Aviation History 2015-07

FIRST THUNDERSTORM CHASERS + MAKING THE BLUE MAX

CELEBRATING 25 YEARS

The flying circus that opened up Britain’s skies Last hop for the Marines’ beloved CH-46 Battle Phrog

JULY 2015

HistoryNet.com

BLACK WIDOW

Why Northrop’s P-61 was poison to Japanese night raiders

P-47 VS. ME-109

in the Battle of the Bulge

CELEBRATING 25 YEARS

FEATURES 22 Black Widow’s Web

By Stephan Wilkinson The malevolent-looking Northrop P-61 became a legend in its own time, but does it deserve its vaunted reputation?

30 Project Thunderstorm

By Steve Zuger In 1946 a group of brave airmen volunteered to help peel back the layers of mystery surrounding severe weather.

34 ‘Indians’ Over the Bulge

By Steve Blake Ninth Air Force P-47s came out on top in a wild dogfight with the Luftwaffe above the Ardennes.

40 Sir Alan’s Flying Circus

By Derek O’Connor British aviation visionary Alan Cobham set out to sell the world on long-distance air travel.

46 Swan Song for the Battle Phrog

By Frank Lorey III Veteran CH-46 crews wouldn’t have traded their Sea Knights for any other helicopter—not in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.

54 Making The Blue Max

By Don Hollway Today’s computer-generated flight scenes can’t compare to the real thing in a World War I epic filmed 50 years ago.

DEPARTMENTS 6 Mailbag 8 Briefing 14 Extremes A U.S. Marine drops from a CH-46 Sea Knight of HMM-163 during an exercise in the Indian Ocean in 2011 (story, P. 46).

By Robert Guttman Miles’ dragonfly-like Libellula was originally designed as a carrier aircraft.

16 Aviators

By John Lowery RF-80 pilot John Rhoads died just before the Korean armistice took effect.

18 Restored

By Dick Smith Pima’s newly refurbished P-39N Airacobra fought in the South Pacific.

Cover: A P-61 creeps up on its next victim, in a painting by Jack Fellows. Northrop’s Black Widow arrived late in the Pacific War, but quickly ruled the night skies (story, P. 22). Cover: ©1990 Jack Fellows, ASAA Above: U.S. Navy

21 60 65 66

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

SEE OUR IPAD EDITION FOR MORE

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

3

MODERN WAR STUDIES EDITOR IN CHIEF

The Mediterranean Air War

Roger L. Vance

Michael A. Reinstein Dionisio Lucchesi William Koneval

Airpower and Allied Victory in World War II Robert S. Ehlers, Jr.

CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER PRESIDENT ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

“Robert Ehlers has assembled a perceptive, skillful, and comprehensive account of the air dimension of World War II’s pivotal Mediterranean campaign.”—Douglas Porch, author of The Path to Victory: The Mediterranean Theater in World War II Vol. 25, No. 6

“Ehlers combines comprehensive research and insightful analysis in equal measure. This study rightly establishes the centrality of airpower in the struggle in the Mediterranean theater.”—Sebastian Cox, head of Air Historical Branch, Royal Air Force and editor of The Strategic Air War against Germany, 1939–1945

EDITOR

JULY 2015

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

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Discussion: With this issue, Aviation History is celebrating 25 years of publication. We’d love to hear what you enjoy most about the magazine, what you like least and what you hope to see in future issues.

Kim Goddard National Sales Manager [email protected] Rick Gower Georgia [email protected] Terry Jenkins Tenn., Ky., Miss., Ala., Fla., Mass. [email protected] Kurt Gardner Creative Services Director

Go to HistoryNet.com/aviation-history for these great exclusives: Bite of the Black Widow Northrop’s P-61 became the ultimate nocturnal predator in the Pacific War.

Tabitha, a P-61A Black Widow of the 425th Night Fighter Squadron, Ninth Air Force.

Like Aviation History Magazine on Facebook

Top 10 Best and Worst Aviation Movies Walter Boyne’s list of must-see films—as well as the ones you might want to skip. Rise of the Helicopter During three years of fighting in Korea, rotary-wing aircraft played an increasingly vital role.

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

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

A 70th Anniversary Special Issue

Remembering D-Day!

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A revealing look back at an event that changed the world, with riveting eyewitness accounts, classic images, and detailed analysis.

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MAILBAG

Carl with an F4F-4 at Henderson Field during World War II.

Memories of Marion Carl You have no idea of the magnitude of my nostalgia when I finished reading Barrett Tillman’s story “The Natural” about Marion Carl in the May 2015 issue. Then–Lt. Col. Carl was my boss’ boss when I was a civilian novice flight test engineer at the Naval Air Test Center, NAS Patuxent River, Md., in 1946. In late 1946, Carl was scheduled to fly a Lockheed P-80, modified for aircraft carrier operation, aboard USS Franklin D. Roosevelt to determine the effects (if any) of the jet exhaust on the first-of-its-kind steel flight deck and non-skid pads. At that time, the Navy did not have any suitable jet-powered aircraft; the P-80 was the only aircraft available for this purpose. Although I was not involved in the program with the P-80, I asked Carl if I could go along with him and the others who were involved. He asked why I wanted to do this. I told him that since I was new to flighttesting carrier-based aircraft, I thought that

Herk Rescue Recognition Author John Ottley Jr. sent us this picture of his presentation to C-130 pilot Mack Secord (right) of a framed copy of his May “Briefing” item, “Herk Rescue Mission,” at a March 10 meeting of the Atlanta Kiwanis Club. Ottley says Secord was “totally surprised and really delighted,” and received a standing ovation. Our apologies to John for leaving off his byline on that item, but as he graciously pointed out, Mack is a genuine hero who deserves all the credit.

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if I could see actual carrier operations I would be better at my job. He said that he would let me know soon. A few days later he told me I was authorized to go. When I asked him what my work assignment would be, he said, “Look, listen, learn and stay out of my way.” I spent an unforgettable two weeks on board the carrier at sea. Such was the character of the man. He was excellent at his job—administrative and technical—and was also kindly to all, even young civilians. I will never forget him. Martin A. Snyder Dublin, Calif.

March Cover Art Great cover art! Glad to see illustrations back on the covers of Aviation History. No staged photo can capture drama like the cover of the March issue by Jack Fellows. I could stare at it for hours and still not see all the details. Dale R. Schneider Ripon, Wis.

behind him—imagine his surprise to look back and see his observer clinging to the tail of his machine. According to other witnesses, Fiske came clear out of his cockpit for a distance of about 5 feet along the fuselage before landing again just ahead of the empennage. Fortunately his impact created a dent in the wood and fabric of the fuselage, enabling him to hold on until he was able to get astride the airplane and crawl forward, then dive into his cockpit. There’s a picture of the two of them and the dented fuselage in History of the Twentieth Aero Squadron, and a copy of Mandell’s description, accompanied by a drawing, in Volume 1 of New England Aviators 19141918. They were at an altitude of 2,300 feet at the time. Fiske survived the war; Mandell (cousin to my grandfather, also a World War I aviator), was shot down and killed on November 5, 1918. Jane Rice Moultonborough, N.H.

Dramatic Recovery Thanks for the article on the Breguet 14 [“Winged Warhorse,” March]. Your readers might be interested to hear the story of Lieutenant Samuel P. Mandell and his observer, Lieutenant Gardiner H. Fiske. They were flying in a Breguet 14 on a practice mission, both using gun cameras, and Fiske was standing up in the rear gunner’s cockpit, shooting with his gun camera, when pilot Mandell dived to take a shot with his camera. He heard a crash from

Constitution Mystery Ship Received the March issue today and lo and behold therein I met an old friend, the R6O-1 Constitution. I was attached to Air Transport Squadron 5 (VR-5) at Moffett Field, Calif., back in the 1950s. At that time we had the two R6Os in our squadron. I flew many flights as “flight mech” on both 163 and 164. I am an aviation artist, and attached [above] is a painting I completed some time back titled Memories of Moffett Field. Thanks for making the Constitution a “Mystery Ship”! Dave Paulley Osage, Wyo. Send letters to Aviation History Editor, World History Group, 19300 Promenade Drive, Leesburg, VA 20176-6500, or e-mail [email protected].

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BRIEFING

Savannah’s Flying Fortress

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hey called it the Mighty Eighth—the Eighth Air Force, the most effective bomber force of World War II. Though “thousand-plane raids” are bruited as the criterion of aerial enormity, at its peak the Eighth was launching 2,000 bombers at a time against multiple targets. The Eighth was established in January 1942 at Savannah Army Air Base, more familiarly known as Hunter Field. Here and elsewhere, the Eighth’s forces marshaled— slowly at first, but in such growing numbers that by November 1944 the 5,000th airplane was sent to England from Hunter. It was a B-17G appropriately named City of Savannah, for it had been bought with half a million dollars donated by the people of Savannah and surrounding Chatham County. (B-17s cost the government about $205,000 apiece at the time, so the balance of that $500,000 was apportioned for the training of the crew.) City of Savannah survived 44 missions, only to return to the U.S. and disappear under the scrapper’s torch. Now there is a new City of Savannah, an airplane that holds pride of place in the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum, a short drive down I-95 from Savannah International Airport. Though it will never again fly, it has been restored—and work continues—in an effort to make it the fin-

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est static-display B-17 in the world. Nearly every World War II system works: turrets, ancient radios, engines and motors, switches and relays, controls and cables. The B-17 that became Savannah had its own unusual history. Rolled out of the Boeing factory just after V-E Day, it was parked until 1947, when it was flown to Hazen, N.D., to serve as a war memorial outside the town’s high school. In 1951 the B-17 began a 20-year career as a photomapper in Canada before returning to North Dakota to become a borate bomber. Soon everything of WWII relevance had been stripped out, replaced by slurry tanks, simple 1970s avionics and the bare necessities of firebombing. In 1984 the airplane made its last flight, to Dulles International Airport for delivery to the Smithsonian in trade for two Lockheed P2V Neptunes. It was stored in an open-sided hangar for two decades, where it was cocooned in bubble wrap and became home to thousands of birds. “The plastic had adhered to the fuselage and was AIR QUOTES

“There is no reason to fly through a thunderstorm.” –SIGN AT UBON ROYAL THAI AIR FORCE BASE, 1970

Top: Volunteers pose with City of Savannah as it nears completion. Above: The original Flying Fortress at its dedication ceremony.

very difficult to remove,” says restoration director Jerry McLaughlin. “The interior still held considerable amounts of caked slurry, and it took us a year just to clean the airplane and begin stripping parts. We plan to be the only publicly displayed B-17 in the world that has all three power turrets working,” says McLaughlin. The ball and chin turrets are already functional, and the upper turret should be powered up by the time you read this. (For more on one of the volunteers behind the turret restorations, see “Restored” in our next issue.) Stephan Wilkinson

TOP: GULFSTREAM AEROSPACE; ABOVE: SAVANNAHB17.ORG

Bata Lockheed Electra

Bata’s 1937 Lockheed 10A Electra helped pioneer the corporate airplane concept.

any of us assume that corporate flying was developed by Texas oil barons and Midwestern entrepreneurs during the 1930s, but it was a Czech shoe company, Bata, that pioneered a particularly productive form of business aviation with this very airplane—a 1937 Lockheed 10A Electra that recently was returned to betterthan-new condition by Wichita Air Services. Rather than simply using the 10-seat twin (eight passengers, two crew) as a royal barge for corporate execs, Bata’s Lockheed was also put to work to fly high-value workers to factories where they were needed and to carry emergency replacement parts for assembly-line machinery. The Electra also made the first successful round-theworld business flight, in April 1937. Bata, which started and still exists as a shoe manufacturer, eventually had more than

M

TOP: JEFF MOORE PHOTOGRAPHY; ABOVE: ROBERT F. DORR

100 different companies all over Europe, the UK, India and the Far East. It’s surprising that Bata approached aviation with such enthusiasm, for the company’s founder, Tomas Bata, was killed in 1932 in the crash of a Junkers J.13, his first bizplane, near his headquarters in Zlin, Czechoslovakia. And despite this tragedy, one of Bata’s divisions became an aircraft-manufacturing company named after that home city: Zlin, the builder of aerobatic trainers and competition aircraft. The Bata Electra had a varied career after it flew a planeload of executives to freedom in England in 1939. The 10A then saw service as an RAF shuttle and was sent to Canada to fly antisub patrols for the RCAF. Sold as surplus in 1946, it passed through the hands of several owners, including film actress Margaret O’Brien, and ultimately was bought by a

Czech aviation enthusiast. The airplane was flying when it arrived at Wichita Air Services’ extensive restoration shop in Newton, Kan., in 2010, but it needed corrosion correction, much reskinning, lots of rewiring and a complete new interior and cockpit. The Electra first flew again on March 13 of this year, and has

since been flown to the Czech Republic. The owner of OKCTB—its original Czech registry—is honoring the airplane’s Bata legacy by displaying it in a purpose-built hangar at an airfield near Prague. Whether the Lockheed will be flown at future European airshows hasn’t yet been determined. Stephan Wilkinson

MYSTERY SHIP

Can you identify this experimental jet? Turn to P. 12 for the answer.

JULY 2015

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

9

BRIEFING

Widow-Makers at Work

The drones are flown from a mobile command post (inside view, below).

Drones vs. Poachers

I

t has been 70 years since Northrop P-61B-1NO no. 42-39445 of the 550th Night Fighter Squadron, Thirteenth Air Force, left Hollandia airfield on a “proficiency flight” on January 10, 1945, only to crash on Cyclops Mountain in New Guinea. In 1988 the wreck was recovered from its crash site 5,050 feet up the mountain, and in 1991 it was brought to the MidAtlantic Air Museum in Reading, Pa. Since serious restoration efforts got underway in 1994, the quest to turn the wreckage of one of the most technically complex combat planes of World War II into the only flying example of its kind has been a protracted process. Some $850,000 has gone into reassembling the fuselage nacelle, twin booms and tailplane, but much work—and an estimated $1 million—remains to be invested in rebuilding the wings and rendering the aircraft flight-ready. This year, though, the ongoing effort is showing encouraging signs of accelerated progress. “The Mid-Atlantic Air Museum’s P-61 restoration project continues to move along,” reports the museum’s founder and president, Russell A. Strine. “As a result of the recent Kickstarter fundraising effort, all the materials to manufacture the new wing spars, replace any damaged wing ribs and re-skin the wings are now in-house. Meanwhile MAAM crews are busy on the other wing spar components such as the spar web, and are also making the patterns for and are forming new wing ribs as necessary. The ribs are made in three sections: nose, center and trailing edge. However, a 10

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

oachers are killing so many elephants and rhinos in Africa that biologists predict both species may soon be extinct without massive intervention. According to the Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation’s president, John Peterson, “About 40,000 elephants were killed last year to supply the ivory trade to China.” Fortunately there’s a new tool on the horizon—literally—for rangers trying to protect those endangered animals: unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. Tested in the past two years, the foundation’s Air Shepherd program combines unarmed drones equipped with night-vision cameras with advanced predictive analytic technology. Basically, the drones fly where poachers are most likely to strike, transmitting images of the areas to operators on the ground, who then communicate with rangers who’ve been prepositioned and are ready to intervene. As Peterson puts it, “When we fly, the poaching stops.” The Lindbergh Foundation has launched a crowdfunding campaign for drone teams for seven African nations interested in the program. To contribute or find out more about the program, visit airshepherd.org.

P Top: The Mid-Atlantic Air Museum’s P-61B in June 2014. Above: A section of the wing trailing edge takes form.

number of the nose or leading edge section ribs must be replaced due to damage from trees during the crash. Work on the crew nacelle has been focused on installing miles of electrical wiring for quite some time now, and just prior to the December holidays ground power was put on the airplane for the first time to test all electrical circuits, which went without a hitch!” Other work has centered around stringing and connecting up the engine fuel system and flight control trim cables. “During 2014 an original NOS [new old stock] Curtiss Electric propeller was purchased after raising $20,000 dollars during the museum’s annual World War II Weekend event,” Strine says. “A second Curtiss Electric prop, promised to the museum for the project, is now in-house.” Up to now, Mid-Atlantic Air Museum visitors have been greeted by a wingless, bare-metal Black Widow. But displaying its work in progress has undoubtedly contributed to raising the funds that will make this the only flying P-61 in the world. Jon Guttman

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BRIEFING MYSTERY SHIP ANSWER

Two Eagles Across the Pacific

A

merican Troy Bradley and Russian Leonid Tiukhtyaev added two more world records to their already substantive pilot portfolios: On January 31 they completed a trans-Pacific gas-filled balloon flight that set both distance and duration records. Starting from Saga, Japan, the two aviators traveled 6,646 miles in 160 hours and 37 minutes, sharing space the size of a modest tent. Their intended target was Vancouver Island, British Columbia, but southerly coastal winds forced a water landing just outside Puerto San Carlos in Baja California. The prior records for each were 5,208 miles in a 1981 Pacific cross-

Top: A dramatic view of the Pacific from the Two Eagles gondola. Above: Aeronauts Tom Bradley and Leonid Tiukhtyaev.

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ing effort, and a duration record of 137 hours, 5 minutes, set in 1978 during the first Atlantic balloon crossing. Bradley, a seasoned lighter-than-air pilot who completed the first U.S.-to-Africa balloon flight in 1992, holds more than 50 international ballooning records. Tiukhtyaev, from Moscow, is a bank executive who won the silver medal in the 2012 America’s Challenge balloon race, among other distinctions. The differences between balloon types were particularly notable in this venture: Two Eagles is a helium-filled balloon, meaning that the pilots depended only on wind to determine direction and speed. This also required that they launch with almost six tons of ballast bags used for altitude adjustments during the long trip. Other types of balloons include hot air (also dependent on wind for direction and speed, and requiring a flammable fuel source), and the Rozière balloon—a hybrid invented in 1785 that combines gas (usually helium) and hot air in separate chambers, allowing for slightly better control. At press time the Two Eagles records were still listed as unofficial and are pending certification by the Fédèration Aéronautique Internationale.

The X-31 was an unarmed research ship that resembled a fighter. It emerged from experience over North Vietnam where nimble, Soviet-built MiG-17s out-turned American fighters like the F-4 Phantom II. Developed by America’s Rockwell International and Germany’s Messerschmitt-BölkowBlohm, the two X-31s tested thrust vectoring—aiming engine exhaust in different directions—that would enable warplanes to maneuver as never before. The pilot could make tight turns and point his nose (which would have guns, on a fighter version) at targets quickly and abruptly. The X-31 could even fly in one direction while pointing and shooting in another—what is known as flight path decoupling. The first X-31 made its maiden flight at Palmdale, Calif., on October 11, 1990, the second on January 19, 1991. A goal was achieved when an X-31 first flew at a 70-degree angle of attack on September 18, 1992. Thrust-vectored X-31s dazzled observers with their ability to fly at strange angles and perform unorthodox maneuvers. At the 1995 Paris Air Show, an X-31 literally flew backwards above the crowd. The U.S. Navy and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) managed the program from 1990 to 1995. Each X-31 was powered by a single General Electric F404GE-400 turbojet. At the plane’s tail were three-vane, thrust-vectoring carbon-fiber paddles, described by Navy test pilot Commander Al Grove as “the aircraft’s visible technological masterpiece.” After the two X-31s completed 580 flights, the first ship crashed on January 19, 1995, though the pilot ejected safely. The second aircraft was retired for several years, flew again and is now on display at Deutsches Museum Flugwerft Schleissheim, near Munich. Robert F. Dorr

PHOTOS: TOM BRADLEY

The World Was Never the Same: Events That Changed History

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EXTREMES

By Robert Guttman

Dragonfly Dreams Although Miles Aircraft’s odd-looking Libellula flew well, British officials swatted it down

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he conventional image of an airplane—a tubular fuselage with a pair of wings attached somewhere near the center and a rudder and elevators mounted on tail surfaces—has become ingrained in the public consciousness. A few independent-minded individuals, however, have possessed the imagination to step back and take a fresh look at aircraft design. Among them were British brothers George and Frederick Miles and Frederick’s wife, Maxine. In 1933 the Miles family began designing airplanes for the Phillips and Powis Aircraft Company. Frederick also became the firm’s managing director, and its products were marketed under the Miles name. That state of affairs persisted until 1943, when Frederick took over the company and its name was officially changed to Miles Aircraft Ltd. Maxine, a draftswoman who in 1935 designed the Sparrowhawk racing plane, became a shareholder and would also serve as director of the Miles Aeronautical Technical School in 1943. Miles produced a series of successful light sporting monoplanes during the 1930s, including the M.12 Mohawk, an elegant twoseater designed and built in 1936 on special order for Charles Lindbergh (the Mohawk is currently on display at the Royal Air Force Museum outside London). In 1937 Miles introduced the innovative Magister twoseat trainer, which became the first monoplane to be accepted by the British Air Ministry for “ab initio instruction” (primary training). A total of 1,293 Magisters would be manufactured. In 1939 Miles followed up that success with the Master, a high-speed advanced trainer, of which 3,300 were produced. Thousands of British Commonwealth pilots would train in Magisters and Masters during World War II. In 1941 George Miles learned that the Royal Navy was concerned about the high 14

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

A small-scale prototype of the tandem-wing, twin-engine Miles M.39—proposed as a high-speed, high-altitude medium bomber—makes a test flight on August 14, 1945.

rate of landing accidents aboard aircraft carriers. Reports indicated that one of the principal issues was poor visibility from the cockpit during final approach. George thought a possible solution might be an airplane configured as a tandem biplane, powered by a pusher engine and equipped with tricycle landing gear. He reasoned that the pilot of such an aircraft could sit in the nose, affording him an unobstructed view during landings. Additional benefits of the configuration would include increased wing area and reduced span, resulting in a slower landing speed while simultaneously eliminating the need for heavy, complex folding wings. In addition, spreading the center of lift between two tandem wings would eliminate the need for tail surfaces, reducing drag. It would also shorten the fuselage, rendering the airplane more

maneuverable in flight and easier to stow aboard ship. Miles dubbed this innovative design the Libellula, after a genus of common dragonflies. To determine whether the proposed configuration was feasible, George Miles and his chief engineer, Ray Bournon, designed a small-scale test version powered by a 130-hp de Havilland Gipsy Major engine. Designated the M.35, the experimental plane was completed in less than six weeks. No more than 12 employees ever worked on it because the factory was so busy filling orders for RAF trainers. The M.35 had a large, low-set swept wing just ahead of the tail, with end-plate fins and rudders. A smaller, high-set straight wing was mounted just behind the cockpit. The ailerons were fitted to the aft wing, while the elevators were situated on the

RAF MUSEUM, HENDON

forward wing. Both wings were fitted with landing flaps. The original intention had been to install the Gipsy Major ahead of the rear wing, driving the propeller via an extension shaft. In order to save time and expense, however, the engine was mounted at the tail, without the extension shaft. As a result of all that weight concentrated at the tail, however, when Frederick Miles first flew the aircraft on May 1, 1942, it proved to be longitudinally unstable. Although the problem was alleviated by the installation of ballast, the design was not considered a success. The M.35 had been constructed entirely as a private venture, and the Air Ministry criticized Miles for building and flying it without authorization. In any case the Admiralty, for whom it was intended, showed no interest in the design. A projected full-size carrier-based fighter version, to be powered by a Rolls-Royce Griffon and armed with four 20mm cannons, was never built. Undeterred by the official disapproval, George Miles designed another Libellulatype aircraft, this time to meet an Air Ministry specification for a high-speed, highaltitude, twin-engine medium bomber. Called the M.39, the bomber variant was intended to be powered by two Rolls-Royce Merlin or Bristol Hercules engines and have

a range of 1,500 miles at 30,000 feet while carrying a 4,000-pound bombload. Once again Miles built a small-scale flying mock-up of the proposed aircraft, the M.39B. Powered by two 140-hp Gipsy Majors, the M.39B differed from its predecessor in that its rear wing was mounted higher than the front wing, to allow clearance for the twin propellers and also to clear the aft wing from the downwash effect of the forward wing. The endplate fins and rudders were also augmented by a central fixed fin. Flown for the first time on July 22, 1943, the M.39B handled very well, demonstrating that Miles had learned from his mistakes on the M.35. Miles again found himself officially censured for building and flying an unauthorized prototype, but this time the Air Ministry was sufficiently interested to purchase the plane for evaluation at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. Official testing was delayed by two accidents that necessitated extensive repairs to the prototype. Neither of those mishaps had anything to do with the airplane’s flying qualities. One occurred when the delivery pilot forgot to lower the landing gear on arrival at Farnborough, the other when the M.39B was blown onto its back by the prop-wash of a nearby aircraft. While at the R.A.E., the M.39B was flown

When Frederick Miles (left) flew the original Libellula model (below), the M.35, in May 1942, it proved to be longitudinally unstable, as a result of the weight concentrated in its tail.

ABOVE: AVIATION HISTORY COLLECTION/ALAMY; ABOVE INSET: HISTORYNET ARCHIVE

extensively by Captain Eric “Winkle” Brown, one of the world’s most experienced test pilots. Much of Brown’s work involved testing control and stability with different combinations of the two pairs of flaps. He subsequently wrote that the aircraft exhibited exceptionally mild stall characteristics, and would recover by itself after losing only about 100 feet of altitude. He did criticize its performance with one engine out, during which he found it virtually impossible to maintain straight and level flight. It should be noted, however, that to save money the prototype had been fitted with low-powered engines that turned in the same direction, and with nonfeathering propellers. Brown’s verdict: He found it an interesting and generally pleasant aircraft to fly, and speculated it might have made a good high-speed bomber, though he didn’t believe it would have been suitable as a carrier-based fighter. In the end the Air Ministry turned down Miles’ bomber proposal, and the full-sized prototype was never built. The M.39B was eventually returned to Miles Ltd., where it underwent further modifications and tests. The Miles brothers persisted with the Libellula configuration, proposing, among other things, a jet-powered mailplane. Dubbed the M.63, it would have been propelled by three tail-mounted jet engines, similar in configuration to the later Boeing 727. The M.63 was expected to have a range of 1,600 miles at a cruising speed of 500 mph at an altitude of 36,000 feet. Miles’ most ambitious aircraft—and what would turn out to be its last project—was undoubtedly the M.52, an experimental jet designed by Miles engineer Don L. Brown that was intended to break the sound barrier. The first of three planned aircraft was nearly complete in 1946, but once again the British government stepped in and terminated the project, this time over postwar budget concerns. Data on the M.52’s all-moving, variable-incidence tailplane that Miles shared with America’s National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, predecessor of NASA) was reportedly used by Bell Aircraft during its development of the supersonic X-1. In 1947, the same year that Chuck Yeager exceeded the speed of sound in the X-1, Miles Aircraft entered receivership, and the company was subsequently restructured.  JULY 2015

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AVIATORS

By John Lowery

Last Airman KIA in Korea Five hours before the armistice, a photoreconnaissance pilot lost his life in a Shooting Star over Pyongyang

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t was late afternoon on July 27, 1953, the final day of the Korean War. With clouds covering his target along North Korea’s border with China, Lockheed RF-80A photoreconnaissance pilot Captain John K. Rhoads was alternately snatching his aircraft hard left, then hard right, apparently trying to find a hole in the clouds so he could bring home usable photo-intelligence. As the Air Force weather officer had predicted in the 4th Fighter Interceptor Group’s mission briefing, the entire target area was covered in a solid undercast. The armistice agreement specified that the North Korean air force would be limited to the number of aircraft within the nation’s borders on the war’s last day. Because their airfields were bombed so often, the North Koreans had transferred their entire air force to Chinese bases, which were politically protected. The United Nations command needed to document the exact number of jet fighters the North Koreans had in-country to ensure their compliance when the armistice took effect at the end of July 27. The 45th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron of the 67th Tac16

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

Above: An RF-80 prepares to take off on a photorecon mission over Korea, followed by two escorting F-86s. Left: 1st Lt. John Lowery poses on the wing of a Sabre.

tical Reconnaissance Wing, to which Captain Rhoads was assigned, had been tasked with photographing the North Korean airfields located near the Yalu River boundary with China, where the MiG-15s were likely to be based. Rhoads’ escort consisted of four North American F-86 Sabres from the 334th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing. Both wings were based at Kimpo Air Base, better known as K-14.

Rhoads’ aggressive maneuvering that afternoon was making it difficult for those of us in his escort to keep him in sight while simultaneously scanning the sky for attacking MiGs. As a newly christened first lieutenant, I was flying the number four position in the escorting flight. I had unfortunately been saddled with one of the two remaining early-model F-86As assigned to the 334th Squadron. With less powerful engines than the newer F-86Es and Fs, those Sabres had been used primarily for proficiency flying or training newly arrived pilots. But since there was a shortage of operationally ready aircraft that day, an F-86A had been placed on the afternoon mission schedule. Because of my Sabre’s lower engine thrust, I was continually at full throttle, trying to keep up with my element leader, 1st Lt. Edwin Scarff. Adding to my other problems, the G-forces resulting from the

TOP: U.S. AIR FORCE; ABOVE: COURTESY OF JOHN LOWERY

continuous hard maneuvering over the border were causing my G-suit to be constantly inflated, and it was getting downright uncomfortable. Captain Rhoads had already established a reputation for aggressive flying. While most recon photos were typically taken from 15,000 to 21,000 feet, to avoid deadly anti-aircraft fire, he was known to regularly shoot his pictures at 6,000 to 9,000 feet. And if he couldn’t see his target well enough at that level, he’d often go down to as low as 300 feet and slow down to 250 knots, in an effort to improve the photographic detail. At the conclusion of that day’s briefing, Rhoads had been overheard telling a squadron mate that he intended to get a Silver Star for the mission “or die trying.” I remember thinking, “How in the world do you get a Silver Star, the nation’s third highest award for bravery, by taking pictures?” Although the weather made prospects for that last mission look dubious, Rhoads was clearly determined to succeed. When we arrived in the target area, not only was it covered in clouds but our island radar station, “Mongoose,” located in the Yellow Sea, assured us the MiGs were not flying. As Rhoads continued his aggressive maneuvering, we turned south from the Yalu River and headed back toward base in a vigorous zigzag fashion. About halfway home, Rhoads finally found a hole in the undercast—over the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. Rhoads immediately dived down over the city and began running his cameras, bringing us all within lethal range of antiaircraft guns. Then, despite a warning from our flight leader Major David T. Davidson, Rhoads inexplicably did the unthinkable:

He lined up for a second pass down Pyongyang’s main street. I was so busy just trying to stay with my element leader that I couldn’t see all the fireworks. But then I spotted a long sheet of flame from the RF-80’s tailpipe area. The radio was eerily quiet for a moment, and then, very calmly, Davidson said, “You better get out of that thing.” Rhoads responded, “I’ve stop-cocked her—think I’ll try to make it to the water” (the Yellow Sea was just to the west). Then the RF-80 exploded. Rhoads’ Shooting Star had unfortunately not yet been equipped with an ejection seat. “Someone better stay to see if he gets out,” Davidson radioed, “and give him a fighter CAP.” We were all low on fuel at that point, however, and knew we had to head for Kimpo immediately. Back at K-14, with the sun setting in the west, we entered the initial landing approach in right echelon. Then, with fivesecond interval spacing, we pitched out for the downwind and began turning to base leg. But now I had a problem. The landing gear warning horn was blaring, and the left main gear indicator light was showing red—unsafe. I checked my fuel gauge, which read 50 pounds (20½ gallons) remaining. Landing with an unsafe gear was a sure ticket to a major accident. To go around and try to lower the gear with the emergency hydraulic hand pump in the F-86A was a big roll of the dice. Maybe 50 pounds of fuel was enough and maybe not. I quickly decided to risk it. With the Sabre’s J47 at full power, I retracted the landing gear and pulled up steeply to the downwind leg of the traffic pattern. Then I put the gear handle down

An F-86E of the 336th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing, lands at Kimpo Air Base, better known as K-14.

LEFT: COURTESY OF JOHN LOWERY; RIGHT: U.S. AIR FORCE

again, hoping that by recycling it would give me a “safe” indication. No dice. While operating the hand pump with my right hand like my life depended on it—and half expecting the engine to quit at any moment—I turned a rather short base leg. My other hand was busy modulating the engine power, extending the flaps and flying the airplane. After I turned onto final, the gear warning horn continued to blare, with the left main landing gear warning light still glowing red. Sweat was running into my eyes as the fuel gauge pointer touched the big E—empty—but thankfully the engine didn’t quit. Still, if the landing gear collapsed with no fuel aboard, at least there should be no explosion and fire. As my Sabre rounded-out in the landing flare, the landing gear warning horn suddenly stopped. I felt the tires touch the pavement, then looked down and saw three green landing gear indicator lights. I breathed a sigh of relief as I rolled to the end of the runway. Just as I turned onto the taxiway, the engine flamed out. Greatly relieved, I relaxed as our maintenance guys towed me to the squadron revetments. It had been quite a day. Just five hours before the armistice, Captain John K. Rhoads died trying to fulfill his mission and earn a Silver Star. Instead of that award, however, on September 10, 1953, he received a posthumous Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second highest military honor. Because of his record of achievement, for months thereafter the 45th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron operations scheduling board continued to list his takeoff time— “Rhoads-1530”—with the landing time missing. 

This RF-80A of the 45th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron sports olive-drab paint, to make it less conspicuous to MiGs.

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RESTORED

By Dick Smith

Jungle Airacobra After taking a circuitous route from New Guinea, a wrecked P-39N has been returned to fighting trim by the Pima Air & Space Museum

B

ell’s P-39 turned heads when it first appeared on April 6, 1938. With its mid-fuselage-mounted engine, the Airacobra boasted a hard-hitting 37mm cannon in the nose that fired through the propeller spinner. Several Airacobras survive today on static display, in addition to at least three airworthy examples. A recently restored late version of the fighter, a P-39N that fought in New Guinea during World War II, is now on display at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Ariz. Development of the P-39 began in February 1937, when U.S. Army Air Corps Lieutenant Benjamin S. Kelsey, the project officer for fighters, and Captain Gordon P. Saville, a fighter instructor at the Air Corps Tactical School, issued a request for a highaltitude interceptor. The aircraft was to be armed with a nose cannon and feature tricycle landing gear. It had to be capable of a level airspeed of at least 360 mph and able to climb to 20,000 feet in six minutes. Bell’s designers came up with the streamlined XP-39, with a 37mm Oldsmobile T9 cannon that fired through the spinner plus a pair of .50-caliber machine guns in the

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

The markings on the Pima Air & Space Museum’s newly rebuilt P-39N (above) are based on photos of an Airacobra flown by Lieutenant John T. Evans (left).

wings. Power to swing its nearly 12-footdiameter Aeroproducts propeller came from a 1,200-hp Allison V-1710 V-12 positioned behind the cockpit. A 10-foot-long steel shaft ran from the engine through a tunnel beneath the pilot’s feet to the nose, transmitting energy to the prop. In another distinctive design feature, the cockpit was accessed via two automobile-style doors on either side of the fuselage. The starboard door had interior and exterior handles, while the port door had a handle only on the outside, for emergency use. Although the bullet-shaped Airacobra had been conceived as a high-altitude inter-

ceptor, the Allison’s poor performance above 20,000 feet eventually relegated the aircraft to lower-altitude duties. Several fixes were proposed for the engine, including a turbocharger, but that was deemed impractical because there was no space for it in the streamlined airframe. In an effort to save the project, Bell engineers and the Army worked out a solution that called for 12 preproduction YP-39s to be built with a single-stage, single-speed supercharger.

TIMELINE

No. 42-18814’s fuselage before restoration.

TOP AND BOTTOM: PIMA AIR & SPACE MUSEUM; MIDDLE: THE J.T. EVANS FAMILY

This made the Airacobra simpler to manufacture, but relegated it to serving as a medium- to high-altitude interceptor. Still, nearly 10,000 P-39s, in more than a dozen variants, were built from 1940 to 1944. Pima’s P-39N rolled out of the Bell plant in Buffalo, N.Y., in April 1943. Aircraft number 42-18814 was part of a block of 500 P-39Gs that were disassembled, crated and shipped to Australia (the P-39Ns were originally “G” variants ordered by the Air Corps, upgraded with a more powerful engine driving a larger propeller). On arrival, it was transferred to the airfield at Tadji, on New Guinea’s northern coast. Records of 42-18814’s service in the Pacific theater are incomplete, but according to James Stemm, Pima’s director of collections and restorations, it was apparently assigned to the 110th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron of the Fifth Air Force. “We have good information on the aircraft until it left the United States,” Stemm explained. “After that it gets pretty sketchy.” Airacobra 42-18814 was part of what was considered the middle production run, the P-39F to N versions. From its serial number, it appears that Pima’s P-39 is an N-5. Some N models were fitted with cameras, though these were seldom used over areas like New Guinea, since the dense jungle obscured aerial evidence of military operations. The assumption is that Pima’s Airacobra conducted ground-strafing missions and served as a low-level fighter-interceptor before it crashed at Tadji airfield (the crash date was unrecorded). The aircraft was then stripped and abandoned in the jungle. There the wreckage remained until 1974, when it was recovered by New Zealander Charles Darby and Australian Monty Armstrong. They had been tasked with overseeing the removal of several P-39 and P-40 wrecks by David Tallichet, the late founder and head of the Military Aircraft Restoration

Corporation, an aircraft recovery and salvage operation based in California. What was left of 42-18814, with other P-39 wrecks, was disassembled before being carried in pieces to trucks and shipped to the U.S. Those aircraft ended up at Chino Airport, where Tallichet had storage facilities. Though sources indicate 42-18814 remained at Tallichet’s facility for some time, there’s no indication what shape it was in on arrival. It does appear that restoration was started on the fuselage and wings there. Little else is known about Pima’s P-39 until May 24, 1997, when records indicate the fuselage was received by the Military Aviation Preservation Society at AkronCanton Airport, in Ohio. Reed Kimball, the society’s director of education, confirmed that some restoration work was done there too, though there are no details on record. In 2004 the P-39 fuselage arrived at the Pima museum. “When we got the aircraft in 2004, it was on its gear,” Stemm reported. A lot of work was needed to bring the airframe up to museum standards. Photos show that the fuselage exterior was intact, though many access panels were missing. The cockpit was virtually empty; working from Bell plans, restorers constructed an instrument panel using components from the museum’s stock of spare parts. The pilot’s seat was fabricated in the metal shop, and the throttle quadrant had to be built and affixed to the inside of the portside door. Finishing touches included thorough cleaning of the cockpit and painting. While the cockpit work was still in progress, staffers started in on the Allison engine. Since the aircraft would never fly again, most of the restoration work was cosmetic. “But it still has to appear first class,” Stemm noted. When the airframe arrived from Ohio, it included only rudimentary wing sections and empennage. “We had to make many parts of the wings

and tail, especially the fairings,” he said. “It required a lot of custom hand work.” Although some P-39 versions carried wing-mounted guns, Pima’s Airacobra doesn’t have that armament. Equipping the fighters with additional guns made the aircraft especially attractive to the Soviet air force during WWII. After receiving considerable numbers of the N and Q models under the Lend-Lease program, the Russians put them to good use against German forces on the Eastern Front. Despite the fighter’s success with the Russians, however, it never achieved much favor with the British or Americans. The RAF’s No. 601 Squadron was the only British unit to use the Airacobra in combat, when four P-400s—export versions with a 20mm cannon in place of the 37mm weapon—strafed a group of German barges near Dunkirk on October 9, 1941. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, American P-39s and Britishrejected P-400s fought at Guadalcanal, in the Solomons and in the Aleutian Islands, also tangling with the Japanese over New Guinea. In Italy the 332nd Fighter Group, the celebrated “Tuskegee Airmen,” flew P-39Qs for a short time before obtaining hand-me-down P-47D Thunderbolts. The newly refurbished P-39N is on exhibit in the Pima Air & Space Museum’s Hangar 4 with a fresh coat of U.S. Army olive drab on the fuselage topside and an undersurface of neutral gray. Its empennage, wing leading edges and prop spinner are glossy white, in keeping with the 110th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron’s markings in New Guinea. The Airacobra’s personal livery—a shapely brunette on the starboard cockpit entry door, the name “Girlie” and a bold white 30 on both sides of the fuselage—is based on photos of a P-39 flown out of Gusap, New Guinea, in 1944 by Lieutenant John T. Evans, a pilot in the 110th TRS. 

The reconstructed fuselage awaits wings.

Pima’s P-39N on its gear, before painting.

A close-up of the 37mm nose cannon.

ABOVE LEFT AND MIDDLE: PIMA AIR & SPACE MUSEUM; RIGHT: DICK SMITH

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TO

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LETTER FROM AVIATION HISTORY

By Carl von Wodtke

Silver Anniversary

L

Like the Wright brothers’ first airplane at Kitty Hawk, time flies. This issue, our 150th, marks the completion of 25 years of publishing Aviation History (and its earlier incarnations, Aviation Heritage and Aviation). Given the rapidly changing landscape in the magazine publishing industry during the last quarter-century, that’s quite an accomplishment. One thing that hasn’t changed in all those years of publisher buyouts, consolidations and reorganizations is our dedication to producing, as editor emeritus Arthur H. Sanfelici put it in our premiere issue, “a magazine that you will enjoy reading each issue,” one that is “both interesting and enlightening.” To that I would add “and dedicated to faithfully and accurately telling the stories of the brave men and women who made aviation history.” We owe them that. In this issue, for example, you’ll read about Britain’s long-distance flight pioneer Sir Alan Cobham (P. 40), who devoted his life to making the public more “air-minded”; about the courageous airmen who volunteered to fly P-61 Black Widows directly into thunderstorms in the late 1940s, collecting weather data that made the skies safer for all (P. 30); and about the U.S. Marine Corps flight and ground crews who kept the venerable CH-46 Sea Knight transport helicopters flying for half a century (P. 46). Then there’s the story of Captain John K. Rhoads, a photoreconnaissance pilot who earned a posthumous Distinguished Service Cross when he was shot down over North Korea just five hours before the armistice went into effect, as told by one of his fighter escorts that day (P. 16). Certainly aircraft and related hardware make up a big part of aviation history, but without the designers, mechanics and aircrews themselves, they would never get off the ground. Still, we know our readers enjoy a good airplane story, especially when it’s as deftly handled as Stephan Wilkinson’s “Black Widow’s Web” (P. 22). Given his considerable talents and track record with us, it’s no surprise that contributing editor Wilkinson is our go-to guy for superbly written aircraft development pieces. While our dedication to producing the best aviation history magazine possible remains the same, we haven’t been resting on our laurels. You’ll note several references in this issue to additional content on our iPad edition. Launched with our January 2015 issue, the iPad edition is far more than a straight replicant of our print issue in digital form; it’s a completely redesigned and enhanced version of the magazine. It allows readers to watch videos related to stories, take 360-degree virtual cockpit tours of the airplanes we feature and view photos (including additional images not featured in the magazine) at full-screen size. Current subscribers who have access to an iPad can add this digital edition to their existing subscription for just $3 (call 1-800-435-0715), and new subscribers can choose from print, iPad and print/iPad packages (see historynet.com for details). Change is in the wind as we embark on our 26th year of publication as part of the new World History Group. But while we intend to keep pace with current publishing trends, as Art Sanfelici wrote in our first issue, all of us at Aviation History “pledge to you that we will do our best” to deliver a magazine that honors the people who made it all possible. 

1990

2015 Aviation History has come a long way since our premiere issue (as Aviation Heritage, top) 25 years ago. Our new digital interactive edition for iPad (above) is presented in a horizontal format with additional content for an enhanced reader experience.

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BLACK ’ WIDOW S WEB

N

With just 127 victories to its credit, the Northrop P-61 was a minor player in WWII air combat, but its influence extended far beyond that wartime role

BY STEPHAN WILKINSON

Not counting bombers, transports and more specialized types, the United States produced just over 100,000 fighter aircraft of 11 different types for use in World War II. Only 674 of them were Northrop P-61 Black Widows (with another 32 delivered after war’s end). Yet the brutish twin-engine night fighter has achieved a mythic status that belies its small production run and short career—just a single year of combat at the end of the conflict. Does the infamous Black Widow deserve such a reputation? Good question, and the answers will be all over the map depending on whether you consider the Black Widow “too cool” or subscribe to the “too slow, too low” school. The British invented aerial night combat during World War I, when specially modified Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2cs were first used to blunt the German Zeppelin night-bombing campaign. The spindly biplanes were fitted with fixed Lewis machine guns that fired upward at a 45-degree angle, so the airplane needed only to fly within range under the huge, notoriously flammable airships and blaze away. The Luftwaffe borrowed that idea for the venomously efficient Junkers Ju-88G and several other night fighters during the next war, calling it Schräge Musik (jazz music). The various Ju-88 marks had more European theater night victories than did all Allied night fighters combined.

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©1990 JACK FELLOWS, ASAA

Artist Jack Fellows captures the moment before Nakajima Ki.84 pilot Sergeant Akira Kusano became the seventh and last victim of P-61 ace Major Carroll Smith over Mindoro early on December 30, 1944.

The U.S., however, initially had no use for night fighters. The Army Air Corps was confident Americans were safe from attack night and day between two impossibly wide oceans, and offensive doctrine was built around daylight bombing. Unlike the RAF, the U.S. had no need to desperately search the night skies for intruders over its capital city or, later, escort its own bombers in the dark. The 1940 Battles of France and Britain, and the London Blitz, showed that this new war was going to be different, and lessons learned by Fairey Battles, Bolton-Paul Defiants, Spitfires and Hurricanes were shared by RAF airmen with their American counterparts. With London still in flames and Heinkels muttering overhead nightly, the British approached Jack Northrop, with whom they already were doing business (Northrop was license-building Vultee Vengeance dive bombers for the RAF), about designing and building a night fighter capable of using a new device called radar. Within a month, the British informed the U.S. War Department of their newest developments—the cavity magnetron and centimeter-wave radar—and American military planners decided they needed a night fighter to utilize these devices. Earlier, less-sophisticated radar broadcast and received signals that could be measured in meters, which meant that antenna components had to be separated and spread piecemeal all around an airframe—on the nose, wings and fuselage. It was what gave German night fighters, especially, their characteristic appearance, flying around with bedsprings, stag’s horns and clown mustaches on their noses. Some of these drag-inducing antenna farms slowed their carriers by as much as 25 mph. Centimeter-wave radar was lighter—albeit still heavy—and far more compact, utilizing a parabolic antenna small enough in diameter to be carried in what would become a P-61’s Jimmy Durante nose. Housing a radar dish right up front required relocation of any nose-mounted guns, of course, which was a good thing: They

could be slung under the belly, in a pod or fairing like the P-61’s, virtually eliminating night vision–destroying muzzle flash. Any night-fighter pilot firing wing- or nose-mounted guns got one shot at a target and then spent the next five or 10 minutes groping around like an old man with a white cane.

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n October 1940, the Air Corps, aware of Northrop’s work for the British, asked the company to design a dedicated night fighter. Jack Northrop quickly submitted the initial proposal for a heavily armed, twin-engine, twin-boom, tricycle-gear, three-man aircraft that his engineers had been drawing up for the British, and in January 1941 a contract for two prototype XP-61s was awarded to the small California company. The P-61’s SCR-720 radar became its stock in trade. It was sometimes troublesome, sometimes unreliable, sometimes couldn’t be repaired due to lack of replacement parts, but it was an effective unit that allowed the Black Widow to become the world’s very first purpose-built night fighter. After all, if a night fighter can’t find its prey, what does it matter how fast, powerful or well-armed it is? Unfortunately, the P-61 wasn’t particularly fast, and it turned out that did matter. All the P-61A and -B Black Widows that saw combat had supercharged but unturbocharged Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engines. When the airplane was designed, the thinking was that a night fighter would loiter at altitude and await its prey for a ground-controlled intercept, but that’s not always how it worked in practice. Night fighters had to be able to climb hard and climb high, and then stern-chase fast to overhaul a bogey. The Black Widow didn’t have a particularly good rate of climb—only 500 feet per minute at 20,000 feet, which is roughly the climb rate of a small, single-engine lightplane—and it rapidly ran out of grunt at 20K as the superchargers reached their limit. (Admittedly, there were also concerns about the reliability and throttle response of early R-2800

IN OCTOBER 1940, THE AIR CORPS ASKED THE COMPANY TO DESIGN A DEDICATED NIGHT FIGHTER. JACK NORTHROP QUICKLY SUBMITTED THE INITIAL PROPOSAL FOR A HEAVILY ARMED, TWIN-ENGINE, TWIN-BOOM, TRICYCLE-GEAR, THREE-MAN AIRCRAFT.

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Newly arrived Black Widows are towed to Guadalcanal’s Carney Airfield for assembly and operation by the Thirteenth Air Force.

The radar dish is visible in the translucent nose of YP-61 no. 41-18882, undergoing service tests in California during 1943.

turbos.) At war-emergency power, a P-61 could accelerate to about 370 mph; for such power output, it had a 24-gallon water tank good for perhaps 15 minutes of water injection.

quito had won and was surprised to see a report recommending the P-61—a report onto which his signature had been forged.” Ultimately, the British had no interest in winning the flyoff. A clean victory would only have meant they’d have been required to hand over too many of their priceless Mk. XXX Mosquitos to their ally. And the Americans loved their Northrop behemoth in spite of it all. One ETO night-fighter squadron was scheduled to revert to Douglas P-70s—the night-fighter version of the elderly A-20—but the squadron’s pilots reportedly threatened to hand in their wings if that happened. In the Pacific, the P-61s suffered an embarrassment, however, when Far East Air Force Lt. Gen. George Kenney found their performance so lacking during the Battle of Leyte Gulf that he requisitioned a squadron of radar-equipped Marine Grumman F6F-5Ns to replace them. The Black Widows were sent to a backwater island airstrip. It was also in the Philippines that one of the strangest yet most productive uses of a P-61 occurred. On January 30, 1945, the Japanese prison camp at Cabanatuan was to be attacked by Army Rangers and Filipino irregulars, for the U.S. knew that the Japanese were within hours of executing their contingent of American and British prisoners as MacArthur’s troops advanced. As part of the raid, a Black Widow was scheduled to do a low-altitude flyover of the prison to distract the guards while the raiders crept as close as possible to the camp fencing. The P-61 pilot did orbits while shoving the mixtures to full rich to pump out black exhaust smoke, and flipping mag switches to produce backfires. The Japanese guards were totally distracted by what they figured was about to be a fiery crash into the jungle, and the Cabanatuan raid overwhelmed them. Among the Cabanatuan prisoners were Brits left behind at the fall of Singapore, in the earliest days of the Pacific War. When they saw the unearthly black shape of the P-61 close overhead, some of them became convinced that the Germans had won the war, for they felt that nobody but the Luftwaffe could have fielded such a malevolent machine. In late October 1944, the U.S. Navy hosted a “joint fighter con-

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he biggest knock against the Black Widow is that it simply wasn’t fast enough to do the job for which it was designed, an opinion held by a number of influential colonels and generals. Colonel Winston Kranz, director of USAAF night-fighter training, said: “The P-61 was not a superior night fighter. It was not a poor night fighter, it was a good night fighter, but it did not have enough speed.” In July 1944, just as the first P-61s were arriving in the ETO, Lt. Gen. Carl Spaatz insisted upon the “great night-fighter flyoff,” between a Black Widow and a de Havilland Mosquito NF Mk. XVII. The Mosquito was an early version of what, as the NF Mk. XXX, would become by far the best Allied night fighter of the war, and Spaatz wondered if maybe the USAAF should be flying them in place of the ponderous Northrop. Controversial ever since, the contest saw the P-61 apparently handily outfly the British wooden wonder. Longtime National Air and Space Museum researcher and aviation historian Dana Bell is convinced that “the results were rigged to give the American crews more faith in the P-61s they were about to take into combat.” Bell points out that the American P-61 crew was stoked, competitively selected and up for a fight, while the RAF pilot wasn’t even aware that it was a contest; that the P-61’s engines had been tweaked and tuned by Pratt & Whitney factory representatives, while the Mosquito, a 1942-vintage machine with single-stage Merlins, had simply been taken off an operational flight line; and that the tests were never flown at altitudes higher than 20,000 feet, the level of the P-61’s maximum efficiency. “The final report was never shown to one of the two American evaluators,” Bell reveals. “Forty years later, he still thought the MosOpposite: The first of two XP-61 prototypes sits at Northrop Field, in Hawthorne, Calif., before its maiden flight in May 1942.

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Top: Armorers prepare to load 20mm rounds on P-61A Dangerous Dan in October 1944. Above: A view of the 20mm cannon bay of a 419th Night Fighter Group P-61, being readied for a mission. Above right: Installing an upper turret in the crew nacelle.

ference” at its new Patuxent River test center in Maryland, with aircraft from not only the Navy but also the Army, the RAF and the RCAF, all of them to be flown and assessed by active-duty pilots from all four air arms. A P-61 was one of the airplanes evaluated, and among the 11 U.S. fighter types represented, it did not fare well. (Much of the information that follows is from Francis H. Dean’s outstanding book America’s Hundred Thousand: U.S. Production Fighters of World War Two, which should be part of every serious aviation enthusiast’s library.) Of course the P-61 was by far the heaviest of all U.S. WWII fighters—more than twice as heavy, at a baseline gross weight of 31,100 pounds, as a P-47. Even with a double helping of 2,000-hp R-2800 engines, this gave it the highest power loading of all fighters as well, which was not helped by its highest-in-category flat-plate drag area. The double-cockpit crew nacelle, with a second windscreen for the gunner seated behind and above the pilot, was a draggy arrangement. General Hap Arnold, upon first viewing a fully equipped P-61 parked on a flight line, turned to procurement chief Maj. Gen. Oliver Echols and asked, “Who is responsible for this assortment of built-in headwinds?” He had a point. The result was a speed deficit, which had from the outset been the P-61’s bad rap. A Black Widow cruised at roughly 225 mph—B-25 performance—and could summon about 365 mph flat out at 20,000 to 24,000 feet. 26

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The P-61 was heavy for a reason: It needed to carry a crew of three (sometimes reduced to two—pilot and radar/radio operator—when no gunner was needed), four heavy cannons and ammunition, sometimes a four-gun top turret, adequate fuel and a huge number of heavy vacuum-tube radio and radar boxes. A casual count shows at least two dozen, some the size of orange crates, scattered throughout the crew nacelle.

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he best available radio gear was needed because P-61s were often ground-controlled during the initial stage of intercepts. A controller using ground radar would vector the Black Widow toward a bogey until the airplane’s own radar, which had a range of between five and 16 miles depending on atmospheric conditions, picked up the target. The P-61’s radar operator would then take over guidance, with the pilot soon able to pick up the blip on a tiny panel-mounted display. (Most pilots didn’t bother, instead allowing the RO to continue with verbal vectors.) The final stage of such a pursuit required the pilot to swing into place a pair of hands-free night-vision binoculars to make a visual ID of the target and confirm that it was a bandit and not a friendly. This was not a trivial pursuit. P-61s in the ETO shot down several Allied aircraft, including at least one Mosquito and an A-20. Official records show that no Black Widow was ever shot down by an enemy fighter, though some claim an Fw-190 downed one. A P-61 also required a relatively long runway for takeoff at such Opposite: Not all Widows were black. This P-61A-1-NO, no. 42-5507, was lost over the South Pacific on April 10, 1945.

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weights, but it lifted off at a gentle 100-110 mph indicated. And Vmc—the minimum speed at which the airplane could be controlled if one engine failed—was only 120 mph, or 140 mph when heavily loaded. This meant that the dangerous window between liftoff and single-engine controllability was brief. (While climbing out within that window, a pilot’s only choice if an engine failed was to close the throttle on the good engine and land—or more likely crash—straight ahead.) There have been published reports of the Black Widow’s “remarkable short-field capability,” perhaps in some cases an assumption based on its nearly full-span slotted flaps. But if short takeoffs were achieved, they must have been done with lightly loaded examples or using nonstandard techniques that would considerably extend the time needed to achieve Vmc, for the Pax River conference placed the P-61’s ground roll 19th among 20 different fighter variants tested, exceeded in distance only by a heavily loaded P-47D. Most of a Black Widow’s handling qualities seemed to be excellent, other than the need for extreme yoke deflection to achieve roll effectiveness at slower speeds, which made flying in turbulence challenging. Stalls were benign and straight ahead, pilots all agreed, and it was surprisingly maneuverable for an airplane with heavy engines and tail booms well outboard of the centerline. Still, one pilot at the 1944 fighter conference adjudged the P-61 to be “cumbersome as a night fighter, hopeless as a day fighter.” Its most surprising talent was the ability to turn very tightly, especially at slow speeds. The Black Widow gobbled up Corsairs and handily out-turned the vaunted P-51 Mustang. Unfortunately, this was a

quality of little use to a night fighter, which typically attacked in straight and level flight from dead astern. But rolling into that turn was another matter. A P-61 could roll at 50 degrees per second at 330 mph, with lesser roll rates at slower speeds, meaning it took a Black Widow more than seven seconds to do a full aileron roll. A P-51 could do almost twice that laterally. Actually, a Black Widow had almost no ailerons. For roll control, P-61s had 10-foot-long panels that rose out of the upper surface of each wing, near the trailing edge. These “spoiled” the lift to drop a wing when the airplane’s schoolbus-size control yoke was deflected in its direction. There were very small “ailerons” near the tip of each wing, but they had no effect on roll rate; their purpose was to provide aerodynamic feedback to the pilot, since the spoilers couldn’t be felt through the yoke. Why spoilers? So that nearly the entire trailing edge could be devoted to flaps, which not only lowered landing speed but helped the Black Widow to decelerate rapidly once it had overhauled its quarry and was approaching from dead astern to a position to fire its guns. A 15-ton airplane is hard to slow. Imagine driving a car and taking your foot off the accelerator with the transmission in neutral—freewheeling. Deceleration is almost imperceptible. So a night fighter needs to be able to quickly drop very effective flaps (or some other aerodynamic device) or it will sail past its target. Wartime P-61s had no dedicated speed brakes other than their flaps. The XP-61 prototype had an unusual form of flaps called Zap flaps, after inventor Edward Zaparka, an engineer who worked on the P-61. (He had, however, patented the flaps before joining North-

THE P-61 WAS HEAVY FOR A REASON: IT NEEDED TO CARRY A CREW OF THREE, FOUR HEAVY CANNONS AND AMMUNITION, SOMETIMES A FOUR-GUN TOP TURRET, ADEQUATE FUEL AND A HUGE NUMBER OF HEAVY VACUUM-TUBE RADIO AND RADAR BOXES.

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THEY DIDN’T ADAPT AN EARLIER DESIGN TO BECOME A NIGHT FIGHTER OR BASE THE P-61 ON ANYTHING THAT ALREADY EXISTED. THEY STARTED WITH A CLEAN SHEET OF PAPER AND INVENTED THE FIRST ALL-WEATHER, DAY/NIGHT INTERCEPTOR. rop.) Zap flaps were unslotted split flaps that moved aft as they dropped from under the upper surface of the wing, thus lengthening the apparent chord line of the wing and increasing lift while simultaneously providing drag. The manufacturing tolerances necessary for them to trundle smoothly along their tracks proved unattainable, however, so all Black Widows built after the first prototype had conventional single-slotted flaps. Another design hangup was buffeting caused by disturbed airflow over the horizontal stabilizer and elevator whenever the P-61’s top turret was traversed. The four .50-caliber barrels poking into the slipstream when they pointed anywhere but straight ahead were in a direct line with the horizontal tail, and their effect was strongly felt. That problem was never satisfactorily solved, so the top turrets were either deleted or locked in a straight-ahead position. Well over half of all P-61s were delivered to their squadrons without top turrets. This allowed the gunner to stay on the ground, since now the upper guns and the belly-pod cannons could be fired by the pilot. Some Black Widow units field-modified their airplanes to seat the radar operator in the gunner’s chair right behind the pilot, which must have been more pleasant than working from the lonely aft compartment, often facing backward like a kid in an old station wagon’s way-back, sealed off from the rest of the crew. Not that a P-61 cockpit was a particularly friendly space. Most pilots at the Pax River fighter conference rated it as “cluttered,” “badly designed” and “too complex,” with “lousy visibility” to boot, despite all the glass area. Much of what was behind the pilot was obscured by the gunner and his station, and the latticework of greenhouse structure didn’t help. The multifaceted canopy also led to glare and reflection problems during night attacks. Of all U.S. fighter types, only the P-38L Lightning was voted to have a worse cockpit that the Black Widow. Perhaps fighters with steering-wheel yokes rather than joysticks bore an automatic deficit in fighter-jock minds. Some warbird enthusiasts have assumed that it was remarkable 28

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for a twin-engine airplane as large as the P-61 to have a single pilot, but in fact two-man crews were a particularly American obsession. Virtually all British and German twins, and even the four-engine Avro Lancaster, had single-pilot cockpits. Even if there were two men up front, as in the Lancaster and the Mosquito, only the one on the left had flight controls.

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he ultimate P-61, the 430-mph C model, never made it into combat. Taking into account the basic failings of the P-61A and B—unspectacular climb and speed, and limited range— the P-61C was fitted with turbosupercharged R-2800s, the top turret was permanently deleted and a big fuel tank was installed in the now-available space in the center of the crew nacelle. Internal fuel capacity went from 646 gallons to 1,158, with new underwing hard points available to carry yet another 1,248 gallons max, at gross weight making the P-61C a 20-ton fighter. (A loaded P-47D typically weighed 7 tons.) The C also had “fighter brakes”—large perforated panels that rotated out of the wing upper and lower surfaces to rapidly slow the airplane. But it was too late. The Black Widow’s web was about to be broomed away by several new night-fighter jets, first among them Northrop’s own F-89 Scorpion, plus the Lockheed F-94 Starfire. (The P-61’s immediate and direct replacement, just in time for the Korean War, was the North American F-82 Twin Mustang.) The Black Widow airframe’s final form was the F-15 Reporter, a small batch of bubble-canopied reconnaissance versions with a name as nerdy as the P-61’s was arrogant. If “Black Widow” was the war’s most aggressive nom de guerre, “Reporter” was its blandest. Some of the P-61’s most valuable work was done after WWII. A number were assigned to weather reconnaissance duty, and they compiled invaluable meteorological data in those pre-satellite days. Thirteen P-61Cs and F-15s flew as part of the Weather Bureau/ NACA Thunderstorm Project, from 1946 through 1949, providing

LEFT: NASA; RIGHT: NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM

Opposite left: NACA scientists install an aerodynamic drone beneath a P-61C at Moffett Field, Calif., in 1948. Opposite right: A view of the pilot’s compartment of the Black Widow preserved at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center.

a foundation for a real understanding of how thunderstorms are generated, what tremendous powers lie within them and how radar can be used to avoid the worst weather (see story, P. 30). A P-61B flew as part of the development of the first U.S. ejection seat, and a brave AAF volunteer was successfully ejected from it in April 1946. NACA (predecessor of NASA) used two P-61Cs to drop-test drones to collect valuable data on sweptwing flight. No P-61s flew in the Korean War. The last operational Black Widow in the Pacific left Japan in May 1950, bound for the boneyard a month before the North Korean invasion of South Korea, but photomapping of the Korean Peninsula by P-61s during the late 1940s proved invaluable. Despite its brief wartime service and low shoot-down count (a total of 127 enemy airplanes, 18 V-1 buzz bombs and one B-29 flying on autopilot after the surviving crew had bailed out over Iwo Jima), it can’t be said that the P-61 was a failure. Black Widow air combat victories were necessarily one at a time, the result of lengthy

solo pursuits rather than swirling 60-second dogfights. The P-61 was in fact a remarkable response to the mission set for it, but that mission had already changed before it got into combat. Northrop, a small manufacturer that rose to meet a challenge, did an amazing job of building a sophisticated, new-technology airplane that had no precedent. They didn’t adapt an earlier design to become a night fighter or base the P-61 on anything that already existed. They started with a clean sheet of paper and invented the first all-weather, day/night interceptor. In that sense it was the beginning of today’s anytime/anywhere/24-hour U.S. Air Force. It was the start of something else big, too. Oddball specialty airframer Northrop Aircraft, once small enough that it could be given the night-fighter assignment without disturbing the work of such long-gone industry giants as Republic and North American, is today, as the Northrop Grumman Corporation, the fifth largest defense contractor in the world.  For further reading, contributing editor Stephan Wilkinson suggests: Northrop P-61 Black Widow: The Complete History and Combat Record, by Garry R. Pape; Northrop’s Night Hunter P-61 Black Widow, by Jeff Koln; and Queen of the Midnight Skies: The Story of America’s Air Force Night Fighters, by Garry R. Pape and Ronald C. Harrison.

NORTHROP P-61B-20 BLACK WIDOW SPECIFICATIONS

ENGINE: 2,250-hp Pratt & Whitney R-2800-65 18-cylinder radials driving four-bladed Curtiss Electric Type 34 props WINGSPAN: 66 feet LENGTH: 49 feet 7 inches HEIGHT: 14 feet 8 inches WEIGHT: 20,965 lbs. (empty), 34,200 lbs. (loaded) SPEED: Max: 369 mph at 20,000 feet CEILING: 33,100 feet RANGE: 1,350 miles (normal), 1,900 miles (ferry) ARMAMENT: Four fixed forward-firing 20mm Hispano M2 cannons and/or four turret-mounted .50-caliber Browning M2 machine guns, plus 6,400 pounds of bombs or six 5-inch HVAR (high-velocity aircraft rockets) on wing pylons AVIONICS: SCR-720A (AI Mark X) search radar and SCR-695 tail warning radar

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ILLUSTRATION BY STEVE KARP

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The first weather hunters put their lives on the line to gather data on the life cycle of thunderstorms BY STEVE ZUGER

PROJECT THUNDERSTORM

The Witch of November was laying down the law. An ominous weather front whipped the iron-green waters of Lake Erie into a froth. The lead-colored sky grew darker as a severe thunderstorm began discharging thousands of volts in all directions. The cracking sounds of thunder traveled from one side of the horizon to the other. Yet while seemingly saner people sought cover from the impending deluge, a group of military pilots prepared to fly directly into this cacophony. At the time, the raw power and inner workings of thunderstorms were poorly understood. In 1945 Congress sought to redress that deficiency by mandating and funding a multi-agency meteorological study. A group of brave airmen stepped forward in the interest of science to help peel back the layers of mystery surrounding severe weather. Dubbed the Thunderstorm Project, the joint venture involved no less than four federal agencies: the Weather Bureau, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the predecessor of NASA), the Army Air Forces and the Navy. In August 1945, the Weather Bureau appointed University of Chicago meteorologist Horace R. Byers director of the Thunderstorm Project. With World War II over, a surplus of trained personnel, aircraft and equipment created the ideal conditions to launch the project. The war’s end also saw a corresponding increase in the number of weather-related civil aviation accidents, providing Opposite top: A ground crewman points to damage sustained by a Northrop P-61C while flying through a thunderstorm in June 1947. Opposite: Project Thunderstorm P-61Cs and an F-15 Reporter (rear) line up for takeoff at Wilmington, Ohio. Above: A Black Widow sets out from Ohio’s All-Weather Flying Center.

OPPOSITE: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; OPPOSITE TOP & ABOVE: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE U.S. AIR FORCE

additional impetus for the in-depth study. The Thunderstorm Project’s main objective was to get inside a severe weather event to assess its characteristics and the dangers it held. Central Florida, the frequent site of violent thunderstorms, became a logical place for the storm study to begin in the summer of 1946. The airmen participating in the program were based at Pinecastle Army Airfield near Orlando. The following summer the project was moved to Wilmington, Ohio, and headquartered at the All-Weather Flying Center at Clinton County Army Air Force Base. It was an important study for its time, on a par with postwar atomic bomb testing then taking place in the South Pacific. The aircraft chosen for the project, surplus Northrop P-61C Black Widows, flew as many missions through thunderstorms as possible during different phases of severe weather events. The P-61Cs would enter the storm at different altitudes in a vertical stack, 5,000 feet apart, to obtain the broadest spectrum of measurements possible. It was dangerous flying, with few dull moments. Roscoe R. Braham Jr., a senior analyst with the Thunderstorm Project, said the goal was “to obtain the maximum number of traverses through each storm and to sample storms in all stages of development. No storm was to be avoided because it appeared too large or violent.” Each Black Widow carried a crew of three: an accomplished instrument pilot, a highly trained radar operator and a weather observer. The military pilots were members of Air Materiel Command’s All-Weather Flying Division, and underwent careful screening to ensure they were well suited to the program. In addition to their volunteer spirit, the crews had to project a high level of alertness and confidence and be unfazed by the unexpected dangers of such hazardous research.

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This Black Widow’s nose has been dinged during a recent encounter with a storm. Opposite: The aircraft entered storms in a stack, at 5,000-foot intervals, to obtain a broad spectrum of measurements.

PILOTS WERE INSTRUCTED TO SET THE AIRPLANE TRIM FOR STRAIGHT AND LEVEL FLIGHT PRIOR TO ENTERING A THUNDERSTORM, AND TO EXERT MINIMAL CONTROL INPUT ONCE THEY HAD PENETRATED THE STORM.

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MATURE THUNDERSTORM 40,000 ft.

30,000 ft.

These particular Black Widows were obtained from a weather reconnaissance outfit being terminated in Alaska, the Cold Weather Testing Detachment, Unit 616, based at Ladd Army Airfield near Fairbanks. The twinengine P-61 was chosen for the study largely because of its sturdy construction, durability and onboard radar. NACA engineers equipped the Black Widows with instruments to measure their response to turbulence, and installed transponders so they could be tracked. In effect, the entire airplane was a storm turbulence sensor. To supplement the Black Widows, the Soaring Society of America loaned the Thunderstorm Project three Pratt-Read TG-32 two-seat gliders for exploration of smaller cumulus clouds. This group of pilots made 141 flights under a contract with the Weather Bureau, and on numerous occasions flew into full-stage thunderstorms—frightening conditions for a glider ride! During one flight, pilot Paul Tuntland was caught inside a powerful thunderstorm updraft over Florida on July 25, 1946, that took him from his release point at 4,000 feet up to 22,700 feet, setting a new national altitude record for two-place gliders. The Thunderstorm Project also used a variant of the P-61, the F-15 Reporter, to take close-up photographs of thunderstorms and make complete reconnaissance flights around them. A movie camera, controlled by the pilot, was installed in the Reporter’s nose section. Ground radar would track the F-15 as it circled a thunderstorm, giving the storm cell’s exact dimensions and location. Engineers checked all the onboard recording equipment before and after every flight. The turbulent flying conditions could easily play havoc with instrumentation, so technicians took no chances with these delicate devices. Pilots were instructed to set the airplane trim for straight and level flight prior to entering a thunderstorm, and to exert minimal control input once they had penetrated the storm. Power settings and control surface movements were constantly recorded, and instrument panels filmed. Considering the severe conditions inside the thunderclouds, and the P-61s’ dramatic reactions to violent updrafts and downdrafts, getting usable film footage was not easy. Motion picture film of a Black Widow’s instrument panel as it Opposite left: A pilot at Orlando’s radar station explains weather data tracked by CPS-1 radar during thunderstorm flights. Opposite right: The same SCR-720 radar that made the P-61 an effective night fighter helped it negotiate storm cells.

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flew through a storm cell showed the needles on the horizon and 25,000 ft. altimeter gauges jumping all 20,000 ft. over the place. As might be expected, the 32°F 15,000 ft. P-61s took a beating. One Black Widow was upended onto its back 10,000 ft. during a mission, but the pilot managed to recover. Another pilot issued 5,000 ft. a radio report of heavy, blinding snow inside a storm cloud. Several aircraft were struck by lightning, hail and ice. P-61 nose cones were punched in by the weather and propellers were bent and dented. In spite of such punishment, there were no accidents or fatalities during the project, which encompassed 1,362 cloud penetration flights. About 180 hard-working men and women participated in the Thunderstorm Project from 1946 to 1949, helping to greatly advance the science of meteorology. Today’s understanding of thunderstorms owes much to their efforts, and aviation is far safer for it. Data collected during the project showed that even light aircraft can structurally withstand the wrath of storms, and that with proper instrumentation and training a pilot could minimize the risk of encountering turbulence and strong vertical motion. The Thunderstorm Project was the first study to determine that radar should play a front and center role in helping pilots navigate in and around storm cells, depending on the severity of the weather. Dave Atlas, one of the pioneers of radar meteorology, was a key figure in getting radar into the cockpits of aircraft for practical use. The Thunderstorm Project also helped spur development of ground-based weather radar used for general aviation and more. As for the brave airmen who volunteered to fly their Black Widows into the teeth of violent thunderstorms, they emerged with a new appreciation for the power of Mother Nature. For their efforts they were all awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Today we take for granted such modern developments as Doppler radar and computer-generated storm modeling. Most people don’t realize that the push to develop those tools began with the Thunderstorm Project, and that the hard data it collected on the life cycle of severe storms laid the foundation for modern forecasters and helped make the skies safer for all.  Steve Zuger is a freelance writer and teacher based in Salem, Ore. He wishes to thank Mike Kurz, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wilmington, Ohio, for his assistance with this article. For more about the Thunderstorm Project, including a 35-minute Department of Defense video chronicling the Ohio phase, visit weather.gov/iln/thunderstormproject.

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‘Indians’Over the Bulge NINTH AIR FORCE P-47S CIRCLED THE WAGONS AND PICKED OFF LUFTWAFFE FIGHTERS IN A WILD DOGFIGHT ABOVE THE ARDENNES FOREST BY STEVE BLAKE

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Luftwaffe pilots hunting for Allied aircraft on the Western Front often cried out “Indianer!” (Indians!) to alert comrades to approaching enemy fighters—the equivalent of “Bandits!” in the U.S. Army Air Forces. The term sprang from the German fascination with America’s Old West. In one aerial melee during the infamous Battle of the Bulge, there were plenty of Indianer on hand, including one pilot who, ironically, might have had Native American ancestors. The plan for the Wermacht’s surprise counteroffensive, which began early on December 16, 1944, was to blast through the thinly held American lines in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium and Luxembourg to the Meuse River, then turn north to capture Brussels and Antwerp, driving a wedge through Allied forces on the Western Front. The Germans gained ground rapidly during the first week, while low clouds and snow largely shielded them from attack by Allied aircraft, thereby creating the “bulge” into the American lines. But the offensive began to slow down when the skies cleared on December 23, enabling American fighter-bombers to deliver their devastating ordnance even as reinforcements were stiffening Allied opposition on the ground. The offensive finally ground to a halt a few miles short of the Meuse on the 27th. At that point the Germans began a slow retreat, under constant harassment by American aircraft. What was left of the Wermacht’s forces in the Bulge had straggled back to their original lines by the end of January. The task of the tactical Ninth Air Force’s fighter-bombers was twofold: provide direct support to the American armies on the front lines, and destroy supplies and reinforcements intended for the Germans in the Bulge, targeting road convoys, rail traffic, marshaling yards and storage depots. One of the units involved in that effort was the P-47 Thunderbolt–equipped 365th Fighter Group, the “Hell Hawks,” then based near Metz in eastern France. The 365th had been activated in the States in May 1943. The following December the group shipped out to England, commencing combat operations two months later. The Hell Hawks went to France at the end of June 1944, then moved from one airfield to another while supporting General George S. Patton’s Third Army as it pushed across France and southern Germany and into Austria and Czechoslovakia. Among the 365th’s many notable pilots was Joseph Franklin Cordner, from Devil’s Lake, N.D. Cordner had joined the Army Air Forces as an aviation cadet in April 1942, and received his wings

Opposite top: P-47Ds of the 365th Fighter Group taxi for takeoff during a mission from Aachen in March 1945. Opposite: Luftwaffe Officer Cadet Theodor Nau shoots down 1st Lt. Roland C. Potter on January 14, 1945, prior to being shot down himself.

Captain Joseph Cordner (left) with UPI reporter Bob Musel in the 365th Group's "razorback" P-47D at Chièvres, Belgium.

and commission with Class 43-E at Foster Field, Texas, on May 14, 1943. On July 16, as a 19-year-old second lieutenant, he was assigned to the group’s 387th Fighter Squadron at Langley Field, Va. Cordner was already known as “Injun Joe” when he arrived, a nickname he’d acquired during training. According to fellow Foster Field 43-E graduate and 387th Squadron pilot Russell E. Gardner, “We all thought he had an Indian look about him and thus began calling him ‘Injun Joe,’ though this was never confirmed as far as I know.” Several other squadron mates said they believed he did in fact have Native American blood. Whatever his ancestry, Cordner proved to be a skillful and aggressive pilot. One of his most memorable engagements took place late in the afternoon of July 31, 1944, when the 387th attacked some German tanks and armored cars near Vire, France. As they were leaving the area, 1st Lt. Cordner’s P-47 was seriously damaged by anti-aircraft fire. He managed to reach a liberated area nearby before bailing out, but was apparently a bit groggy when he hit the ground. A Frenchman and his son helped him out of his parachute and harness, and tended to him until he was fully conscious. The American gave the boy an autographed 100-franc note before he was picked up by a liaison plane and returned to the group’s airfield on the Cherbourg Peninsula. The Hell Hawks claimed to have shot down 150 enemy aircraft. Cordner probably destroyed a Messerschmitt Me-109 near Rouen, France, on August 19, and damaged two more over the Bonn/

OPPOSITE TOP: U.S. AIR FORCE; OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF MARK DZIEWA, VIA THEODOR NAU; ABOVE: GERHARD "HARDY" HOELTER

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Right: 2nd Lt. Gale Phillips was "Injun Joe's" wingman during the January 14 dogfight. Far right: Cordner chats with reporter Martha Gellhorn prior to taking her up in a P-47 from Aachen. Below: After crash-landing in France on July 31, 1944, Cordner gave this autographed 100-franc note to his teenage rescuer.

Koblenz area of Germany on October 21. He was subsequently promoted to flight leader and captain, and by December was serving as an operations officer with group headquarters. Not too far away, another fighter pilot, Theodor Nau, was just beginning his brief combat career in defense of the Reich. At 14 Theo had begun training on gliders, and after becoming a certified sailplane pilot he was accepted into Luftwaffe officer candidate school. He was called for duty on October 1, 1943, three months short of his 18th birthday. Nau was one of the relatively few candidates who passed all their physical and mental tests and proceeded to the next step, an NCO preflight course that he also passed. On February 1, 1944— when just 50 of the original 200 candidates remained in the program—he began cadet flight training at Fürstenfeldbruck, near Munich. He later estimated that between 30 and 35 of the students completed that course, of whom about a dozen, including Nau, were selected to become fighter pilots. Officer Cadet Nau was assigned to Jagdgeschwader (Fighter Wing) 101, a training unit in Bavaria where he learned to fly the Me-109, and then to an operational training group for final instruction before assignment to a combat unit. In October 1944, Nau and his friend Wolfgang Schade, with whom he had completed training, joined II Gruppe of Jagdgeschwader 11 (II/JG.11). They were assigned to one of the group’s four squadrons, 7th Staffel. II Gruppe was then at Wunstorf airfield near Hannover, where it received replacement aircraft—the latest model Me-109Gs and Ks. At the beginning of the Ardennes counteroffen36

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sive in December, the group was transferred to Zellhausen, near Frankfurt-am-Main, just east of the Bulge in southwest Germany. January 14, 1945, was a huge day in the European theater for USAAF fighters, which scored a record total of 175 confirmed victories. Most of those were achieved by VIII Fighter Command pilots during bomber escort missions high over Germany, but the Ninth Air Force’s fighter-bombers also racked up a few, including two kills by the Hell Hawks on the first of six missions that day. The 387th Squadron had been involved in a vicious dogfight between a large group of German fighters and another Ninth Air Force P-47 squadron, the 397th of the 368th Group, with which the 365th Group was then sharing the airfield at Metz/Frescaty. The 397th Squadron’s 12 Thunderbolts had just bombed a truck depot at Saint-Ingbert, and some of them were strafing railroad cars when they were attacked from above and out of the sun by an estimated 60 Me-109s and Focke Wulf Fw-190s. Although grossly outnumbered, the Americans gave a good account of themselves, claiming six of the enemy but losing an equal number of their own—half the squadron. Captain Cordner from 365th headquarters, who was flying with his old squadron on this mission as White Flight leader, described what happened in an encounter report: While Red and Blue Flights were bombing, my flight rode top cover. The controller, Ripsaw, notified the squadron of an engagement approximately 20 miles away on a vector of 180 degrees. After the bombing flights had rapidly reformed, my flight, retaining its bombs, set course for the area of the scrap. I spotted a bogie at 4,000', heading

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: GALE PHILLIPS; CHARLES JOHNSON; REMY CHUINARD

Below left: Nau shortly after his arrival at the 7th Staffel, II Gruppe, of Jagdgeschwader 11 at Zellhausen in December 1944. Below right: Nau's crew chief, Corporal Kurt Braasch, fastens the pilot's seat belts in Me-109G-14 Yellow 18.

north. Jettisoning my bombs, I led the flight down to investigate. I identified the aircraft as an ME-109 and closed on him, but overshot and was unable to fire at him. I dropped back about 50 yards and fired a deflection burst which caught him in the tail, afterward seeing pieces fly off the empennage. The E/A [enemy aircraft] then went into a turn so tight that I couldn’t fire without falling out, so I contented myself with tailing him and sweating out another chance, occasionally letting him have short deflection bursts which scored hits immediately behind the cockpit. After about five minutes, I hit his coolant and he started smoking badly. The canopy flew off, but he still continued to turn. I fired another deflection [shot,] which hit around the cockpit. The ME-109 straightened out of the turn, flipped over on its side and the pilot bailed out. He was wearing what appeared to be a black leather suit, similar to the American winter flying suits. His chute opened and I flipped the camera switch and took his picture, after which his plane crashed. Before bailing out, the enemy pilot was certainly determined to get away, but those [P-47]D-27s will stay with anything. The entire squadron was high and circling above me and my wingman during the entire chase and witnessed the bail-out. I claim one ME-109 destroyed.

Cordner’s wingman, 2nd Lt. Isaac Gale Phillips, reported: “We dived from about 10,000 ft. to investigate a smoking plane at about 3,000 ft. We found a ME 109 making a pass on the smoking plane. The ME 109 broke off the pass he was making and turned into us. Captain Cordner was in a series of Luftberrys [sic] with the 109 and scored hits which set the plane smoking. The pilot bailed out and

PHOTOS: THEODOR NAU

the plane went down smoking and struck the ground.” Phillips, who vividly remembered that fight 52 years later, elaborated on his official account: We saw the smoke trail of a damaged plane in a descending angle. As we approached, we saw a ME 109 crisscrossing behind and firing at what looked to be a P-47. We had about a 7,000 foot bounce on the ME 109 and dived to intercept. For some reason Joe increased his speed in the dive and I had to crack the throttle to stay with him. As we came up to the 109 I saw that Joe was going to overshoot the target. I cut the throttle back and fishtailed to kill speed. Joe did shoot on past the target. I had a clear shot at the target, but my job as wingman was to cover Joe. I had killed off enough speed that as the 109 started to turn toward Joe, I was able to get in tight on his right wing and we made two turns in very tight formation. Joe was able to slow down enough to engage in a series of Luftberrys [sic] and scored numerous hits. As we circled, the 109 moved us toward a marshaling yard to get the ground flak to help him. Joe hit the coolant system and the 109 began to smoke. The 109 pilot jettisoned his canopy, but continued to turn. We were far enough away from the flak source and the rest of our squadron were in position to neutralize it. The flak was not too effective. The 109 pilot bailed out and the plane hit the ground near the marshaling yard. All in all it was an extremely long dogfight.

First Lieutenant Ray L. Jones, the element leader in Cordner’s flight, shot down another Me-109, for his second and last air victory. “I noticed another ME 109 ‘departing’ the area,” he recounted.

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Below left: A formal portrait of Nau while he was training at Fürstenfeldbruck in 1944. Center: Nau embarks on a mission in Yellow 18. Below right: 1st Lt. Potter, the German’s victim on January 14, was leading the 397th Squadron's Blue Flight.

SHOT DOWN

“Along with my wingman, I took off in pursuit. I fired short bursts several times without effect. The ME 109 had been heading for the deck from the very start and seemed to be outrunning us. I finally fired a long burst from what must have been maximum range. I remember raising the nose of my plane, so that the path of the tracers would reach the ME 109. At that point, the ME 109 suddenly dived steeply and quickly smashed into the ground.” Jones also remembered Joe Cordner as a friend who “was well liked by everyone.” He added, “I had been sent to the squadron as a replacement pilot in April 1944. To me, Joe was one of the ‘Old Boys’ and was always kind to us young amateurs.” The mission leader, Sam Saunders, said: “Injun Joe was a very good pilot and very dependable in combat. He was dedicated to the missions we were flying and Joe would be there when we ran into trouble. Joe was probably a little more aggressive than most, but he could handle it. He would make the P-47 perform to its limits and still keep it under control. Also, Joe was a good shot—always on target.” Among the Luftwaffe units participating in that attack on the 397th Squadron was II/JG.11, including Theo Nau, who by then had flown roughly two dozen combat missions and scored two air victories—a B-26 between Koblenz and Bonn on December 23 and a P-47 near Asch, Belgium, on January 1, during Operation Bodenplatte. Nau’s regular aircraft, Yellow 18, was unserviceable that day, so he was instead flying Yellow 4, Me-109G-14/AS serial no. 785971. Fifty-three years later, Nau recalled: We took off in the morning hours; the sky was clear and it was very cold. [The force consisted of all the] available aircraft of Fighter Group 11, perhaps 25 to 30 Bf 109s [the Germans typically used this older designation for their Messerschmitts], which were left from the original number of 68 with which we had started out in December,

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after the heavy losses we had suffered during a little more than four weeks of combat action. Via radio we were ordered to proceed to the area Ludwigshafen/Mannheim [as] strong units of P-47 aircraft were reported to be operating there. At an altitude of about 20,000 feet we observed numerous formations of P-47s. [Captain Karl] Leonhard [the group commander] pulled up steeply into the sun in order to attack from there. When the blinding effect of the sun began to decrease and my vision improved again, I spotted some P-47s just ahead of me. One I directly “tallyhoed” on my sight. When I fired my first rounds with all my guns, the P-47 showed hits. Trailing fuel and smoke it went into a steep dive. I made the serious mistake of leaving my formation in order to follow it in the dive. The P-47, with its seven tons, outweighed the Bf 109 by nearly three times, and it descended at a much higher rate. Trying to keep up, I far exceeded my Vmax, marked at 850 km/hr on my airspeed indicator. An unpleasant vibration of my wings reminded me how excessive my speed was. As we approached the ground, I managed to close up on the P-47 and fired again. The P-47 then crashed into the woods. Since I didn’t see a parachute with a pilot, I pulled up to see what happened. Suddenly, I noticed tracers passing left and right of my canopy, while my wings and airframe produced a shattering noise. I had obviously collected some serious hits. I pulled up immediately, made a very steep right turn and saw a P-47 behind me. At first I could out-climb it, but then I saw four more P-47s above me and I had no chance to get away from them. Meanwhile, my Bf 109 had received many more hits and started burning. I released my canopy and noticed on the altimeter an altitude reading of 2,500 feet. I jumped out of the aircraft, pulled the parachute release and landed on the ground in the vicinity of the flak batteries [near Kindsbach,] which Gale Phillips mentioned. Later the commander of the flak batteries told me that he had ordered

LEFT & CENTER: THEODOR NAU; RIGHT: TIM GRACE

Below left: 1st Lt. Ray Jones, an element leader in Cordner's flight, shot down an Me-109 in the January 14 melee. Below right: Jones' victim that day was Nau's 19-year-old friend Officer Cadet Wolfgang Schade, who crashed in Yellow 10.

SHOT DOWN

a cease fire as he had been afraid that I would be hit by their fire. Only after I had landed on the ground did I notice that my right upper arm was fractured. I assume that I had hit the fin of my rudder when I parachuted from my aircraft. Because of this injury I had to stay in hospital until mid-April.

The pilot of the Thunderbolt that Nau shot down was 1st Lt. Roland C. Potter, the 397th Squadron’s Blue Flight leader, who reportedly survived the crash of his fighter (P-47D-30 serial no. 44-20446, the remains of which were excavated in 2005), but died of his wounds or exposure before he was found. Second Lieutenant Leonard N. Kostrach, Potter’s wingman on January 14, described what happened in a report: We were at approximately 12,000 feet when the bandits were first sighted. They were about 6 to 10,000 feet above us and coming out of the sun. Lt. Potter started climbing immediately. There were two groups of E/A, one of which was about 5,000 feet above the other. The lower group started peeling off in sets of three. There were a total of 50 E/A. When Lt. Potter started to climb I pushed everything forward, climbing on his wing, but due to insufficient power, I could not stay with him. At about 20,000 feet, I stalled out and fell off. Lt. Potter was still climbing and I called him and told him I could not stay with him. At this time I had a 109 attacking at my rear and I broke sharply to the right. I then became tangled with four 109s and lost track of Lt. Potter. I later heard him say he was on fire and [ground controller] “Ripsaw V” gave him a heading toward home. That was the last I heard of Lt. Potter.

Ray Jones’ victim turned out to be Nau’s friend Wolfgang Schade, also 19, who was killed flying Yellow 10, Me-109G-14/AS serial no.

LEFT: DANIEL CRYSTAL VIA CHARLES JOHNSON; RIGHT: THEODOR NAU

785105. (The remains of Schade’s plane would be recovered from a field near Rothselberg in 1995.) Two days later, on January 16, while participating in a mission with the group’s 388th Squadron, Cordner shot down an Fw-190 during another big dogfight near Worms, bringing his final score to two destroyed, one probable and two damaged. By the end of the war in Europe, he had been awarded three DFCs and 22 Air Medals. After Cordner left the military in November 1945, he attended college and worked as a geologist for an oil company. He died from malignant hypertension in Minnesota on October 2, 1962, shortly before his 39th birthday. Following Theo Nau’s release from the hospital, he was reassigned to JG.77, in Czechoslovakia. He finally became an officer on May 1, when he was promoted to second lieutenant, and flew three missions with JG.77, the last on May 8, V-E Day. Most of Nau’s unit surrendered to American troops, but the GIs promptly handed them over to the Soviets. Nau managed to escape while being marched to Russia, but was recaptured in Austria by U.S. soldiers, who later allowed him to return home to Koblenz. He found that his family’s house had been almost completely destroyed in an air raid that had killed his father. Nau returned to school, then worked in the distillery and insurance businesses until retiring in 1992.  Steve Blake has written dozens of articles and four books on World War II air combat, including The Pioneer Mustang Group: The 354th Fighter Group in World War II. Further reading: Second to None: The History of the 368th Fighter Group, by Timothy M. Grace; and Hell Hawks! The Untold Story of the American Fliers Who Savaged Hitler’s Wehrmacht, by Robert F. Dorr and Thomas D. Jones.

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his de Havilland am stands with h Left: Alan Cobh Cape Town, Sout r fo embarking ’s am D.H.50J prior to bh low: Co mber 16, 1925. Be Africa, on Nove g a National rin du ng wi s ie take flying menager ndoners watch Lo splay. Opposite: di y Da to ion iat Av bham prepares ter Bridge as Co 26, 19 1, r from Westmins be on Octo J on the Thames lia. ra st Au land the D.H.50 to t gh fli cord roundtrip re his of d en e at th

’S N A L SIR A S U C R I C G N I FLY ST M DEVOTED MO A H B O C N A L A IC NARY ONG THE PUBL EER AND VISIO M N A IO ” P S S N E IO N T D E IA D V A -MIN ROMOTING “AIR P O T E IF L IS H OF OR BY DEREK O’CONN

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Cheered on by thousands of spectators, the de Havilland D.H.50J floatplane swooped low over London’s Westminster Bridge to alight gracefully on the Thames River, close to the Houses of Parliament. It was October 1, 1926, and 32-year-old Alan Cobham had just made aviation history, flying more than 27,000 miles to complete the first round trip from Great Britain to Australia. Apart from the sheer visual impact of setting down the floatplane in front of Parliament, it was a shrewd political gesture by Cobham, one intended to act as a wake-up call to both government and public about the growing potential of long-distance air travel. Cobham was already an accomplished long-distance flier when he established the Australian record. Yet this far-sighted airman’s route to a career in aviation was unorthodox, if not unique. As a teenage apprentice in London’s garment industry, Cobham became fascinated by airships and man-carrying kites. A visit to a flying meet at Brooklands aerodrome on Easter in 1910 inspired him and a friend to construct an aviette, described as “a kind of bicycle with wings, the pedals driving an enormous propeller.” Unsurprisingly, their machine never got off the ground. Soon after World War I broke out, Cobham was in uniform— though not, as might have been expected, that of the Royal Flying Corps or Royal Naval Air Service. On August 14, 1914, motivated

OPPOSITE PHOTOS: BY KIND PERMISSION OF LADY COBHAM; ABOVE: POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES

by his lifelong passion for horses, Cobham joined the Army Veterinary Corps. He would serve for 3½ years on the Western Front, becoming a sergeant. Only in 1918, after his interest in aviation was revived by the increasing effectiveness of the air services, did he transfer to the RFC as a cadet pilot. By late August of that year, Cobham was a second lieutenant in the new Royal Air Force and, with 100 hours in his logbook, was assigned to a flying instructor’s course. Demobilized after several months of teaching in February 1919, he never served in an operational squadron. Two months later Cobham was barnstorming with the Berkshire Aviation Company, giving joyrides in a converted three-seater Avro 504K. In 1920 he honed his already meticulous flying skills with Airco Aerial Photography before, in February 1921, being recruited as the first pilot of Geoffrey de Havilland’s Hire Service at Stag Lane aerodrome, in Edgware. Apart from charter work and aerial photography, his duties soon expanded to test-flying and aircraft delivery. He would later recall, “Thanks to all this experience I had become extremely familiar with the cities and countryside of Great Britain, and could find my way anywhere, if necessary by dead reckoning.” Although no aerobatic expert, Cobham prided himself on his “ability to make a good landing.” In August 1921, Lucien Sharpe, a wealthy American with a taste

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NOW A HOUSEHOLD NAME, COBHAM TOOK TO THE LECTURE CIRCUIT WITH MISSIONARY ZEAL. “MY MESSAGE WAS AVIATION. I WANTED TO MAKE PEOPLE AIR-MINDED....IN PARTICULAR, THE AMERICANS WANTED TO HEAR ME.” for travel and fine wines, hired Cobham to pilot several longdistance flights to North Africa and the Near East in a D.H.9C. That aircraft had to be written off in October 1922, however, after fog forced Cobham to ditch in the Venice Lido. In between those excursions, during March 1922, he made the first test flight of the nine-passenger D.H.34 biplane. And on June 22 he found time to marry actress Gladys Lloyd. August 1923 saw Cobham flying the prototype D.H.50, an open-cockpit passenger biplane powered by a 230-hp Armstrong Siddeley Puma, across the North Sea to the International Aeronautical Exhibition of European commercial aircraft at Gothenburg, Sweden, where it won a reliability prize. Cobham recalled meeting there “a most charming young man, plump and jolly and friendly. I spent quite a lot of time with him. His name was Hermann Goering.” At the time, the future Nazi Reichsmarschall was flying for Junkers. Piloting that same aircraft, G-EBFN, one year later, on August 12, 1924, Cobham demonstrated his versatility by winning the King’s Cup air race, averaging 106 mph on a round-Britain course. In late September, with ex-RAF apprentice and de Havilland mechanic Arthur B. Elliott as engineer, he piloted G-EBFN to Tangier and back, covering nearly 3,000 miles over three days in 28 flying hours, including a nonstop stage of 920 miles between London and Madrid. On November 20, Cobham and Elliott left Croydon for Rangoon, Burma, in D.H.50 G-EBFO. They had been chartered to fly mono42

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cled Director of Civil Aviation Sir Sefton Brancker on a survey of possible airship routes to India and beyond, as well as sites for the massive hangars and mooring masts needed for the leviathans. While Brancker was busy in India, Cobham flew to within 40 miles of Mount Everest before bad weather forced him to turn back. The 17,000-mile roundtrip flight to Rangoon, which took 220 flying hours at an average speed of 80 mph, ended at Croydon on March 18, 1925. The contradiction of using an airplane to survey an airship route was not lost on Cobham. After Brancker perished aboard the India-bound R-101 when it crashed in France on October 5, 1930, Cobham recollected: “I think he [Brancker] experienced a change of heart during the course of it and began to see that the facilities needed were going to be civil aerodromes rather than mooring masts....If so, it’s all the more sadly ironical that an airship killed him.” Cobham’s next pioneering flight was to Cape Town, essentially a survey for a prospective Imperial Airways air route that would use Britain’s East and Central African colonial territories as steppingstones to South Africa. G-EBFO was again employed, though it had been re-engined as a D.H.50J, with a 385-hp Armstrong Siddeley Jaguar radial for extra power during high-altitude takeoffs. Two additional fuel tanks were installed in the cabin, making traveling conditions for engineer Elliot and cameraman B.W.G. Emmott even more cramped than usual. In what has been described as “a masterpiece of sound organization,” between their departure

TOP LEFT AND ABOVE: BY KIND PERMISSION OF LADY COBHAM; TOP RIGHT: CORBIS

Far left: Cobham as a flight instructor during World War I. Left: Sir Alan and crew set out to circumnavigate Africa in a Short Singapore in 1927. Opposite below: Cobham carried this flag when he became the first to fly to Cape Town and back.

from Croydon on November 16, 1925, their arrival in Cape Town on February 17, 1926, and their return to Croydon on March 13, G-EBFO covered more than 16,000 miles. In the process, they made the first flight from Britain to the Cape in the same aircraft and—when retracing their steps back by the same route to Europe—became the first to complete the journey by air from Cape to Cairo. It was not exactly a trouble-free journey. While Cobham was en route back over the featureless areas of Egypt, the strain had begun to tell. He remembered: “I kept on losing my bearings…. And if it hadn’t been for the wonderful stability of the DH50, we should probably have crashed….I had lost the Nile and could find no other landmark. But I used dead reckoning and hoped for the best, and sure enough the great Aswan dam came into view just as expected.” Cobham was awarded an Air Force Cross for that feat. Once back in England, he was already planning his next flight: to Melbourne, Australia, and back, the commercial survey that, although marred by tragedy, would become the centerpiece of his long-distance career. Once again G-EBFO was employed, this time fitted with metal floats by Short Brothers at Rochester. And Arthur Elliott would once more serve as his engineer. Taking off from the Medway River at Rochester on June 30, 1926, they flew south across France before heading east across Italy, Greece and Turkey to the Middle East. Cobham later admitted that early in the journey he was plagued by “feelings of black depression…as though I had some premonition of impending disaster.” Disaster duly materialized on July 6 when, as they were flying low over the desert while following the Euphrates between Baghdad and Basra, a Bedouin rifleman took a potshot at them. The bullet pierced the fuel pipe before entering Elliott’s arm and puncturing both his lungs. Hurriedly alighting on the Euphrates and beaching the aircraft, Cobham found Elliott “in a terrible state….he told me feebly that he had a hole in his side and was mainly breathing though it.” Ever responsible, Elliott reminded Cobham to turn off the engine oil before being taken to the hospital. He died that evening and was later interred with full RAF honors. A disconsolate Cobham might have abandoned the flight if not for encouraging cables from home. The RAF lent him a replacement for Elliott, Sergeant Arthur H. Ward of No. 84 Squadron, then based at Shaibah. Pressing on to Basra and then to India and the Far East, Cobham and Ward crossed the Timor Sea to Darwin, Australia, on August 8. In Darwin the D.H.50J’s set of undercarriage wheels, which had been shipped ahead, were refitted for the next stage. The duo reached Melbourne to a tumultuous welcome on August 15. G-EBFO departed Melbourne on August 29, carrying an extra crew member, C.J.S Capel of Armstrong Siddeley, who would help Ward maintain the Jaguar engine. With the floats refitted, they left Darwin for England on September 4. Their touchdown on the Thames at Westminster on October 1 marked the end of what was described as a “relatively uneventful”

©DAILY MAIL/REX/ALAMY

return flight. Cobham, who had flown a remarkable 27,000 miles in 78 days, was knighted by King George V, while Ward received an Air Force Medal. Now a household name, Cobham took to the lecture circuit with missionary zeal. “My message was aviation,” he wrote. “I wanted to make people air-minded....In particular, the Americans wanted to hear me.” In November 1926, off he went to the United States, with the new Lady Gladys, aboard RMS Homeric. He brought along a D.H.60 Moth floatplane that he planned to lower into the water off Ellis Island and fly to Newark, so it could be fitted with wheels before delivery to its new owner in Washington. But the Moth, with Cobham and Gladys aboard, refused to unstick from the slightly choppy water, even after the pregnant Gladys left the plane. It eventually had to be lifted out of the water and taken to Newark for conversion. Cobham was not amused, accusing de Havilland of knowing about the Moth’s problems but failing to warn him. “The episode did nothing to improve my relations with the company, which were already strained,” he commented. In New York Cobham met transatlantic aspirant Charles Lindbergh, as well as “a wealthy man named [Charles] Levine, who wanted me to fly the Atlantic in his own machine, with himself as passenger.” Cobham turned Levine down, reckoning it would be better to take the equivalent weight in fuel. After six intense weeks in America, Cobham returned to Britain “a complete wreck,” convinced he needed to take stock of his situation and make some decisions about his future. Despite his having spent six highly successful years with de Havilland, the company refused to make him a director. “It was time for me to return to my real work, my real message,” he wrote. In May 1927, Cobham founded his own company, Alan Cobham Aviation Ltd., “aviation consultants, aerodrome experts and air

Cobham emerges from D.H.50 G-EBFO after making a roundtrip survey flight to Burma in 1924-25 with Director of Civil Aviation Sir Sefton Brancker, who is being helped down from the wing.

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Above: Cobham (right) takes part in an RAF recruitment campaign. Right: Cobham and William Helmore, in an Airspeed AS.5 Courier, refuel from a Handley Page W.10 during their 1934 attempt to fly nonstop to Karachi.

EXPERIMENTS WITH VARIOUS TRANSFER METHODS LED TO A NONSTOP FLIGHT ATTEMPT FROM PORTSMOUTH TO KARACHI, INVOLVING FOUR FUEL TRANSFERS EN ROUTE USING THE GRAPPLE-LINE, LOOPED-HOSE TECHNIQUE. route surveyors.” He also envisioned having his own airline, centered on Africa, flying routes that Imperial Airways was then denied (Imperial went no farther south than Cairo). With his friend Robert Blackburn, who already had airline interests in Africa, they formed Cobham-Blackburn Airlines Ltd. By June Cobham had started planning an east-west circumnavigation of Africa. With financial support from Castrol founder Sir Charles Wakefield, he set off from Rochester on November 17 in the Air Ministry’s all-metal Short Singapore flying boat, powered by two 650-hp Rolls-Royce Condor IIIA engines. With him were New Zealand copilot Henry W. Worrall; two Rolls-Royce engineers, F. Green and C.E. Conway; and S.R. Bonnett as cinematographer. Also along for the ride was Lady Gladys, who acted as secretary, cook, medic and—when spirits were low—impromptu vocalist and banjo player. The flight had many anxious moments. On the outbound leg atrocious weather at Malta resulted in structural damage to the Singapore, necessitating that new wingtip floats and a lower wing be sent from England. Later on, over the Sudan, copilot Worrall was standing up in the open cockpit, “gesticulating madly” to draw photographer Bonnett’s attention to a large herd of elephants below, when one of the two propellers whirling behind him clipped his hand, badly gashing a finger. During the return trip around the coast of West Africa, engine problems at Fresco, on 44

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the Ivory Coast, grounded them until a replacement Condor could be shipped from England. Those and other delays meant that when they returned to Rochester on June 4, 1928, after covering roughly 20,000 miles, they were three months behind schedule. Imperial Airways subsequently had second thoughts about missed opportunities in Africa; one consequence was that in July 1930, Cobham-Blackburn Airlines was bought out by the national airline. “Big Brother had elbowed me aside!” lamented Cobham. Meanwhile, on May 14, 1929, Alan Cobham Aviation Company had taken delivery of a 10-seat D.H.61 Giant Moth. Dubbed Youth of Britain, the new airplane was intended for a 21-week “Municipal Aerodrome Campaign” tour round Britain. In a concerted attempt to convince local authorities that municipal airfields were a necessity, the indefatigable Cobham gave short flights to some 3,500 mayors and officials from existing or improvised airfields. Through the generosity of Sir Charles Wakefield, 10,000 schoolchildren were also given free flights to promote air-mindedness. Cobham’s last major long-distance survey flight, to Lake Kivu in the Belgian Congo, began on the Medway at Rochester on July 22, 1931, this time in a Short S11 Valetta floatplane. With a crew of five, the airman aimed to demonstrate the practicability of using a marine aircraft for flights across Africa’s lakes and inland waterways. He received some support from the Air Ministry but none

LEFT: BY KIND PERMISSION OF LADY COBHAM; RIGHT: ©HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS

from Imperial Airways. The 12,300-mile flight, completed in 128 W.10 over Malta had to be abandoned after the cotter pin holding flying hours, ended in Southampton on August 31, 1931. That same the Courier’s throttle linkage together fell out, leaving Cobham year, at the invitation of his friend the famed aeronautical engineer with no control over the engine. Somehow he managed to glide to and author Nevil Shute Norway, Cobham became a founding direc- a wheels-up landing on Hal Far, Malta. The flight to India was then canceled, with the damaged Courier returning to England by sea. tor of the newly formed Airspeed Ltd. aircraft manufacturers. Cobham persevered, however. By 1939 the looped-hose system Between 1931 and 1935, the energetic Cobham ran the organizational masterwork for which he is usually most remembered, was being used in trials to refuel Short C-class Empire flying boats the National Aviation Day displays, better known as “Cobham’s operating on the transatlantic route. The outbreak of World War II saw the suspension of trials as Flying Circus,” which toured the UK and Ireland promoting the Flight Refuelling turned to war work, including slogan “Make the Skyways Britain’s Highways.” experiments to establish the viability of towing Operating from a wide variety of aerodromes, Spitfires and Hurricanes behind Vickers Wellingsome little more than unplowed fields, a barnton tugs to beleaguered Malta and the Middle East. storming squadron of up to 14 aircraft—including Fortunately, perhaps, the relief of Malta and the de Havilland Moths, an Avro 504K, Comper Swift, defeat of Rommel rendered that scheme redunSouthern Martlet, Cierva C.19 Autogiro, Handley dant. In 1944 Cobham was involved in the operaPage W.10, Handley Page H.P.33 Clive I and two tional planning of “Tiger Force,” a proposal to 10-seater Airspeed AS.4 Ferry trimotors—took bomb the Japanese Home Islands from Burma more than 100,000 passengers joyriding in the first using RAF Avro Lincoln bombers refueled by Avro two seasons. A contemporary report from a Sussex Lancaster tankers. But the speedy advance of the newspaper captured the mood of these hugely Americans in the Pacific, as well as the capture of popular gatherings: “Thousands of people in cars, airfields only 400 miles from Japan, meant that coaches and on foot flocked to the Old Aerodrome Tiger Force never became operational. to witness the air display promised by Sir Alan. The During the winter of 1946-47, Flight Refuelling journey was certainly not wasted. Those present cooperated with the new British South American were treated to a day of thrills they would rememCobham’s interest in longAirways in experiments to determine the practicalber for the rest of their lives. Most had never seen distance flights led him to ities of in-flight refueling under operational airline before upside down flying, wing-walking and parafound Flight Refuelling Ltd. conditions, using BSAA Lancastrians (converted chute descents.” Many people also took to the air between the wars. Lancaster bombers) supported by Lancaster tankaboard one of the Circus’ aircraft, a bargain at just ers. Though the trials were successful, the technique was never used four shillings for a short flight. During the winter of 1932-33, the Circus toured South Africa, for scheduled passenger flights. Experiments with the probe-andalthough this was not a financial success. Eventually, as Cobham drogue refueling method, in cooperation with the U.S. military, later wrote of the National Aviation Day, “Its very success killed later led to wide-scale adoption of that technique by the world’s it….I was causing [people] to regard aviation as nothing so very major air forces. Cobham remained chief executive of Flight Refuelremarkable after all, and this had a naturally adverse effect on our ling until 1969, when he handed over control to his son Michael. The takings.” That plus the ongoing Depression made the 1935 season company is still active in the defense industry as Cobham plc. Having faced countless dangers and buffetings in windswept, the last, and Cobham sold up. But naturally he had other fish to fry. On May 3, 1935, he founded Cobham Air Routes Ltd., a small open cockpits, the visionary Cobham had survived into the space company operating between Croydon and Guernsey using an age, to see safe, comfortable and reliable airline travel taken for Airspeed AS.5 Courier and a Westland Wessex trimotor. The granted. The remarkable transition from the days when flying had venture was short-lived; Cobham sold the airline after the Wessex been regarded as a highly dangerous pastime for an eccentric few was something in which Cobham could take immense satisfaction. ditched in the English Channel on July 3, with the loss of its pilot. For many years Cobham had been pondering the problems of After an active retirement in the British Virgin Islands, Sir Alan refueling aircraft in flight, leading to his founding Flight Refuelling Cobham died in England on October 21, 1973, at age 79. Gladys Ltd. at Ford in Sussex. Experiments with various transfer methods had predeceased him in 1961. Patriot, pathfinder, test pilot, flight refueling pioneer, aviation led, on September 22, 1934, to a nonstop flight attempt from Portsmouth to Karachi, involving four fuel transfers en route using the crusader and showman, the charming and persuasive Cobham grapple-line, looped-hose technique. The long-distance aircraft accumulated an astonishing variety of accomplishments. Moreover, chosen was the prototype AS.5 Courier monoplane, crewed by his flying tours unquestionably inspired many thousands of young Cobham and Squadron Leader William Helmore, whose unenvi- men who volunteered to serve in the RAF during WWII.  able task during refueling was “to stand up through the hatch of the Courier and reach out for the trailing line, using a shepherd’s crook Derek O’Connor writes frequently on British topics from his home in to secure it.” Amersham, Bucks, UK. For further reading, he suggests the CobhamThe AS.5 left Portsmouth early on September 22 and was imme- penned books A Time to Fly, Australia and Back and Twenty diately refueled by a Handley Page W.10. Sadly, that tanker later Thousand Miles in a Flying Boat. The RAF Museum at Hendon crashed, killing all four crewmen. A second refueling with another is holding an Alan Cobham exhibition through September 11, 2015.

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SWAN SONG FOR THE BATTLE PHROG

THE VENERABLE CH-46 SEA KNIGHT SERVED WITH DISTINCTION FOR HALF A CENTURY, FROM VIETNAM TO IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN BY FRANK LOREY III

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B

oeing Vertol’s CH-46 was recently retired from active duty after 50 years of service. The final three U.S. Marine Corps squadrons of Sea Knights, known to leathernecks as “Battle Phrogs,” began transitioning to the MV-22 Osprey starting in February 2014, with another CH-46 dispatched to the “boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base every few weeks. The U.S. Navy, which long depended on the CH-46 as a vertical replenishment transport, had retired its last Sea Knight a decade earlier, in 2004. For many CH-46 veterans, however, nothing can take its place. The Sea Knight dates back to 1956, when Vertol, formed out of the Piasecki Corporation, was looking for a major project. The result was the Model 107M (military HRB-1), a tandem-rotor, stressedskin helicopter powered by the new T58 1,250-hp turbine engine.

TOP: AP PHOTO/DANA STONE; INSET: HISTORYNET ARCHIVE

After Boeing took over Vertol, the design went through years of refinements. The Marines awarded a contract in February 1961, after a competition was held for a new combat assault/utility transport helicopter. Thereafter the Navy also jumped in to purchase the CH-46. The first production model flew on October 16, 1962, with deliveries beginning in 1964. Problems plagued the early models, leading to fatal accidents in Vietnam as well as Stateside. Following a CH-46 Reliability Review Conference in August 1967 at the Vertol plant in Pennsylvania, the aft rotor assembly was redesigned. The modified chopper eventually gained an overall favorable reputation during the Vietnam War years, when it became a familiar sight on the nightly news. Replacing the UH-34 Seahorse, it served as the main troop carrier

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Opposite top: A loadmaster directs a CH-46 Sea Knight airlifting supplies to the 27th Marine Regiment west of Da Nang in 1968. Inset: The unofficial “Phrog” shoulder patch. Above: A CH-46 replenishes a warship off the Horn of Africa in March 2003.

for the Marines, arriving in-country in March 1966. Retired Colonel Fred Allega, who first flew the CH-46 at Marine Corps Air Station New River on November 3, 1964, remembered: “The first pilots were all factory-trained….We had four to five days of ground school, then we went out with an instructor pilot. Since I was a senior first lieutenant and an aircraft commander, I never had much copilot time. Unfortunately, the 46A models were very underpowered.”

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During the Vietnam War, Allega received two single-mission Air Medals to go with his two Distinguished Flying Crosses and 25 regular Air Medals. The first medal was awarded for a mission to Laos, to recover a Special Forces team trapped on a mountainside—two Americans and four Vietnamese Montagnards surrounded by the enemy. “We would go out to put these teams on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and usually we were back in less than four hours to pull them out because they would get into trouble,” Allega said. “This time it was a really big show—we had two gunships and some ADs [Douglas Skyraiders] as support. There was no place to land, so we had to use the hoist. Nobody got shot down, but they all took a lot of hits. We got shot up pretty well, too. It was a constant gun battle, and none of their team expected to survive....when one of the Americans was back on board, he hugged me. The Army actually recommended me for the medal.” In the second mission, an Army team had come under fire near Da Nang close to nightfall. Allega recalled: “We extracted them under fire again. We had gunships for cover, but this time was not as bad. The team had so many soldiers that we didn’t have enough power to get over the hill once we had picked them up. I did a wingover and went back across the landing zone—something you’re never supposed to do. We took 20mm fire, and realized that one guy was still on the rope. He had to hold on for 15-20 miles, until we were halfway home. He got to the hatch, and had so much equipment on that he wouldn’t fit. One guy in the helicopter had to reach out with a knife and cut away his gear, then he fit inside.

“When you are done, you are just happy to be alive,” he added. “You did your mission and didn’t worry about medals.” While the CH-46 was primarily used as a transport, it was equipped with some armor—mostly to protect the engines and avionics bays. The side windows were removed in Vietnam, and .50-caliber machine guns mounted at both side hatches. “We were usually told where we could shoot—if we were in ‘Indian Country,’” Allega said. “Otherwise it was pretty restricted, since we did not always know where the friendlies were.” The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan also saw widespread use of the CH-46. Marine Major Dominic Harris, who served as the aircraft maintenance officer for the last Sea Knights at MCAS Camp Pendleton in Southern California, was deployed to Iraq from 2003 to 2006, and again in 2007-08. “I was usually flying CASVAC [casualty evacuation], along with some ground support and on occasion VIP duty,” Harris said. Despite all the flying he did in a hostile environment, he noted: “I was never hit, at least not that I knew, but I got lucky. My first mission—in the opening days of the war—I was stationed forward. We would go out in pairs a week at a time. Most of it was CASVAC support, and I was with Colonel (now General) [Joseph F.] Dunford helping the medevac guys. We got a call in the morning to go in between the U.S. and British artillery units. There were Scud [missile] warnings; we had to cross the border and didn’t know what to expect. “A couple of foot soldiers…had stepped on mines and needed to be evacuated. We were still an inexperienced crew, and we flew to

“...NO PUSHING BUTTONS. IF IT ISN’T LEAKING, IT IS OUT OF FLUIDS, AND YOU DON’T NEED A COMPUTER TO TELL YOU IT DOESN’T LOOK, SMELL OR FEEL RIGHT. YOU JUST KNOW.” 48

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AP PHOTO/HORST FAAS

Opposite: U.S. Marines deploy from a CH-46 in South Vietnam during an operation just south of the Demilitarized Zone in July 1966. Above: The interior of a Phrog serving in Vietnam, where the Marines used the helicopter as their primary troop carrier.

the vicinity. A bunch of people were lying on the ground, and there were Marines all around. We saw the landing panels and tried to focus on them, but it kept going through my mind, ‘What if those are body bags?’ We had not heard how the invasion was going, and it turned out those were Iraqi prisoners lying on the ground, hands bound with zip ties, and Marines guarding them until they could be processed.” In those early days of the war, there was a lot of confusion, and “adrenaline was running pretty high,” Harris said. “The medevac was near the first line of Iraqi defense, and it turned out there were lots of surrenders right away—they had no food and were ready to surrender!” Major Jeff Barber wanted to fly helicopters when he joined the

Corps 15 years ago, and he got his wish. “I was deployed to Iraq from June of 2004 to March 2005, and also the spring of 2006,” he said. “My usual missions were CASVAC, ammo resupply and just plain logistics—moving people and things. Our scariest mission: We were shot at a lot, but one time a SAM was shot at us. We were in a dash-2 aircraft, and the lead aircraft saw the launch and the missile tracking our aircraft. We shot our flares, not knowing if it was a real situation, as there were lots of false alarms, but this time it hit the flares and exploded below us. I guess ignorance was bliss. We still use flares like that. “Another time we were flying over the ‘wrong’ part of Baghdad. Every time this would happen, we would get shot at a lot, but we usually would not find any holes in our aircraft. This time, the lead aircraft was lost—he had holes, we didn’t!” Regarding his aging mount, Barber said: “I didn’t really think about the age of the aircraft; everything has been upgraded. It is old but reliable, simple and you know how it operates. It is kind of like an old baseball mitt—comfortable, and it gets the job done….We do have HUD [head-up display] for navigation equipment….It may have the same serial numbers, but it is not the same aircraft that was in Vietnam.” Captain Sean Breit-Rupe, who joined the Marines in June 2005, has been flying for six years. “I have only flown 46s—‘God’s Chariot’—and I have nothing but pride in the old girl,” he said. “It is reliable and will go anywhere. You can see the gauges and they tell the answer—no pushing buttons. If it isn’t leaking, it is out of fluids, and you don’t need a computer to tell you it doesn’t look, smell or feel right. You just know.” While in Iraq from March to October 2009, Breit-Rupe mostly flew troop transport, cargo and VIPs. He remembered that “things were winding down, and it was a lot calmer. We were bringing guys back from bases that were closing, and flying Iraqi nationals to the forward bases—no more flying CASVAC….We did get shot at a

Below left: Two Sea Knights and Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawks land on a road near Jalibah airstrip, in Iraq, to take on fuel in March 2003. Below right: A Marine aircrewman directs a CH-46E to a parking spot at a forward operating base in Afghanistan in 2001.

TOP: HISTORYNET ARCHIVE; ABOVE LEFT: U.S. MARINE CORPS; ABOVE RIGHT: U.S. NAVY

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couple of times at Ramadi—we had to make a tight turn and went over a bad neighborhood. We didn’t know for sure until we were on deck and saw the holes. At one checkpoint we always drew tracers. We finally figured out it was one guy with an AK-47 who was tired of helicopters flying over. We could never tell if it was a false alarm; you had to break away from the threat. “My final deployment wasn’t as bad. You would fly over the Tigris, the Euphrates and Babylon, and the history wasn’t lost on you. We were flying over ancient battlefields, but we never got to do sightseeing, only from the air. We were based at the Al Asad base, and we served with heroes—the guys that were there early. I was just cleaning up. They flew their brains out.” One of Breit-Rupe’s most memorable tales concerned a recent delivery mission: “I have flown some 46s to Davis-Monthan. Kevin Rector flew one retired bird over there, and when he tried to shut down, it wouldn’t stop. He pulled back the throttles and cut everything off, and it was a dual engine control failure. Fuel kept getting to the engines. He tried to ‘beep’ the engines down, popped the handles for a fire, and it still wouldn’t stop. They even did a manual fuel shut-off, and it still ran for 15 minutes. She didn’t want to quit!” Commanding officer Lt. Col. Brian Peterson, who piloted CH-46s in Afghanistan, recalled: “I have been flying it for 19 years,

and in Afghanistan I first flew recon in the mid-2000s. Later I flew CASVAC in the Sunni triangle area. We were then deployed to WESPAC [Western Pacific], flying off ships, where we won ‘HMM of the Year.’” Peterson explained: “In Afghanistan, during the initial invasion, we were just getting a foothold. We were supporting ‘carjacking’ missions outside of Kandahar, where we set up checkpoints and flew in supplies to the guys on the roads. This was late in 2001, and we were back out in 2002. They never brought any more CH-46s in there; there were only two squadrons to begin with. One squadron had been sent in from the West Coast—HMM-163—and one from the East Coast. “Our most difficult missions were the low-level, low-light flights at night in the desert environment. There was always very fine dust flying, and a Huey crashed from the brownout. We were never shot at, though. In Iraq we took lots of shots, usually when we were traveling at night.” He added, “I never worried about how old the aircraft were because nothing is going to go wrong in a 46 that hasn’t happened before.” Captain Steven Dixon, who has been flying CH-46s for the last five years, reflected on his experience in the venerable bird’s most recent training role. “Our average day starts about 0645, and ends

Members of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit board a CH-46 during a beach-landing training exercise from USS Saipan in 2002.

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about 12 hours later,” he reported. “It includes about three hours of flying, and we do it two or three times each week for each crew. We practice our main skills—landings and navigation, that’s pretty typical. When we do night flights, the days are only about 10 hours long. Despite our names being on the sides of the aircraft, we aren’t actually assigned a particular 46. Neither are the crews—they work on them all.” Dixon also flew overseas, though not in active war zone duty: “We were deployed on the USS Makin Island, 12 46’s, five Zulu Cobras, four 53s, two Hueys and six Harriers—29 aircraft total. We made a couple of transits of the Strait of Hormuz, went to Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia. Before that the squadron had been in Iraq.” Captain Allen Whitlow, who was preparing to take his next to last flight in a Battle Phrog before transitioning to the Osprey, said: “I always wanted to fly helicopters. The CH-46 is like an antique car. We do have HUD with the helmets, but basically it is still the stock instruments.” Whitlow noted the care taken with the aging Sea Knights: “Most of our flying is at 70-80 knots. At the end of every 30 hours of flight, we collect oil and transmission fluid samples. They look for metal, and can tell if it is from bearings, seals, etc. Every 100 hours there are phase inspections—A, B and C—with different sections of the aircraft being inspected. It is still the basic airframe, but the transmission, engine and many components have been changed numerous times. So for everything except the airframe, it is a newer helicopter. I will always have a soft spot for the CH-46 as it is being retired.” The crews that kept the Sea Knights flying have a similar perspective. Crew chief Staff Sgt. James Barnhill said that the biggest challenge with an aircraft that age is just “keeping it safe to fly.” His motto is “never trust a helicopter under 40 years old.” Corporal Joseph Moccia, who works with Barnhill, said he “finds the age of the aircraft comforting.” Corporal Michael Petruny, a crew chief who worked on CH-46s for a year, noted, “The biggest challenge is to keep up with it; it is good overall, but it has its quirks.” Corporal Harrison Schoettley agreed, saying: “The typical repairs have been done many times; the biggest problems are just keeping up with metal fatigue, the hydraulics, the tires and fiberglass areas. Those kinds of repairs always need to be redone. There isn’t much bullet-hole patching anymore….” The CH-46 has undergone a lot of modernization to keep it flying all these years. The first major round of improvements—to 273 aircraft—came in 1983, involving engine upgrades (to 1,800 hp) as well as modifications affecting rescue gear, avionics and crash survivability. By 1999, another round of mods improved night flying capabilities and included many dynamic component upgrades. Recent aircraft survivability upgrades have added new countermeasures, including a new missile warning system, redesigned chaff and infrared missile jamming. Some of the extremely heavy steel armor plate previously installed was replaced with the new ceramic

A Sea Knight of helicopter support squadron HC-6 lifts cargo from the aft flight deck of the carrier USS John F. Kennedy.

version. Despite all that, the interior remains very old school, with lots of hydraulics and bundles of wiring. Most of the last flying models were the CH-46D/E versions, which typically carried a crew of three or four and could haul up to 25 passengers or, for casualty evacuation, 15 litters and two medical attendants. During Desert Storm the CH-46 regularly flew replenishment missions while maintaining a mission-capable rate of 87 percent. Sea Knights were last deployed overseas in May 2010, on the amphibious assault ship Peleliu bound for the Persian Gulf. At the beginning of 2014, three squadrons were still flying the CH-46— two out of Camp Pendleton and one in Norfolk, Va. HMM-364 had 14 of the veteran helicopters left, HMM-774 had 12 and a handful were being used by HMMT-164, a training squadron. Several of the old warbirds are still scattered in other locations, including 14 at Twentynine Palms, in California. A few more are thought to be languishing at overseas bases, likely being used as squadron hacks.

“I NEVER WORRIED ABOUT HOW OLD THE AIRCRAFT WERE BECAUSE NOTHING IS GOING TO GO WRONG IN A 46 THAT HASN’T HAPPENED BEFORE.” U.S. NAVY

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Clockwise from top left: Phrogs of Marine medium helicopter squadron HMM-364 await their next training exercise at MCAS Camp Pendleton, in California; the “front office” of a CH-46; a view from the helicopter’s rear shows the loading ramp and folded seats in the cargo compartment; Sea Knight crewmen take their seats before embarking on another mission; one of HMM-364’s choppers.

HMM-774, in Norfolk, was the first to transition to the MV-22 Osprey, in February 2014. HMMT-164, at Camp Pendleton, wrapped up its CH-46 days on August 25. The annual airshow at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar near San Diego on October 3-5, 2014, was initially supposed to feature a few CH-46s in its Marine Air-Ground Task Force demonstration, but the decision was made to highlight the Osprey instead. In the CH-46’s last public flight demonstration, four Battle Phrogs made a couple of passes over the field at Miramar before heading off into history. A few days after that show, on October 9, the commander of HMM-364, Lt. Col. John Field, relinquished his command at Camp Pendleton, and the unit was redesignated as Tilt Rotor Squadron 364. Many CH-46 veterans attended the October 9 Camp Pendleton ceremony, including famous Phrog pilot Major Pat Donovan, who earned two Navy Crosses in the span of two months in 1969. In February of that year he was seriously wounded while evacuating casualties under heavy fire in Vietnam’s Quang Nam Province. Despite his wounds, once he determined that his damaged chopper was still airworthy, he returned to evacuate more wounded troops. Then in April Donovan again came under heavy fire during another casualty evacuation mission in the same region. His CH-46 was so badly shot up that it was deemed no longer airworthy. Nevertheless, he found another chopper and requested 52

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another mission to the same landing zone, where more wounded troops remained. Once again his CH-46 came under intense fire, wounding his door gunner. Although another helicopter had to finish off the mission, Donovan made it back to base. His daughter, Captain Eileen Donovan—a former CH-46 pilot who now flies the Osprey—flew an MV-22 to Camp Pendleton to witness the October ceremony. It will take about a year for all the remaining CH-46s in Virginia and California to be retired to the Arizona boneyard. Most of the Sea Knight’s roles are being passed on to the Osprey, but the Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk is also taking on some of its duties. Meanwhile those who flew or maintained the venerable Battle Phrog rightfully have the final word about its legacy. Most claim they wouldn’t have traded it for any other helicopter—not in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.  Historian Frank Lorey III is the author of 15 books and more than 500 magazine and journal articles. While researching this article, he spent a day flying in CH-46s with the Marines at Camp Pendleton, and another day conducting interviews prior to their retirement ceremony. He also interviewed crewmen before the final public flight demonstration at MCAS Miramar. A video of the last mass CH-46 flight at Camp Pendleton can be viewed on YouTube (search “Mass Formation CH-46”).

PHOTOS: FRANK LOREY III

MODELING

BUILD A CH-46 SEA KNIGHT

K

its for the Boeing Vertol CH-46 Sea Knight aren’t generally found on hobby shop shelves, but regularly show up online and at model swap meets. One of the easiest to find is the 1/72nd-scale Hobby Boss kit, number 87723. Though it’s simple to construct, it includes a detailed cockpit with controls for both pilots, instrument panels above and in front of the flight crew and nicely molded pilots’ seats. The only real drawback is the bench-style seats in the cargo area, which should have replicated fold-ups with canvas backs and bottoms. Start by painting the cavernous cargo area walls in a shade very close to air mobility gray, FS-36173. The cockpit sidewalls and floor of the cargo area should be painted engine gray, FS-36076. Paint the flight crew seat frames air mobility gray, with olive drab seat cushions made from plastic strip and detailed with etched-metal seat belts from the Airwaves set, AC72-83. Next paint the belts sand, FS33531, with silver buckles. The seats of the cargo hold should be olive drab, FS-34087. You can also use belts from the Airwaves set in the cargo bay, to hold crates and boxes secure. The cockpit will stand out when the glazing is fitted, but the cargo hold is a “black hole” in the closed fuselage. When the cargo bay is not configured for carrying troops, it can be loaded with 55-gallon fuel drums, equipment crates and ammunition boxes—resincast accessories easily purchased online from a specialty hobbyist such as valuegeardetails.com. Before closing the fuselage sides, be sure to securely glue the porthole windows into position, cement the nose gear leg into place and position

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the shafts that will eventually hold the rotors. With the fuselage closed, glue the topside transmission cover and engine intake spikes to the top of the fuselage, then set these assemblies aside to dry. While the fuselage parts are drying, paint the rotor heads engine gray and the six blades flat black, FS-37038. When those parts are dry, assemble the heads and dry-fit the blades into the slots on the head ends. If you’ve attached the blades correctly, they’ll display their customary “droop” when at rest. Now back to the fuselage assembly, where the long seam on the underside of the fuselage will need to be filled and sanded. Since these pieces are pressed from thin plastic, they tend to flex with handling, and the seam may have to be filled twice. Once the fuselage construction is complete, tackle masking the cockpit glazing. This is a tedious job, as there are many clear areas, and some of the outlines of the window supports are poorly cast. There doesn’t seem to be another way to accomplish this task except for using thin strips of masking tape burnished in place with the flattened end of a toothpick. Attach the masked cockpit greenhouse with Deluxe Glue ’n’ Glaze, a stronger version of common white glue that dries crystal clear. Note that the fit of the glazing could be better,

The CH-46 that this model represents is slated for display at the USMC Museum.

so you might have to do some filling and sanding around seams. Once all the seams are filled and sanded, spray a coat of Alclad II primer and microfiller on the model. Lightly wet sand the entire model overall, then wash off the residue and let air dry. During the Vietnam War, U.S. Marine Corps helicopters were painted overall Marine field green, FS34095. After the color coat has cured, spray a gloss clear coat over your model to provide a smooth surface for decals. I found the white letters and numbers for CH-46 Bu.No. 153369, a Vietnam veteran from HMM-364, on various Micro Scale and Super Scale decal sheets. Once the decals have dried, apply a coat of dulling spray overall. A mist of Tamiya’s smoke on the panel lines will replicate the wear resulting from the years of hard use that the “Battle Phrog” endured on the battlefields of Southeast Asia. Dick Smith

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MAKING

THE BLUE MAX

FILMED 50 YEARS AGO, LONG BEFORE THE ADVENT OF CGI, THE WORLD WAR I AVIATION EPIC REQUIRED TWO AIR FORCES BUILT FROM SCRATCH AND STUNT PILOTS WILLING TO RISK IT ALL BY DON HOLLWAY

A

Arriving at Ardmore Studios, Dublin, Ireland, in 1965 to begin work on a new 20th Century Fox World War I dogfight movie, stunt pilot Derek Piggott learned he was in for more than just zooming around the skies, popping off smoke bombs and fake bullets while cameras rolled. The script called for a biplane to fly under a bridge, and producer Christian Ferry did not intend to use remote-control models. He meant to make the greatest WWI air combat film of all time: The Blue Max. “He must have had photos of almost every bridge in Ireland,” recalled Piggott, who had flown Airspeed Horsa gliders for the RAF in World War II, set a postwar glider altitude record (22,800 feet without oxygen) and broken into movies flying pre-WWI replicas in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. “I often wonder now whether Christian showed all the pilots these photos in order to see their reaction, and to try to decide who he would ask to do the job when the time came. Perhaps I was the only pilot who did not say that all the bridges looked quite hopeless.” Not to mention that the stunt would have to be flown in an airplane virtually hand-built from scratch. Aircraft made of wood and cloth tend to rot, and five decades after the Great War the owners of the few surviving WWI warbirds weren’t inclined to risk them making movies. The Blue Max required Fox to assemble two miniature air forces, at the cost of about a quarter-million dollars—in today’s money, nearly $2 million. Stunt flier Lynn Garrison, a colorful ex–Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, airshow promoter and aircraft collector, helped assemble the fleet. In German and British paint schemes, a Caudron C.276 Luciole served as a reconnaissance plane for both sides. De Havilland

D.H.82 Tiger Moths and a pair of Stampe SV.4Cs with their front cockpits faired over filled out dogfight sequences. A similarly converted French Morane-Saulnier MS.230 stood in for the Fokker E.V parasol monoplane in the film’s final sequence. Meanwhile Bitz Flugzeugbau GmbH of Augsburg, West Germany, built two Fokker Dr.I triplanes, and Rousseau Aviation of Dinard, France, constructed three Fokker D.VII biplanes. Personal Plane Services, in Buckinghamshire, England, built a Pfalz D.III, and the Hampshire Aero Club another. For the “enemy,” Miles Marine and Structural Plastics Ltd. of Shoreham, England, built two S.E.5a scouts. Given time and material constraints, some sacrifices to authenticity had to be made. The PPS Pfalz was a rebuilt de Havilland Gipsy Moth with a 4-cylinder 140-hp Gipsy Major engine, including a pair of fake cylinders and exhausts to enable it to pass for the original Pfalz’s 160-hp Mercedes inline-6. Similarly, the Bitz triplanes used Siemens-Halske SH-14 radials instead of Oberursel rotaries. Gipsy Queen 3 200-hp 6-cylinder inlines powered both the S.E.5as and D.VIIs; since the Fokkers’ original Mercedes weighed almost twice as much, they required some 200 pounds of noseballast for balance. Rousseau named its models the D.VII-65. “Most of the aircraft for The Blue Max were constructed in less than five months,” Piggott remembered, “and were flown for the first time only days before the filming began.” There was a friendly competition among the builders to deliver first. PPS took the prize with its Gipsy Pfalz. On the other hand, Rousseau delivered its D.VIIs by actually flying them from France to the set in Ireland— their German crosses and lozenge camouflage no doubt raising eyebrows below.

Opposite: A Bitz Flugzeugbau–built Fokker Dr.I heads a lineup of “D.VII-65s” warming up for takeoff in a Blue Max production scene. Above left: Star George Peppard, whose goal in the film is the prestigious Orden Pour le Mérite (opposite top), poses in front of the radial—rather than rotary—engine powering his triplane. Above right: Notably missing in this poster is Peppard’s upper wing.

OPPOSITE AND ABOVE LEFT: MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; OPPOSITE TOP: ©INTERFOTO/ALAMY; ABOVE RIGHT: ©CYCLO/ALAMY

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AS A FOKKER HOPPED A TREE ROW, FILM LOADER JOHN EARNSHAW NOTICED THAT HE WAS ACTUALLY LOOKING DOWN ON ITS WHEELS. HE HIT THE DIRT JUST BEFORE ONE OF THEM RIPPED THE CAMERA MOTOR OUT OF HIS HAND. Anthony Squire, a WWII flying boat pilot who learned movie work with the RAF Film Unit, would direct the air action. German WWI pilot Kurt Delang, with two victories as a senior NCO in Jasta 10, served as technical adviser. Director John Guillermin, thus far best known for Tarzan movies, was determined to make the most of his big break. “Life isn’t really filled with many heroes,” he said of the story, or perhaps the pilots he asked to fly his planes, “but there are men like [main character] Bruno Stachel who strive to achieve greatness against such overwhelming odds that the attempt, to lesser men, must seem not only impossible but madness.” Star George Peppard took the role of Stachel so seriously that he actually learned to fly. “Before production on The Blue Max, I took an intensive four-month flying course, which gave me 210 hours on my pilot’s log, 130 of them solo,” he reported. “I then checked in at our location in Ireland and spent an additional month flying the re-creations of early aircraft built for the film.” He proved it on the cover of the May 1965 issue of Air Classics magazine, flying a Stampe in German colors. The PPS D.III reportedly flew well, though with heavy controls. On the other hand, the Hampshire Aero Club’s all-wood Pfalz earned the nickname “Rubber Wings” during filming. The steeltube S.E.5as were strong and maneuverable, said to be easy to fly, but the D.VIIs were reportedly very heavy and—though their Gipsy Queens ran at twice the rpm of the original Mercedes—under56

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powered. Likewise the Dreideckers, originally famous for their agility, suffered from the lack of rotary engine torque. Garrison reported, “The [Bitz] triplane has the flying characteristics of a Link Trainer.” The pilots weren’t the only crew members risking their lives. As a Fokker hopped a tree row, leveled off and rushed the camera, film loader John Earnshaw noticed that he was actually looking down on its wheels. He hit the dirt just before one of them ripped the camera motor out of his hand. Camera operator Chic Waterson was struck on the head, but back at work the next day. Director of photography Douglas Slocombe was hospitalized for three weeks with a wrenched back. 20th Century Fox head of European production and Blue Max executive producer Elmo Williams admitted Guillermin was “indifferent to people getting hurt as long as he got realistic action…a hard-working, overly critical man whom the crew disliked.” And the idea of a bridge fly-through followed by a crash wouldn’t go away. “Where and exactly why the crash was to occur was not yet determined,” recalled Piggott, “because so much would depend on the location used.” At Carrigabrick, east of the village of Fermoy in County Cork, a railway viaduct of wrought-iron lattice girders spanned the Blackwater River on stone pillars. Carrigabrick Castle, the five-story stone keep at one end, was tall enough to snag a low-flying aircraft for a climactic crash. Garrison flew a test run, and Piggott was told the bridge “had been flown under by the pilots

HISTORYNET ARCHIVE

The risk of accidentally performing the scripted crash had everyof the RAF in the 1930s,” but he flew down to judge for himself. “From the filming point of view this bridge was ideal,” the stunt one on edge. “The film crew had felt the strain of waiting days for pilot noted, “since it was high enough to allow plenty of room this moment,” Piggott recalled; some were “scarcely able to watch for vertical error. However, this did mean that there could be no the first run.” “All I had to do,” he knew, “was to settle down quickly on each question of pulling up and over the top of the bridge once the run had been started.” To minimize horizontal error, Piggott pre- run and keep those two poles lined up until the bridge had gone by. cisely set pairs of scaffolding stakes in the ground, with one right I made myself oblivious to the huge stone pillars on either side and out in the river (visible in the movie, far out ahead of “Willi von did not even glance at them.” The Alouette, with a main rotor span 10 feet wider than the Dreidecker’s wings, Klugermann’s” first fly-through). “Then if could not follow. “In many ways I had the the pilot flew toward the bridge keeping the easy job,” Piggott said. “All I had to do was two poles exactly in line,” he reasoned, “he fly through the arch, whereas Gilbert flying must pass through without any problem.” the helicopter had to both follow me closely Practicing in a Dreidecker at the airfield, and then pull up and over the top of the though, Piggott found he required several bridge at the very last moment....By very tries to align the poles. “This was worryclever use of the zoom lens…they were able ing,” he said, “since if I did not get through to film the triplane at close quarters and see the bridge on the first run, it was immaterial it go right through the arch.” how well I might have done the others.” Guillermin wasn’t the only stickler for The camera ship was a French Aérorealism. “I was rather afraid that the whole spatiale SA 318C Alouette II helicopter, of this episode might be thought to be faked flown by Gilbert “Gilly” Chomat, with a or done with models, and therefore I sugcameraman filming from a side mount. gested that we should put a flock of sheep Beginning with over-water passes through at the foot of the bridge,” Piggott rememthe bridge’s widest span, Piggott flew 15 bered. “On the first few runs the sheep were successive runs. “Gilbert was able to follow British actor Jeremy Kemp, who played scared by the noise and moved about very behind me and go through with the heliWilli von Klugermann, stands beside a realistically, but they soon became bored copter filming all the way,” he recalled. “It D.H.82 Tiger Moth whose front cockpit with the aircraft and took hardly any notice was interesting to notice that the ‘take’ has been faired over, converting the at all.” Filming also had to pause in midselected for the film was not one following two-seater to a single-seat “fighter.” flight as a railway truck rolled innocently the aircraft sedately....In order to make it more exciting the helicopter had been lifted during the run so the through the scene, apparently inspecting the track and, as Piggott reported, “happily quite unaware of what was going on.” triplane appears to duck down under the top of the bridge.” “That day I really earned my pay,” he wrote, “with fourteen runs The next day’s schedule, however, targeted the landward span. “I can remember flying over to the location for the first go under through the narrow arch and two more through the large one. I the narrow arch and feeling more like Willi than Stachel,” Piggott slept very soundly that night!” Irish weather prevented flying the third day. Instead the crew wrote. “Circling over the bridge and looking down, the narrow arch looked quite impossible....I was very aware of the fact that the mounted a small camera on one of the triplanes to get over-thelittle triplane could not climb over the bridge at the last moment. shoulder footage. The next day Piggott made two runs wearing The biggest danger was the possibility of over-correcting and weav- Stachel’s helmet, then landed to switch film magazines and don Willi’s helmet. The pass that “kills” Klugermann in the film threating from side to side.”

Opposite: A D.VII streaks over the film crew. Above left: Director John Guillermin, shown here with Ursula Andress, was reportedly “indifferent to people getting hurt as long as he got realistic action.” Above right: Peppard and Carl Schell confer with a producer.

TOP AND ABOVE LEFT: 20TH CENTURY FOX/THE KOBAL COLLECTION; ABOVE RIGHT: HISTORYNET ARCHIVE

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ened to kill Piggott. “These last two runs were distinctly exciting,” he understated. “The triplane was buffeted about and I had to bring it back to the center line several times when it had been shifted bodily by the gusts together with the cross wind. This time it was quite a pleasant relief…to know that these were the last runs.” The crew of The Blue Max not only built and flew their own air forces, they earned $5 million (about $37 million today) at the box office doing it. TV Guide said the film “impressively captures the reality of war in the trenches and in the air.” Perfectionists might quibble, but the Monthly Film Bulletin opined, “The reconstructed S.E.5s, Pfalz D.IIIs and Fokker D.VIIs look as though they were worth the quarter-million dollars spent on them.” Director and warbird enthusiast Peter Jackson (best known for The Lord of the Rings trilogy) calls it one of his favorite WWI movies, and the very best when it comes to the air war. How can any film buff, or aviation buff, think otherwise? CGI artistry simply can’t compete with actual pilots wagering their lives, flying wood-and-wire aircraft just they did at the dawn of aviation. Such scenes are never likely to be captured so well again. 

A Fokker D.VII comes to a fiery end—one reason filmmakers used custom-made stand-in aircraft rather than the real thing.

Frequent contributor Don Hollway has written for Aviation History about real WWI aces Max Immelmann (November 2013) and Jean Navarre (November 2012). For further reading, he recommends: Delta Papa: A Life in Flying, by Derek Piggott; and The Blue Max, by Jack D. Hunter. Visit donhollway.com/bluemax for more on the film.

FATE OF THE BLUE MAX FLIERS AND FLEET efore computer-generated imagery, filming WWI aviation movies was almost as dangerous as aerial combat. Using money he had earned flying as a mercenary in Africa and Latin America, Lynn Garrison bought the entire Blue Max fleet for rent to movie studios. In August 1970, while shooting Zeppelin, Gilly Chomat and his camera crew were killed when an S.E.5a replica rammed their Alouette helicopter over the Irish Sea. A month later Charles Boddington, who flies the triplane barrel roll right before the Blue Max bridge scene, died filming Richtofen and Brown when his S.E.5a snagged the ground during a low-level maneuver. The day after that mishap, flying a Stampe with actor Don Stroud aboard, Garrison took a bird strike to the face. The Stampe tore through five power lines and went into the Liffey River, inverted. Both men survived, but Garrison’s head wound required 60 stitches. The Blue Max squadron suffered similar attrition. The Caudron was crushed in a hangar collapse. In the mid-’80s its remains, the surviving Stampe, the Pfalzes and the D.VIIs were purchased by the

B

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Fighting Air Command at Hartlee Field, in Denton, Texas. The FAC, however, disbanded by decade’s end. Both Pfalzes and the first D.VII-65 ended up with New Zealand’s 1914-18 Aviation Heritage Trust, under the care of The Vintage Aviator Ltd., an aircraft restoration and manufacturing company. General Manager Gene DeMarco reports: “The Hampshire Pfalz is a static display, but the Personal Plane Services Pfalz flies in the colors of Lieutenant Fritz Höhn of Jasta 21, who ended the war with 21 victories. We completely stripped down the D.VII and built it back up, correcting many of its original construction shortcuts, and fly it, too.” To learn more about those aircraft, visit thevintageaviator.co.nz. The red Fokker triplane has had the most dramatic story. In October 1978, it vanished from Garrison’s Ireland hangar. Police initially turned up no leads, but three years later, leafing through Air Progress magazine, Garrison recognized the plane in an ad, when it was about to be auctioned off on behalf of a defunct Orlando air museum. He showed up with a sheriff, took possession and had it trucked to Chino,

One of the Dr.Is used in the film is being rebuilt at Pearson Field, in Washington.

Calif. While awaiting full restoration, however, the Fokker was again stolen. As it repeatedly changed hands, the aircraft slowly went to pieces. The Dreidecker was rediscovered in a Southern California backyard—a find publicized in 2008. Garrison’s son Patrick fetched it home to Pearson Field, Wash., where today it’s being restored. “All the original parts for the Blue Max triplane have been located,” Garrison says, “with the original rudder being located in a collection in Texas, and the original twin Spandau movie guns that have been located in a collection in the Pacific Northwest.” It’s just a matter of time and money before the Dreidecker flies again. To get the full story, visit blue-max-triplane.org. D.H.

TOP: ©CLASSICSTOCK/ALAMY; ABOVE: BLUE MAX AVIATION

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REVIEWS BOOKS HELL’S ANGELS: The True Story of the 303rd Bomb Group in World War II by Jay A. Stout, Berkley Publishing, New York, N.Y., 2014, $27.95. Reviewing a good book, or even a bad book, is relatively easy, particularly since I never review a bad book, being only too aware of how a stinging review makes an author feel. But reviewing a great book is something else altogether, and that makes this analysis of Hell’s Angels very difficult, for it is truly a great book. Jay Stout chooses one of the most important bomb groups of World War II in terms of the time in which it flew and the successes that it scored. He then dissects that group’s equipment, procedures, personnel, victories and defeats in a way not previously done. Stout’s technique immediately poses two questions, one obvious and one that has to be pondered. The first is why more books are not done in a similar manner. The answer probably is the enormous research required, and the discrimination needed to select the most important elements. The second, and more important, question is whether a nation capable of creating a 303rd Bomb Group from such scant material in such a short period of time during WWII is still able to do so in today’s environment. Stout’s task would have been far more difficult if he did not write so well. As it is, he manages to combine the overall story of a mammoth city-destroying organization created from the raw material of a Depression-ridden America with the highly personalized accounts of the men who flew their colorfully named B-17s into the heart of Nazi Germany. He vividly portrays the battle from its early days, when the Luftwaffe was far more powerful and experienced, and the 303rd was at the beginning of its learning curve. He carries the long, hard story, with its many casualties and triumphs, through to the last days of the war. At that point the German fighters might have been less effective, but the 60

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dangers of heavyweight takeoffs, midair collisions and ever-present flak still took their toll. Stout assembles his story around the real but too often overlooked building blocks of a deadly efficient combat unit. He covers the duties of the support groups that were so vital to success, including maintenance, supply, administration, etc. He also paints very human portraits of the flight personnel as individuals, as well as essential crew members of the 10-man weapon system that was the B-17. This is truly an excellent book, a model for researchers and writers, and a treat for readers. Walter J. Boyne THE 377 STRATOCRUISER & KC-97 STRATOFREIGHTER: Boeing’s Great Post War Transports by Bill Yenne, Specialty Press, North Branch, Minn., 2014, $39.95. Bill Yenne does his usual authoritative work in this long-overdue book on a terrific Boeing design that has been largely ignored. One of Yenne’s talents is his ability to deliver an enormous amount of information in a minimum number of words. In this book he provides 10 chapters of narrative history, jam-packed with facts. These are backed up by no less than 14 appendices and an addendum. He complements his narrative with more than 300 photos and excellent captions, to tell a comprehensive story of this great series of airplanes. As Yenne points out, the massive U.S. government investment in the B-29 (some $3 billion, the most expensive project of WWII) put Boeing in a seemingly ideal position to enter the postwar passenger transport field. There were hurt feelings among some in Boeing management about the way Douglas’ DC-3 had shouldered its Model 247 aside in the mid-1930s. Boeing wanted vindication—and it needed to sell airplanes to the civilian market in anticipation of wartime production ending. As Yenne explains, the portly C-97 made its mark in the civilian market as a luxurious high-speed, long-range transport, but

not in the numbers achieved by the new Douglas and Lockheed airliners. One vital factor was operating cost, even in those days when fuel expenditures were laughably low by today’s standards. The comparative advantages and disadvantages of the design are revealed in complete detail. Yenne tracks each individual airplane’s use by airlines and its ultimate fate. He even provides the changes in the high-sounding names made when the aircraft passed from one airline to another, as when the American Overseas Airways Flagship Europe became Pan Am’s Clipper Glory of the Skies. As its rivals dominated the airliner market, Boeing was fortunate that the advent of the jet age forced the Air Force to modernize. It bought the KC-97 first as a transport and then as a tanker. In the refueling role, it was an essential tool for two Boeing bombers, the B-50 and the B-47, as the Strategic Air Command rapidly expanded. The size and structure of the “Strato” series aircraft made it adaptable to many roles, including one in which it reigned supreme—the giant Guppy and Super Guppy transport conversions used to deliver huge pieces of hardware for spacecraft of all sorts. This is an essential book for any aviation library, and an excellent way to recapture an important and even glamorous series of aircraft, all too often lost in the shadow of the later Boeing 707 and KC-135. Walter J. Boyne CAPTURED EAGLES: Secrets of the Luftwaffe by Frederick A. Johnsen, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, England, 2014, $25.95. Ace historian Fred Johnsen appears to have gotten his hands on every report by an Allied pilot who tested a German aircraft during and after WWII. He also found reports of Allied interrogations of German pilots and engineers. Perhaps best of all, Johnsen has traced the whereabouts of just about every Axis flying machine that fell into U.S. hands. This is the place to read about the American retrieval, flight-testing and evaluation of German aircraft. The distinctive voices of

those who flew captured Messerschmitts and Focke Wulfs help convey the findings about how Germany’s best compared with Allied warplanes. Sadly, after these war prizes served their purpose as sources of intelligence and technology data, most were scrapped. Aviation museums were few and far between when the war in Europe ended 70 years ago. As Johnsen reminds us, “The entire concept of air museums hosting vast collections of fullsized aircraft was in its infancy at the end of World War II.” Several Messerschmitt Me-262s were captured and brought across the Atlantic, only to be discarded after testing. An Me-109 once held by an American owner seems to have disappeared. Many German aircraft (as well as the priceless B-32 Dominator, no examples of which survive today) earmarked for museum display were instead scrapped. Ever the optimist, Johnsen writes encouragingly about the rare aircraft that were saved, including the world’s only Arado Ar-234 jet bomber at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center. Many of the 106 images in Captured Eagles have never been seen before, including a color photo of Hermann Göring being interrogated by American officers in a collegial setting. The selection of pictures is excellent, though an editorial decision to separate photos from their captions makes the content difficult to follow. This book is an essential reference work as well as an entertaining read and a real bargain. Robert F. Dorr

the Present and its updated sequel High Stakes: Britain’s Air Arms in Action 19451990, both of which I highly recommend. Supported by an impressive bibliography, Fighter Aircraft Combat Debuts offers hours of reading and browsing pleasure, but also serves as a dependable reference. Some of the information presented will be familiar to enthusiasts, but there are many descriptions and anecdotes that may be new to even the most experienced aviation reader. Jon Guttman (Aviation History’s research director) is well known for his writing on World War I aviation, particularly through his numerous books for Osprey, but here he branches out into interwar engagements and early World War II operations, such as the first German raids into Poland in September 1939. His treatment of little-known British Royal Navy efforts in the first years of WWII, including missions by Fairey Fulmar twoseat fighters, and the desperate response by the Soviets when their air force was decimated by the German onslaught in June 1941, makes for excellent reading. Late-war German jet and rocket-plane operations add to the overall spread of coverage. The only real problem is the thumbnail size of most photos, many of them interesting and unusual. This book is reasonably priced in today’s market, but I would have gladly paid a little more to see bigger pictures. That said, Fighter Aircraft Combat Debuts is another fine effort by Guttman. Peter Mersky

FIGHTER AIRCRAFT COMBAT DEBUTS, 1915-1945: Innovation in Air Warfare Before the Jet Age by Jon Guttman, Westholme Publishing, Yardley, Pa., 2014, $35.

CLASSICS

Interesting, very well written and packed with facts and details, this survey of the careers of a wide variety of fighters in a seminal 30-year period comes from an established expert in aviation history. It is in the same wide-ranging and unusual category as British author Victor Flintham’s two books, Air Wars and Aircraft: A Detailed Record of Air Combat, 1945 to

FLIGHT OF PASSAGE: A True Story by Rinker Buck Imagine Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn aviating across America in a Piper Cub in 1966. Only this isn’t a novel. Rinker Buck, then 15, and his 17-year-old brother Kernahan are the precocious fliers in this beautifully told odyssey of self-discovery. The youthful protagonists were driven by different motives to be the presumed youngest kids to make a transcontinental flight up to that time. Kern, a desperately shy lad, hankered for a way to “stand out.”

Rink, on the other hand, sought a means to shake his domineering father. The complex relationships between father and sons as well as between brothers permeate every chapter, baring emotions that range from bitter frustration to genuine devotion. The characters the brothers encountered at fuel stops from New Jersey to California in six drama-filled days are memorable. A roughhewn crop-dusting pilot at a small airstrip in East Richmond, Ind., topped off their tank for free and advised them how to skirt a threatening weather system, resulting in the journey’s most scenic leg. In Carlsbad, N.M., a mechanic with a heavy drawl repaired the Cub’s torn fabric and tuned the ragged engine just for the privilege of helping the boys pass over the daunting Rockies. At El Paso, on the far side of the mountains, a cigar-chomping treasure-hunter smoothed over a potentially serious run-in with the FAA. This coming-of-age story never strays far from the flying motif. Each leap into the air is conveyed with descriptive power worthy of aviation writers Richard Bach and Ernest Gann. Readers are treated to a stunning travelogue from the low-and-slow vantage point of the puddle-jumper’s window. Older pilots will feel pangs of nostalgia. This flight took place at a time when avgas cost 39 cents a gallon and you could overfly the nation’s vast landmass in a plane with no radio, carrying $300 in your pocket. Almost as amazing as the flight itself, the boys had totally rebuilt the Cub by themselves in a barn during the preceding winter, using funds they earned plowing snow and working other odd jobs. At times Buck overreaches. It wasn’t really necessary, for example, to establish the boys’ earthiness by injecting so much foul language or harping on how they scammed teachers and church elders. Perhaps most damaging in the eyes of aviation aficionados are repeated references to the AT-6 as a fighter. Yet those small annoyances are overshadowed by the sheer literary merit of the narrative, which retains its freshness all these years after publication. There is also enduring relevance, because of course some aspects of the transition to adulthood never change. Experienced fliers will relish Flight of Passage thanks to its capacity to recapture

JULY 2015

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

61

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Leatherneck Simulations offers new insights on the MiG-21 with its MiG-21Bis add-on module to Digital Combat Simulator World (available at digitalcombatsimulator. com or via Steam digital distribution). DCS World’s stable of aircraft isn’t for lightweights, and MiG-21Bis is no exception. Although it can be flown in arcade-style missions, it’s meticulously detailed and meant for the discriminating enthusiast. MiG-21Bis feels special, perhaps because the Fishbed hasn’t previously received treatment of this caliber. There are some add-on MiG-21 packages for Microsoft Flight Simulator, but nothing like this. Leatherneck Simulations used Russian consultants, and it shows: The radio chatter is in Russian and cockpit labels are in Cyrillic, though users can also elect to see them in English. I spent some time learning the startup sequence and getting off the ground, in part because of discrepancies between the manual and in-game tutorials. But it was hard not to smile when I heard the Tumansky R25 engine spooling up. You’d expect a plane developed in the 1950s to be crude by modern standards, but the Bis variant is one of Solid Steel Construction

the more advanced versions, and its simplicity also affords it some elegance. The MiG-21 definitely likes to go fast, though it’s more agile than one might expect for a rocket with stubby wings. It’s a tough plane to master, however, as speed bleeds rapidly and performance can suffer in extended turns. As analysts have noted, rearward visibility is also not great, due to the lack of a bubble canopy. MiG-21Bis’ graphics are very good, and the developers have replicated every detail in the aircraft models. But the environment and terrain have a dated look. There’s a good selection of content across several missions and multiplayer support. Though there are a few bugs in the game and I would recommend a fast PC to run it well, MiG-21Bis is a quality product. The F-4 could do more in the beyondvisual-range regime and in strike roles, but the MiG-21 has a stronger production history. With greater numbers and usage in more countries, the MiG is the jet parallel to the Kalashnikov AK-47. Which plane is better? Perhaps success, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Bernard Dy N0 RISK 30 DAY HOME TRIAL

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

63

The Authorized Biography of

Luftwaffe Ace Gunther Rall

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AV507A

FLIGHT TEST

By Jon Guttman

Kings of the Night F A

The P-61 Black Widow may have been a night fighter from the get-go, but previous improvisations achieved more.

1. Which was the first fighter to score a night victory using airborne intercept radar, on July 2-3, 1940? G

B

H

A. B. C. D.

2. Which airplane scored the most night victories during World War II? A. B. C. D.

C

Blenheim Mk. IF Defiant Mk. II Havoc Mk. I Me-110C

P-61B Black Widow D.H.98 Mosquito Bristol Beaufighter Me-110G

3. To what factor did Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer attribute his record 121 night victories?

Thomas-Morse S-4C Keystone B-4A North American T-6 Vultee BT-13 Curtiss P-1 Hawk

Nonregulation A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J.

6. de Havilland D.H.82 Tiger Moth 7. Boeing-Thomas Morse MB-3 8. Travel Air 4000 9. Northrop F-5E Tiger 10. Hispano HA-1112 Buchón

Match the nickname of the formation with the plane type that gained it fame.

Rudolf Berthold’s Blue Tails Gene Valencia’s Mowing Machine The Squadron of Experts Ray Collishaw’s Black Flight Antonin Brocard’s Storks Colonel Randy Holzapple’s Flying Circus The Blue-Nosed Bastards of Bodney Manfred von Richthofen’s Flying Circus Doug Bader’s Bus Service Hub Zemke’s Wolfpack

1. Albatros D.V 2. North American P-51 Mustang 3. Republic P-47D Thunderbolt 4. Supermarine Spitfire 5. Fokker D.VII 6. Sopwith Triplane 7. Messerschmitt Me-262A-1a 8. Spad VII 9. Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat 10. Martin B-26C Marauder

5. What was the fastest night fighter to see combat in World War II? A. B. C. D.

P-61B Black Widow Mosquito NF Mk. XXX He-219A-0 Me-262B-1a/U1

ANSWERS Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing?

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Advanced radar Obliquely mounted 20mm cannon Identify friend or foe equipment All of the above

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

Can you identify these flying stars from war films?

A. B. C. D.

Nonregulation

Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing?

4. What did Shigetoshi Kudo’s modified Nakajima J1N1-C have that helped him score eight night victories in 1943?

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

J

A superior plane Superior radar His crew All of the above

Kings of the Night

E

A. B. C. D.

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

I D

JULY 2015

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

65

AERO POSTER

A

host of aerial performers embellish this poster promoting National Aviation Day, an airshow extravaganza organized by Sir Alan Cobham (story, P. 40). Today the charismatic airman is best remembered for the displays, better known as “Cobham’s Flying Circus,” that toured the UK and Ireland between 1931 and 1935 promoting the slogan “Make the Skyways Britain’s Highways.”

66

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

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LONGEST SUMMER by ANTHONY SAUNDERS The limited edition book and print portfolio

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