• Fledgling Days Of American Aviation

Over the years I've owned and flown three biplanes built by Travel Air Manufacturing Company in Wichita, Kansas. The principals of the operation were Clyde Cessna, Lloyd Stearman, and Walter Beech, although the outfit was, it turned out, a success thanks to Olive Anne Mellor who later became Mrs. Beech and Chairman of Beech Aircraft. Here's some fascinating background on how other names you know became part of aviation history.

How many of you know that in 1910 the mighty Martin Marietta Company got its start in an abandoned church in Santa Ana, CA? That's where the late Glenn L. Martin with his mother “Minta” Martin, and a mechanic named Roy Beal, built a fragile contraption in which Glenn “taught himself” to fly.

It has often been told how the Douglas Company started operations in 1920 by renting the rear of a barbershop on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. The barbershop is still there.

The Lockheed Company built its first Vega in 1927 in what is now the Victory Cleaners and Dryers at 1040 Sycamore Avenue in Hollywood.

Claude Ryan who at 24 held a reserve commission as a flyer, had his hair cut in San Diego one day in 1922. The barber told him how the town aviator was in jail for smuggling Chinese across the border. Claude investigated and stayed on in San Diego to rent the old airfield from the city at $50 a month and replace the guy in the pokey. He agreed to fly North instead of South.

In 1928, the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, Transcontinental Air Transport (now TWA) and the Douglas Company chipped in enough money to start North American Aviation, a holding company. The present company bearing the Northrop name came into being in a small hotel in Hawthorne. The “hotel” was conveniently vacant and available because the police who raided it found that steady residents were a passel of money-minded gals who entertained transitory male guests.

After Glenn Martin built his airplane in the church, he moved to a vacant apricot cannery in Santa Ana and built two more. In 1912 he moved to 9th and Los Angeles Streets in downtown Los Angeles. Glenn was then running a three-ring-circus. Foremost, he was a showman who traveled the circuit of county fairs and air meets as an exhibitionist aviator. Secondly, he was an airplane manufacturer. He met his payroll and bought his lumber, linen and bailing wire from proceeds of his precision exhibition flying. His mother and two men ran the factory when Glenn was risking his neck and gadding about the country. One of the men was 22-year old Donald Douglas who was the “engineering department” and the other was a Santa Monica boy named Larry Bell, who ran the shop

The third circus ring was a flying school. It had a land plane operation in Griffith Park and later at Bennett's Farm in Inglewood, and a hydroplane operation at a place that's now part of the Watts District. A stunt flyer named Floyd Smith ran it. One of his first pupils was Eric Springer, who later became an instructor and then Martin's test pilot, still later the test pilot for the early Douglas Company, and then a Division Manager.

Eric and Floyd taught a rich young man named Bill Boeing to fly. Having mastered the art; Boeing bought a Martin biplane, hired Ross Stem, Glenn's personal mechanic, and shipped the airplane to Seattle. Later, when it crashed into the lake and Boeing set about to repair it, he ordered some spare parts from Martin in Los Angeles.

Martin, remembering the proselytizing incident with Ross Stem, decided to take his sweet time and let Boeing stew. Bill Boeing said, “To Hell with him”, and told Ross Stern to get busy and build one of their own.

Boeing had a friend named Westerfelt and they decided to form a company and build two airplanes. These two “BW” airplanes bore a remarkable resemblance to the Martin airplane, which, in turn, had been copied, from Glenn Curtiss. There seems to be a moral about customer relations and product support mixed up in this episode.

During WW-I, a bunch of sharpies from Wall Street in New York got control of the Wright Company in Dayton and the Martin Company in Los Angeles. They merged the two companies into the Wright-Martin Company. They sent a young man named Chance Vought to be their Chief Engineer. Donald Douglas lost no time in quitting and went to work for the U.S. Signal Corp.

The Wright-Martin Company started building obsolete “standard” biplanes and Hispano-Suiza engines, with the latter under a license agreement with the French Government. Martin told them what they could do with them, and took off for Cleveland, taking Larry Bell and Eric Springer with him.

Having the backing of a baseball mogul to build a new factory, Martin was soon joined by Donald Douglas who went to work and came up with the design of the Martin Bomber. It came out too late to see service in WW-I, but showed its superiority when General Billy Mitchell made everyone mad at him by sinking the captured German battlefleet. The deathblow to the allegedly Dreadnaught “Osfriesland” was delivered by the Douglas designed Martin Bomber.

At Cleveland, a young fellow called “Dutch” Kindelberger joined the Martin Company as an engineer. Also a veteran Army pilot from WW-I named Carl Squier became Sales Manager. His name would become one of the most venerable names in Lockheed history. Back in 1920, Donald Douglas had saved $600 and struck out on his own. He returned to Los Angeles, found a backer, David Davis, rented the rear of a barbershop and some space in the loft of a carpenter's shop where they built a passenger airplane called “The Cloudster”

Claude Ryan bought this a couple years later and made daily flights between San Diego and Los Angeles with it. This gives Ryan the distinction of being the owner and operator of the first Douglas Commercial Transport, and certainly a claim to be among the original airline passenger operators.

In 1922, Donald Douglas was awarded a contract to build three torpedo planes for the U.S. Navy. Douglas lived in Santa Monica, but worked in Los Angeles. Away out in the wilderness at what is now 25th Street and Wiltshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, there was an abandoned barn-like movie studio. One day Douglas stopped his roadster and prowled around to investigate. The studio became the first real home of the Douglas Aircraft Company.

With the $120,000 Navy contract, Donald Douglas needed and could afford one or two engineers. He hired my brother Gordon Scott newly over from serving an apprenticeship to the Martinside and the Fairey Aviation Companies in England. Gordon was well schooled in the little known science of Aviation by 1923.

My first association with some of the early pioneers occurred when I visited my brother Gordon at the barn at 25th Street. I found him outside on a ladder washing windows. They were dirty and he was the youngest engineer. There were no janitorial services at the Douglas Company in those days.

Gordon introduced me to Art Mankey, his boss and Chief Draftsman, and four of his fellow engineers. There was a towhead guy called Jack Northrop, a chap named Jerry Vultee, and a fellow named Dick Von Hake, a reserve Army flyer. Jack Northrop came from Santa Barbara where he had worked during WW-I for the Lockheed Aircraft Manufacturing Company. The fourth member of the Engineering Group was Ed Heinemann. They were all working on the design of the Douglas World Cruisers. Shortly afterwards, Jack Northrop left the Douglas Company in 1926. Working at home, he designed a wonderfully advanced streamlined airplane. He tied back with Allan Loughead who found a rich man, F. E. Keeler, willing to finance a new Lockheed Aircraft Company.

They rented a small shop in Hollywood and built the Northrop designed Lockheed “Vega”. It was sensational with its clean lines and high performance.

In May 1927, Lindbergh flew to Paris and triggered a bedlam where everyone was trying to fly everywhere. Before the first Vega was built, William Randolph Hearst, publisher of the Hearst newspaper chain, bought it and entered it in the Dole Race from the Mainland to Honolulu, which was scheduled for 12 August 1927.

In June 1927, my brother Gordon left the Douglas Company to become Jack Northrop's assistant at Lockheed. He also managed to get himself hired as the navigator on the “Golden Eagle”, the name chosen by Mr. Hearst for the Vega, which hopefully would be the first airplane to span the Pacific.

The race was a disaster! Ten lives were lost. The “Golden Eagle” and its crew vanished off the face of the earth.

With its only airplane lost under mysterious circumstances, a black cloud hung heavily over the little shop in Hollywood. However, Captain George H. Wilkins, later to become Sir Hubert Wilkins, took the Number Two airplane and made a successful polar flight from Nome, Alaska to Spitzbergen, Norway. After that a string of successful flights were to put the name of Lockheed very much in the forefront of aviation.

At Lockheed, Jack Northrop replaced the lost Gordon Scott with Jerry Vultee. In 1928, Jack quit the Lockheed Company to start a new company in Glendale called Avion. Jerry Vultee then moved up to become Chief Engineer at Lockheed. He hired Dick van Hake from the Douglas Company to be his assistant. A young man named Cliff Garrett joined the Lockheed Company as the driver of their pick-up truck.

I went to work at Lockheed shortly after the “Golden Eagle” was lost. I became the 26th Lockheed employee. The Vegas were made almost entirely of wood and I became a half-assed carpenter, generally known as a “wood butcher”

In 1929, Jerry Vultee quit the Lockheed Company to start the Airplane Development Company, which became the Vultee Aircraft Company, a division of E. L. Cord, the automobile manufacturer. He later merged with Reuben Fleet's Consolidated Aircraft Company to become Convair. When Vultee left Lockheed, Dick van Hake became the Chief Engineer.

In the meantime, Glenn Martin closed his Cleveland plant and moved to Baltimore. His production man Larry Bell moved to Buffalo to found the Bell Aircraft Company. Carl Squier left Martin to tie in with the Detroit Aircraft Company, which had acquired the Lockheed Aircraft Company and seven others. They hoped to become the “General Motors” of the aircraft business! They appointed Carl Squier as General Manager of the Lockheed plant, which moved to Burbank in 1928.

At this time, General Motors had acquired North American Aviation, which consisted of several aircraft companies in the East. Ernie Breech, formerly with Bendix but now with General Motors, hired “Dutch” Kindelberger away from Douglas to head up the aircraft manufacturing units. “Dutch” took Lee Atwood and Stan Smithson with him. The companies involved were Fokker Aircraft, Pitcairn Aviation (later Eastern Airlines), Sperry Gyroscope and Berliner-Joyce. Kindelberger merged Fokker and Berliner-Joyce into a single company and moved the entire operation to Inglewood, California.

Thus, a handful of young men played roles, which profoundly affected all of our lives and the lives of millions of other Americans. They changed Southern California from a wasteland with a few orange groves, apricot and avocado orchards and the celluloid industry of Hollywood to a highly sophisticated industrial complex with millions of prosperous inhabitants.

This technological explosion had some very humble and human beginnings. The “Acorns” took root in some strange places: a church, a cannery, a barbershop, but from them mighty Oaks have indeed come to fruition.

From a speech given by Mr. Denham S. Scott to the AIA on March 19, 1968.
Reprinted from North American Aviation Retirees Bulletin - Summer 2001

• Know Where You're Going When You Volunteer

2011 ended for us on the next to last day of the year with the sale of our Twin Beech. We weren't flying her much for physical, financial, and business reasons, so we were happy to have her go to a place in Ohio where she'll be flown and kept in a manner to which she was accustomed.

In the process we remade our acquaintance with Taigh Ramey, one of a handful of genuine Twin Beech experts around, and a thorough gentleman. His shop is in Stockton California, in the valley east of San Francisco, where we stopped on the way home to San Diego from Oregon where we bought the bird.

And all that reminded me of a spiral bound collection of stories, by former military flyers who had flown the Bugsmasher, titled She's A Beech.

Taigh said he'd heard of it and would give anything to read it, and I knew I had a copy someplace.

So after their departure

I went home and rummaged around until, sure enough, I found the book. I'd told Taigh I'd share it with him if I found it, and so I started to scan it into a PDF file. But I was brought up short by the line on the title page that said reproduction of the mid-1990s book in any form was prohibited without the permission of the author. I pondered the 17 year copyright expiration issue, but resolved to contact editor Tom Smith regardless.

In 1995 it would probably have been a frustrating and fruitless effort to track him down—and back then I wouldn't have been considering sending the material off as a computer file or finding some way to share it on the Internet, either.

But on the last day of 2011, with help from Google, I found Tom's phone number on a RAFS (Real Aviators Flew Stoofs) forum, a Stoof being the iconic Navy/Grumman S-2F 'Tracker'.

And, boy, am I glad I called Tom. Even if you didn't know the 82-year-old was a Naval Aviator, you could tell by the verbal equivalent of the spring in his step that he'd been to Pensacola. It was clear he still wore his wings of gold with pride, if even only metaphorically.

This was taken just after Tom's initial carrier qualification on the USS Monterey, December 1954.

We traded a few flying stories, and Tom graciously allowed me to share his book with you and the story below. The details of how he manage to find the stories for the book, and background on the authors, are in the PDF.

Tom, we salute you for your service and for your effort to preserve the stories that prove, She's A Beech. 

This tale, modestly told when you think about what he actually did, is by Colonel Benjamin H. Shiffrin, USAF (Retired).

Ben graduated from Army Air Corps pilot training on August 15, 1941. After Pearl Harbor, he flew submarine patrol with C-47s, C-46s and 0-52—the Curtis Owl. People grew up fast in WW2, and just four years later, in January of '43, Ben was Commander of the 1st Arctic Search and Rescue Squadron, based in Greenland. In '45 he activated and commanded the 44th TC Squadron, flying C-46s with a mission of providing air drops on Japan.

After the war he operated a flying school, fixed base operation, and an aircraft sales and service business in Bethany, Connecticut. He was recalled to active duty in '47 as a Major, was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1951 and Bird Colonel in 1953. Among other prestigious assignments he was Base Commander of Kelly AFB. He retired in 1968 and started a new career as a successful company executive.

I think you'll enjoy his story, especially for the unusual and historic details in it:

KNOW WHERE YOU'RE GOING WHEN YOU VOLUNTEER

In early January of 1943, I was the Officer-of-the-Day for the 103rd Observation Squadron based at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. A teletype message came across my desk requesting a volunteer pilot with multi-engine and ski-plane experience for an urgent rescue mission.

Nothing was mentioned about what and where the rescue mission would be, or what type of aircraft was involved.

Being completely bored with squadron inactivity in wartime following a frustrating year of ineffective antisubmarine patrol in obsolete aircraft, I volunteered immediately. I had never been on skis, on my feet or airplane, and my multi·engine experience totaled 1.5 hours. In a matter of hours I was accepted for the mission.

Two days later I received secret orders. I learned that the mission was to rescue crew members of a B-17 that had crashed on the Greenland ice cap. The B-17 went down while searching for another lost aircraft.

Greenland? Up to now I had always thought of Greenland as a little green island somewhere in the ocean. After pouring over numerous charts and maps, I found the location of Greenland ... and went into immediate shock!

My orders required me to pick up a new AT-7 (C·45) at the factory in Wichita, Kansas. There I was to undergo a quick checkout in the Beech, and then proceed to the Norduyn Aircraft factory in Montreal, Canada, to pick up pontoon-type skis.

From Montreal, I was to fly to Presque Isle, Maine; Goose Bay, Labrador; and then to Greenland. At Presque Isle I was to pick up an ex-airline pilot who knew the route to Greenland.

With orders to proceed with dispatch, we arrived at BW1, (Narssarssuak) Greenland, on 24 January. My co·pilot/navigator escaped at once back to the United States. He probably thought he would be assigned to go on the rescue mission if he didn't get the hell out of there fast.

I sought out Colonel Bob Wimsatt, Commander of the Greenland Base Command, and the only person who had ever been to the rescue base on the east coast of Greenland, BE-2 (lquteg), and returned. All others who had tried were either lost enroute or were still there.

It took two days to recruit a crew chief, S/Sgt McDonald, and to collect the necessary survival gear. I checked with every pilot I could find that had flown in Arctic conditions. With their help, I plotted the flight and waited for good weather conditions.

On the third day, weather forecasters assured me that the weather enroute would be clear. It was probably the last time in my life that I ever completely believed a weather guesser.

After crossing the ice cap at 10 ,000 feet, we flew over the water along the shore to our destination, an airfield more than four hundred miles north, and sixty miles up a narrow fjord. The further north we flew, the lower the ceiling became. We crossed over the Eskimo village of Angmagssalik, at the mouth of the fjord, with a ceiling of about 1,000 feet.

There was an American operated radio beacon at Angmagssalik, but not at our destination airfield. We had already passed the point of no return, so our only option was to fly up the narrow fjord with lowering ceilings.

We were truly flying into a tunnel with towering mountains on both sides, water below and the ever lowering ceiling above. To make matters worse, it began to snow, restricting our visibility. We had calculated the flying time from the beacon at Angmagssalik, and knew we would be in deep trouble if time ran out and we didn't have the airfield in sight.

As the time elapsed, we were flying with 500 feet of ceiling and about a half mile of visibility. At that moment I observed the silhouettes of two B-17 bombers on the snowy bank of the fjord. The area turned out to be our destination airfield. But no semblance of a runway was visible from the air. I executed a hard landing with several bounces on the very rough runway.

We had to get the aircraft skis out of the cabin before we could exit the aircraft. As we left the aircraft, we were met by Colonel Bernt Balchen, commander of the rescue task force. He threatened to court martial me on the spot for endangering the vital ski·equipped AT-7.

Hell, I was just glad to be alive!

The six man crew of the crashed B-17 had been awaiting rescue since November 9. They had been spotted on the ice cap by Colonel Balchen on November 24, and had been the subject of an intense rescue effort for more than two months.

We went to work immediately to install the pontoon· type skis on the AT-7. We worked without a hangar in sub-zero temperatures with little daylight. We succeeded in mounting the skis on the next day and made some taxi tests on the rough and icy runway.

We learned to our dismay that a hard landing or bounce on takeoff would result in the props cutting the skis. To correct this, Colonel Balchen had the blacksmith shop of the civilian airfield construction crew cut the landing struts and insert metal pipes to lengthen them. The work was completed overnight and taxi tests the next day proved the aircraft to be uncontrollable on the ground—one ski was pigeon-toed and the other, people-toed.

Again the blacksmith shop removed the struts in an attempt to realign them parallel. All their work was in vain. That evening, after all their creative labor, the blacksmith shop burned down, skis and all!

The rescue, code-name PN9E, eventually succeeded when Colonel Balchen and a U.S. Navy crew flying a PBY Catalina amphibious plane, landed on the ice cap on its belly. This had never been attempted before, and demonstrated great courage on the part of Colonel Balchen and the Navy flight crew.

The rescue required two such belly landings. On the second flight an engine failed due to overheating and required the PBY and crew to remain on the ice cap overnight. Repairs made during the night allowed the PBY to takeoff on two engines, but the ailing engine had to be shut down again after takeoff.

Lt. Spencer and rescue man Sgt. Tatley on board the rescue plane.

All members of the B-17 crew survived.

Colonel Balchen, the renowned Arctic and Antarctic pilot, who had also flown Admiral Byrd across the Atlantic in 1927, wore two hats at this particular time. In addition to being the Rescue Task Force Commander at BE-2, he was also the Commander of the 1st Arctic Search and Rescue Squadron. After leaving these command positions, he led a successful bombing expedition from Iceland to northern Greenland where German weather stations had been discovered by Danish patrols. These stations were providing valuable weather information to German submarines and luftwaffe operations.

The complete story of the PN9E rescue effort is told in Hitch Your Wagon - The Story of Bernt Balchen, by Clayton Knight and Robert C, Durham, Bell Publishing Company, 1950.

Click here to download She's a Beech (PDF 3.8Mb) and the rest of the Model 18 stories. This was a tame one, by the way.