi Nishizawa I. Constantin Cantacuzino J. Ivan Kozhedub

1. Spad VII 2. Lockheed P-38 3. Lavochkin La-7 4. Sopwith Camel 5. Mitsubishi A6M2 6. Supermarine Spitfire 7. Messerschmitt Me-109G 8. Fokker F.I 9. MiG-15 10. Fokker D.VII

4. What was the first aircraft carrier sunk exclusively by dive bombers, on April 9, 1942? A. Lexington B. Hiryu C. Kaga D. Hermes

5. Which pilot, commanding USS Enterprise’s squadron VB-6, is credited with scoring the fatal bomb hit on the Japanese carrier Akagi at Midway? A. Maxwell F. Leslie B. Richard H. Best C. Wilmer E. Gallaher D. Robert R. Johnson

ANSWERS Let’s Be Civil

J

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

E

A. Arizona B. Prince of Wales C. Marat D. Hiei

Naturals

I

3. What was the first battleship sunk exclusively by dive bombers, on September 23, 1941?

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

D

A. Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 B. Savoia-Marchetti SM.85 C. Junkers Ju-87 D. Junkers Ju-88

Dive Bombers vs. Ships

H

1.A, 2.C, 3.C, 4.D, 5.B

C

MAY 2015 AV I AT I O N H I S T O RY

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AERO POSTER

A

recruiting poster highlights the combat prowess of the Grumman F4F, flown by first-ever U.S. Marine Corps ace Marion E. Carl (story, P. 22) and other American airmen early in the Pacific War. In this highly stylized illustration, a single Wildcat shoots down multiple Japanese aircraft, against an Asian backdrop representing the Japanese empire.

66

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