SOVIET FAILURE: THE MIG-25 FOXBAT REVEALS ITS SHORTCOMINGS
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WORLD WAR II’S WORST FIGHTERS 10 AIRPLANES THAT DESERVE TO BE IN THE HALL OF SHAME
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THE CRASH THAT KILLED PATSY CLINE WHAT WENT WRONG? LIGHTS, CAMERA, B-25s THE CATCH-22 AIR FORCE 6/8/22 4:56 PM
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FEATURES 26 FOXBAT FOLLIES Was the Soviet’s MiG-25 Foxbat as awesome as it appeared to be? BY STEPHAN WILKINSON
A reconnaissance version of the MiG-25 Foxbat takes to the sky.
36 THE 10 WORST FIGHTERS OF WORLD WAR II With these airplanes you get the good, the bad and the ugly—minus the good. BY ROBERT GUTTMAN
44 “A WORTHY CAUSE” Before he created King Kong, American adventurer Merian C. Cooper flew for Poland. BY TOM HUNTINGTON
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52 THE CATCH OF CATCH-22 How a Hollywood movie assembled a private squadron of B-25 bombers.
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BY MARK CARLSON
60 ANOTHER DAY THE MUSIC DIED The 1963 crash of a Piper Comanche killed country music star Patsy Cline. What happened?
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5 MAILBAG 6 BRIEFING 10 AVIATORS 14 FLIGHT LOG 16 EXTREMES 18 PORTFOLIO 24 FROM THE COCKPIT 66 REVIEWS 70 FLIGHT TEST 72 FINAL APPROACH ON THE COVER: Illustrator Marek Rhys depicts a Seversky P-35, an airplane that was already obsolete by the start of World War II.
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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: FOXBAT GRAPHICS IMAGE LIBRARY/YEVGENIY KAZENNOV; U.S. AIR FORCE; RON COLE; SAN DIEGO AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM; NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND
BY TOM LECOMPTE
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You’ll find much more from Aviation History on the web’s leading history resource: historynet.com
HOW THE B-25 BECAME THE ULTIMATE STRAFER OF WORLD WAR II A featured player in the movie Catch-22, the North American B-25 Mitchell was intended to be a medium bomber. Instead, the Mitchell found its true calling in World War II as a low-level attack bomber and strafer. historynet.com/b25bomber
UNFETTERED TURKEYS: AIRPLANES THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER FLOWN It’s easy enough to design a bad airplane, but it takes real gumption to put it into production. Got a favorite airplane to hate? Here are our picks of seven not-somagnificent aircraft that should not have advanced beyond the drawing boards. historynet.com/unfettered-turkeys
HOW “HUNDRED TAKES HUGHES” GOT HIS NICKNAME Roscoe Turner’s Sikorsky S-29-A was destroyed during the filming of the 1930 movie Hell’s Angels. That was just one of the setbacks Howard Hughes experienced during the shoot, but the eccentric millionaire ended up with some of the most memorable air combat sequences ever captured on film. historynet.com/hellsangels
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TOM HUNTINGTON EDITOR LARRY PORGES SENIOR EDITOR JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR STEPHAN WILKINSON CONTRIBUTING EDITOR ARTHUR H. SANFELICI EDITOR EMERITUS BRIAN WALKER GROUP DESIGN DIRECTOR MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY PAUL FISHER ART DIRECTOR GUY ACETO PHOTO EDITOR DANA B. SHOAF MANAGING EDITOR, PRINT MICHAEL Y. PARK MANAGING EDITOR, DIGITAL CLAIRE BARRETT NEWS AND SOCIAL EDITOR C O R P O R A T E KELLY FACER SVP REVENUE OPERATIONS MATT GROSS VP DIGITAL INITIATIVES ROB WILKINS DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIP MARKETING JAMIE ELLIOTT PRODUCTION DIRECTOR A D V E R T I S I N G MORTON GREENBERG SVP ADVERTISING SALES MGreenberg@mco.com RICK GOWER REGIONAL SALES MANAGER Rick@rickgower.com TERRY JENKINS REGIONAL SALES MANAGER TJenkins@historynet.com D I R E C T R E S P O N S E A D V E R T I S I N G NANCY FORMAN / MEDIA PEOPLE nforman@mediapeople.com © 2022 HISTORYNET, LLC SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION: 800-435-0715 or shop.historynet.com Aviation History (ISSN 1076-8858) is published quarterly by HistoryNet, LLC 901 North Glebe Road, 5th Floor, Arlington, VA 22203 Periodical postage paid at Tysons, Va., and additional mailing offices. postmaster, send address changes to Aviation History, P.O. Box 900, Lincolnshire, IL 60069-0900 List Rental Inquiries: Belkys Reyes, Lake Group Media, Inc.; 914-925-2406; belkys.reyes@lakegroupmedia.com Canada Publications Mail Agreement No. 41342519, Canadian GST No. 821371408RT0001 The contents of this magazine may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written consent of HistoryNet, LLC PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA
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MR. MENDOCINO I just read your article on the original fire bombers (“A Baptism by Fire”) in the May 2022 issue of Aviation History. A couple of years ago, while having lunch with the guys at the airport in Madera, California, I mentioned an N3N in Chico for sale on the internet. A friend said, “After lunch let’s go look at it.” We did, and he bought Mr. Mendocino, Harold Hendrickson’s fire bomber. I had no idea what that nose art
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THE REAL FIRST
With all due respect to Colonel Harry A. Halverson, he was not the first to bomb the Ploesti oilfields in Romania (Flight Test, May 2022). The first aerial bombing there took place during World War I by German Army Zeppelin LZ.86. The airship was based near Temesvar (now Timisoara), Hungary, and her commander was Hauptmann Walter Wolff. On the night of September 3/4, 1916, it bombed both Bucharest and Ploesti but then crashed while attempting to land, killing nine of the crew including Wolff. Ploesti was bombed at least once more that month by the Zeppelin LZ.101. Steve Suddaby Annandale, Virginia
COURTESY FRANK ELY
Steve Suddaby is one of the leading specialists about bombing in World War I, so we will not argue with him. However, Halverson was the first to bomb Ploesti during World War II.
helped settle the final configuration for the modern airplane. Willoughby’s Pelican with its triangular ailerons was a unique design of the “hey, let’s try this” variety, like the Wright brothers’ wing warping. I think an article on the early efforts in the Wrights’ era, when inventors were still trying to define the airplane, would be interesting. Louis Chandler Monroeville, Pennsylvania
WHAT GOES AROUND…
A thank you to Dan Zamansky for the well-penned and timely piece, “The Luftwaffe’s Lost Cause” (May 2022). It forces one to pause and ponder: Does any tyrant ever crack a history book? As Zamansky articulates well, a bit less than a lifetime ago the world witnessed the Russians in a fight to the death against a foe determined to strip them of their freedom and sovereignty, and history teaches us that what most imbued them with a winning spirit was the certain knowledge that they were defending their very right to exist. Now the victors of that conflict would visit the same horrors on another sovereign nation. And expect what by way of response? Bouquets at the border? At the end of the day, I can only wish Putin’s version of Russia all the glory that was heaped upon postwar Nazi Germany! Michael McCrath Seattle, Washington
Dear Aviation History readers:
Beginning with this issue, Aviation History is moving to a quarterly publication schedule. But worry not: existing subscriptions will be extended, so you’ll get all the issues you paid for. We’ve made some exciting improvements, with plenty more in the works—all in the aim of giving our valued readers even more than before: • We’ve redesigned our website to make it more compelling and active and easier to search. Two million users visit every month; check it out at historynet.com. • And we’re offering a subscribers-only email newsletter, “Monthly Mail Drop,” which includes fresh material not available elsewhere. Soon subscribers will also have exclusive access to special content on the website with the insight, excitement and quality you expect from Aviation History. • Plus, we’re going to digitize all back issues of Aviation History, going back to 1990. This tremendous and unprecedented resource will soon be available to subscribers. We’ll keep you up to date. If you aren’t a subscriber, go to shop.historynet.com and sign up today so you don’t miss a thing! If you are a subscriber—thank you— and stand by for great things to come. Please reference the terms and conditions of your subscription for additional details on magazine delivery each year.
DESIGNING INVENTORS
The recent article about Hugh Willoughby (“The War Hawk and the Pelican,” May 2022) reminded me of other early experiments that
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A REPLICA OF THE WORLD’S FIRST BOMBER Mike Fithian approached his re-creation of a 1912 Etrich Taube with compulsive workmanship and attention to detail. That’s because he wanted to build a faithful representation of the airplane his grandfather had flown in World War I. He succeeded. Robert Eyb was a pilot in the tiny Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Air Service during the run-up to World War I. When his maternal grandson sought a building venture, Fithian recalled a photograph he had seen of Grandpa Eyb and his airplane. The original Taube was not designed as a warbird, for it first flew in 1910. When it did go to war, it achieved notoriety as the world’s first bomber, after an Italian Army Taube in 1911 dropped several grapefruit-size grenades on Bedouin troops in Libya who were allied with Turkey during the brief Italo-Turkish War. (See “The Father of Aerial Bombardment,” May 2022.) Just days earlier, on October 23, Captain Mario Piazza reconnoitered the enemy for about an hour in a French Blériot XI, making that history’s first heavier-than-air “warbird.” Since Taube is German for “dove,” many assume that the airplane’s bird-like planform indicates the designer’s inspiration. In fact, the wings are patterned after the seeds of the Javan cucumber tree, which burst from pods high in the trees and propagate after gliding for long distances. Austrian engineer Ignaz Etrich applied the principal to his primitive, wing-warping design. Some think of this airplane as a Rumpler Taube, because another Austrian, Edmund Rumpler, made some minor changes to the design—such as replacing the castering four-wheel crosswind landing gear with a pair
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of conventional wheels—and named the result after himself. Easygoing Etrich didn’t bother to defend his patent; before long, his unlicensed design was being cranked out by 14 different companies, including Rumpler’s. Fithian’s Taube is currently based at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, the famous upstate New York vintage-airplanes site, where it will occasionally take to the air on gentle-weather days for the amazement of summer-weekend visitors. — Stephan Wilkinson
BOTH: DAVID TROST, MD–OLD RHINEBECK AERODROME
Shown in early Austro-Hungarian military markings, Mike Fithian’s Etrich Taube is a replica of one of the most stable, easy-to-fly airplanes of 1911, when an Italian used one to drop grenades. The Austro-Hungarians had relegated it to a training role by the end of 1914.
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TOP LEFT: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE; TOP RIGHT: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, HA.COM; RIGHT: CALLE HESSLEFORS/ULLSTEIN VIA GETTY IMAGES
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BOTH: DAVID TROST, MD–OLD RHINEBECK AERODROME
A Stratotanker Joins the Air Force Museum
This summer a Boeing KC-135R Stratotanker with the tail number 600329 became the latest addition to the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. The airplane came with a story. Anyone who has refueled from a KC-135 since the airplane arrived in the U.S. Air Force in 1957 can testify that, while the big Boeings made in-air refueling a standard procedure for the Strategic and Tactical Air Commands, such operations were seldom routine. For the crew of 60-0329, one mission in May 1967 proved exceptionally dramatic. The Stratotanker was refueling two Lockheed F-104C Starfighters off Vietnam when it got an emergency request from six Navy planes over the Gulf of Tonkin—two Douglas KA-3 Skywarriors, two Vought F-8 Crusaders and two McDonnell F-4 Phantom IIs that were dangerously low on fuel. Breaking contact with the F-104s, the tanker descended to 5,000 feet, since even the KA-3s, which were Navy tankers, had too little fuel to ascend any higher. Upon reaching their “customers,” the KC-135 crew worked out a “daisy chain” formation in which they refueled one of the KA-3s, which in turn fueled an F-8 behind it, and then they repeated that unprecedented procedure until all six planes had been replenished. The Stratotanker crew was subsequently awarded the Air Force’s Mackay Trophy for most meritorious service of the year. Since then, 60-0329 continued its faithful service through a series of upgrades—particularly in the 1980s, when it was among the KC-135s that received new engines that increased efficiency by 25 percent, allowing them to offload 50 percent more fuel and reduce operational costs. Redesignated as a KC-135R, 60-0329 ended 60 years of faithful service when it retired from the Hawaii Air National Guard and made its last flight to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on April 30, 2022. From there, in July, it took its place among the historic aircraft at the NMUSAF. Some of them might even be former customers. — Jon Guttman
AIR QUOTE “Strangers he didn’t know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them, and it wasn’t funny at all.” –JOSEPH HELLER, CATCH-22
Earhart Relic Sells at Auction In February 2022, Heritage Auctions of Dallas, Texas, sold a leather flying cap once worn by Amelia Earhart on a history-making flight across the Atlantic. The winning bid was $825,000. Earhart is best known today for disappearing during an attempt to fly around the world in 1937. Born in Kansas in 1897, Earhart made her first flight, in a barnstormer’s airplane, when she was 23, began taking flying lessons within two weeks, and bought her own airplane in July 1921. Book publisher George P. Putnam (later Earhart’s husband) arranged to get her onboard a transatlantic flight attempt with pilot Wilmer Stultz and copilot Louis Gordon. The trio took off from Newfoundland on June 17, 1928, in a Fokker F.VII and landed in Wales nearly 21 hours later. Even though only a passenger, Earhart had become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic and she wrote a book about her experience, 20 Hrs. 40 Min.: Our Flight in the Friendship. Earhart later piloted her own recordsetting flights, which included becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932. Earhart wore the leather cap on the 1928 transatlantic flight. She dropped it on the ground after flying in the 1929 National Air Races in Cleveland and a young man picked it up and gave it to his mother. The leather cap, in which the aviatrix had written “A. Earhart,” remained in the family until Heritage Auctions sold it. —Tom Huntington AUTUMN 2022
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Career Change
When is an airliner not an airliner? When it’s been converted into a classroom. DC-7 C-1921 now serves in that capacity for the Iliff Preschool in Denver, Colorado.
Visitors to the University Hills area of Denver, Colorado, might be surprised to notice the top of a large white aircraft just barely visible behind a tall wooden fence in this residential neighborhood. Peer over the fence and you will see the complete fuselage of a vintage passenger airliner. It is, in fact, all that remains of Charlie-21, one of only four DC-7 airframes still known to exist out of the 338 constructed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. Built in 1954, DC-7 number C-1921 was powered by four piston engines and originally flew for United Airlines before being sold to the Dooley Aircraft Company in Arizona as a charter plane. Eventually outdated, the airplane was due to be scrapped. Instead, Iliff Preschool in Denver purchased the airframe in the early 1970s and had it transported overland to its site, where it was converted into a classroom. Significant work was done on the airframe to make it stable for day-to-day use, but it still retains much of its original configuration. Standing in or around the airframe is a remarkable experience. Now crewed by small children, Charlie-21 flies in their imagination on a daily basis. — Douglas G. Adler
Even before producing and directing Merian C. Cooper (right) the classic 1933 film King Kong, Mereceived this medal from rian C. Cooper lived a life of drama Poland in 1921. To learn and adventure, his greatest exploit more, read the feature no doubt being his role in founding that starts on page 44. the American Kosciuszko Squadron that fought for Poland in the Polish–Soviet War of 1919-20 (story P. 44). For his daring service providing aerial support for Polish troops against the enemy to the east—action that led to a shot-out engine and capture by the Russians—the Polish government in 1921 awarded Cooper the Virtuti Militari silver cross “for acts of outstanding bravery and risk of life on the field of battle.” One of Poland’s highest military decorations, the Virtuti Militari is also one of the world’s oldest. First established in 1792, a very early recipient was, fittingly enough, 18th-century Polish and American military hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko—for whom Cooper named his squadron. — Larry Porges
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TOP LEFT: STVAN BAJZAT/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/DPA/AP IMAGES; TOP RIGHT: COURTESY CLAIREWILLIAMSONGLASS.CO.UK; RIGHT: VINTAGE WINGS, INC.
FLYING COLORS
TOP (BOTH): DOUGLAS G. ADLER; LEFT: (MEDAL) COURTESY THE PILSUDSKI INSTITUTE; (COOPER) L. TOM PERRY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO, UT 84602
AERO ARTIFACT
MILESTONES
On a very blustery October 28, 1972, Airbus’ twin-engine A300 prototype took off from Toulouse–Blagnac International A irport in France. Airbus senior vice president Bernard Ziegler later recalled the pressure to get the prototype airborne, noting that the “highest First flown in 1972, crosswinds ever met by the A300 was on its the Airbus A300 first flight.” Despite the hazardous conditions, became a successthe one hour, 23-minute flight was a success. ful airliner; more France’s Aerospatiale and Germany’s Deutthan 200 remain in sche Airbus—later to officially merge into the service today. Airbus consortium—developed the wide-body A300 in the late 1960s to compete with American models that were threatening to dominate the medium- to long-haul market. Construction of the A300’s 158-foot, 250-seat prototype began in September 1969 and featured the revolutionary use of fiber-reinforced plastics and other composites to lighten the aircraft and make it more cost-effective than its larger three-engine American rivals, McDonnell Douglas’ DC-10 and the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. Designers cleverly positioned the cabin floor high enough so that standard freight containers fit underneath, ensuring the A300 could serve as both a cargo hauler and a passenger airliner. Air France had already expressed its interest in the A300 by the time of the first flight, but the airline requested increased passenger capacity. Airbus then redesigned the A300 as the A300B2, the first production variant. Its fuselage was nine feet longer, adding space for 20 extra seats. The new airliner entered service with Air France in May 1974. Today, 50 years after it first took to the skies, the 300 series remains a mainstay both for passengers and cargo. The last of 561 A300s rolled off the Airbus assembly line in July 2007; as of 2021, 231 remain in commercial service. —Larry Porges
TOP LEFT: STVAN BAJZAT/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/DPA/AP IMAGES; TOP RIGHT: COURTESY CLAIREWILLIAMSONGLASS.CO.UK; RIGHT: VINTAGE WINGS, INC.
TOP (BOTH): DOUGLAS G. ADLER; LEFT: (MEDAL) COURTESY THE PILSUDSKI INSTITUTE; (COOPER) L. TOM PERRY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO, UT 84602
MAGIC BUS
BACK TO THE SKY
The C-53 Skytrooper Beach City Baby (see Briefing, March 2022) returned to the air on May 14 following its restoration by Vintage Wings, Inc. The airplane will now tour the country and provide ground tours for enthusiasts who want to learn about its past. To see its schedule of stops, visit www.vintagewingsinc.com.
Dambusters to Get Window The “Dambusters” mission is a legendary exploit from World War II. Carrying bombs designed to skip across the water, 19 Avro Lancasters of the RAF’s 617 Squadron flew out of RAF Scampton airfield on the night of May 16, 1943, to breech dams in the Ruhr Valley and disrupt German war production. Only 11 of the airplanes returned. Today Scampton Church, near the squadron’s base, plans to commemorate the unit with a stained-glass window. Designed by British artist Claire Williamson, the window will join another, also by Williamson, that commemorates the RAF personnel at the base, which is scheduled to close at the end of the year. Plans call for the window to be installed by March 23, 2023, the 80th anniversary of the squadron’s formation. Donations are being accepted through www.justgiving. com/crowdfunding/617squadronwindow. AUTUMN 2022
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“125 POUNDS OF NERVE AND PLUCK” PIONEERING AVIATOR RUTH BANCROFT LAW WAS NOT AFRAID TO PUSH AGAINST BOUNDARIES
Clad in a chauffeur’s fur-lined jodhpurs, leather breeches, a leather mask, several layers of clothing and a leather coat, 29-year-old Ruth Bancroft Law took off in a 100-horsepower Curtiss pusher biplane from Chicago’s Grant Park at 7:25 a.m. on November 19, 1916. She was seeking to set a long-distance, nonstop flying record to New York. Although Glenn Curtiss had refused to provide a new twin-engine airplane to the 5-foot-5 pilot (Law believed he did not think she could handle it), his mechanics had refitted her airplane with overhangs on the upper wing for additional lift and added extra fuel tanks. She sewed a piece of paper with her compass bearings to the cuff of her glove and had a box with her route map on rollers tied to her left knee. She flew at 5,000 feet. When her fuel ran out, Law glided for the last two miles before touching down in Hornell, New York. The time was 2:07 p.m. and she had covered 590 miles, 138 more than the previous record holder, Victor Carlström.
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Top: Ruth Bancroft Law grips the controls of a Curtiss pusher sometime around 1912. Above: Law holds the roller-mounted map she used during her 1916 record flight.
TOP: PAUL POPPER/POPPERFOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES; LEFT: GEORGE RINHART/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES
BY ELIZABETH FOXWELL
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Aero Club of America President Alan R. Hawley lauded Law’s “125 pounds of nerve and pluck” and awarded her a check for $2,500. Corinne Robinson, sister of former president Theodore Roosevelt, dedicated a poem to her. New York City’s J. B. Greenhut & Company department store exhibited her airplane. Vaudeville offers arrived, including one for $35,000. The Alliance (OH) Review and Leader wrote, “The record flight of Miss Ruth Law, aviatrix…is another proof of the ability of women to do things.” America’s first female flying instructor, the first U.S. female pilot to loop-the-loop, the first woman to fly at night and the first pilot to fly airmail in the Philippines, Ruth Law was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, on March, 21, 1887, the third of four children. Her father, Frederick, a traveling salesman, had served in the Navy. Her parents’ marriage ended sometime before 1902, when her father remarried. In August 1907, Law married fellow Lynn native Charles Augustus Oliver. Her brother Rodman had experienced some success with stunts such as parachuting off the Statue of Liberty, giving Oliver the idea of buying an airplane and holding exhibition flights with Rodman. Rodman wasn’t interested in learning to fly, so, as Law said, “I asked for the privilege of letting me fly.” Oliver bought a Wright Model
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GETTY IMAGES/BETTMANN
With her feet strapped to the airplane’s upper wing, Law peforms a daring stunt at a Chicago airshow in 1921. Witnessing maneuvers like this might have led to her husband’s nervous breakdown.
B from Orville Wright, although Wright would not train Law because, she said, “[h]e didn’t think women could fly.” She trained instead with Arch Freeman of Burgess Company & Curtis, Inc., in Marblehead, Massachusetts. “I liked it from the very first,” she said. “I was never afraid of it.” She began to give exhibition flights in August 1912 and in November she became the sixth woman in the United States to earn a pilot’s license when the Aero Club of America issued her license number 188. Beginning in January 1913, she took people aloft, charging between $14 and $25 depending on duration, and served as a flight instructor in Daytona Beach, Florida. While at Daytona she entered Brooklyn Dodgers lore when she tossed a grapefruit from her airplane at manager Wilbert Robinson in a publicity stunt during spring training. After adding stunt flying to her repertoire she became a popular attraction at state fairs and similar venues. Her flight to 11,200 feet in May 1916 and another to 14,700 feet the next September set new records for female pilots. She and her husband submitted passport applications in January 1917 for a trip to England and France to observe military aviation. Law’s application is a milestone, as it states, “Ruth Oliver, professionally known as Ruth Law.” Not until May 1925 did the married Esther Sayles Root win a lawsuit that enabled her to obtain a passport in her maiden name, so Law’s assertion of her professional identity is significant. After Law returned from Europe, the government sent her on a cross-country air trip to promote Liberty bonds and recruit for the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps, even granting her special permission to wear a uniform during her recruitment efforts. In an article titled “Enlist!” in the October 1917 issue of Air Travel, Law urged men to join the Aviation Section because, she said, “I can’t go because I ain’t a man.” Nonetheless, she intended to try. In November, Law applied to the Aviation Section, aiming for a commission as first lieutenant. The judge advocate general ruled that the Army could not accept women. Undaunted, Law allied with New York Congressman George Murray Hulbert to introduce a bill to allow women to join the Aviation Section. The bill failed to pass. Law then published “Let Women Fly!” in the February 1918 Air Travel, writing, “I felt that it was a question of training and experience, rather than of sex, and that the world was at its old game of developing, speeding up and training its man power, while disregarding, passing over and wasting its woman power.” She added prophetically, “I feel sure that the time will come when women will be welcomed in the air service.” In early 1919, Law gave exhibition flights in Japan before a Tokyo audience reported at 50,000. She visited the Philippines on the same trip, where she made her pioneering airmail flight. In 1920 she founded Ruth Law’s Flying Circus, featuring several airplanes and daredevil stunts— such as Law standing on a wing while the pilot looped-the-loop—races between cars and airplanes and car-to-airplane transfers. Tragedy struck on October 1921, when Madeline Davis, who was auditioning for a place in the flying circus, died during an attempted car-plane transfer (Law was driving the car). The incident may have led her husband to announce Law’s retirement from flying (without her knowledge) in February 1922. Law, who admitted to “many near misses,” reported that Oliver feared the stunts were becoming increasingly dangerous and had even suffered a nervous breakdown, perhaps from worry. The couple retired to California. Although Law expressed interest in 1924 in flying helicopters and took the controls of a friend’s airplane in 1947, these episodes did not lead to a permanent return to the air for a pioneer whose flying was more than an occupation or pastime. As Law, who died in 1970, wrote, “the airplane was a part of me.”
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Pilot Roscoe Turner used his Sikorsky S-29-A as a flying billboard, although someone misspelled “Davison” here. Below: John K. Ottley persuaded Turner to attempt a milestone flight from Atlanta.
FLIGHT, INTERRUPTED ROSCOE TURNER RAN INTO TROUBLE WHEN HE TRIED TO FLY PASSENGERS FROM ATLANTA TO NEW YORK CITY
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“American,” and at the time it was the biggest airplane in the United States. Registered as NC 2756, the huge airplane had two 400-hp Liberty L12 water-cooled engines and room for 14 passengers. The pilot rode in an open cockpit above the passenger compartment, where a mechanic monitored the engines. Some credit the S-29-A with being the first twin-engine airplane able to maintain altitude if one engine failed. Turner would put this to the test. In those days, airplanes were rare enough that people still looked up when one passed overhead. Turner took advantage of this by using the Sikorsky as a flying billboard. His client in 1926 was Davison-Paxon-Stokes, an Atlanta department store that had been acquired by Macy’s.
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GETTY IMAGES/UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES
In May 1926, a 23-year-old newspaper reporter named John K. Ottley tried to put Atlanta, Georgia, on the aviation map by persuading pilot Roscoe Turner to fly passengers in his Sikorsky S-29-A from the city’s unpaved airport—known then as Candler Field—to New York. Also aboard would be a $1 million check from the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank for delivery to the bank’s New York counterpart. Things didn’t go as planned. The Mississippi-born Turner had flown in World War I and made a name for himself afterward as a barnstormer. (He would later earn much greater fame as an air racer, winning the coveted Thompson Trophy three times.) His flamboyant style and nose for showmanship made him perfect for such a publicity venture. As one writer at the time noted after encountering Turner, “High-booted, in tan leather, coated trimly in sky blue, a tan buckskin topcoat over his arm, he looked fictitious. Anybody would have ridden his machine in a minute, skeptic or otherwise.” In 1926, Turner arranged to purchase the Sikorsky S-29-A for $10,000. The airplane was a one-off transport designed and built by Russianborn aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky. The “A” in the name stood for
FLIGHT LOG
TOP: SAN DIEGO AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM; BELOW: COURTESY JOHN OTTLEY JR.
BY JOHN OTTLEY JR.
GETTY IMAGES/UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES
TOP: SAN DIEGO AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM; BELOW: COURTESY JOHN OTTLEY JR.
Turner had the store’s name painted in giant letters on the Sikorsky’s fuselage. On May 23, Turner landed at Candler Field with a cargo of the latest in women’s dresses from New York. While there, he was interviewed by an Atlanta Journal reporter who also chaired the Aviation Committee of the city’s Junior Chamber of Commerce. In his role as aviation booster, Ottley asked Turner whether, since he had to fly back to New York anyway, he would carry passengers, which would be the first commercial passenger flight between the two cities. In addition, the Federal Reserve check would prove that transferring funds by air would benefit the banking industry and its customers. Turner, who already had his eye on Atlanta’s potential for air travel and was alert to potential new business, quickly agreed to the idea. Dawn was still 62 minutes away at 5 a.m. in Atlanta on May 27, when passengers stepped aboard Turner’s Sikorsky at Candler Field for what they hoped would become a milestone in aviation history. In addition to Ottley, they included city councilman William Berry Hartsfield, national Jaycee president Robert Emmett Condon, Atlanta businessman Robert Leroy Harwell and a 20th Century-Fox newsreel cameraman. James Maxwell, Turner’s mechanic, was also aboard. About two hours into the flight, Turner noticed that one engine was overheating. He decided to make a precautionary landing near Abbeville, South Carolina, 255 miles short of his intended first stop at Fayetteville, North Carolina. He touched down on the farm of L.A. Jackson at 7:10, braking to a halt with one wing almost nestling in an apple tree about 150 feet from the farmer’s back door. The cameraman was the first passenger to exit. “We just dropped in to pick some apples!” he yelled to Jackson. All the shocked farmer could muster in response was, “Sorry, mister, but they ain’t ripe yet.” The forced landing drew a large crowd—so many people, in fact, that they drank the poor farmer’s well dry. Things improved for him when an entrepreneur set up a stand to sell cold drinks and ice cream and paid the farmer a percentage of the proceeds. Another farmer, duly impressed, promised to donate land for an airport. Turner discovered that a water-cooling hose had worked loose, causing the engine to overheat. He also found a frayed rudder cable. While Maxwell repaired the airplane, Turner took a train back to Atlanta, where he climbed aboard another airplane he owned, a French Breguet, and flew back to the farm. Bad luck continued to
Turner, in full flying regalia, shakes hands with Howard Hughes in front of the Sikorsky S-29-A during the filming of Hell’s Angels. The others are (left to right) actors Lucien Prival and Wallace Beery, Carline (Mrs. Roscoe) Turner, and actors Greta Nissen and John Darrow.
dog him, though. As he attempted to land in the field, some spectators dashed in front of the airplane. Turner swerved, ground-looped, and broke his landing gear and propeller. He would have to deal with that later. Now he was focused on getting the Sikorsky back into the air. Turner had some areas of the field leveled so he could take off in the repaired airplane, but he was not sure he could get airborne fully loaded. Someone in the crowd told him of a large grain field in Calhoun Falls, some 15 miles to the southwest. He guessed it was suitable for landing. Turner had his passengers driven there while he and Maxwell got the big Sikorsky back into the air and headed for Calhoun Falls. As the airplane approached, it panicked a farm worker driving a wagon through the grain field. Thinking he was in mortal danger from the low-flying airplane, he whipped his mules and dodged back and forth. A bystander drove his car into the field to calm the worker and get him out of Turner’s way. After landing and reloading the passengers, Turner was off again. Before long, one of the passengers noted smoke coming from the troubled engine. Turner circled back and landed. Maxwell determined that the previous overheat had cracked a piston, leaking oil into a combustion chamber. Unsure how long it would take to get spare parts and make repairs, Turner cancelled the flight. It would take a couple days for Turner to get the Sikorsky flying again. Atlanta had to wait to get scheduled passenger service (but not to New York) until September 1928, when Florida Airways flew some passengers in and out of Candler Field. Turner later leased his Sikorsky to millionaire Howard Hughes so it could be painted to resemble a German Gotha bomber for Hughes’ film Hell’s Angels. (The movie’s publicity department claimed the airplane was, in fact, an actual Gotha.) Through legal chicanery, Hughes claimed he had purchased the airplane. On May 22, 1929, the Sikorsky, with another pilot at the controls, crashed doing a stunt Turner refused the fly. The pilot bailed out, but his mechanic was killed. One final detail: John K. Ottley, the young newspaper reporter on the attempted flight to New York City, was the author’s father. AUTUMN 2022
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One of NASA’s Shuttle Training Aircraft (STA), a modified Gulfstream II, makes a characteristic steep descent. The refurbished Grumman business jet gave the astronaut in the cockpit a sense of what it was like to land a space shuttle.
STICKING THE LANDING
HOW DID ASTRONAUTS LEARN TO FLY THE SPACE SHUTTLE— WHICH FLEW LIKE NOTHING ELSE? The space shuttle was truly groundbreaking. When the design was first unveiled in the 1970s, people were used to the idea of sending people into orbit or even to the moon in relatively tiny space capsules, but the enormous winged shuttles, with their stark, black-and-white color scheme and covering of novel thermal protection system tiles, captured the world’s imagination. Still, for all its glamour, the space shuttle posed tremendous engineering problems for its designers and its operators. Because the shuttle program deviated from the existing blueprint for putting humans into space, NASA had to extensively test, rehearse and train for every aspect of its flight profile, especially the landing. A shuttle would land like an airplane on a runway (or more accurately, like a glider, since it would be coming in without engines), but it actually flew very differently from most preexisting aircraft. NASA quickly realized that astronauts would have to devote significant resources to learn how to land a four-million-pound glider that descended so steeply and rapidly that it was referred to as the “flying brick.” In addition to training in realistic, ground-based flight simulators,
EXTREMES
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NASA decided that astronauts needed realworld experience flying and landing an actual vehicle that behaved just like a real space shuttle. No such aircraft existed, so NASA had to develop one. The result was the Shuttle Training Aircraft (STA). NASA originally considered using a Boeing 737 for its STA, but eventually settled on the Grumman Gulfstream II. The Gulfstream II (also referred to as a C-11 by the Department of Defense) is a twin-engine jet aircraft designed for corporate business travelers. A standard, off-the-shelf Gulfstream II flies nothing like the space shuttle, but NASA changed the interior, exterior and operation of four Gulfstream IIs to create a mini fleet of STAs for their corps of shuttle astronauts. The airframes required heavy reinforcement
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY NASA
BY DOUGLAS G. ADLER
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ALL PHOTOS COURTESY NASA
so they could withstand the severe stresses that came with repeatedly mimicking shuttle landings. Each cockpit received a complete redesign so it resembled the interior of an actual shuttle’s flight deck, with computers, multi-functional displays, flight controls (including the rotational hand controller specific to the shuttle) and heads-up display (HUD) arrayed around the pilot. The STA pilot sat in the left seat, which was the same design as the seat on a shuttle. Even the windows and window frames were remodeled to replicate the view a pilot would have during a real shuttle landing. The right seat of each STA, where the instructor pilot (IP) sat, retained traditional aircraft controls and instruments. A typical training flight in the STA started with an ascent to 37,000 feet. The aircraft maneuvered to a point abeam the planned landing site. At this time, the IP in the right seat initiated the simulated landing and closely replicated the final few minutes of an orbiter’s descent. The IP lowered the main landing gear and deployed both engine reversers in flight to dramatically increase drag on the aircraft. (The front landing gear remained stowed at this point, as it could not tolerate the stress of flying in this manner.) The IP then placed the aircraft into simulation mode and at that point the astronaut’s controls became functional. In a typical landing, a real shuttle would overfly the runway area and continue on for several miles before completing a 180-degree turn that would encompass parts of the landing pattern’s downwind, base and final legs. In the STA, the astronaut flew this same pattern as the aircraft rapidly descended. Once the STA reached 20,000 feet, it had typically accelerated to about 280 knots. Final approach began at about 12,000 feet with the STA accepting a 20-degree dive angle at an airspeed of 300 knots (seven times steeper than passengers on commercial aircraft experience and with a rate of altitude loss 20 times faster). At approximately 1,800 feet above the surface, the astronaut would level out to a three-degree rate of descent and experience about 2 Gs in doing so. Although the STA had been flying with its nose gear up, the astronauts simulated having the shuttle nose gear deployed. At 300 feet, the IP lowered the STA’s real nose gear for safety. When the astronaut’s eyes were 32 feet above the runway (the height of a real shuttle cockpit), a light came on to indicate that a simulated touchdown had occurred. At this point, the flight profile was complete; the IP resumed control of the STA, deactivated the reversers and
climbed away from the landing strip. Once the STA reached altitude again, the team initiated another simulated landing. Full days in the STA could give an astronaut a double-digit number of “landings.” Before a real shuttle flight, a mission commander had to complete 1,000 simulated landings in the STA. Once the shuttle era ended in 2011, NASA had no need for the STAs. Although the agency could have used them to transport astronauts when no other aircraft were available, it elected to put the airplanes out to pasture. The STAs are currently displayed in Oregon at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum (tail number 947), in Amarillo at the Texas Air & Space Museum (tail number 946), in Alabama at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center (tail number 945) and in California at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center (tail number 944). From the outside, the STAs still look like ordinary jets, but their appearance belies what radical aircraft they were and the vital role they played in allowing generations of astronauts to return home safely from space.
Top: The astronautin-training sat in the left seat, using controls modified to mimic those of a shuttle. The instructor pilot in the other seat had regular controls. Above: Astronaut Charles O. Hobaugh, commander of the space shuttle Atlantis on its November 2009 mission, studies his touchdown parameters before landing the STA.
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Old meets not-so-old as three Air Force North American F-86 Sabres and a Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor fly in formation over Arizona’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in 2016. Below: Stuart Symington (left) gets sworn in as the first secretary of the Air Force on September 18, 1947, the day that marked the service’s debut as an independent branch of the United States military.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE WAS BORN 75 YEARS AGO THIS YEAR
It wasn’t an easy birth. The Air Force left the Army and become an independent service of the Defense Department on September 18, 1947, when the National Security Act of 1947, signed by President Harry S. Truman that July, went into effect. The act created the new Department of Defense from the old War and Navy Departments and created the Air Force (as well as the Central Intelligence Agency). The changes came after months of often contentious wrangling within the military, with both the Army and the Navy (which included the Marines) determined to retain their own air arms. Stuart Symington became the Air Force’s first secretary and Carl Spaatz assumed the role of the service’s first chief of staff. The 75 years since then have been a time of continuous change. The newly born Air Force was still flying mostly propeller-driven aircraft in 1947 and continued to do so during the Korean conflict, even as jets like the North American F-86 Sabre began taking the vanguard. In fact, the technological advances in the Air Force over the past 75 years have been breathtaking—and include the high-flying Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird that became a vitally important eye in the sky, the stealth aircraft (Lockheed F-117 and Northrup Grumman B-2) developed to evade radar, and unmanned drones that receive their commands from thousands of miles away.
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TOP: U.S. AIR FORCE; RIGHT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
One thing that hasn’t changed is the hard work of the men and women in Air Force uniforms who remain dedicated to preserving and protecting the United States, whether they are flying Boeing KC-135 Stratotankers for refueling operations, making mission-sustaining supply flights in lumbering Lockheed C-5 Galaxies, keeping their fellow airmen alive and healthy as medics or performing the myriad (and often unsung) jobs necessary to keep the Air Force functioning. As the service’s motto says, they intend to “Aim high: fly-fight-win,” something the Air Force has been doing for three-quarters of a century now.
TOP: U.S. AIR FORCE/SRA CHRIS MASSEY; ABOVE: U.S. AIR FORCE
PORTFOLIO
TOP: U.S. AIR FORCE; RIGHT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
TOP: U.S. AIR FORCE/SRA CHRIS MASSEY; ABOVE: U.S. AIR FORCE
Bombers representing the old U.S. Army Air Forces and the new USAF gather at Carlswell Air Force Base in Texas after receipt of the first Convair B-36 Peacemaker in 1948. Clockwise from top left are a Douglas B-18 Bolo, the B-36, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and a Boeing B-29 Superfortress of the Strategic Air Command’s 7th Bombardment Wing. The gigantic B-36 provided a cornerstone of SAC’s role for nuclear deterrence.
One of the Air Force’s first tasks was to help keep Berlin supplied during the Berlin Airlift. Here Douglas C-47s unload cargo at the city’s Tempelhof Airdrome in 1948 during “Operation Vittles.” By the time the airlift ended in September 1949, the Western powers had delivered 2.3 million tons of supplies to beleaguered Berlin. AUTUMN 2022
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TOP: FERNANDO SERNA/U.S. AIR FORCE; LEFT: SSGT BENNIE J. DAVIS III/U.S. AIR FORCE; RIGHT: U.S. AIR FORCE
FAR LEFT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; ALL OTHERS: U.S. AIR FORCE
Above: Lieutenant (and future general) Daniel “Chappie” James Jr. stands beside a North American P-51D Mustang of the 18th Fighter Wing in Korea, where he flew 101 missions. The Air Force was the first branch of the U.S. military to fully integrate. Above right: A Lockheed F-80C Shooting Star drops napalm on Suan, North Korea, on May 8, 1952. Right: During a melee over Hanoi, a North Vietnamese MiG-17F pursues a Republic F-105F Thunderchief, as photographed through the gunsights of a second F-105F. Far right: Colonel Robin Olds, commander of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing in Vietnam, returns from his final combat sortie. Bottom: A McDonnell F-4 Phantom II and its 500-pound bomb load undergo a “last chance” check before embarking on another mission to North Vietnam.
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TOP: FERNANDO SERNA/U.S. AIR FORCE; LEFT: SSGT BENNIE J. DAVIS III/U.S. AIR FORCE; RIGHT: U.S. AIR FORCE
FAR LEFT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; ALL OTHERS: U.S. AIR FORCE
Top: During Desert Storm in January 1991, a General Dynamics F-16A Fighting Falcon of the South Carolina Air National Guard, a McDonnell Douglas F-15C Eagle from Bitburgh Air Base, Germany, two F-15Es from the 4th Fighter Wing based at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, and an F-16A of the New York Air National Guard conduct a sortie against Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army. Above left: A Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit prepares to refuel from a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker in 2006. The stealth bomber flew its first combat mission in 1993. This aircraft is assigned to the 393rd Expeditionary Bomb Squadron and is currently deployed to Andersen AFB, Guam, as part of Pacific Command’s continuous bomber presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Above right: 1st Lt. Jeannie Flynn (Leavitt), the first female pilot to qualify in the F-15E, climbs aboard her airplane. She was following in the footsteps of women like 1st Lt. Christine E. Schott, the first to complete Air Force flight training; Captain Sandra M. Scott, the first to command a KC-135; and 2nd Lt. Mary L. Wittick, the first to graduate from the Air Force’s helicopter program. AUTUMN 2022
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THIS PAGE, TOP: U.S. AIR FORCE; BELOW: SSGT. LARRY E. REID JR./U.S. AIR FORCE; OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SSGT. LARRY E. REID JR./U.S. AIR FORCE; SSGT. TREVOR T. MCBRIDE/U.S. AIR FORCE; SRA J.T. ARMSTRONG/U.S. AIR FORCE
Above: The Air Force has always explored cuttingedge technology. This 1953 photo of research aircraft at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ High-Speed Flight Research Station (now known as the Dryden Flight Research Center) shows the Douglas X-3 Stiletto (center) and (clockwise from bottom left) the Bell X-1A, the third Douglas D-558-1 Skystreak, Convair XF-92A, Bell X-5, Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket and Northrop X-4 Bantam. Right: The General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper is an unmanned aerial vehicle— popularly known as a drone—and it represents the new face of the war in the air. AUTUMN 2022
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THIS PAGE, TOP: U.S. AIR FORCE; BELOW: SSGT. LARRY E. REID JR./U.S. AIR FORCE; OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SSGT. LARRY E. REID JR./U.S. AIR FORCE; SSGT. TREVOR T. MCBRIDE/U.S. AIR FORCE; SRA J.T. ARMSTRONG/U.S. AIR FORCE
Left: The U.S. Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, known as the Thunderbirds, started flying in 1953 with Republic F-84J Thunderjets; they now now use F-16s to thrill audiences all over the world. In this 2011 photo the Thunderbirds perform a maneuver called the trail-to-diamond roll at an airshow in Romania. Above: In 2021, an F-16 approaches a KC-135 of the 350th Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron to receive fuel during a mission over Southwest Asia. Below: Lightning provides a dramatic backdrop for a Boeing B-52H Stratofortress at North Dakota’s Minot Air Force Base. The Stratofortresses first entered Air Force Service in 1955. This airplane, called Ghost Rider, was retrieved from the boneyard in the Arizona desert in 2015 and completely updated. It returned to the air on September 27, 2016. The Air Force expects to keep flying the venerable B-52s until 2050—the year the service will celebrate its 103rd birthday.
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Merian C. Cooper was saluted in Poland, where his image adorned the tail of a Polish Air Force MiG-29 in 2015. Cooper might have enjoyed the irony of being honored on a Soviet-built fighter.
A LIFE OF ADVENTURE If people today remember Merian C. Cooper at all it’s because he created and co-directed King Kong (1933), a strange fever dream of a movie in which a giant gorilla runs amok in New York City. The scene of Kong fighting off biplanes from the top of the Empire State Building has become one of the great iconic images from the movies. Wonderful as King Kong is, though, Cooper did much more than that. He lived an extraordinary life. In this issue we look at his experiences as a pilot in World War I and the Polish-Soviet War (P. 44). His adventures in those conflicts provided excitement enough for most lifetimes. (And it’s worth pointing out that the latter war has unfortunate parallels with Russia’s assault on Ukraine and was fought over some of the same ground.) After that, Cooper joined a crew for an attempted round-the-world voyage (the boat ran aground in the Red Sea), journeyed into Ethiopia to meet future emperor Haile Selassie and made documentaries in Persia and Thailand. He was a founding director of Pan American World Airways, went on to become production head at RKO Studios (where he teamed Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) and produced some of director John Ford’s finest films. But wait, there’s more! When the United States entered World War II, Cooper became chief of staff to former Flying Tigers commander Brig. Gen. Claire Chennault, then commanding the China Air Task Force, and even flew missions as an observer on B-25s. He was in China to debrief aviators from Jimmy Doolittle’s April 1942 raid on Tokyo, and he was on the battleship USS Missouri for the Japanese surrender. As if that weren’t enough, after the war he partnered with radio personality and adventurer Lowell Thomas to help develop the widescreen format known as Cinerama. Cooper died on April 21,
FROM THE COCKPIT
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1973, after enough adventure to fill several lifetimes. It only seems like it was something out of the movies. On another topic, they say change is good. Let’s hope that’s true, because we’re changing. Last issue we morphed our old Style section into Portfolio and you’ll discover more changes in this issue. For one thing, we’ve revised our overall design to provide a sleeker, easier-to-read and more attractive look. Kudos to art director Paul Fisher and group design director Brian Walker for finding ways to make the magazine better than ever. Second, we’ve added a new department to the lineup this time. It’s called Flight Log, and you’ll find the initial offering on page 14. The idea with Flight Log is to tell shorter stories about interesting flights or missions that might otherwise get overlooked. We have some quirky and fascinating tales on tap for this department, which will rotate with Restored. There’s something new on the last page, too. We’ve moved Aero Artifact into the Briefing section and replaced it with Final Approach. The idea here is to showcase a really striking image and provide some background about it. Let us know what you think. We welcome your letters and emails.
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FOXBAT FOLLIES THE MIG-25 SEEMED TO SPELL TROUBLE FOR THE WEST. THEN A DEFECTOR EXPOSED THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS SOVIET BEAST BY STEPHAN WILKINSON
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A once-top-secret Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25P appears intimidating enough on the ground. Above right: After Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko flew his MiG-25 to Japan, the airplane was no longer so mysterious or alarming.
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pounds heavier than a Boeing B-17. Photographs of MiG-25s looming over its swarms of technicians and ground crews suggested that the airplane was maintained by toddlers. The Soviets were short on titanium technology, however, and titanium is a key ingredient of high-speed flight. The heat generated by skin friction at supersonic speeds softens and weakens aluminum, making titanium the best answer for flying extremely fast. But titanium is expensive and difficult to machine and shape. In the 1960s, the Russians lacked the cutting tools and the experience to work with the exotic metal. Instead of titanium, the Soviets turned to stainless steel, even though steel weighs three times as much as the correspondingly strong aluminum. Fueled but without any ordnance, a steel MiG-25 weighed 64,000 pounds. A composites-and-titanium Lockheed-Martin F-35A, the Air Force’s heaviest fighter, grosses just under 50,000 pounds. Aft of the cockpit, the Foxbat’s entire fuselage consisted of a single welded-steel fuel tank. (In the MiG-25R reconnaissance version, fuel was also carried inside the two big vertical tails.)
PREVIOUS SPREAD: FOXBAT GRAPHICS IMAGE LIBRARY; INSET: CIA MUSEUM; ABOVE: AVIATION-IMAGES.COM/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES
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he spy satellite photos created panic in the Pentagon. They showed an enormous Soviet airplane, probably an interceptor, with engine intakes the size of small cars. The wings were huge, too, hinting at maneuverability far beyond anything America’s first-rank McDonnell F-4 Phantom II could achieve. These were prototypes of what would become the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 Foxbat. After the airplane appeared in public for the first time in July 1967 and went on a record-setting spree, it appeared the Soviets had a wonder weapon that could match the best in the West—the Mach 3.2 Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spyplane. The lightened MiG-25 prototypes, designated YE-155R (reconnaissance) and YE-155P (interceptor), set 29 speed, altitude and time-to-climb records, some of which still stand. For pure speed, they notched 1,852 mph. They could climb to 98,425 feet in four minutes and 3.86 seconds and ultimately reached an absolute altitude record of 123,520 feet. In truth, the MiG-25 turned out to be a Potemkin Village of an airplane. The same kind of surveillance failure behind the so-called “missile gap” that John F. Kennedy exploited during the 1960 presidential campaign was also responsible for “Foxbat hysteria.” The Foxbat interceptor did achieve its mission in one way, though. It kept the SR-71 out of Soviet airspace for several years while the West pondered the big MiG’s true capabilities. And big it was. The Foxbat was the size of a World War II heavy bomber—nine feet longer than an Avro Lancaster, two and a half feet taller than a Consolidated B-24 and with a gross weight almost 27,000
BOTH: U.S. AIR FORCE
PREVIOUS SPREAD: FOXBAT GRAPHICS IMAGE LIBRARY; INSET: CIA MUSEUM; ABOVE: AVIATION-IMAGES.COM/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES
A MiG-25PU two-seat trainer takes off on a flying display at the 1999 International Aviation and Space Show at what was then known as Ramenskoye Airport outside Moscow. Top right: An underside rear view of a MiG-25 reveals four AA-6 Acrid air-to-air missiles. Lower right: Western intelligence analysts would have closely studied images like this air-to-air side view of a Foxbat.
Soviet aerospace workers had little experience with steel and hand-welding, though, and the Foxbat revealed that. Workmanship was crude enough that some Western observers thought they saw rough repair patches when they were actually looking at factory-fresh skinning. “Those repairs looked like a country tinker had gone to work patching up a pot,” said one British engineer, but they weren’t “repairs” at all. The SR-71’s strength was that it could expose much of the strategic deception the Soviets had spent decades creating, to keep the West thinking they were more powerful than the facts warranted. They wanted to keep the Blackbird from revealing there was no Soviet Wizard behind the Iron Curtain. They were also worried about the potential of Strategic Air Command’s supreme Cold War bombers—the Convair B-58 Hustler and the under-development North American B-70 Valkyrie—and the MiG-25 had been created specifically to target them at altitude. Launch, climb, shoot, come home. Virtually all of it, including missile launch, was under ground control, as was the USSR’s wont. Soviet pilots were paid to take off and take orders.
But almost as soon as the Foxbat went operational, the U.S. revised its battle plan. A new generation of surface-to-air missiles made unbidden entry into Soviet airspace a fool’s errand. Any bomber heading toward Moscow high, wide and handsome was dead meat. SAC decided it needed to arrive low, fast and stealthy. It retired the B-58 Hustler and canceled the B-70. That made the Foxbat a machine without a mission. The airplane had powerful pulse doppler radar, weighing over half a ton and full of delicate vacuum tubes, yet that radar had a range of barely 56 miles. One pilot noted that it would kill a rabbit at 300 yards, if the unlucky bunny got in the way while a MiG-25 was taxiing—but the radar was designed to search up into an open sky and burn through any bomber’s jamming tech from below. Countering a Northrop Grumman B-2 Stealth Bomber jinking through valleys and riverbeds demanded look-down/shoot-down radar that the Foxbat didn’t have. In fact, the Soviets wouldn’t develop look-down/shoot-down radar until the 1980s, and the Foxbat’s radar was blind below 500 meters (1,650 feet) above the ground.
THE “REPAIRS” LOOKED LIKE A COUNTRY TINKER HAD GONE TO WORK PATCHING UP A POT, BUT THEY WEREN’T REPAIRS AT ALL.
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Almost as soon as Soviet air force pilot Viktor Belenko touched down at Hakodate, Japan, in September 1976, intelligence personnel from Japan and the U.S. began to pore over his “mysterious” MiG-25P fighter. Some say that engineers from the Hasegawa Corporation, a well-known Japanese model company, were included in that group. Clearly, Hasegawa’s model makers took full advantage of first-hand observations and photographs of Belenko’s Foxbat. According to rumors, company representatives were present while the jet was being disassembled for transport back to the Soviet Union. With accurate dimensions and details of the jet, Hasegawa gained a scoop in the world of plastic modeling. In the model’s instruction sheet the company even boasted about how it went from zero to manufacturing complete kits in only 100 days. The result became headline news in the modeling world. The box art even duplicated a news photo of Belenko’s jet on the ground in Japan, partially covered with a tarp. Hasegawa had produced the first accurate kit of the MiG-25 Foxbat, one that quickly appeared on workbenches all over the world. A simple, straightforward kit by today’s standards, the Hasegawa Foxbat is still in production. — Guy Aceto An image of Belenko’s MiG-25 under wraps in Japan inspired the box art for Hasegawa’s model kit.
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ITAR-TASS NEWS AGENCY/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
A Model MiG
TOP: THE ASAHI SHIMBUN VIA GETTY IMAGES; LEFT: GUY ACETO
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he West learned this because of a man named Viktor Belenko. A 29-year-old Foxbat pilot, Belenko was crushed by a wife who was divorcing him and a Communist society that left him yearning for the West’s full supermarket shelves, so on September 6, 1976, he peeled off from his unit’s training sortie and headed for Japan—not a long flight, since he was based in Vladivostok. He failed to find the Japanese military airbase he’d selected as his destination and instead landed at the civil airport at Hakodate, where he overran the 6,000foot runway and shut down with only 30 seconds of fuel remaining. Belenko had delivered to the West its misunderstood bogeyman, a nearly new Foxbat. He even brought along a copy of the airplane’s training manual. Had the U.S. been allowed to place an export order at the MiG factory, they couldn’t have spec’d out a better Foxbat to buy. For some reason, no Western pilot ever flew Belenko’s Foxbat. Perhaps the Japanese forbade it—it was temporarily their airplane, after all— or cooler heads sensed the political consequences. But Japanese and American technicians did spend two months completely disassembling the airplane. The tear-down revealed that the braggart was a toothless phony, too heavy to be maneuverable at low altitudes, limited in what it could accomplish up high, and with little range and no midair refueling capability. When later compared to the U.S. teen-series fighters, the F-15, -16 and -18, it was powerless, particularly because the Foxbat had a max-G rating of 4.5, and just 2.2 with full fuel. Excess Gs would rip its half-ton air-to-air missiles from their underwing hardpoints, since the airplane was intended to go fast but in a straight line. The Foxbat was a one-trick pony, and nobody was betting on that horse anymore. The Soviets gave the MiG-25 a service ceiling of 89,000 feet but it actually could sustain an altitude of slightly less than 79,000 feet for two minutes, while carrying just two of its four missiles. (Foxbats had no guns.) Belenko admitted during his debriefing that the max altitude for a fully loaded Foxbat was 68,900 feet. Swedish radar frequently tracked MiG-25s trying to intercept SR-71s over the Baltic Sea, but the Soviets never got closer than 10,000 feet below the Lockheeds and quickly fell astern. After their initial caution, SR-71 pilots no longer considered the Foxbat a threat. The MiG-25 was built around its engines, but the big Tumansky R-15 wasn’t up to the job. It was an unsophisticated single-shaft design that
ITAR-TASS NEWS AGENCY/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
TOP: THE ASAHI SHIMBUN VIA GETTY IMAGES; LEFT: GUY ACETO
had lousy fuel specifics during transonic, non-afterburning flight, but thanks to its threering afterburner fuel nozzles, the engine was surprisingly efficient in sustained supersonic flight. (If you use twice as much fuel with the burners lit but go three times as fast, that’s a net gain.) At speed, the engine functioned as a ramjet. Much of the intake air circumvented the low-pressure compressor section and fed the enormous afterburner. A jet engine can swallow only so much air. At Mach 2.0+, it’s drinking from a firehose. The intake air must be restricted. Lockheed accomplished that on the SR-71 with a movable cone in each engine’s intake. The faster the airplane went, the farther forward the cones moved to choke off the excessive inflow. MiG tried doing that with movable ramps on the Foxbat, but they apparently were ineffective at the airplane’s highest speeds. The influx of air demanded so much fuel flow that the engines turned into outof-control blast furnaces. But the R-15 was the best engine that Soviet metallurgy could create at the time. Engines intended for Mach 3+ flight needed exotic metallurgy just as much as did the airframe they powered, and it turned out that the Foxbat’s two supersized engines began to come apart at speeds over Mach 2.83, which was the airplane’s “operational top speed.” Any attempt to actually take them up to the MiG-25’s mythical top speed, Mach 3.2, literally blew them apart, sucking the cores straight out the tailpipe. Foxbats cruised at Mach 2.35 using partial afterburner and
advancing the power levers any more had to be done with caution. The interceptor version’s only armament was four massive AA-6 missiles, the radar-guided versions more than 20 feet long, a foot in diameter and weighing just over half a ton, including the huge 220-pound warhead. The AA-6, codenamed Acrid by the West, was the largest air-toair missile ever produced, and it was designed specifically to shoot down B-70 bombers, airplanes that existed as only two prototypes before being canceled. The AA-6 came in two versions, one guided by the launching airplane’s own radar and the other homing in on its target’s infrared heat signature. Foxbats carried a mix of both kinds and a kill shot was intended to be a salvo of two AA-6s; first a heat-seeking missile and then the radar-guided version, to avoid the possibility of the heat-seeker homing on the radar missile’s exhaust. The Acrid had a limited range of between 30 and 50 miles, and its speed coasted down to Mach 2.2 after the solid-fuel rocket motor burned out. It had virtually no chance of catching an SR-71 from behind and a beak-to-beak attack would have meant that, with a closing speed of Mach 6, an AA-6’s guidance system had no time to lock onto a Blackbird from beyond a maximum of just 50 miles out. (No Soviet aircraft ever fired an AA-6 in combat, but an Iraqi MiG-25 downed Lt. Cdr. Scott Speicher’s F/A-18 with an Acrid during the first night of the 1991 Persian Gulf war.) The U.S. set out to develop a new generation of
The MiG-31BM interceptor was a redesign meant to remedy the MiG-25’s shortcomings. Here one takes off on a training flight from Tsentralnaya Uglovaya airfield in Primorye Territory, Russia, in October 2018.
THE INFLUX OF AIR DEMANDED SO MUCH FUEL FLOW THAT THE ENGINES TURNED INTO OUTOF-CONTROL BLAST FURNACES.
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TECH NOTES 1
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Below: The MiG-25BM Foxbat F “Bort White 37” was an example of a defense suppression variant intended to seek out and destroy surfaceto-air missile sites. Production of the BM variant ceased in 1985 after completion of fewer than 100 examples.
air-to-air missiles specifically to counter the MiG-25. They were radar-guided Mach 3.5 rockets with a range of more than 90 miles, to be called AIM-97 Seekbats, but the program was discontinued in 1976 when Viktor Belenko revealed the Foxbat to be a paper tiger. After 67 days of study, Belenko’s Foxbat was shipped back to the Soviet Union in pieces. The Russians claimed some parts were missing and billed the Japanese $20 million for them. The Japanese more civilly counterclaimed $40,000 for shipping fees and runway repairs at Hakodate. No money ever changed hands, and Belenko, after two months of debriefing, became an American citizen, married a music teacher from North Dakota, fathered a son and found work as an aero engineering consultant to the USAF and various manufacturers. He never bothered to finalize his Russian divorce.
F
ortunately for the Russians, the Foxbat had originally been envisioned as a superfast, superhigh, unarmed reconnaissance platform, which would turn out to be the airplane’s forte when its failings as an interceptor became apparent. The MiG-25 was designer Mikhail Gurevich’s swan song, though he retired
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Left: Some of the instruments in the cockpit of a MiG-25PDS include: 1. Gunsight 2. Attitude reference unit 3. Missile launch/jettison switch 4. Radar control switch 5. Trim control switches 6. True airspeed/Mach indicator 7. Radio altimeter 8. Pressure altimeter 9. Indicated airspeed 10. Pressure altimeter 11. Clock 12. Air inlets indicators 13. Artificial horizon 14. Directional gyro compass 15. Radar control panel 16. Distance to waypoint 17. Vertical speed/slip indicator 18. Radar screen 19. Fuel and systems function lights 20. G indicator 21. RPM indicator 22. Engine temperature indicator 23. Fuel gauge 24. Control column
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before the project was fully formed. But it was thanks to him that recon became an important part of the plan. (Serious consideration was also given to developing a bizjet version of the Foxbat, with a plush six-seat cabin and a conventional cockpit replacing the military fuselage forward of the air inlets. It would have been solely for Soviet elites, not the Western market, but the Soviet Union’s immensity and the MiG’s limited range made the project a nonstarter. Moscow to Vladivostok would have been an embarrassing two-stop trip, and the Russians would have been better off buying Gulfstreams.)
TOP: JIM LAURIER FROM F-15C EAGLE VS MIG-23/25: IRAQ 1991, BY DOUGLAS C. DILDY AND TOM COOPER; BELOW: FOXBAT GRAPHICS IMAGE LIBRARY/VASILIY ZOLOTOV
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Pitot head Radome Radar scanner/antenna Radar equipment IFF antenna Pressure sensor
7. Km-1M ejection seat 8. Engine air intake 9. Avionics bay 10. Main landing gear door 11. AA-6 Acrid radar-guided missile 12. AA-6 Acrid infrared-guided missile
Viktor Belenko’s defection had removed the Foxbat from top-dollar super plane status, but that made it affordable enough that tinpot dictators from Libya, Syria, Algeria and Iraq were delighted to buy the world’s fastest fighter, if only for bragging rights. It was in the Mideast and northern Africa, not the Soviet Union, that the MiG-25 made its bones. The airplane was far more effective at reconnaissance than as a fighter, for F-14 Tomcats and F-15 Eagles in the employ of U.S. forces and client nations such as Israel dined on Foxbat interceptors pretty much at will.
ABOVE: CUTAWAY BY ADAM TOOBY; BELOW: FOXBAT GRAPHICS IMAGE LIBRARY/VASILIY ZOLOTOV
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13. Radar warning receiver (RWR), port 14. Tumansky R15BD-300 engine 15. RWR (aft) 16. Engine exhaust nozzle
The MiG-25 was introduced to foreign affairs in 1971, when the Soviets sent a package of four Foxbats—two fighters and two recon aircraft plus seven top pilots and a retinue of groundsupport personnel—to Egypt as a response to Israeli penetrations, one of which had culminated in an attack on a generator station that blacked out all of Cairo. The Soviets retained total control of the Egyptian unit, and their Foxbats would suddenly launch from the Cairo West Egyptian air base at will, ignoring air-traffic controllers. The Foxbats cruised through Israeli airspace untouched and they provided
Below: The MiG-25RU trainer made its maiden flight on March 20, 1971, and was built in small numbers for the Soviet, Algerian, Bulgarian, Indian, Libyan and Syrian air forces.
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Egypt with priceless intelligence. The first Foxbats to see actual combat were operated by Syria, which had bought two dozen MiG-25 interceptors and recon platforms. The debut did not go well. An Israeli F-15 downed a Syrian MiG-25 over Lebanon in February 1981 and repeated the feat in July—the first times Foxbats had fallen to enemy fire. (Syria may still have one or two Foxbats, though nothing that remains flyable.) In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, and Syria’s MiG-25s began flying recon over Beirut. They were untouchable, since the lightened MiG-25R was lighter and faster than the -25P. The IAF set up a complex ambush mission, however, and netted its third Foxbat kill. During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq operated Foxbats and claimed to have shot down some 15 Iranian aircraft, but it was a list that included several C-130 Hercules, a Fokker F-27 and a Gulfstream III. Iraq’s leading Foxbat ace, Mohammed Rayyan, claimed 10 victories before he was himself shot down by Iranian F-14s in 1986. Iran claimed to have downed nine recon MiG-15Rs and one MiG-15P interceptor, though Iraq insists that it lost only three Foxbats. A clue to the reliability of Rayyan’s claims: some reports suggest that he never actually existed but was a bogus propaganda myth invented to boost morale. The Iraqi Air Force was particularly noted for having tried to protect its Foxbats from the invading Americans during Desert Storm by burying them in the Arabian Desert sand. U.S. forces found one of them, minus its wings, and it is now under restoration at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. It is the only Foxbat in the United States. (The museum is looking for a set of
UNITED AIRCRAFT CORPORATION ARCHIVES
The MiG-25RB was the reconnaissance version of the MiG-25 fighter. The big jet actually performed better as a reconnaissance platform than as an interceptor.
wings, if you happen to have any.) India also bought six MiG-25RBK reconnaissance versions, plus two trainers, for surveillance of its mountainous borders with Pakistan and China. Flying high and fast, the Indian Foxbats were still only 30,000 feet above the highest Himalayan ground, so their photo intel was particularly crisp, revealing details of Chinese and Pakistani trenches, redoubts and other defensive structures. The excellent aviation blog Hush-Kit (hushkit.net) published an interview with Indian Air Marshal Sumit Mukerji, who had commanded a Foxbat reconnaissance unit. His words reveal some of the MiG-25’s strengths and weaknesses. “A 20-ton aircraft that carries 20 tons of fuel, flies in the stratosphere and cruises at Mach 2.5 in minimum after-burner with ease…it was an awesome airplane,” Mukerji said. He explained that the remarkably accurate first-generation inertial navigation system (INS) automated much of the Foxbat’s operation. “The MiG-25 would execute the complete mission, photography included, and return to base, descending to a height of 50 meters, when the pilot needed to take control and flare for the landing. All the pilot was required to do through the entire mission was manipulate the throttles. “Sure, you can call it an archaic, unsophisticated machine, but there was no ‘sophisticated’ aircraft to match its performance or shoot it down,” said Mukerji, who had apparently never met an F-15. “With a navigation accuracy of a maximum of 10 kilometers off track over a 1,000-kilometer run, with a lateral photo swath of 90 kilometers…targets were never missed.” Twenty tons of fuel, however, was barely adequate. “We operated on the fringe…. We always returned for landing with 200 to 400 kg of fuel remaining, [and] 200 to 250 kg was required to execute one circuit and landing. The runway had to be kept clear—no other flying permitted for fear of runway blockage—once the MiG commenced its descent. “The Foxbat was a bullock cart, we would joke. She was heavy but responsive. There was a lot of inertia, requiring anticipation [on the controls]. The aircraft would wallow on approach, if pilot anticipation and control inputs were not timely. The greatest joy was to be able to throw a fighter around in the sky with abandon, which you missed when you flew the MiG-25. We missed the G [forces].” However, the Foxbat did the United States
BOTH: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
UNITED AIRCRAFT CORPORATION ARCHIVES
one big favor. The Air Force was in the midst of a competition to create the next-generation air-superiority fighter, initially tagged the F-X. The F-X program was driven in large part by dismaying losses to fast, maneuverable and simple Soviet MiG-21 day-fighters over Vietnam. Fear of the MiG-25 set the bar substantially higher, however, and engineers at McDonnell Douglas ramped up their efforts to design what became the F-15 Eagle. Thanks to the Foxbat, the airplane intended to outfly it became the most successful air superiority fighter ever fielded. So far, F-15s have notched 104 shoot-downs without losing a dogfight. Without the phony threat of the Foxbat, that might never have happened. Despite all its faults, the Foxbat had one feature that made it popular with the Russians who maintained it—an unusual and not particularly effective air-conditioning system that relied upon the evaporation of a mixture of distilled water and 240 liters of near-pure grain alcohol. MiG-25s often returned from missions with a small portion of the brew still in its tank, but the
airborne vodka quickly disappeared into mechanics’ canteens. It also helped that the small bowsers used to refill the system had convenient spigots to tap the keg. No wonder the Foxbat was often referred to as the Flying Restaurant. Na zdorovye! Contributing editor Stephan Wilkinson suggests for further reading MiGs by Bill Sweetman, MiG Pilot: The Final Escape of Lt. Belenko by John Barron and Foxbat Tales: The MiG-25 in Combat by Mike Guardia.
Above: In 2003, U.S. military personnel unearth an Iraqi MiG-25RB at Al Taqaddum airfield west of Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Top: The airplane, which lacks wings (but obviously not its engine nozzles), is now part of the collection of the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.
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HERE ARE SOME NOMINATIONS FOR THE HALL OF SHAME
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THE 10 WORST FIGHTERS OF WORLD WAR II
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In this illustration by Marek Rys, a veteran Polish pilot of French Groupe de Chasse 1/145 “Varsovie” strives to get the most out of his Caudron C.714 over France in June 1940. Expatriate Polish pilots flew the French airplane effectively against the Germans despite its flaws.
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Brewster F2A Buffalo
Produced by a company owned by an aviation consultant to the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, this underperforming carrier-based fighter earned a disastrous reputation with the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marines and the Royal, Royal Australian and Royal Netherlands East Indies Air Forces. Only the Finns proved a spectacular exception with the B-239 export version, although that success has been attributed more to the quality of their training and doctrine—as well as the relative incompetence of their Soviet adversaries—than to the Buffalo’s merits. Brewster Aeronautical’s management insisted that they were the victims of sabotage, but perhaps the problem was simply their own poor pro-
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duction methods. The factory was a multi-story building in an urban area of Queens, New York, a venue hardly conducive to the production of aircraft. Components fabricated on several different floors were brought together for the final assembly. The completed aircraft then had to be disassembled and reassembled elsewhere for flight testing. In other words, for all intents and purposes, all Brewster aircraft were built twice. But perhaps that was the least of the problems with an overweight, underpowered airplane that was consistently outflown by its faster and more nimble opponents. Marines on Midway Island who were unlucky enough to fly it against Japan’s Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero called it the “Flying Coffin.” Brewster later produced the Vought Corsair under license as the F3A-1, but it made a mess of that, too. Brewster-built Corsairs had so many quality-control issues that none were accepted for front-line service and the company finally went out of business in 1946.
PREVOUS SPREAD: MAREK RYS; BOTH: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND
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lenty of authors have expounded their own views of what were the best fighters of World War II. Fast, technologically advanced airplanes like the P-51 Mustang or the P-38 Lightning are almost certain to make such lists. Others might cite Germany’s revolutionary Me-262 jet fighter, or Britain’s Supermarine Spitfire. Not so many have tried compiling a list of the worst fighters from the conflict, even though there are plenty of airplanes that could be nominated, from many different countries. While it may be true that no one sets out to design a bad airplane, factors outside a designer’s control can lead to unsatisfactory results. Some of these airplanes were already obsolescent before they rolled off the production line. Others suffered from the use of substandard materials in their construction. Still others were acts of desperation. And there can always be unknown factors no designer could have predicted that can derail a design that looks great on paper. Here, then, is a modest proposal for such a list, the sort on which nobody ever wants to be included.
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Above: U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Joseph C. Clifton trains in a Brewster F2A-3 Buffalo in August 1942. Right: An F2A-3 of Marine fighter squadron VMF-211 has a mishap aboard the escort carrier Long Island on July 25, 1942. Some Marines referred to the Brewster as the “Flying Coffin.”
TOP: IWM HU 3376; BOTTOM: FINNISH DEFENSE FORCES SA-KUVA
PREVOUS SPREAD: MAREK RYS; BOTH: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND
Fiat CR.42 Falco
Widely used during World War II by Italy and other nations, the Fiat CR.42 is often regarded as one of the finest biplane fighters ever produced. Therein, however, lay the fatal flaw: the CR.42 was a fabric-covered, open-cockpit biplane with fixed landing gear—essentially a refinement of the standard World War I formula that was already obsolete. Much ink has been expended arguing whether the CR.42 was superior to Britain’s Gloster Gladiator. The bottom line is that the Royal Air Force considered the Gladiator, which was first flown in 1934, to be obsolete in 1939, when the CR.42 prototype first flew. Supermarine Spitfire monoplanes, 100 mph faster than the CR.42, were already widespread in RAF service by that time. The CR.42 enjoyed some initial success against British fighters, mainly because the British pilots attempted to get into maneuvering dogfights with them. Once the British figured out that their Hurricanes and Spitfires could use their superior speed and diving characteristics to defeat the Italian biplanes, they quickly turned the tables on the CR.42s. What makes the CR.42 even more inexplicable is the fact that Fiat actually produced a successful monoplane fighter, the G.50, in 1937. Its modern features included all-metal construction, retractable landing gear and an enclosed cockpit. The G.50 entered squadron service in 1938, the year before the CR.42’s first flight. In addition, while the G.50 may not have been the fastest fighter of its time, it was still 20 mph faster than the CR.42 while powered by the same engine. It should have been obvious to anyone that the CR.42 was outdated before the first prototype took off. Yet, not only did the Regia Aeronautica order the CR.42 in quantity, but Fiat even managed to export it to Belgium, Hungary and Sweden. Fiat turned out 1,784 of these outdated biplanes, well over twice as many as the 688 G.50s that the company produced. While much has been written extolling the mer-
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its of this flying anachronism, the question remains why Fiat and the Regia Aeronautica ever bothered to develop it in the first place.
Lavochkin-GorbunovGudkov LaGG-3
Fabricated out of resin-impregnated plywood to conserve metal, the Soviet LaGG-3 turned out heavier than planned. Its speed, rate of climb and maneuverability were inferior not only to the enemy’s Messerschmitt Me-109F, but to the Soviet Union’s own Yakovlev Yak-1, which had the same engine as the LaGG-3. Still, the Soviets produced 6,500 LaGG-3s. The designation stood for the initials of the aircraft’s designers—Semyon A. Lavochkin, Vladimir P. Gorbunov and Mikhail I. Gudkov. The fighter earned such a poor reputation, however, that Soviet pilots joked that “LaGG” really stood for “Lakirovanny Garantirovanny Grob” (the Russian words for Varnished Guaranteed Coffin). After the departure of Gorbunov and Gudkov, Lavochkin finally managed to convert the LaGG-3 design into a viable fighter. He replaced the liquid-cooled inline engine with a more powerful air-cooled radial and introduced a number of aerodynamic and structural improvements. The result, first flown in March 1942, was the highly successful La-5.
Above: Brought down by a Hawker Hurricane near Orford Ness, England, on November 11, 1940, this Fiat CR.42 Falco of the 95a Squadriglia, 18o Gruppo has been preserved in the Royal Air Force Museum in London. Below: A Finnish aircraft shot down this LaGG-3 of the 524th Fighter Regiment. The airplane made an emergency landing in the Nurmoila area of Russia on March 6, 1942.
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Developed from a series of racing planes of the mid-1930s, the French C.714 provides a perfect illustration of how a successful racer does not necessarily translate into a successful combat plane. It was intended as a lightweight fighter that could be built quickly and inexpensively. Four 7.5mm machine guns were slung beneath the wings in panniers, seemingly as an afterthought, but it achieved the respectable speed of 301 mph with an engine of only 450 hp. Nevertheless, the C.714 failed as a viable fighter. It had a range of only 486 miles and took more than 9½ minutes to reach its service ceiling, which was only 13,000 feet. France sold a batch of C.714s to Finland, which, although desperate for modern fighters to use against the Soviets, rejected them. Those issued to the Armée de l’Air during the Battle of France in 1940 were so mechanically flawed that, despite the urgent need for fighters, the French Minister of War ordered it withdrawn from active service on May 25, 1940, only one week after it had been introduced. The C.714s were grounded and its production cancelled. Nevertheless, the French issued a few C.714s to a squadron of expatriate Poles eager to keep up their fight against the hated Germans with whatever was available. The Poles used them to some effect in the few remaining days of the French campaign.
THE U.S. ARMY WANTED NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CW21, BUT CURTISS SOLD EXAMPLES TO CHINA AND THE Curtiss-Wright CW-21 Demon NETHERDeveloping a fighter from a trainer is usually an LANDS. act of wartime desperation, as was the case with
Australia’s Commonwealth Boomerang. The Curtiss-Wright division of the Curtiss Aircraft Corporation tried it as well before the war, when the U.S. had no such desperation. Developed in 1938 from the CW-19, a two-seat trainer with which the company achieved a certain amount of success in the export market, the CW-21 Demon was touted as the “fastest-climbing interceptor in the world.” Despite the fact that
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the U.S. Army Air Corps wanted nothing whatever to do with the CW-21, the company managed to sell some to China and the Netherlands. Along with the prototype, China bought three complete aircraft and 27 sets of components for assembly there. How they would have fared in combat will never be known, however, because the three production fighters crashed en route and the rest were never assembled. Since the Netherlands was occupied by the Germans in May 1940, early in 1941 the 24 CW-21B fighters its exiled government ordered were delivered to the Dutch East Indies. Although somewhat refined with a flush-retracting landing gear instead of the “clamshell door” fairings of the original CW-21, the CW21B proved no match for Japan’s Zero. The Japanese army’s Ki-43 fighter, which the CW-21B also faced, has frequently been criticized as being flimsy, under-armed and lacking armor protection. Yet the CW-21B also lacked armor, was 1,000 pounds lighter and was armed with only two .30-caliber and two .50-caliber machine guns, compared with the Ki-43’s two 12.7mm machine cannons. First Lieutenant R.A.D. Anaemet, who commanded a squadron in Java, described the CW-21B as “by no means a bad aircraft but simply surpassed…in nearly every important performance category by its opponents.” All were wiped out within three months of Japan’s invasion of the East Indies.
Heinkel He-162 Salamander
Faced with the need to repel large numbers of Allied bombers in the summer of 1944, Adolf Hitler demanded the development of a “Volksjäger” (“People’s Fighter”). It was to be a jet-powered interceptor flown by pilots from the “Hitler Youth” with only a minimum of training. The aircraft also had to be ready to
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TOP: NATIONAL ARCHIVES (BOTH); BELOW: BAE SYSTEMS ARCHIVES
Caudron C.714
TOP LEFT: FINNISH DEFENSE FORCES SA-KUVA; TOP RIGHT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Above: This Caudron C.714 was one of six shipped to Finland. Although Finnish pilots were renowned for making the best of things, they rejected the French airplanes as hopeless. Right: A squadron of Curtiss-Wright CW-21Bs belonging to the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army Air Force lines up on a runway shortly before taking on the Japanese in 1942.
TOP: NATIONAL ARCHIVES (BOTH); BELOW: BAE SYSTEMS ARCHIVES
TOP LEFT: FINNISH DEFENSE FORCES SA-KUVA; TOP RIGHT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
enter production by January 1, 1945. Although not judged the best proposal submitted, Ernst Heinkel’s He-162 was selected because it was regarded as the easiest to produce, and because about one-third of the airframe was made of plywood, a “non-strategic material.” Plans were laid to mass-produce the plane in underground factories. Flight testing, however, revealed serious flaws. The prototype crashed when its wing disintegrated, due both to weak design and defective bonding of the plywood. The wooden structure also flexed in warm weather and became brittle in cold. The plane was found to be unstable in both pitch and yaw, and it could not fly inverted for more than three seconds, or else the engine would stop. Experienced fighter pilots who flew the He-162 considered it a death trap, and certainly not suitable for half-trained teenage pilots. Regardless, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring insisted that production go ahead so the first He-162s could re-equip Jagdgeschwader 1. Its commander, Herbert Ihlefeld, simply resolved that all the pilots assigned to him would fail the physical. More than 300 He-162s were eventually built and a few did see combat. Predictably, more were lost in accidents than Allied aircraft were shot down—and even that one ended up being credited to a flak unit instead.
Blackburn B-25 Roc
The “turret fighter,” a two-seat, single-engine fighter in which all the armament was placed in a power-driven gun turret, was a concept peculiar to the British and one that is universally accepted to have been misguided. Bad though the RAF’s purpose-built Boulton Paul Defiant turret fighter was, however, the Fleet Air Arm’s carrier-based equivalent, the Blackburn Roc, was unquestionably worse. In an effort to cut costs, the Royal Navy simply installed Boulton
Paul’s gun turret in Blackburn’s Skua carrier-based dive-bomber. The performance of the resulting aircraft, dubbed the Roc, was so poor that the FAA would have been better off simply using the Skua as a fighter—which, in fact, it did. With its turret grafted on as an aerodynamic afterthought, the Roc could achieve only 223 mph, a climb rate of 1,500 feet per minute and a service ceiling of 18,000 feet. The floatplane version of the Roc was even worse, with a top speed of 193 mph and a rate of climb of 1,100 feet per minute. While 136 Rocs were eventually built, they never equipped a fighter squadron nor served aboard a carrier. A handful briefly augmented a couple of Skua squadrons, but none saw any active service. Some Rocs were later converted into target tugs, and a few were placed on airfields to use their turrets as stationary anti-aircraft batteries.
Top left: Captured at the end of the war, this Heinkel He-162 Salamander went on display at Andrews Field near Washington, D.C. Top right: The Nazis used this underground assembly line near Hinterbrühl, Austria, to produce up to 50 Heinkels per month. Above: A photographer captured this formation of Blackburn Rocs and their less-than-effective rear turrets on August 9, 1940.
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Tank was tried for treason but was eventually acquitted. The Luftwaffe came up with a scheme to convert the Ta-154s into explosive-filled drones and blow them up amidst enemy bomber formations, but nothing came of that, and no Ta-154 was ever used operationally.
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Focke-Wulf Ta-154 Moskito
De Havilland’s wooden Mosquito caused consternation when it appeared over Germany. Erhard Milch, who was in charge of German aircraft production, asked Focke-Wulf to develop a similar twin-engine, wooden multi-role aircraft that could serve as a night fighter. Designed by Kurt Tank, who had created the successful Fw-190, the new aircraft was designated Ta-154. The Germans even went so far as to name it the “Moskito.” Politics intruded upon the development process. Based upon operational experience, the Luftwaffe wanted the excellent Heinkel He-219 Uhu (Owl), but Ernst Heinkel had fallen out of political favor with Milch, who preferred the Ta-154. First flown in July 1943, the prototype Ta-154 was tested against the He-219 and the Junkers Ju-388 and outflew them both. The competition, however, was rigged. The Ta-154 was a stripped-down prototype while the other two carried full military equipment, including armament and radar. Adding military equipment reduced the Ta-154’s speed by almost 50 mph. In June 1944, the Moskito was finally ready for production. Around that time, however, the British bombed the factory that made the special resin required to glue the Ta-154’s wooden airframe together. Another adhesive was substituted, but it proved corrosive to the wooden structure, causing several Ta-154s to break up and crash. Consequently, the Ta-154 was cancelled after production of about only 50 aircraft.
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MAREK RYS
Above: A Focke-Wulf Ta-154 V7 Moskito undergoes testing at Langenhagen airfield in Germany. Below: The Messerschmitt Me-210 required major redesign— and a complete change in designation—before pilots would give it another chance.
Messerschmitt created the legendary Me-109, unarguably among the best and certainly most-produced fighters of World War II. Messerschmitt also came up with the Me-210, a twin-engine multi-role fighter that was so bad it nearly ruined the reputation the Me-109 had given the company. The Me-210 was supposed to replace the earlier Me-110 as what the Luftwaffe called a “Zerstörer” (destroyer), meaning a twin-engine general-purpose aircraft intended as a long-range escort, fighter/bomber and reconnaissance plane. In 1940, the Me-110 proved vulnerable to British fighters and was more of a liability than an asset. Since 1937, however, Messerschmitt had been working on its replacement. On paper the Me-210 looked so promising that the Luftwaffe ordered 1,000 before the prototype ever even flew. First flown in September 1939, the Me-210 seemed very advanced. The two crewmen were placed under a bulbous canopy in the nose, where they enjoyed an excellent view. The main armament of two 20mm cannon and two 7.92mm machine guns were mounted beneath the crew stations and a bomb bay was underneath them. Two 13mm machine guns were placed in remotely controlled barbettes, one on each side of the fuselage. In flight the Me-210 proved unstable, with a dangerous tendency to stall and go into a spin even during routine flight, let alone violent combat maneuvers. The advanced defensive armament system also proved unreliable and difficult to aim accurately. Worse still, the Me-210 did not outperform the existing Me-110, with a top speed of 350 mph, a range of 1,130 miles and a service ceiling of 29,200 feet, compared with the Me110’s speed of 350 mph, 1,750-mile range and 35,000-foot ceiling. In 1942, after no more than 400 examples were built, the Me-210 was cancelled and the Me-110 retained in production. The Me-210 was eventually replaced by a similar-looking but much improved fighter that was redesignated the Me-410, probably in an attempt to disassociate it from the disastrous reputation of its forbear. First flown in 1942, the Me-410 incorporated many changes, including a longer fuselage and completely different wing, which
TOP: SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM; LEFT: AVIATION HISTORY COLLECTION/ALAMY
Messerschmitt Me-210
finally alleviated the Me-210’s instability problems. Fewer than 1,200 Me-410s were built, however, before production was phased out during 1944 out in favor of single-engine fighters.
MAREK RYS
TOP: SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM; LEFT: AVIATION HISTORY COLLECTION/ALAMY
Seversky P-35
A contemporary of the Hawker Hurricane and Messerschmitt Me-109, the Seversky P-35 was the U.S. Army Air Corps’ first truly modern fighter. It featured an all-metal structure, an enclosed cockpit and retractable landing gear. It beat the Curtiss P-36 Hawk in competition for a 1936 Army Air Corps fighter contract (although the P-36 was subsequently ordered into production as well). Unlike its British and German contemporaries, however, the P-35 was clearly outdated by the start of World War II. Only 76 P-35s were delivered to the AAC before production was terminated. After AAC orders ceased, Seversky managed to sell Sweden a further 120 examples of an improved version of the P-35, with a more powerful engine and an armament of two .50-caliber and two .30-caliber machine guns. The Swedish air force received 60 of these J 9s, as it called them, and operated them until 1946, but the remaining 60 were seized by the United States in an embargo. Designated P-35A by the AAC, 51 of the ex-Swedish J 9s were sent to the Philippines in 1941. The P-35As constituted a major portion of the AAC’s air defense assets in the Philippines in December 1941. Apart from being already obsolete, the fighters arrived in the Philippines still crated for delivery to Sweden. That meant that the instruction and maintenance manuals were in Swedish and the flight instruments were
calibrated in metric. In addition, .50-caliber machine gun ammunition was in short supply. There were also no spare parts for the engines, which were commercial versions of the Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp intended for export. Lacking armor and self-sealing fuel tanks and outclassed in performance and armament by contemporary Japanese fighters, only five P-35As were still operational by January 1942. Incredibly, the last surviving P-35A, flown by a Filipino pilot, was shot down on May 3, 1942, while attempting to strafe Japanese troops who were landing at Macajalar Bay. Outdated though the P-35 was, Seversky’s design made an impact. Republic developed it into the P-43 and then the formidable P-47 Thunderbolt. In Italy, Reggiane refined it into the Re.2000 series. Hungary bought Re.2000s for use over Russia and later built its own version, the MÁVAG Héja (Falcon) II, with a Weiss Manfred WM-14 in place of the Piaggio engine. The latter’s combat debut—and finale—came on April 13, 1944, when Héja IIs from the 1st Squadron, 2nd Fighter Group went up to challenge a U.S. Fifteenth Air Force bombing raid. One was shot down by Lockheed P-38s of the 1st Fighter Group and two more by distant relatives, P-47Ds of the 325th Fighter Group. All the pilots survived, but the Hungarians got the message and relegated all their Héjas to the fighter training role thereafter.
The Swedes flew the Seversky J 9 (P-35A). In this illustration by Marek Rys, the airplane is in the colors of the 1st Division, Flygflottilj 8, which flew out of Barkarby airfield near Stockholm. The fighter was withdrawn from front-line service in 1946 and one is preserved in the Swedish Air Force Museum.
OUTDATED AS THE P-35 WAS, THE DESIGN MADE AN IMPACT. REPUBLIC DEVELOPED IT INTO THE P-43 AND THEN THE FORMIDABLE P-47.
Robert Guttman is a regular contributor to Aviation History. For further reading he recommends Rare Birds: Forgotten Aircraft of the Second World War by Charles R. G. Bain, and The World’s Worst Aircraft by Jim Winchester. AUTUMN 2022
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In an illustration by Ron Cole, Merian C. Cooper, an American pilot of Poland’s Kosciuszko Squadron, prepares to attack Cossack horsemen in his Italian-built Ansaldo A.1 Balilla. Cooper and his fellow aviators provided valuable service to Poland during the Polish-Soviet War.
“A WORTHY
” CAUSE BEFORE HE CREATED KING KONG, MERIAN C. COOPER EXPERIENCED A THRILLING LIFE IN THE AIR—AND IN A SOVIET PRISON BY TOM HUNTINGTON
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Day Bombardment Group, on a mission to bomb a railroad bridge across the Meuse River on the opening day of the Meuse-Argonne offensive. Lieutenant Sidney Howard—later a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and the screenwriter for Gone with the Wind—was leading the flight when it was assailed by German Fokker D.VII fighters of Jagdstaffel 12, which shot down five of the American planes. One of them was Cooper’s. Living up to its pejorative nickname as the “flaming coffin,” the DH-4’s engine ignited and the flames spread into the cockpit. “As I fell straight down towards the earth in a spinning nosedive it looked to me as if the whole world was on fire,” Cooper wrote to his father. “The only thing in the world that I wanted to do was to get out of that pain.” Even though he didn’t have a parachute, Cooper readied himself to leap from the burning aircraft, but then he realized that gunner/bombardier, 1st Lt. Edmund C. Leonard was still alive. Cooper returned to his
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TOP IMAGES: L. TOM PERRY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO, UT 84602; BELOW: EDWARD V. RICKENBACKER PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION/OHIO HISTORY CONNECTION
In Poland, the missions Cooper and his fellow Americans flew included escorting Polish Maj. Jerzy Kossowski’s bombers. Here members of the squadron take time for a photograph with Kossowski and one of his Breguet 14.A2 aircraft. Left to right are Cooper, Kossowski, Edwin Noble and Carl Clark.
PREVIOUS SPREAD: ILLUSTRATION BY RON COLE; ABOVE: L. TOM PERRY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO, UT 84602
K
ing Kong has thrilled movie audiences ever since its premiere in 1933, but few people know that the man behind the movie had a life as adventurous as anything he put on screen. Merian C. Cooper learned what it was like to fly military aircraft like the ones that shot Kong off the Empire State Building—and how it felt to be on the receiving end of their bullets. He had piloted bombers in World War I and fighters for the Poles in the Polish-Soviet War and was shot down in both conflicts. “Life has its high points,” Cooper once wrote. “You risk your skin, and in the moment when life balances with death, no matter how afraid you may be, you get a touch of the animal value of existence.” More than once he experienced that delicate balance. Merian Coldwell Cooper was born on October 24, 1893, in Jacksonville, Florida. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy but got kicked out before he could graduate. “I was high-spirited, loved excitement, took chances and got caught too many times,” he told film historian Rudy Behlmer in 1965. “Besides, I had been interested in aviation even since the Wright Brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk and I wanted to get into World War I and fly and realized I couldn’t get into flying in the Navy.” He joined the Georgia National Guard in 1916 so he could participate in the hunt for Francisco “Pancho” Villa in Mexico, and the Guard later sent him to aeronautics school in Georgia, where he learned to fly. Then Cooper headed off to France as a first lieutenant in the Army Air Service. Determined to enter combat as soon as possible, he trained to be a bomber pilot and received an assignment to the 20th Aero Squadron. Cooper’s unit flew license-built British de Havilland DH-4 bombers powered by American Liberty engines. On September 26, 1918, Cooper was piloting one of seven DH-4s from the squadron, by then part of the 1st
TOP IMAGES: L. TOM PERRY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO, UT 84602; BELOW: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES
PREVIOUS SPREAD: ILLUSTRATION BY RON COLE; ABOVE: L. TOM PERRY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO, UT 84602
controls. Badly burned, barely able to use his hands, Cooper made a crash landing. The Germans captured both men and Cooper spent the rest of the war in a German hospital. He had been wearing a flying mask and goggles, so his lips were the only part of his face that suffered, but his hands were badly burned. “The Germans did a beautiful job on them, but I’ve had trouble with them ever since,” he told Behlmer. The armistice ended the fighting on November 11, 1918, but Cooper did not go home until December. “I was one of the last people out of Germany because I wasn’t in any shape to be moved,” he said. The army had even issued his death certificate. For his actions Cooper received a recommendation for the Distinguished Service Cross but he turned it down. Serving with his squadron was honor enough, he said, adding, “I would feel in receiving any honor or decoration that I would be dishonoring my dead and living friends.”
A
fter the war Cooper joined the American Relief Administration and began working to distribute food in Poland. When war with the nascent Soviet Union threatened, Cooper’s hatred of Bolshevism prompted him to seek a way to serve Poland militarily. The Versailles Treaty had created an independent Poland in 1918, but its eastern border could not be defined until the chaos from the Bolshevik revolution had subsided in Russia and a government emerged with which the Allied powers could negotiate. Not until December 1919 did the Allies’ Supreme War Council establish the
Curzon Line as the border between Poland and Russia. The Polish government refused to recognize this frontier, however, as its armies were already a considerable distance beyond it. The Poles had attacked first in February 1919, but it merely beat the Bolsheviks to the punch. Vladimir Lenin’s government, eager to expand its borders westward, had begun planning its attack on Poland that January and intended to launch its offensive in April. After meeting with Josef Pilsudski, the Polish head of state and commander in chief, in May 1919, Cooper headed to France and began recruiting other expatriate American airmen at the cafés of Paris to form a squadron and help the Poles. The first to sign up was Cedric E. Fauntleroy, who had entered the French air service with the Lafayette Flying Corps and subse-
Top left: Members of the newly formed Kosciuszko Squadron and their canine mascot prepare to board a train on the way to Poland. Pictured, left to right, are George Crawford, Carl Clark, Cooper, Edwin Noble and Arthur Kelly. Top right: Cooper poses for a photograph in his U.S. Army Air Services uniform during World War I. Above: Cedric Fauntleroy (right) shows off the squadron insignia. At left is Ludomil Rayski, who commanded the 7th Air Squadron before turning it over to the Americans.
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As an editorial in the New York Times observed, they were “bringing into our time something of eighteenth century flavor, a reminiscence of the day when gentlemen lent their swords willingly to a worthy cause.” The cause may have been worthy, but the flying conditions were primitive. “The military equipment available in Eastern Europe in 1919 was extremely limited,” wrote Norman Davies in his 1972 history of the conflict, White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919-20. “The Polish-Soviet War was fought on First World War surplus.” That meant Cooper and his fellow aviators had to fight first with Austro-Hungarian Oeffag-Albatros D.III and then Italian Ansaldo A.1 Balilla fighters. Tragedy struck before the squadron even tasted combat. On November 22, 1919, the squadron flew an exhibition in Lwow (Lviv) in honor of Pilsudski. After passing over the reviewing stand in an Albatros, Graves appeared to attempt a double roll over Potocki Palace. First the airplane’s left upper wing tore off, then the lower one. Graves managed to climb free of the cockpit and jump but smashed into the ground and died before his parachute could fully deploy. He was the squadron’s first casualty. Once in the field, the Americans flew reconnaissance missions, delivered messages to units at the front and attacked men, horses, troop vessels, bridges and trains from the sky. The squadron never got a chance to experience air-to-air combat; the one time the men spotted a Bolshevik airplane it had disappeared by the time they
TOP: ARCHIWUM MUZEUM LOTNICTWA POLSKIEGO; INSET: COURTESY PAUL KONYS
The Americans flew a polyglot collection of War War I surplus aircraft. Here Cooper is seen in an Austrian-built Oeffag-Albatros D.III. They also used Italian and British airplanes.
quently transferred to the USAS to serve in Captain Edward Rickenbacker’s famed 94th “Hat in the Ring” Aero Squadron. Fauntleroy had already received an offer to be a technical advisor to Poland, but he decided to join Cooper instead. Other volunteers included Edward C. Corsi of New York, another Lafayette Flying Corps volunteer who had shared in burning two German balloons while in Escadrille Spa.77, and Carl H. Clark of Tulsa, who had flown with the British. Kenneth O. Shrewsbury was a former law student; George M. “Buck” Crawford, who sported a carefully trimmed mustache, had been a squadron-mate of Cooper’s in the 20th. Edwin L. Noble was from Massachusetts and had a background in electrical engineering. Arthur H. Kelly, a former aerial observer, recruited two of his friends back in London. None of these pilots were as fervent for the Polish cause as Cooper was, but they all sensed the opportunity for a great adventure. Because of his rank and experience, Major Fauntleroy was chosen as the squadron commander. With eight men at hand and two more—Edmund Graves and Elliot William Chess—promised from London, the squadron set out for Poland in September 1919. Although officially designated the 7th Air Squadron (7. Rskadra Lotnica), the small force of Americans named themselves after Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a Pole who had fought in the American Revolutionary War under George Washington. In 1919, when the world was still reeling from World War I’s bloodshed, their motives seemed old-fashioned.
EVERETT COLLECTION
WHEN THE WORLD WAS STILL REELING FROM WORLD WAR I’S BLOODSHED, THE AMERICANS’ MOTIVES SEEMED OLDFASHIONED.
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TOP: ARCHIWUM MUZEUM LOTNICTWA POLSKIEGO; INSET: COURTESY PAUL KONYS
EVERETT COLLECTION
could get off the ground in pursuit. Their flying experiences match what historian Davies wrote about Polish aviation during the Soviet war in general: “They sometimes landed behind the lines to ask the villagers about the enemy, and frequently crash landed through disorientation or shortage of petrol. There are stories of grounded pilots being butchered by Cossacks, being rescued on snowsleighs driven by sympathetic priests, or even being worshipped by awestruck peasants.” On one occasion Crawford received a bullet through his main tank. He switched to his reserve, but the engine began to sputter and fail. Crawford made a forced landing in a field just ahead of some advancing Cossacks. The pilot leapt from the cockpit and ran—until he heard the airplane’s engine cough back to life. Apparently, the hard landing had knocked an obstruction from the fuel line. Crawford dashed back to his airplane, crawled into the cockpit and frantically tried to take off, plowing through a wheat field and over an irrigation ditch that nearly took off his landing gear. He finally pulled the nose up, but not quite fast enough to avoid a fence. The landing gear crashed through the obstruction, embedding a rail in the undercarriage. Crawford had to make a crash landing at the squadron’s base, but he emerged unscathed. On another occasion, Chess and Fauntleroy were delivering a pair of brand-new Balilla biplanes when Chess landed his airplane on top of Fauntleroy’s, destroying both craft. Fauntleroy was “speechless with rage,” but the dapper Crawford attempted to look on the bright side. “Well, Faunt, we’ll have plenty of spare parts now, won’t we!” he said. Starting in the spring of 1920, the Kosciuszko Squadron didn’t fly over a static front, but over an ever-changing one, first as the Polish armies moved headlong into Ukraine and took Kiev, then in reverse as the Bolshevik armies pushed the Poles back to the outskirts of Warsaw. (As one Polish soldier said, “We ran all the way to
Kiev, and we ran all the way back.”) To keep up with the fluid situation, Fauntleroy had a train outfitted to make the squadron a mobile air arm that they could fly from any level space the train could reach. They converted the train cars to meet their needs for barracks and repair shops. Even under such difficult conditions, the tiny force made a difference. As a Polish general noted with admiration, “The American pilots, though exhausted, fight tenaciously. During the last offensive, their commander attacked enemy formations from the rear, raining machine-gun bullets down on their heads. Without the American pilots’ help, we would long ago have been done for.” The aerial support didn’t come without costs—on April 26 Edwin Noble was taken out of the conflict after he received a bullet in the elbow while attacking a train. The American pilots tried to “shock and awe” the fierce Cossack horsemen of General Semyon Budyonny’s 1st Cavalry Army with attacks from the air. For a time, they succeeded. Harmon Chadbourn Rorison, a cocky North Carolinian
Top: Fauntleroy’s Albatros D.III is in the foreground in this image of the squadron’s aircraft taken in December 1919. Inset: Massachusetts native Edwin Noble, pictured here on his identify card, flew with the squadron until he was shot in the elbow on April 26, 1920.
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irplanes against men on horseback may seem like an unfair match, but a bullet from the ground could even the odds very quickly. Captain Cooper discovered that on July 13, 1920, when a Cossack bullet went through the engine of his Balilla and he had to make a forced landing near the enemy cavalry. Angry horsemen quickly surrounded him and stripped him of his flying suit. Cooper knew his life would be in danger if the Russians discov-
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LEFT: L. TOM PERRY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO, UT 84602; RIGHT: RKO/PARAMOUNT PICTURES
who was credited with three German fighters while serving in the 22nd Aero Squadron, USAS, and had arrived to replace Graves, noted one attack against cavalry when the airplanes attacked “until, actually weary of the sport, they drove off and headed for home, leaving but a sweating, cursing remnant of the Bolos to crawl into a nearby wood and rest from their strenuous ride.” The Cossacks soon learned to take defensive measures, sometimes merely dropping to the ground and covering themselves with their cloaks as camouflage. They also concealed guns in forests to shoot at the airplanes when they came down low.
BOTH: L. TOM PERRY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO, UT 84602
Above: Shortly after their overland escape from a Soviet prison camp, Cooper and his two Polish compatriots posed for a photograph in Latvia. Right: Back in Warsaw, Cooper (left) received Poland’s Virtuti Militari from Josef Pilsudski. (For more about the medal, see page 8.)
ered his identity, because Budyonny had put a price on his head. Luckily, his burn-hardened hands marked him as a member of the proletariat, not a bourgeoisie officer, and his World War I-surplus underwear was stenciled with the name of its previous owner—so Captain Merian C. Cooper became Corporal Frank R. Mosher. Issak Babel—later a noted Soviet author (and a victim of Stalin’s purges)—served as a supply officer with the Cossack cavalry in 1920 and kept a stream-of-consciousness journal of his experiences. In one entry he noted his encounter with the pilot he knew as Mosher. “A shot-down American pilot, oh how that smelled of Europe, like a coffee-house, civilization, power, old culture, I ponder and observe, I see it all, barefoot, but elegant, his neck like a pillar, dazzling white teeth, suit covered with oil and dirt. Asks me fearfully whether it is a crime to fight against Soviet Russia….” Instead of being shot, Cooper was taken to Moscow and thrown into prison. He became sick with typhus and spent a cold and hellish winter. While imprisoned, he also had a chance encounter with a fascinating woman he had first met at a Red Cross dance in Warsaw. Marguerite Harrison was a Baltimore socialite (her sister married Maryland’s governor) who took up journalism and then, when her paper refused to send her to Europe to cover World War I, volunteered her services to the United States as a spy. Like Cooper, she headed to Poland after the war, and then made her own way into Soviet Russia. When visiting prisons in Moscow, she received a smuggled note written by a prisoner who called himself Corporal Frank R. Mosher. “He wrote that he was in very bad physical condition and asked for food and clothing from the French Red Cross,” Harrison recalled. She provided what she could and received another note. “My name is not Mosher,” it read. “I am Merian C. Cooper of Jacksonville, Florida, and I know you well. Don’t you remember the time we danced together at a ball at the Hotel Bristol in Warsaw?” For a month Harrison smuggled supplies to Cooper until she was herself arrested. Fearing that he could be exposed at any time, Cooper decided to make his break from the prison camp to which he had transferred. On the night of April 12, 1921, Cooper and two Polish officers, Lieutenants Stanislaw Zalewski and Stanislaw Sokolowski, escaped and set off walking and running through the hours of frigid darkness. They had some 500 miles of territory to traverse before they would reach the Latvian border and safety, and they would have to pass
LEFT: L. TOM PERRY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO, UT 84602; RIGHT: RKO/PARAMOUNT PICTURES
BOTH: L. TOM PERRY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO, UT 84602
through a country where everyone they met would certainly eye them with suspicion. They slept the next day near a railway station. That night they followed the example of American hobos and hopped a freight train. They remained with the train until approaching dawn made it too dangerous. Once the stations became so few and far between that they risked being caught in the daylight hours aboard the trains, they began following the rails on foot, making their way through forests and swamps. They finally neared the Latvian border, the most perilous juncture of the entire journey. The three men found a professional smuggler who agreed to take them over the border in exchange for an overcoat and a pair of shoes. Sokolowski sacrificed his coat. Cooper gave up his shoes and tore off the tails of his shirt to cover his feet. At the last minute the smuggler threatened to turn the men over to the Bolsheviks. “Since we had absolutely nothing more with which we could part,” Cooper related, “and seeing the critical situation in which we found ourselves, Lieutenant Zalewski, who speaks perfect Russian, told the smuggler that he would kill him if he did not guide us safely to the Latvian border.” Perhaps Zalewski was bluffing, but the threat from three obviously desperate men persuaded the smuggler to keep his bargain. On April 23 the three escaped prisoners passed over the Latvian border to safety. Cooper managed to make it back to Warsaw in time for a ceremony in which members of the squadron received medals for their service to Poland. Cooper and Fauntleroy both received the Polish equivalent of the U.S. Medal of Honor, the Virtuti Militari. By then the fighting had ended with an armistice that went into effect at midnight on October 18, 1920; the Treaty of Riga officially ended the war the next March. Polish casualties were about a quarter million, with 48,000 dead, but
the Poles had stopped the enemy advance outside Warsaw and pushed the routed Bolsheviks back through Ukraine. “In objective terms, it is hard to recognize any victory,” said one historian about the conflict. “None of the contestants’ war aims had been achieved…. The result of the Polish-Soviet War was not compromise, but stalemate. There was no solution.” The Kosciuszko Squadron had performed admirably, however. Its pilots had flown more than 400 missions under extremely difficult conditions. Cooper’s days in Poland had repercussions on his life. For one thing, a liaison with a Polish woman had resulted in an illegitimate son. For another, in 1922 he reunited with Marguerite Harrison in New York City, where the two adventurers and ex-prisoners bemoaned the lack of excitement in the post-war world. They joined forces with a lanky Midwesterner named Ernest B. Schoedsack, who had photographed the war in Poland, and embarked on an expedition to film a documentary about Persian nomads in what is now Iran. They called the resulting movie Grass. Its success started Cooper and Schoedsack on the road that led to their co-direction of Cooper’s greatest creation, King Kong. When Cooper and Schoedsack filmed the sequence in which Curtiss F8C Helldivers shoot Kong off the Empire State Building, they decided they would appear onscreen as the lead airplane’s pilot and gunner. “Let’s kill the son of a bitch ourselves,” Cooper said. Some might call that typecasting.
Left: After the war, Cooper (third from right) visited a memorial to the American flyers at the Lwow Defenders Cemetery. Cedric Fauntleroy stands on the right. Above: Cooper (left) and co-director Ernest Schoedsack cast themselves as one of the aircrews who attacked King Kong on the Empire State Building in the classic 1933 film.
COOPER MADE IT BACK TO WARSAW IN TIME FOR A CEREMONY IN WHICH MEMBERS OF THE SQUADRON RECEIVED MEDALS FOR THEIR SERVICE TO POLAND.
Tom Huntington is the editor of Aviation History. For further reading he recommends Kosciuszko, We Are Here! American Pilots of the Kosciuszko Squadron in Defense of Poland, 1919-1921 by Janusz Cisek and Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper, Creator of King Kong by Mark Cotta Vaz. AUTUMN 2022 AUTUMN
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THE CATCH OF
CATCH-22 BEFORE HE COULD FILM JOSEPH HELLER’S NOVEL, DIRECTOR MIKE NICHOLS HAD TO ASSEMBLE HIS OWN B-25 SQUADRON
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North American B-25 Mitchells take to the air for a scene in the 1970 film Catch-22. Gathering the bombers and training their crews proved to be a major task. The production shot in Mexico, using a custom-built runway that was subject to dangerous crosswinds.
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be crazy,” the film’s Yossarian says in a conversation with the base’s doctor (Jack Gilford). “And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I’m not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying.” “You got it,” replies “Doc” Daneeka. “That’s Catch-22.” After its publication in 1961, Heller’s novel became a bestseller and its title entered the cultural lexicon, yet the book’s episodic nature made it appear inherently unfilmable. Heller tried and failed to turn his work into a screenplay. Nonetheless, Paramount Pictures approved the project, with Nichols directing and Buck Henry assigned to turn the sprawling novel into a script. Catch-22 would be Nichols’ third film, following Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? (1966) and The Graduate (1967). After putting together a workable screenplay, the next hurdle was finding a filming location. Nichols traveled to Tunisia and Italy, seeking
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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: 1970 PARAMOUNT ©1978 BOB WILLOUGHBY/MPTV IMAGES; PARAMOUNT PICTURES/RONALD GRANT ARCHIVE/ALAMY; SILVERSCREEN/ALAMY
Director Mike Nichols (foreground) assembled a top-notch cast that included Alan Arkin, Orson Welles, Art Garfunkel, Martin Balsam, Anthony Perkins, Bob Newhart, Jon Voight, Martin Sheen—and 18 B-25 Mitchells. In the end, much of the flying footage featuring the bombers never made it to the screen.
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or his third film, acclaimed director Mike Nichols decided to adapt Catch-22, Joseph Heller’s pitch-black satire of war, madness, the military and capitalism. The book focuses on American bomber crews at an Italian base during World War II, and Heller based it on his own experiences as a bombardier on North American B-25 Mitchells of the 488th Bombardment Squadron (Medium) in the Mediterranean. There was a catch, though: To create a realistic foundation for the dark comedy, Nichols needed to assemble a squadron of B-25s. This was in 1969, long before filmmakers could rely on computer-generated imagery (CGI) to create fleets of bombers with software. Instead, Nichols had to enlist his own air force. He ended up with 18 B-25s, the largest group of Mitchells flown since the war ended. Nichols did not set out to make a flag-waving film like the war movies produced during World War II or its immediate aftermath, when Americans felt unalloyed pride in the country and the war effort. That attitude began to shift during the turbulent 1960s as the Vietnam War led to a growing distrust of government. Pride in the American armed forces reached a low ebb at the time, an attitude reflected in films produced between 1965 and 1979. One example is Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970), a film set during the Korean War that was clearly commenting on the American experience in Vietnam. Catch-22 would be another film that looked at war and warmakers with a jaundiced eye. Both the film and the book tell the story of Captain John Yossarian (played by Alan Arkin), a B-25 bombardier flying out of a small Italian island in the Mediterranean. Yossarian is desperate to get out of the war and the only way to accomplish that is to convince his commander he is insane. And there lies Heller’s famous catch. “In order to be grounded, I have to
suitable stand-ins for the novel’s island of Pianosa. But the landscape had changed too much in the quarter-century since the war ended. Instead, Nichols found what he needed much closer to home—near the small village of Guaymas in Mexico on the Gulf of California. There the production company spent $1 million to build a World War II airbase, complete with control tower, ready rooms, barracks and a 6,000foot runway. The entire production was budgeted at $17 million, some of which went to gathering and outfitting the B-25s.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: 1970 PARAMOUNT ©1978 BOB WILLOUGHBY/MPTV IMAGES; PARAMOUNT PICTURES/RONALD GRANT ARCHIVE/ALAMY; SILVERSCREEN/ALAMY
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amed after airpower advocate Brig. Gen. William “Billy” Mitchell, the North American B-25 was a twin-engine medium bomber that performed sterling service in every theater in which it served, even flying off the aircraft carrier USS Hornet to bomb Tokyo on the raid led by Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle in April 1942. Mitchells were the scourge of German forces in Tunisia, Crete, Yugoslavia, Sicily, Italy and southern France, and they provided valuable service in the Pacific, China and the Russian front. By the end of the war, American factories had turned out nearly 10,000 B-25s. The number of surviving B-25s had dwindled by the end of the 1960s, so assembling 18 flyable Mitchells was no mean feat for Tallmantz Aviation, the company charged with creating and operating Nichols’ air force. The company, based in Santa Ana, California, had been founded in 1961 by stunt pilots Paul Mantz and Frank Tallman. Mantz was killed in 1965 in a crash while filming The Flight of the Phoenix. (Tallman would have flown the stunt, but he had broken
his leg in a non-aviation accident and would have the limb amputated). Tallman and Tallmantz Aviation carried on without Mantz. Tallmantz had a head start finding the bombers, since it already owned four. To draft the other 14, Tallman and others scoured collections in half a dozen states and found suitable B-25H and J models that they could use. Tallman sought airplanes that he could buy cheaply, but he insisted on craft that still had good wiring and hydraulics, even if they lacked engines. Engines he could replace easily. “There’s too much money involved rewiring airplanes with the complexities of this type,” he told an interviewer. He also made a point to climb up on top of an airplane to check for corrosion in the wing roots. “If you find any corrosion up there, forget it,” he said. Only one of the B-25s he found had served in combat overseas. That exception was the B-25J with tail number 44-28925, which rolled out of the North American plant in Kansas City in September 1944 and flew in Italy with the 310th Bombardment Group of the Twelfth Air Force. After returning to the United States following the war, the veteran aircraft served in various roles, including as an air tanker. When Tallmantz purchased it for $1,500, the engines had been removed. Returned to flying status, it received the name Tokyo Express for the film. The Mitchell with tail number 44-29366 was more typical of the airplanes Tallmantz found. It rolled off the assembly line around September
Top left: Renowned stunt pilot Frank Tallman and his company, Tallmantz Aviation, took on the task of assembling a fleet of B-25s and the crews to fly them. Top right: Alan Arkin as bombardier Yossarian sits in the nose of a B-25J, with Art Garfunkel as Nately in the copilot seat. Above: Although not a critical or commercial success, Catch-22 has seen its reputation grow in the more than 50 years since its release.
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IT’S SAFE TO ASSUME THAT MANY OF THESE AIRPLANES WOULD NOT HAVE SURVIVED MUCH LONGER HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR CATCH-22.
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1944 and was assigned to the Army Air Forces Training Command in Georgia and Texas and was based at Barksdale Air Base in Louisiana at the end of the war. There it spent the next several years in pilot, navigator and bombardier training before ending up in the boneyard at Arizona’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in 1958. That’s where Sonora Flying Service in California found the airplane and purchased it for $2,000. It had been converted into a fire bomber before Tallmantz bought it. The other Mitchells had similar backgrounds, flying domestically as trainers for the Army before being converted into cropdusters, air tankers or other uses or sent to the boneyard. It’s safe to assume that many of these airplanes would not have survived much longer had it not been for Catch-22. Tallman was already using B-25 43-4643 as a camera plane. After being completed at the North American plant in Inglewood, California, the airplane was assigned to the USAAF Domestic Unit in March 1944 as a TB-25H trainer. Declared surplus in October 1945, it was sent to Stillwater, Oklahoma, for disposal. Tallman discovered the airplane there and converted it into a specialized camera plane that he used to shoot footage for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), the Academy Award-winning film about war veterans starring Fredric March. By 1952, Tallman had fitted the B-25, now bearing its civil registration of N1203, with a large glass nose to accommodate the bulky three-lens camera for the new widescreen Cinerama process. He used the Mitchell to shoot nearly all the aerial footage for the ground-breaking 1952 film This is Cinerama, including a dangerous flight through a volcano’s smoking crater. Fitted with additional cameras in the waist, tail, top and belly, the plane also shot footage for Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), The Wings of Eagles (1957) and
THIS SPREAD: 1970 PARAMOUNT ©1978 BOB WILLOUGHBY/MPTV IMAGES
Above: Like war, movie productions have long stretches of tedium between bursts of action. Here members of a B-25 crew (and the airplane’s nose art) relax in the Mexican sun. Opposite: The Gulf of California stood in for the Mediterranean Sea in the film. Catch-22 author Joseph Heller had served as a bombardier with B-25s of the 488th Bombardment Squadron (Medium) in Italy during World War II.
Fate is the Hunter (1964). It also saw service for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Von Ryan’s Express (1965), The Thousand Plane Raid (1969) and 1965’s Flight of the Phoenix, the production in which Mantz was killed. Once he had assembled his fleet, Tallman needed to convert the old bombers to wartime configurations. That meant adding working bomb bay doors, machine guns and turrets. He found a company selling surplus ordnance in New York where he could get “turrets, guns, bomb racks, shackles, all kinds of stuff,” and he tracked down as many spare parts as possible. Initially the filmmakers installed cameras in turrets behind the wings of several Mitchells so they would represent early war models, but problems with buffeting required their removal. The production needed experienced crews to man the vintage aircraft it had found, so Tallmantz’s director of operations, Frank Pine, and its chief pilot, Jim Appleby, set out to recruit pilots. One qualification: military flying experience. Appleby, who died in September 2010 after working on such films as The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) and The Stunt Man (1980), was a stickler for safety and never permitted any pilot to divert from his iron-clad rules. “We knew it was going to be a military type operation with a lot of tight, possibly dangerous formation flying, so we wanted people who knew all the signals, that we could rely on in a pinch, and who we didn’t have to train from the ground up,” he said. “Quite a few of the guys had flown B-25s either during World War Two or Korea.” In the end, Tallmantz recruited an additional 32 pilots. “We turned out a damned fine grade of pilot,” said Tallman, who credited Appleby with “setting up a real Air Force training program” that included checkouts, emergency procedures and handbooks on the B-25. Zona Appleby recalled the training her late husband gave his pilots. “Jim spent a week training the pilots in formation flying and takeoff, airto-air filming and other skills needed to make the combat sequences authentic,” she said. “Jim insisted on safety above all.” By the time filming started on January 11, 1969, all the pilots had received their ratings for the twin-engine Mitchells. In small groups they flew to the recently constructed air base, where each bomber was repainted with Twelfth Tactical Air Force and fictional bomb squadron insignia, right down to risqué nose art. The squadron’s patch of a nude woman riding a bomb was taken from the patch of Joseph Heller’s own 488th Bomb Squadron.
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THERE WAS ONE AIRPLANERELATED TRAGEDY DURING THE SHOOT, BUT IT DIDN’T INVOLVE THE AIRCREW.
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he first scene filmed with the B-25s proved to be a hair-raising test for the pilots. The sequence had all the available bombers take off in formation as the cameras rolled. And rolled again (Tallman recollected that it took 13 different takes to get all the necessary footage). “That was kind of dangerous,” Zona said. “They just took off one after another and had to get into the air. Jim was somewhere in the middle of the pack. Each plane had to get off the ground or crash in the bay lest the following B-25 crash into it from behind. It was that close.” Tallman said it was “one of the most dangerous stunts I’ve even been asked to do.” Jim Appleby recalled that he told his pilots that they had to either take off or get out of the way quickly. “I was positioned about halfway with Frank Pine behind me, with cameras rolling. We all went to maximum continuous takeoff power and started rolling down the runway at two second intervals. It took every bit of strength of both pilots to keep the airplane under control and get it in the air, but we all managed to get through it and live to tell about it.”
TOP: RONALD GRANT/PARAMOUNT PICTURES/ALAMY; BELOW: SAN DIEGO AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM
Above: Paramount Pictures paid to build a runway and realistic bomber base for the production. Frank Tallman said that the group takeoff in the film was one of the most dangerous stunts he ever flew. Right: One B-25 was deliberately sacrificed for the movie and its wreckage buried on site.
The powerful blast from the Curtiss-Wright R-2600 Twin Cyclone 14-cylinder radial engines blasted dust and gravel for hundreds of yards. “They told us later that the prop wash was so strong that it blew a military weapons carrier with an 800mm lens mounted on it end over end, destroying both the vehicle and the camera,” Appleby recalled. There were other risky maneuvers for the pilots to perform for Nichols’ cameras, including a scene with a B-25 bombing its own airfield at night as Yossarian runs along the runway and explosions light up the darkness. “It was a fantastic shot and Alan Arkin is loaded with guts,” Tallman said. “I could see his face as I flashed by at night.” One of the Mitchells, originally assigned tail number 45-8843, was intended only for a crash scene. Found in Mexico and repaired to just-flyable status, it was flown to the Guaymas location with its landing gear down for safety reasons. There it was used for a scene in which Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight) and base commander Colonel Cathcart (Martin Balsam) are blithely conversing about eggs when the B-25 comes into the frame from the right, skidding and screeching across the shot. Minderbinder and Cathcart take no notice as the sound of a crash erupts offscreen. As they get into a jeep and drive away, the bomber’s burning wreckage appears behind them and an ambulance comes screaming down the runway. After the shoot, a bulldozer pushed the charred remains of the airplane into a large pit, where they remain to this day. Aerial and ground filming lasted until April. Despite 1,500 hours of flight time accrued by the Mitchells, they appear on film for little more than 10 minutes. Tallman later lamented that nearly 15 hours “of the most beautiful aerial footage ever taken of the B-25” just ended up in storage in Paramount’s film library. There was one airplane-related tragedy during the shoot, but it didn’t involve the aircrew. Second unit director John Jordan—who had lost a leg to a helicopter rotor while working on the James Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967)—was filming from the tail-gunner position of Tallman’s camera airplane when he leaned out to take some still photos. He was not wearing a safety harness, and he slipped and fell to his death. Twelve weeks of process and studio filming wrapped in August. Despite the superb work of Tallman, Appleby and Pine with the B-25s, the film proved to be a financial disappointment and
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left audiences indifferent to its sometimes surrealistic and bleak humor. (The New York Times’ Vincent Canby, however, called it “the best American film I’ve seen this year” and Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called “an admirable piece of filmmaking.”) Catch-22 was released the same year as M*A*S*H but did not experience the same success. M*A*S*H spawned a long-running television series while an attempt at a Catch-22 series, starring Richard Dreyfuss as Yossarian, never made it past the pilot stage in 1973. However, a new adaptation of Catch-22 appeared in 2019 as a six-part miniseries. It used two actual B-25s— number 44-30423 from the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino, California, and 45-8898 from the Tri-State Warbird Museum in Batavia, Ohio—but it could also put more bombers on screen with the CGI imagery that Nichols lacked.
Despite the initial reaction, Nichols’ film has gained in stature over the years. And the silver lining for warbird aficionados is that Catch-22 saved many B-25 Mitchells from the scrapyard or decay. After filming, the Mitchells returned to the Tallmantz facility in Orange County while Paramount considered further options for their use. None came to fruition and the fleet was sold off between 1971 and 1975. Many of the Mitchells are now in museums (see sidebar, below). The Nichols film offers a rare glimpse at what B-25 operations looked and sounded like in World War II, something CGI can’t really capture. Major Truman Coble, who flew more than 50 missions against Italian and German targets with the 310th Bomb Group out of Corsica, was one veteran who enjoyed the realism of the airplane sequences. “They did a good job of showing how miserable and hot it was there,” he said. “I got nostalgic seeing those Mitchells flying.” Frequent contributor Mark Carlson wrote Flying on Film: A Century of Aviation in the Movies, 1912-2012 and The Marines’ Lost Squadron: The Odyssey of VMF-422. Further reading: Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris and When Hollywood Ruled the Skies by Bruce Orriss.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Eighteen B-25s flew for Catch-22. One was deliberately destroyed during the production. Here’s what happened to all these supporting actors. 43-4432. This B-25H appeared in the film as Berlin Express and now, fully restored, flies for the Experimental Aircraft Association.
TOP: RONALD GRANT/PARAMOUNT PICTURES/ALAMY; BELOW: SAN DIEGO AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM
43-4643. Used as a camera plane by Tallmantz Aviation, this B-25H fell on hard times and crashed in Colombia in 1978 while allegedly being used to smuggle drugs.
43-28204. A B-25J that appeared on film as Booby Trap; now named Pacific Princess, was last reported owned by B-25 Mitchell, LLC, in Missoula, Montana. 44-30077. The B-25J was originally known as Denver Dumper before Tallmantz renamed it Mouthy Mitchell. It is currently owned by Tom Reilly Vintage Aircraft of Douglas, Georgia. 44-29887. Luscious Lulu in the film, this B-25J is now in storage at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum as Carol Jean. 44-29366. A B-25J named aBomina-
ble Snowman for the movie. Now on display at the Royal Air Force Museum in London.
44-31032. The B-25J is now on static
display at the March Field Air Museum in Riverside, California, as Problem Child.
44-29939. The B-25J now named Briefing Time remains in flyable condition and is in the collections of the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Grissom Air Museum in Peru, Indiana.
44-30823. A B-25J used as a camera
platform; flown as Pacific Prowler by Vintage Flying Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, until 2013 and then sold to the Mid America Flight Museum in Mt. Pleasant, Texas, where it flies as God and Country.
44-30748. A B-25J, it was restored to flying status as Heavenly Body and is operated by the Erikson Aircraft Collection of Madras, Oregon. 44-30801. A B-25J called Vestal Virgin in the film; now flown by the American Aeronautical Foundation of Camarillo, California, as Executive Sweet.
44-30493. Named Dumbo in the
44-30925. This B-25J appeared as Laden Maiden; it is being restored in Belgium by the Belgian Aviation Preservation Association.
44-30649. This B-25J is now on
45-8843. A B-25J restored to justable-to-fly status for the movie and then burned for the cameras. Its wreckage was then buried.
movie, this B-25J is now on static display at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana. static display at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, as Poopsie.
44-86701. A B-25J, Annzas also flew for the film Hanover Street; it was destroyed when its hangar burned in 1990. 44-86843. Built as a B-25J, Passionate Paulette is on static display at the
44-28925. The only combat veteran in the movie, the B-25J appeared as Tokyo Express. Now named How ’Boot That!?, it is on display at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum in Addison, Texas. AUTUMN 2022
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ANOTHER DAY THE MUSIC DIED WHAT THE FATAL AIRPLANE CRASH OF COUNTRY STAR PATSY CLINE SAYS ABOUT FLYING THEN AND NOW
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Right: Singer Patsy Cline died in the crash of a Piper Comanche on her way home from an appearance in Kansas on March 3, 1963. Below: Fans and floral tributes were in abundance at a memorial service in Nashville.
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Kennedy, Cliff Robertson and Clint Eastwood, took it up on their own. Flying was very different then. Global positioning system (GPS) navigation wouldn’t be available for another 30 years. The Victor airway system—a network of pathways plotted for low-level flights—had been commissioned only 11 years earlier, in 1952. Most private pilots were strictly VFR (visual flight rules), navigating by dead-reckoning or by a combination of pilotage and radio-based VOR (VHF Omnidirectional Range). Aeronautical charts still marked commercial AM radio stations that pilots could tune in, which allowed them both to navigate and keep up with ball games. Transponders were not yet standard equipment and few aircraft had distance measuring equipment (DME). Most weather briefings were conducted pre-flight in person at one of hundreds of on-field Flight Service Stations located around the country. The system of VFR flight following, when pilots can request departure or approach information from air traffic control (ATC), was not yet established, and many pilots avoided interaction with ATC unless absolutely necessary, filing a flight plan only as a basic precaution.
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amsey Dorris Hughes, also known as Randy, was a Nashville musician and Patsy Cline’s close friend and manager. A relatively new pilot, he received his license in
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here’s a small parking area off a narrow road that winds through the Tennessee hill country about 75 miles west of Nashville. From it, a path leads down a rather steep hill into a wooded ravine. At the end of the path there’s a large boulder etched with the names of Patsy Cline, Hankshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas and Randy Hughes. At this place, on March 5, 1963, all four died in the crash of N7000P, a 1960 Comanche 250. It’s probably the most famous crash involving a Comanche, the same type of plane that I fly. Cline’s death at the age of 30 shocked the music world. She seemed destined for bigger things. Born in 1932 as Virginia Patterson Hensley in Winchester, Virginia, Cline had become a huge star, with a string of hits that included “Crazy,” “I Fall to Pieces” and “She’s Got You.” She died just four years after the crash of a Beechcraft Bonanza killed rockers Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and Jiles Perry Richardson Jr. (better known as the Big Bopper), which fueled much speculation. Why would Cline fly in such a small aircraft? Was the pilot qualified? Was the airplane airworthy? How safe are such planes? In retrospect, given that most celebrities travel today in private Gulfstreams or chartered jets, the idea of a major star traveling in a singleengine plane seems almost ludicrous. But the crash says as much about the times in which it occurred as the circumstances surrounding it. The late 1950s and early ’60s were a time of great optimism for general aviation. Beechcraft, Cessna, Piper and a host of other companies vied for what seemed a limitless market. Manufacturers delivered a total of 6,750 new general aviation aircraft in 1962. Compare that to a total of 2,630 aircraft in 2021. (That latter number includes business jets and turboprops; only 1,393 of the total were piston-powered airplanes.) Among those who caught the flying bug in that earlier era were a number of celebrities. A few, such as Jimmy Stewart, Robert Taylor and Gene Autry, honed their flying skills in World War II. Many others, stars, including George
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The Comanche on the fatal flight was a single-engine, all-metal airplane like this one. Inset: Ramsey Hughes was Cline’s manager and her pilot.
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May 1962. Soon after, he bought N7000P, a green-and-yellow 1960 Comanche 250 (the same year and model as the airplane my father bought new in 1960). It was a distinctive craft, with a garish paint scheme that featured wide stripes along the fuselage and an odd-looking widget shape decorating the tail. (My dad’s airplane was blue and yellow.) Built at a time when airplane manufacturers were promising “an airplane in every garage,” Piper’s first all-metal single-engine craft seemed designed to put automobile drivers at ease with the idea of flying. The Comanche 250 had a 250hp O-540-A Lycoming engine and retractable landing gear. The interior had the look and feel of a sedan; the airspeed indicator was marked in miles per hour rather than the unfamiliar knots; and the owner’s manual was ridiculously thin, excluding topics that might turn away prospective pilots—like emergency procedures. The standard package for the 1960 Comanche did not come with VOR receiver, but Hughes’ 7000P had an upgraded package. That included the Narco Omnigator Mk. II Nav-Com system, a voice communication and navigation system that was reliable but bulky and awkward to use by today’s standards. Hughes’ primary instructor was a man named George Mummert, a well-known and respected instructor in Nashville. Mummert also gave lessons to singer Jim Reeves, who ironically died in a plane crash a year after Cline did. Though the two crashes led to some speculation about the quality of Mummert’s instruction, he was considered a stern taskmaster and stickler for doing things right. Hughes was an active pilot. Between March
and May 1963, according to the Civil Aeronautics Board report, he logged a total of 117 hours in the Comanche. Some of those flights were for business, flying Cline to shows in San Antonio or Iowa. On other occasions, he’d fly his client to Pensacola for a day at the beach and some much-needed R&R. Cline did not seem to be a nervous passenger. If anything, having been in a serious automobile accident in 1961, she seemed more at ease in the air than on the highway. Of Hughes’ total flying hours at the time of the crash, he had logged only three at night, presumably all during his primary training. Also, he did not have an instrument rating, nor had he logged any hours in pursuit of it. Not long after her hit “I Fall to Pieces” made the pop and country charts, Cline agreed to a hastily arranged appearance in Kansas City, Kansas, on March 3, 1963. With back-to-back shows in New Orleans and Birmingham, Alabama, the days before the Kansas City gig, the only way she could make the show in time was via the Comanche, according to the Ellis Nassour’s 1993 biography, Honky Tonk Angel. The weather was cold and blustery, typical for that region at that time of year. Upon arriving at the former Kansas City Fairfax Municipal Airport, Cline complained about how cold it was sitting in the rear seat of the airplane (a situation with which a lot of Comanche passengers can sympathize).
Top left: Hughes’ Comanche included the Narco Omnigator Mk. II voice communication and navigation system, an upgrade from the standard installation. Top right: Piper promoted the Comanche as a comfortable airplane that would appeal to the business flyer. Above: Pages from the airplane’s manual provided basic technical information. Hughes’ Comanche was a Model 250, which came equipped with a 250-hp Lycoming 0-540-A engine.
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his decision. The four checked out of the motel at 12:30 p.m. and headed to the field. Airport owner Eddie Fisher later recalled that Hughes seemed “level-headed” despite Fisher’s warnings about the weather. Hughes assured Fisher, saying, “If I can’t handle it I’ll come back and fly west or go someplace else.” The four climbed aboard Hughes’ Comanche, with Cline sitting in the rear seat behind the pilot, and took off at about 1:30 p.m. Instead of turning on course to the east, however, Hughes headed due south, most likely trying to work his way around the weather and perhaps following the local highways (Interstate 49 had yet to be built). He flew across Missouri and into Arkansas and after about an hour’s flight he landed in Rogers, where he reportedly checked the weather again and took on fuel. Little Rock, about 130 nautical miles to the southeast, was reporting rain and sleet.
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The Comanche hit the ground at high speed, leaving a crash scene strewn with debris. It didn’t take long before sensation seekers arrived to gather grisly souvenirs from the crash. Inset: Cline was a big star and her death shocked the music community.
After the shows, Cline was eager to get home to Nashville, Tennessee. She had come down with the flu, and her husband was taking care of their young children, one of whom was sick. The next morning, however, the airport, which lay in a bend of the Missouri River, was fogged in. Another musician couple offered Cline a ride home in their station wagon, but she turned them down, perhaps figuring the weather would soon lift. It didn’t, forcing Cline, Hughes and musicians Harold Franklin “Hankshaw” Hawkins and Lloyd Estel “Cowboy” Copas (Hughes’ father-in-law) to spend an extra night in a nearby motel. The next morning the weather was only marginally better. A front had moved through, creating a line of showers and storms along the flight path home. The straight-line distance between Kansas City and Nashville is 417 nautical miles, or about a three-hour flight—easily within the range of the Comanche with its 60-gallon tanks. But low clouds grounded all planes. Hughes shuttled between the motel and the airport for updates on the weather. By noon, the ceiling had lifted a bit and the temperature rose to 43 degrees. Hughes made
©GERALD HOLLY /THE TENNESSEAN VIA IMAGN CONTENT SERVICES, LLC
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ughes filed no flight plan, so his exact route cannot be known. Given the weather, he likely had to dodge clouds and precipitation flying under the overcast. He next landed in Dyersburg, Tennessee, about 230 nautical miles to the east, at around 5:15 p.m., a flight of a little over 90 minutes. While Cline and the other passengers ducked into an on-field restaurant, Hughes checked in on the Flight Service Station. A briefer told Hughes that continued flight was not recommended. Visibility was down to five miles in a mixture of rain and light snow, with winds of 20 knots, gusting to 31 knots with heavy turbulence. Conditions were marginal at best, and the low visibility and overcast would obscure obstructions such as hills and radio towers. The weather in Nashville, an hour away, was below VFR minimums and was likely to deteriorate further before any improvement. Hughes asked what time the sun set (about 5:56 p.m.) and was told that the overcast would make it darker much sooner. Hughes was not night current and thus not legal to carry passengers after dark. Hughes then left the station and went to the restaurant to tell the others. There was a brief debate, but by all accounts it was obvious that Cline really wanted to get home. Hughes called his wife in Nashville to ask her about the weather conditions there. She told him that it had been raining and stormy all day, but the rain had stopped, “and it looked as if it were trying to clear up,” she later recalled. Hughes may have misunderstood this to mean the weather had
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cleared up or interpreted it to mean the weather was clearing up. Whatever the case, he told the others to get ready to leave, then went to pay for the 27 gallons of fuel he took on. Airport manager William Braese told investigators he urged Hughes to stay over, that the weather for a non-instrument rated pilot was not good, especially for a flight at night, over a rural area with no lights. He even offered to loan Hughes his car to drive to Nashville and said he would fly the airplane back the next day. But Hughes remained undeterred. Crash investigators often refer to “tunnel vision,” a mental state in which a pilot becomes so fixated on a goal that he or she blocks out all other information. Hughes, facing the pressure to get his prized client home after all the delays getting out of Kansas City, and after the stress of scud-running his way across the south-central U.S. that afternoon, might have been suffering from such a state. When interviewed by the Civil Aeronautics Board, Braese said everyone appeared exhausted, including Hughes. Just before departure, Hughes asked for another weather observation. He then took off into the dusk at 6:07 p.m. About 20 minutes later, according to the investigation report, a witness near Camden, Tennessee, heard a low-flying aircraft. He observed the airplane as it descended out of the low overcast at an estimated 45-degree nose-down angle. He then heard a dull crash. The debris was strewn across a path 166 feet long and 130 feet wide. The engine was buried in a four-foot crater. The violence of the impact left nothing intact. Plane, contents and occupants were scattered in pieces. News of the crash quickly spread. After the bodies were removed, looters descended onto the scene, taking away clothing, jewelry, pieces of musical instruments and parts of the Comanche. On YouTube you can find a video of a reporter interviewing a local man who recalls the crash and then proudly displays one of the plane’s control yokes. Investigators found nothing to indicate anything was wrong with the airplane. The engine was developing normal power at the time of the crash. The board concluded that the “non-instrument pilot attempted visual flight in adverse conditions, resulting in loss of control” and blamed the “judgment of the pilot in initiating flight in the existing conditions.” On one level, the circumstances of this crash are an old story, one that combines poor weather, pressure to get home and pilot hubris. Time has shown that there’s really nothing to prevent people from going up in small aircraft and killing
themselves. Like Hughes, my father never got his instrument rating, but my father was cautious to a fault. I remember being stuck for days waiting out the weather—in Douglas, Arizona, in Hermosillo, Mexico, in St. Louis and in San Diego. There were times we eventually boarded an airliner to get where we wanted to go, and my father would ferry the plane home another time. One truism about flying small aircraft that hasn’t changed over time is that if you absolutely must be somewhere, use the airlines. But things have gotten better since then. Technologies such as GPS, onboard weather reporting and cheaper and more reliable autopilots have improved pilots’ situational awareness and reduced their workload. That, combined with better training and procedures—including the requirement of transponders in controlled airspace and the availability of ATC flight following—along with an industry-wide emphasis on safety (partly the result of the liability crisis of the early 1990s) have all made flying safer. The numbers bear this out. In 1963, the accident rate per 100,000 flying hours was 31. By 2009, that number had dropped to 7.2. That isn’t to say Randy Hughes would not have crashed had he had access to all these tools—only that he would have had a better chance not to. In that case, Patsy Cline might have become an even bigger star.
You can find a memorial to Cline and the other victims of the crash at the spot where the airplane went down, about 75 miles west of Nashville.
THE BOARD CONCLUDED THAT THE “PILOT ATTEMPTED VISUAL FLIGHT IN ADVERSE CONDITIONS, RESULTING IN LOSS OF CONTROL.”
Tom LeCompte is a freelance writer, airplane owner and longtime pilot based south of Boston. When not writing or researching stories, he’s airborne somewhere. For further reading he recommends Honky Tonk Angel: The Intimate Story of Patsy Cline by Ellis Nassour. AUTUMN 2022
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THE GREAT STEWARDESS REBELLION
How Women Launched a Workplace Revolution at 30,000 Feet
by Nell McShane Wulfhart, Doubleday, 2022, $30
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In 1972 American Airlines made its flight attendants wear sailor suits. Tommie Hutto-Blake (left), one of the flight attendants profiled in The Great Stewardess Rebellion, was among the women who endured the indignity.
the fledgling Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for legal action under Title VII of 1964’s Civil Rights Act, although the EEOC tended to prioritize race rather than sex discrimination. Legal cases—including those of men, who had been mostly shut out of the flight attendant profession—resonated beyond the airline industry and established important precedents for equity in the workplace. Wulfhart follows a few key players in this fight. Among them are feisty flight attendant Patt Gibbs, who later became a pilot and union president; diplomatic flight attendant Tommie Hutto-Blake, who also served as a union president; flight attendant Brian Hagerty, who faced homophobia; and flight attendant Cheryl Stewart, who encountered strange questions such as “How does it feel to be colored?” Their inspiring tales of grit and guts illuminate a dark space in aviation. —Elizabeth Foxwell
COURTESY TOMMIE HUTTO-BLAKE
Girdle checks. Public weighins. Automatic termination at age 32. Such were the conditions experienced by many female flight attendants in the notso-friendly skies of the 1960s and 1970s, as journalist Nell McShane Wulfhart makes clear in this compelling account. Far from living the chic image of international jet-setters, American flight attendants—numbering more than 20,000 by 1967—worked punishing schedules, earned wages often lower than those of cleaning crews, were portrayed as sex objects rather than crucial safety professionals, and lost their jobs if they gained weight, became pregnant or married. Wulfhart illustrates her points with some contemporary advertisements in the book, including Braniff International’s 1965 “Air Strip” campaign, which had flight attendants remove articles of clothing throughout each flight. Thwarted in their efforts for more just treatment from their union and airline management, flight attendants enlisted prominent feminists such as Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan for support, undertook efforts at organization and publicity and turned to
REVIEWS
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AN INTERVIEW WITH NELL MCSHANE WULFHART In an excerpt from a talk with Aviation History, the author of The Great Stewardess Rebellion: How Women Launched a Workplace Revolution at 30,000 Feet explains what it was like to be a stewardess for an American airline in the 1960s. “To get the job, you had to meet a very long list of criteria. You had to have very straight teeth, for example. You couldn’t wear glasses. You had to be a certain height, and you had to be a certain weight. The airlines all had extremely strict weight restrictions that were determined according to height. So all the women on the plane were very slim (and at least at the beginning of the ’60s, it was a given that you had to be white). You had to maintain that weight because any manager or pilot could pull you onto a scale at any point and if you were a few pounds over your weight, you could be taken off the flight. And then there was the limit of your tenure, because if you got married, you were fired, if you got pregnant, you were fired. And if you managed to avoid both of those things, when you turned 32 you would be fired.” This transcript has been edited for publication. To see the entire interview online, go to www.historynet.com/wulfhart-interview.
COURTESY TOMMIE HUTTO-BLAKE
WHEN THE SHOOTING STOPPED August 1945
Many (if not most) Americans believe the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in August 1945 quickly ended the fighting in World War II’s Asia-Pacific theater. That perception comes in for considerable revision in this fascinating new book by renowned military historian Barrett Tillman. In his description of the war’s closing weeks Tillman convincingly argues that the last vestiges of Japanese fanaticism did not succumb right away, nor because of a single stressor. Even after the nuclear detonations, combat raged around the Japanese home islands and in parts of the shrinking Japanese Empire. Nearly concurrent with the dropping of the Nagasaki bomb, the Soviet Union declared war against Japan and attacked its forces in Manchuria, fur-
ther pressuring the nation’s leaders to accept defeat. In his vivid descriptions of the final battles, Tillman puts readers alongside advancing tank columns, in kamikaze cockpits and on the bridges of warships. The book deftly shifts between accounts of frontline action and war room decision-making, providing insights into the stubborn resistance by some Japanese dead-enders to Emperor Hirohito’s belated peace overtures. Once the surrender was announced, an emotional outpouring swept the globe. When the Shooting Stopped captures the signing of the treaty on the starboard veranda deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, in poignant detail, including the sense of pride at having avenged the aggressor’s brutality and having persevered to achieve victory over tyranny. This is vital history, brilliantly told. —Philip Handleman
WHEN THE SHOOTING STOPPED August 1945
by Barrett Tillman, Osprey Publishing, 2022, $35
‘SAILOR’ MALAN Freedom Fighter: The Inspirational Story of a Spitfire Ace
“Sailor” Malan was arguably the most successful Allied fighter pilot of the Battle of Britain. Fighter pilots still study his “Ten Rules of Air Fighting.” However, it was Malan’s career after World War II that sets him apart. Born in South Africa to an English mother and Afrikaner father, Adolph Gysbert Malan became a merchant marine officer who saw what was happening in Germany during the early 1930s. Convinced that there would be another war with Germany and that it would be fought in the air, he left the sea in 1935 and joined the Royal Air Force, where he acquired the nickname “Sailor.” He first saw action over Dunkirk as commander of a Spitfire squadron and by the end of the Battle of Britain had become a leading RAF ace and an inspirational leader. But Malan’s story became truly inspirational after the war ended. Outraged by the rise of apartheid, Malan not only spoke out against it, but he also organized and led a movement of White South Africans in opposition to the apartheid government. The government resented Malan so much it refused him a military funeral when he died in 1963 and prohibited South African military personnel from attending the service in uniform. Although lionized as a national hero in the United Kingdom, to this day Malan’s name remains virtually unknown in his own country. More than the mere biography of a WWII fighter pilot, ‘Sailor’ Malan is an important story that badly needed to be told, especially in South Africa. —Robert Guttman
‘SAILOR’ MALAN Freedom Fighter: The Inspirational Story of a Spitfire Ace by Dilip Sarkar, MBE, Pen & Sword Books, 2021, $42.95
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A-7 CORSAIR II UNITS 1975-91
A-7 CORSAIR II UNITS 1975-91
by Peter Mersky with Mike Crutch and Tony Holmes, Osprey Publishing, 2021, $24
B-36 ‘PEACEMAKER’ UNITS OF THE COLD WAR by Peter E. Davies, Osprey Publishing, 2022, $24
Entering service in December 1967, the Navy’s Vought A-7 Corsair II began its combat career over Vietnam, phasing out the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. The Corsair’s exploits up to 1973 were covered in Osprey’s US Navy A-7 Corsair II Units of the Vietnam War (2004). This effective attack airplane’s career finally gets its sequel in Peter Mersky’s new book, with additional material provided by U.S. Navy scholar Mike Crutch and Osprey editor Tony Holmes. Although U.S. naval operations ceased over South Vietnam when the Paris Peace Accords went into effect on January 27, 1973, Corsairs participated in attacks on enemy “lines of communications” in Laos that began the day after the ceasefire and continued there and in Cambodia. Corsairs also escorted helicopters as they retrieved mines laid off Haiphong and later covered the evacuation of American and select South Vietnamese personnel when North Vietnam finally overran the South in 1975. Still, the A-7 did not leave Southeast Asia with a whimper. On May 12, Khmer Rouge naval units seized the American container ship Mayaguez, provoking a final battle at Koh Tang, in which the Corsair played a major supporting role. The bulk of the book is devoted to the Corsair’s participation in a variety of post-Vietnam conflicts in the 1980s: Lebanon, Grenada, Libya and in the Persian Gulf. With the introduction of the more versatile F/A-18 fighter-bomber, A-7 units began a gradual retirement, leaving only VA-46 and VA-72 still flying Corsairs when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. This gave the aging but still reliable Corsair a last hurrah during Operation Desert Storm, which gets ample coverage here. A wealth of photos and color artwork by Jim Laurier adds appeal. —Jon Guttman
B-36 ‘PEACEMAKER’ UNITS OF THE COLD WAR
AMERICA’S FEW Marine Aces of the South Pacific
by Bill Yenne, Osprey Publishing, 2022, $35
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The largest bomber ever deployed by the U.S. Air Force, the Convair B-36 is somewhat obscure today, possibly because it was a weapon that was never used in war. Paradoxically, that is precisely why the B-36 deserves to be remembered—it provided such an effective deterrent to war that the occasion to use it never arose. Any discussion of B-36 units inevitably leads to the subject of the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command. Before the advent of jet-powered bombers or intercontinental ballistic missiles, the gargantuan B-36 was the original cornerstone upon which SAC rested. Yet, the aircraft
was originally conceived as an intercontinental bomber to be used if Britain fell and the U.S. had to go to war against Nazi Germany. Britain did not fall, however, and Convair’s priorities shifted to build the B-24 Liberator and B-32 Dominator strategic bombers. The first XB-36 did not fly until 1946, just as the new Cold War began against the Soviet Union and SAC was established as the Air Force’s intercontinental strategic deterrence force. The B-36 became its principal weapon delivery platform. B-36 ‘Peacemaker’ Units of the Cold War provides a comprehensive account of SAC’s use of its monstrous mainstay during the 1940s and 1950s. It also covers the development of other B-36 versions, including the XC-99 transport, the jet-powered YB-60 that competed unsuccessfully against Boeing’s B-52 Stratofortress and the bizarre NB-36H nuclear reactor test aircraft.—Robert Guttman
AMERICA’S FEW Marine Aces of the South Pacific
Author Bill Yenne identifies the U.S. Marine fighter pilots from World War II who battled the numerically superior Japanese in the skies over Guadalcanal as America’s “few.” Guadalcanal was the United States’ first offensive action of the war and stopped the Japanese advance in the Pacific. The Marine pilots there performed heroically in desperately grim conditions and Yenne compares them to another “few,” the Royal Air Force pilots who fought the Battle of Britain. The book focuses on the 24 Marines who became double aces by shooting down 10 or more enemy aircraft. These Marines made the most of the target-rich environment at Guadalcanal and the follow-up Solomons Campaign, topics that have not gained as much attention as the European Theater has. Yenne not only provides exciting accounts of air combat, but he also personalizes the fighter pilots with revealing descriptions of their pre-military backgrounds and their post-war lives. He spends a good amount of ink on the two best-known Marine aviators, Gregory “Pappy” Boyington and Joe Foss. Even though those are historically familiar faces, Yenne adds some new information about them. He is careful to give others their due, too, especially the young Robert Hanson. The third highest-scoring Marine ace with 25 victories, Hanson was killed as the Solomons campaign wound down. (Yenne does not mention that Hanson is immortalized in Marine aviation with the annual Robert M. Hanson Award for best fighter squadron.)
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NAVAL AVIATION IN THE THIRD DIMENSION! 70 Years of Naval Flight Test Aircraft in 3D! By Hank Caruso, 2022, $65 Hank Caruso, who has been drawing his whimsical Aerocatures for more than 40 years, has created a unique way of looking at the world of naval aviation with this book. Each volume comes with a 3D viewer designed by Brian May (an astrophysicist who also happens be the lead guitarist for the rock band Queen). It may require some practice, but once you get a hang of it, Caruso’s images pop off the pages. “This is not an information book,” says Caruso. “Rather, it is an experience book that gives viewers a chance to become involved with the photographic subjects rather than simply looking at them.” The book is available only from the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum in Maryland and proceeds support the museum. https://paxmuseumgiftshop.com Overall, America’s Few is a superb work, one that well documents the lives of iconic Marine pilots. Highly recommended. —Fred Allison
erwise-forgotten fighter’s star turn in Wings, the WWI film that won the first Academy Award for best picture in 1927. —Robert Guttman
THE THOMAS-MORSE MB-3 THE SECRET HORSEPOWER RACE America’s First Indigenous Fighter Western Front Fighter Engine The latest in a series published by Aeronaut Development Books on World War I-era aircraft, The Thomas-Morse MB-3 actually covers an aircraft that first flew in February 1919, just after the conflict’s end. It is of interest, however, because the MB-3 was the first indigenous fighter plane procured in quantity by the U.S. Army Air Service. In addition, the book is the first to detail the history of this historically significant aircraft. Administered (or, according to many accounts, “mismanaged”) by the Army Signal Corps until May 24, 1918, the Army Air Service entered WWI technologically far behind its European counterparts. It was not until the appearance of the MB-3 that the USAS finally had a home-grown fighter comparable to contemporary foreign types. Powered by a U.S.-built version of the 300-hp Hispano-Suiza engine, more powerful than the 220-hp model used in the Spad XIII that American pilots flew in France, the MB-3 exceeded the performance of the French fighter. However, in accordance with its particularly high-handed procurement policy, the Army Air Service purchased rights to the design from the company that created the airplane and then accepted bids from other companies to produce it. That’s why Boeing became the principal manufacturer of the Thomas-Morse. Jan Forsgren’s book recounts the early history of the Thomas-Morse company and the aircraft it produced before the MB-3, and it details the MB-3’s role in development of the post-WWI Army Air Service. The book also covers this oth-
Piston-engine fighters matured during the leadup to World War II and throughout the war, essentially reaching their performance zenith by war’s end. Much of the success is due to American, British, Italian and German propulsion breakthroughs. That story is told in great detail by Calum Douglas, a U.K.-based Formula One racing expert and aviation enthusiast with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. The competition to produce piston engines for their countries’ air forces involved brilliant engineers like Stanley Hooker of Rolls-Royce and Karl Kollmann of Daimler-Benz massaging the laws of physics in accelerated timelines with neither side wholly at the forefront. However, the author argues that it was the Allies who reached “a turning point” in the contest, in large part when they fitted the Rolls-Royce Merlin 61 to the latest models of the Spitfire and Mustang. By contrast, the German effort faced severe materiel shortages and a bureaucracy that, despite supporting jet-engine development, restricted freedom to pursue promising piston-engine lines of inquiry. The research here is staggering. Douglas spent five years scouring archives across Europe and the U.S. and uncovered a wealth of information. General readers may be intimidated, but those who like tech-heavy tomes will find it rewarding. In the end, the narrative reminds us that enormous engineering strides can be achieved, for better or worse, in times of “unrestrained drive.” —Philip Handleman
THE THOMASMORSE MB-3 America’s First Indigenous Fighter
by Jan Forsgren, Aeronaut Books, 2021, $24.99
THE SECRET HORSEPOWER RACE Western Front Fighter Engine Development
by Calum E. Douglas, Tempest Books, 2020, $65 AUTUMN 2022
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FLIGHT TEST
MYSTERY SHIP Can you identify this distinctive-looking utility airplane?
Spad SA.2
Sukhoi Su-24
Match the Soviet aircraft with its North Atlantic Treaty Organization designation. 1. Sukhoi Su-17 2. Tupolev Tu-28 3. Antonov An-2 4. Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19 5. Sukhoi Su-24 6. Yakovlev Yak-40 7. Kamov Ka-25 8. Ilyushin Il-18 9. Antonov An-26 10. Mil Mi-28
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A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J.
Hormone Coot Fitter Curl Farmer Fiddler Havoc Colt Fencer Codling
3. What was Germany’s fighter mainstay in late 1917 in spite of a weak wing structure? A. Albatros D.V B. Halberstadt D.V D. LFG Roland D.II C. Fokker D.IV 4. What was Germany’s third most produced fighter despite being overweight and underpowered? A. Siemens-Schuckert D.Ia B. Pfalz D.IIIa C. LFG Roland D.VI D. Fokker D.VI 5. Which airplane was an advanced monoplane fighter undone by poor quality control? A. Siemens-Schuckert D.IV B. Zeppelin-Lindau D.I C. Fokker E.V D. Pfalz D.XII ANSWERS: MYSTERY SHIP: PZL-104 Wilga. COLD WAR CODENAMES: 1.C, 2.F, 3.H, 4.E, 5.I, 6.J, 7.A, 8.B, 9.D, 10.G. FAULTY FIGHTERS: 1.B, 2.D, 3.A, 4.B, 5.C.
COLD WAR CODENAMES
2. Which oversized British fighter was turned into a single-seat bomber? A. Martinsyde Buzzard B. Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5 C. Sopwith Buffalo D. Martinsyde Elephant
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1. Which hazardous French two-seat fighter of 1915 evolved into a great single-seater in 1916? A. Morane-Saulnier L B. Spad SA.2 C. Caudron G.4 D. Voisin 5
TOP: JACEK SIMINSKI; LEFT: AVIATION-IMAGES.COM/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES
FAULTY FIGHTERS OF WWI
TODAY IN HISTORY FEBRUARY 14, 1929 KNOWN AS THE ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE, SEVEN MEN WERE SLAIN DURING A FAUX POLICE RAID LIKELY STAGED BY AL CAPONE’S CHICAGO OUTFIT. THE VICTIMS, MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES OF THE RIVAL “NORTH SIDE GANG,” WERE LINED UP AGAINST A BRICK WALL INSIDE A COMMERCIAL TRUCKING GARAGE AND SHOT. BRICKS FROM THE INFAMOUS WALL WERE LATER PURCHASED BY COLLECTORS. MANY ARE ON DISPLAY AT THE MOB MUSEUM IN LAS VEGAS. For more, visit HISTORYNET.COM/ TODAY-IN-HISTORY
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Fighter pilots of Marine squadron VMF-214 dash to their waiting Vought F4U-1 Corsairs in a simulated exercise on September 11, 1943, on Espiritu Santo Island at the start of the U.S. push west across the Solomon Islands. The squadron became known as “Boyington’s Bastards” after leader Major Gregory Boyington, a veteran of the American Volunteer Group in China—with a nod to the fact the renovated unit was replete with pilot “orphans” who had not been assigned previously to other squadrons. Later it became famous as the Black Sheep Squadron. Although the Black Sheep flew as a unit for only about three months, they received credit for 97 enemy aircraft destroyed, with 35 probables and 50 damaged, plus almost 30 ships sunk. Of the 28 pilots on their first tour, no fewer than nine became aces. Pictured from left are pilots Bill Case, Rollie
FINAL APPROACH
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Rinabarger, John Bergert and Henry Bourgeois. Five days after this picture was taken, the Black Sheep saw their first combat in one of the largest air raids of the Solomons campaign, joining Navy TBF Avengers and SBD Dauntlesses to attack the Japanese base on Ballale. In the decades since World War II, VMF-214 has moved on to A-4 Skyhawks, F-35B Lightnings and other aircraft. While the docile black sheep on the squadron’s original insignia (inset) has morphed into a fierce battering ram, the crest still bears the outline of a Corsair with its distinctive inverted gull wing. — Larry Porges
NATIONAL ARCHIVES; INSET: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES
SCRAMBLE!
AUTUMN 2022
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