Aviation History November 2020

ford tri-motor: america’s first successful airliner

thunder from above

republic’s p-47 ‘jug’ hit the germans hard in the air and on the ground sabre ace race: u.s. fighter pilots in korea took on migs and each other

ltv a-7e corsair II: vietnam-era jet recalled for duty in the gulf war NOVEMBER 2020

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NOvEMBER 2020

DEPARTMENTS 5 MAILBAG 6 BRIEFING 10 AVIATORS

Canada’s “Wop” May dodged bullets from the Red Baron before pioneering air rescue in the frigid north country.

By Bob Gordon

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An LTV A-7E Corsair II of U.S. Navy attack squadron VA-72 flies low over Saudi Arabia.

Swedish pilot Mikael Carlson has built a brand new Pfalz D.VIII airframe around an original World War I Siemens-Halske rotary engine.

By Jon Guttman

features 26 Thunderbolt!

A six-ton monster armed with up to eight .50-caliber machine guns and 2,500 pounds of bombs, Republic’s brawny P-47 got the job done and brought its pilots home safely.

By Stephan Wilkinson

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36 Sabre Ace Race

MiG-hunting North American F-86 pilots pushed themselves and their Sabrejets to the limit in a risky contest to become the top American ace in Korea.

By David Sears

44 The Corsair’s Last Hurrah

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Ready for retirement after 25 years of faithful service, the carrier-based LTV A-7E Corsair II instead re-upped to play a crucial role in the Gulf War.

By Marcelo Ribeiro

52 Tale of the Tin Goose

The 1920s all-metal Tri-Motor proved that Ford’s winning formula of producing dependable motor cars could successfully translate to sturdy airplanes.

By Richard Jensen

60 Freewheeling Freddie

16 EXTREMES

The Soviet Union’s Buran space shuttle flew just once before political and economic pitfalls permanently grounded it.

By Douglas G. Adler

18 STYLE

Showcasing products of interest to aviation enthusiasts and pilots.

24 LETTER FROM AVIATION HISTORY 66 REVIEWS 70 FLIGHT TEST 72 AERO ARTIFACT

Innovative British entrepreneur Freddie Laker took on the airline giants of the 1970s and developed a revolutionary new model for affordable air travel.

By Robert Guttman

ON THE COVER: Charlie Tilghman pilots the Lone Star Flight Museum’s Republic P-47D Thunderbolt near Galveston, Texas, in 2016. The museum’s Thunderbolt is painted in the markings of Tarheel Hal, a “Jug” assigned to the 366th Fighter Squadron, 358th Fighter Group, based in Toul, France, in 1944. Cover photo: Kedar Karmarkar.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JOHN LEENHOUTS/U.S. NAVY; TOMAS JAKOBSSON; NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM/GIFT OF THE FAMILY OF GUNTHER RALL; DAILY MIRROR/MIRRORPIX VIA GETTY IMAGES

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MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL PUBLISHER ALEX NEILL EDITOR IN CHIEF

AVIATION H

Aviation History

Online

You’ll find much more from Aviation History on the web’s leading history resource: historynet.com

Wolfpack at War

Commanding officer “Hub” Zemke and his P-47 Thunderbolt pilots of the fabled 56th Fighter Group overcame a rusty start against experienced Luftwaffe Experten to become the most lethal Eighth Air Force group of World War II. The “Wolfpack” developed P-47 tactics to a high art and racked up a total of 992½ victories despite losing many aces to enemy fire and capture.

MiG Madness: The Air War Over Korea

The aggressiveness of leading American pilots helped secure air superiority for U.N. forces in the Korean War. But many of the top aces in Korea suffered from an affliction known as “MiG Madness,” an obsession over victory tallies that sometimes caused them to take unnecessary risks in combat. Tales of friendly fire, rule-breaking and recklessness pepper the combat records of these legendary airmen.

Byrd’s 1925 MacMillan Arctic Expedition

In 1925 U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd led the MacMillan Expedition in the race to become the first to fly over the North Pole, but an unreliable compass, foul weather, fires, icebergs and even diplomatic snags doomed the attempt. The following year Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennett claimed success in a new expedition, though doubts have long existed about their ability to have reached the pole in the time they were aloft.

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NOVEMBER 2020 / VOL. 31, NO. 2

CARL VON WODTKE EDITOR LARRY PORGES SENIOR EDITOR JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR STEPHAN WILKINSON CONTRIBUTING EDITOR ARTHUR H. SANFELICI EDITOR EMERITUS STEPHEN KAMIFUJI CREATIVE DIRECTOR BRIAN WALKER GROUP ART DIRECTOR PAUL FISHER ART DIRECTOR MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY GUY ACETO PHOTO EDITOR CORPORATE ROB WILKINS DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIP MARKETING TOM GRIFFITHS CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT GRAYDON SHEINBERG CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT SHAWN BYERS VP AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT JAMIE ELLIOTT PRODUCTION DIRECTOR ADVERTISING MORTON GREENBERG SVP ADVERTISING SALES MGreenberg@mco.com RICK GOWER REGIONAL SALES MANAGER Rick@rickgower.com TERRY JENKINS REGIONAL SALES MANAGER TJenkins@historynet.com DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING NANCY FORMAN / MEDIA PEOPLE 212-779-7172 EXT 224 nforman@mediapeople.com © 2020 HISTORYNET, LLC SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION: 800-435-0715 OR SHOP.HISTORYNET.COM

Aviation History (ISSN 1076-8858) is published bimonthly by HISTORYNET, LLC 1919 Gallows Road, Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182-4038 Periodical postage paid at Tysons, Va., and additional mailing offices.

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IWM FRE 2596

Hubert “Hub” Zemke led the Wolfpack.

NOVEMBER 2020

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Mailbag

GUNSHIP EVOLUTION

ABOVE: U.S. AIR FORCE; RIGHT: COURTESY OF BRAD BALL

Thank you for your article describing the history of the fixed-wing gunship [September].

I had the pleasure of being a charter member of the 14th Field Maintenance Squadron, stationed at Phan Rang Air Base in 1969-70. We supported the 17th Special Operations Squadron AC-119G, call sign Shadow, and 18th SOS AC-119K, call sign Stinger.

These aircraft were the weapon systems most feared by the NVA in Vietnam. They replaced the AC-47, call sign Puff, stationed at Nha Trang Air Base, which were transferred to the Vietnamese air force in 1969. The 17th and 18th SOS never had an outpost or troops in contact overrun when they were providing aerial support. > > The AC-130s, call sign Specter, were stationed at Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand, where they mainly flew interdiction on the Ho Chi Minh trail and rarely flew combat missions inside Vietnam. While stationed at Elmendorf AFB, in Alaska, I took an unofficial tour of a Specter that had landed due to bad weather.

I was impressed with its four WWII-era 40mm Bofors guns and that 105mm howitzer pointed out the left side of the aircraft.

I have attached one of the most impressive time-lapse photos of an AC-119 doing what it did best [above]. It was taken during a firepower display at Phan Rang in 1970 for the benefit of a visiting VIP. Michael A. Morgan Ingleside, Texas

FLYING WINGS

Thanks so much for a really fun issue [July]. Mark Carlson’s “A Bomber Too Far” had a special appeal for me. Back in 2008, when I participated in the annual

Society of Experimental Test Pilots Symposium, I had the marvelous opportunity to meet General Cardenas and talk briefly with him about some of his experiences.

Regarding the YB-49, he described his tumble experience and mentioned that he had briefed Glen Edwards regarding the bomber’s stall characteristics. I got the distinct impression that somehow Cardenas’ advice was not appropriately heeded.

Which leads me to the question not answered in the article: Why is Edwards Air Force Base not named for Daniel Forbes, since he was piloting the aircraft in which they were both killed?

What is the back story here?

Hank Caruso California, Md. Author Mark Carlson responds: Here is the dope straight from General Bob Cardenas. While Major Daniel Forbes was piloting the YB-49 and Captain Glen Edwards was copilot, Forbes was born in Kansas and Edwards was from

California (he was actually born in 1916 in Medicine Hat, Alberta, but the family moved to Sacramento in 1931). Topeka Air Force Base in Kansas was named Forbes AFB while Muroc was named for Edwards, the Californian.

ONE DIGIT OFF

In the September issue article about the ill-fated P-75A [“Extremes”], the author states that its Allison V-3420 engine (basically two V-1710s with a common crankcase) “sat behind the cockpit, like a P-38’s Allison V-12.” He surely meant the Bell P-39, whose single Allison indeed was positioned behind the cockpit, while the Lockheed P-38’s Allisons were carried in twin booms.

Thomas Calhoun Washington, D.C.

AIR FORCE GIANT

I greatly enjoyed the article on Air Force legend Robbie Risner [“Aviators,” July].

While I was attending Baylor University in the early ’90s, I did a research paper on Operation Rolling Thunder.

While discussing it in class with a friend, a girl in front of me turned around and said, “You should talk to my dad. I think he flew in Vietnam.” When I asked who her dad was, she responded

matter-of-factly, “Robbie Risner.” She must have been perplexed by the dumbfounded look on my face. I gave him a call, and he graciously spent an hour and a half on the phone with me discussing Rolling Thunder.

Needless to say, I got an A on my research paper! Your article made it even more apparent what an extraordinary man he was.

Darren Roberts Olathe, Kan.

MOVIELAND MEMORIES

Don Hollway’s fantastic article on Paul Mantz [May] brought childhood memories rushing back. My best buddies and I grew up in Orange County, Calif., and at the age of 15 rode our bikes 30 miles round trip to attend the grand opening of the Movieland of the Air museum. Jayne Mansfield cut the opening ribbon with Frank Tallman and Mantz looking on—probably at Jayne, not the ribbon. We frequented the museum often and years later my brother purchased this original sign [below], which is proudly hanging in the garage. Thank you for such a great slice of Hollywood and aviators like Paul!

Brad Ball Honolulu, Hawaii

SEND LETTERS TO:

Aviation History Editor, HISTORYNET 1919 Gallows Road, Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182-4038 OR EMAIL TO aviationhistory@historynet.com (Letters may be edited)

november 2020

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briefing

Peter Jackson’s troubled Aviation Empire personal flying circus Above: An Albatros D.Va replica built by The Vintage Aviator takes flight over New Zealand. Inset: Peter Jackson stands with one of his aircraft at New Zealand’s Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre during the “Knights of the Sky” exhibition in April 2014.

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ew Zealand filmmaker and private pilot Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) is obsessed with World War I aircraft. He has amassed the world’s largest collection of original and replica 19141918 airplanes: 40-plus aircraft, plus a few World

War II warbirds. Jackson also formed a remarkable restoration/replication company called The Vintage Aviator, and he created Wingnut Wings, designers of the highest-quality WWI plastic model kits ever marketed.

Unfortunately, Jackson’s aviation empire seems to be on the verge of collapse.

The Vintage Aviator operation was managed by a colorful but controversial American old-plane pro, Gene DeMarco, who in the 1990s ran the restoration workshop at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, in the Hudson River Valley of New York. In 1999 DeMarco was convicted of having stolen a Piper J-3

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OPPOSITE, FROM TOP: MICHAEL JOHNSON/ALAMY; DANNY MARTINDALE/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES; TOP & INSET: ©GEORGE LEWIS ROMAIN; BOTTOM: UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

Cub while at ORA. Apparently the news didn’t travel as far as New Zealand, for in the early 2000s DeMarco became Jackson’s chief pilot, curator of his collection and head of The Vintage Aviator. This past September DeMarco, who maintained his innocence, was convicted of more than $2 million in fraud involving the sale of TVA aircraft, and in December he was sentenced to two years and five months in prison. The Vintage Aviator has since announced that they have shut down all aircraft and engine manufacturing, let much of the staff go and are concentrating solely on maintaining Jackson’s collection.

The blame has been placed on the covid-19 pandemic, but DeMarco’s antics can’t have helped.

Then, in an overnight purge, the entire staff of Jackson’s Wingnut Wings model kits division was let go and the operation permanently shut down.

Wingnut Wings was a pure vanity operation that was never intended to turn a profit. Jackson was the first to admit that the model division was a casual hobby for him, so when his production company, WingNut Films, recently named an efficiency-minded new CEO and CFO, the operation was quickly axed.

Jackson has been planning since the late 2000s to do a remake of the classic 1955 film The Dam Busters. He had several full-size Avro Lancasters constructed in China as props, but it has become clear that film will never be made.

Stephan Wilkinson

airborne tribute Amanda Romain (inset) adds names to the fuselage of a Supermarine Spitfire PR Mark XI (above) to honor Britain’s National Health Service workers.

“WHEN EVERYTHING SEEMS TO BE GOING AGAINST YOU, REMEMBER THAT THE AIRPLANE TAKES OFF AGAINST THE WIND, NOT WITH IT.” –HENRY FORD

A Spit Does Its Bit…Again

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uly 5 marked the 72nd anniversary of Britain’s National Health Service, but it caught people in a less than celebratory mood as they struggled to control the covid-19 pandemic. Amid that a familiar name from an earlier national crisis turned up in the form of a Supermarine Spitfire—in this instance a sleek blue photoreconnaissance Spitfire PR Mark XI, PL983 “L,” restored and owned by the Aircraft Restoration Company at Dux­ ford Airfield in Cambridgeshire. To gratefully recognize all the medical and healthcare personnel for their aboveand-beyond efforts and at the same time to financially support the NHS in its endeavors, the ARC arranged to have about 80,000 names handwritten on the Spitfire and flown around the country along with the words “THANK U NHS” displayed prominently under the wings. As the ARC suggested, donations can honor “anyone from a family member to supportive neighbor or even a close friend who was there for you when you needed it most!”

The minimum donation was £10 per name, with September 20 the final date for contributions. All the money is slated to go to NHS Charities Together.

The Spitfire made its first flight over communities and hospitals on August 1, with additional routes planned throughout the United Kingdom. The Spit’s progress can be tracked at aircraftrestorationcompany.com and on Instagram and Facebook.

Jon Guttman

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BRIEFING

Battle of Britain Heinkel From Spain

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he Kent Battle of Britain Museum Trust in Hawkinge, England, announced in September 2019 that it was acquiring a new battle participant, of a sort, for its aircraft collection. The museum has gone to great lengths to collect representative aircraft that were critical to the Battle of Britain’s outcome. In this case it is a rare German Heinkel He-111H-2 twin-engine bomber that ended up in Spain, where it was re-engined as a CASA 2.111B. In 1968 the bomber left Tablada to appear in the Battle of Britain film, although it has not been determined if it actually flew in the movie.

After the Spanish Heinkel changed hands several times, it was bought by the Kent museum from the Imperial War Museum at Duxford.

In the process of restoration some discoveries delayed the bomber’s appearance at the 80th Battle of Britain Day on September 15. Areas of interior corrosion have to be addressed and two Junkers Jumo 211 engines are needed to replace the CASA 2.111B’s RollsRoyce Merlins. More intriguing for the future is the discovery

well-traveled bomber The Kent Battle of Britain Museum’s Heinkel He-111H-2 was converted to Rolls-Royce Merlin power in Spain after the war, and now awaits reconversion to its original Junkers Jumo 211 engines.

of a Luftwaffe-style bullet hole repair in one wing, indicating that this bomber saw combat—perhaps even during the Battle of Britain. The restoration team plans to complete the Heinkel’s return to original configuration in the colors and markings of an He-111H-2 of Kampfgeschwader 53 documented as having been shot down, appropriately, on September 15, 1940.

Jon Guttman

MILESTONES

Turning of the Tides

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pearl harbor prelude Fairey Swordfish attack the Italian fleet, in a John Hamilton painting.

Mediterranean were seriously affected but not crippled—the era of battleship dominance ended on that night 80 years ago, and the use of air power in naval warfare came to the fore, a strategy that Billy Mitchell, Alexander de Seversky and others had been advocating for years. One nation that took notice was Japan, which emulated the attack on a much wider scale a year later against the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

OPPOSITE TOP PHOTOS: KENT BATTLE OF BRITAIN MUSEUM TRUST COLLECTION; OPPOSITE BOTTOM: JOHN HAMILTON/IWM ART LD 7398; RIGHT PHOTOS: U.S. NAVY

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n the evening of November 11, 1940, the British aircraft carrier Illustrious positioned itself in the Mediterranean within striking distance of southern Italy. Its mission, codenamed Operation Judgment, was an air attack on the Italian navy’s heavily defended main base at Taranto, a port in the arch of Italy’s boot heel. From Taranto, the powerful Regia Marina was able to threaten Malta and Britain’s other interests in the Mediterranean, control the flow of oil from the Mideast and maintain a lifeline to its North African forces.

Just before 8:30 p.m., the first of two waves of Fairey Swordfish—anachronistic-looking open-cockpit biplanes, some armed with 1,600-pound torpedoes and others carrying bombs—took off from Illustrious on their risky night mission.

In all, 21 Swordfish attacked the Italian harbor that night. By the time the air raid ended four hours later, the Italian battleship Conte di Cavour was damaged beyond repair, two more— Caio Duilio and Littorio—were beached and knocked out of action for months, and numerous auxiliary ships, seaplane hangars and oil storage tanks were destroyed.

In one fell swoop, Britain had altered the balance of sea power in the Mediterranean. While the long-range effects of the raid can be debated—Italian operations in the

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V-J Day Flights Over Oahu

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aerial parades From top: A B-25J is hoisted from USS Essex’s deck to take part in the flyovers; a view of Diamond Head from one of two participating PBYs; a TBM Avenger, the B-25J and a T-28 Trojan fly over Oahu during the 75th annniversary commemoration.

OPPOSITE TOP PHOTOS: KENT BATTLE OF BRITAIN MUSEUM TRUST COLLECTION; OPPOSITE BOTTOM: JOHN HAMILTON/IWM ART LD 7398; RIGHT PHOTOS: U.S. NAVY

n September 2, 1945, World War II formally ended with waves of Allied aircraft that helped defeat Japan flying over Tokyo Bay as the surrender papers were signed aboard the U.S. Navy battleship USS Missouri. On August 29-30 and September 2, 2020, the 75th anniversary of V-J Day was marked at Oahu, Hawaii, where the Japanese carrier strike on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into the war on December 7, 1941. There were fewer aircraft involved in this ceremony to “Salute their service, honor their hope,” but they were once again flying over Missouri, which lies preserved near the sunken remains of the battleship Arizona.

Of the 17 veteran aircraft that took off from Wheeler Army Airfield and flew “Legacy of Peace Aerial Parades” around the island, 14 had been ferried to Hawaii aboard the amphibious support ship Essex.

Two were PBY-5A Catalina twin-engine amphibians, one of which, owned by the Soaring by the Sea Foundation, was painted for the occasion in the markings of patrol squadron VP-14, which had been based at Kaneohe Bay when the Pearl Harbor raiders struck. Also arriving in twos were TBM-1 Avengers and F4U Corsairs. Rounding out the fly-in were North American advanced trainers from two arms—two Army Air Forces AT-6s and a Navy SNJ—as well as a P-40 Warhawk, P-51D Mustang, Eastern Aircraft FM-2 “Wilder Wildcat,” F8F Bearcat, B-25J, C-47, Boeing-Stearman primary trainer and T-28 Trojan.

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AvIATORS

“a bold and daring pilot” Captain Wilfrid “Wop” May leans on his Curtiss JN-4 during a 1919 exhibition in Calgary, Canada.

Canada’s Fearless Flier

“WOP” MAY ESCAPED THE RED BARON AND WENT ON TO MAKE CELEBRATED MERCY FLIGHTS AND PIONEER AIR RESCUE IN THE FRIGID CANADIAN NORTH DURING WORLD WAR II

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n June 21, 1952, Wilfrid Reid “Wop” May, a giant in Canadian aviation, died of a stroke while hiking with his son to Timpanogos Cave, near American Fork, Utah. May’s flying career had opened with a scrap against the “Red Baron” and culminated in his receipt of the Medal of Freedom with Bronze Palm in February 1947 from U.S. Army Air Forces Brig. Gen. Dale Gaffney. His time in the air was marked by a series of Canadian aviation firsts and flights of incredible daring and difficulty.

Wop, a nickname he acquired in childhood when an infant cousin was unable to say Wilfrid, was raised in the Alberta city of Edmonton, where he enlisted in the Canadian army in February 1916. Rapidly promoted to sergeant, he applied to the Royal Flying Corps upon his arrival in Britain a year later. On April 9, 1918, Lieutenant May was transferred to No. 209 Squadron of the newly created Royal Air Force. He had turned 20 only days earlier.

During a patrol in a Sopwith Camel on April 21, May was ordered to stay above—and out of—any dogfights.

Encountering a lone German novice who had been ordered to do the same, May nevertheless attacked. He had jumped Wolfram von Richthofen, cousin of Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. The Baron, piloting his trademark red Fokker Dr.I triplane and seeing his younger cousin in trouble, took on May. Later May suggested his inexperience saved his life: “Richthofen was firing at me continually, [and] the only thing that saved me was my poor flying. I didn’t know what I was

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World WaR I double Ace May in 1918, while serving with No. 209 Squadron, RAF.

doing myself and I do not suppose that Richthofen could figure out what I was going to do.”

A .303-inch bullet put an end to the chase. Penetrating the Baron’s right armpit and resurfacing next to his left nipple, it was later found in his clothes. He managed a rough landing behind Allied lines, dying shortly thereafter.

Controversy surrounds

the source of that bullet.

The RAF attributed the kill to May’s squadron leader, Canadian Roy Brown. However, multiple Australian and British ground troops also claimed to have fired the fatal round. Regardless, it is certain that May was Richthofen’s quarry when he was killed. The Canadian would go on to claim 13 victories, becoming a double ace and earning the Distinguished Flying Cross for “proving himself on all occasions a bold and daring pilot.”

Back on civvie street, Wop and his brother rented a Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” and started May Airplanes Ltd., operating out of Canada’s first civilian airfield on the northwestern outskirts of Edmonton. In September 1919 May made history when he flew Edmonton

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oaring over English skies in 1940, Royal Air Force pilots knew they were all that stood between the British people below and the impending Nazi invasion. Day after day, these brave men took their Hurricanes and Spitfires to the air, relying on nothing and no one but their instruments and each other, to engage the invaders, defend their countrymen, and change the course of history by handing Hitler his first defeat of World War II. “Never, in the field of human conflict, was so much owed by so many to so few,” said Winston Churchill.

The Co-Pilot Men’s Watch is inspired by what was accomplished in the Battle of Britain. We studied classic aviator timepieces to match the vintage design and then gave it a 1940s price. Our watchmakers updated the movement for the 21st century, making it even more accurate than the originals. It features markings to calculate velocity, and a stylish sepia-toned dial carrying three classic complications: 24-hour at 3 o’clock and chronograph 60-minute at 9 o’clock. A vintage-style distressed brown leather strap recalls the battle-worn bomber jackets of the 1940s.

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End of the line The Red Baron’s Fokker Dr.I lies mangled in France after he was killed on April 21, 1918, while pursuing May.

Police Detective James Campbell 125 miles west to intercept John Larsen, a double murderer fleeing on a fast rattler. May delivered Campbell to Edson, where the detective caught a train to Mountain Park. He captured Larsen at the nearby Cadomin mine and returned the surprised fugitive to Edmonton for trial.

May’s most famous flight resulted from a medical emergency. On December 18, 1928, Dr. Harold A. Hamman composed a curt telegram in Little Red River, Alberta. After a 12-day, 280-mile trip south by horse

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and sleigh to the nearest telegraph station in Peace River, it landed on the desk of Alberta’s deputy minister of health on New Year’s Day. It read: “diphtheria. fear epidemic, send anti-toxin.”

Accompanied by Vic Horner in an Avro Avian, May took off on the 450-mile flight north that would take them almost to Alberta’s northern border on January 2.

Through headwinds and a fierce storm, braving -30˚F temperatures, they successfully delivered the serum the following afternoon. The pair returned to Edmonton on January 6 to a crush of spectators and a raucous reception.

In 1932 May played an integral role in the hunt for the “Mad Trapper of Rat River.” On the last day of 1931, Albert Johnson

shot and wounded Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Alfred King when the Mountie tried to execute a search warrant by forcing entry into the trapper’s cabin. Johnson subsequently survived an attempt to dynamite him out of his cabin, fleeing west through the frozen wilderness. He killed pursuing Constable Edgar “Spike” Millen on January 30 and eventually crossed the Richardson Mountains into the Yukon Territory, shaking the posse.

Desperate, the Mounties turned to May, now flying for Canadian Airways. Piloting a ski-equipped Bellanca CH-300 on Valentine’s Day, he caught sight of Johnson’s trail. Three days later, on February 17, the posse caught up to Johnson and killed him. During the gun battle Johnson critically wounded one of his pursuers. May, in his own words, “nosed the Bellanca down till our skis were tickling the snow” and flew the wounded constable to a hospital, saving his life.

Despite losing the use of an eye in 1935, and consequently his pilot’s license, May’s finest hours were yet to come. During World War II he served in Edmonton as commander of No. 2 Air

Observer School. Edmon­ ton was a key stop on the Northwest Staging Route that ferried Lend-Lease aircraft from the continental United States to Alaska and then on to Siberia and the Soviet air force. Hundreds of North American B-25 Mitchells, Douglas A-20 Havocs, Bell P-39 Airacobras and P-63 Kingcobras made the trip, and some crashed in the northern wastes. The citation for his Medal of Freedom commended May, who “voluntarily loaned the personnel and the facilities of his school to assure the delivery of aircraft to the Aleutians and Alaska without delay. He conceived the idea of aerial rescue crews for rescue of fliers in the bush area, and after developing a trained parachute squad he furnished a rescue service indiscriminately to Americans and Canadians, thus saving the lives of many of our fliers.

In so do doing he fulfilled the highest traditions of the Dominion of Canada.” special delivery From left, Dr. Harold A. Hamman, Vic Horner, May and a policeman shake hands after May and Horner flew diphtheria serum to northern Alberta on January 3, 1929.

FROM TOP: IWM Q 10929; DENNY MAY COLLECTION

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RESTORED

Up and running Mikael Carlson takes his Pfalz D.VIII reproduction up for its first flight on May 30, 2020.

Rare Fighter Reproduction WHILE THE AIRFRAME OF PILOT MIKAEL CARLSON’S PFALZ D.VIII IS NEW, THE ROTARY ENGINE OF THE WORLD WAR I REPLICA IS AN ORIGINAL

BY JON GUTTMAN

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n aviation enthusiast since childhood, Swedish Boeing 737 pilot Mikael Carlson built his first reconstruction of an antique airplane, a 1919-vintage FVM Tummelisa Ö-1 fighter trainer, in 1982. Since then his workshop with hangars and airstrip in southern Sweden has built and flown a Fokker Dr.I and D.VII, a Piper L-4H and two Thulin As (Swedish license-built Blériot XIs). Except for the restored Thulins, all of his reproductions are built the same way as the originals and are powered by original engines.

On May 30, 2020, Carlson added a rara avis to his collection when his Pfalz D.VIII made its maiden flight. It began with an equally rare engine and plans to build another airplane for it.

“The project started already over 25 years ago when I came across a Siemens-Halske Sh.III engine,” Carlson said, “but my first intention was to build a Siemens-Schuckert D.IV. However, this could not be accomplished as in more than 10 years of searching in all archives I could imagine, I couldn’t find any original drawings or enough information to build a 100 percent authentic reproduction.

“About 15 years ago, I started visiting the Berlin techni-

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cal museum when I was in full process of building my Fokker D.VII, and there I came upon the Pfalz D.VIII, or shall we say, the remains of what the museum had acquired from the Caproni Museum. After a couple of visits, I began to realize that all important parts of the aircraft were there and I was promised full access to them so that I could spend the time needed to measure and draw all the parts.”

The D.VIII was one of five designs that Pfalz entered in Germany’s first fighter competition at Adlershof in January 1918. The Fokker D.VII emerged as the un-

bad to the bones The biplane’s wings await their covering in authentic five-color lozenge-printed camouflage linen.

qualified winner, but the Germans hedged their bets by accepting some other designs for limited production. Among those were the Siemens-Schuckert D.III and D.IV and the Pfalz D.VIII, all powered by the unusual 160-hp Siemens-Halske Sh.III 11-cylinder rotaryradial engine. All three stood out for their outstanding climb rates, well-suited to intercepting enemy bombers in homeland defense.

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ALL PHOTOS: TOMAS JAKOBSSON

Like its more famous predecessor, the D.III, the Pfalz D.VIII’s fuselage was constructed in two halves with 1mm x 80mm plywood strips. Carlson used the Berlin museum’s fuselage and other components to reverse-engineer an authentic reproduction. To research the wings, he consulted Colin Owers, a friend and fellow World War I aviation enthusiast in Australia.

“The Pfalz D.VIII was built in parallel with the Pfalz D.XII,” Carlson explained, “so many construction solutions and parts are shared between the types. I got help from Colin Owers with info by telephone and email, as well as pictures and drawings from the renovation of a Pfalz D.XII in Australia in the ’80s, and this helped me to finally re-create the wings that are missing in Berlin.

“From the start of the overhaul of the engine and the construction of propellers to test flying has taken about seven years. The entire construction follows 100 percent original construction and all material is the same as the original. Plywood has been specially manufactured in Finland. Linen fabric has been produced in both Lithuania and Ireland.

The entire construction, surveying, drawings, engine overhaul, propeller, wheels, woodwork, machine work, welding, streamline tubing, sheet-metal work and test

flights have been done exclusively by me.”

Carlson said that the Sh.III engine was accompanied by documents showing it and eight others had been purchased from Germany after the war by the flight department of the Swedish army in like-new condition.

The vast majority of the 120 Pfalz D.VIIIs built served in home defense squadrons, but 19 were in frontline Jagdstaffeln (fighter squadrons) as of August 1, 1918. Three are known to have been flown by aces: Ludwig Beckmann of Jasta 56 (eight victories), Harald Auffarth of Jasta 29 (29) and Paul Bäumer of Jasta 2 “Boelcke” (43), whose color scheme was selected for Carlson’s reproduction.

“The first test flight took place on May 30 this year and went well,” Carlson reported, “but one thing was clear: This aircraft behaves very differently from my Fokker D.VII and Fokker Dr.I. It may be too early to have an opinion on it, but this does not feel like a dogfight aircraft—more like a high-altitude interceptor, a ‘hit-and-run’ type.”

Carlson’s remarks on the little fighter’s disappointing maneuverability match those of pilots who flew it during the war, the primary reason for its being used mainly in the interceptor role. After his third flight, he concluded that the plane was “very heavy on the ailerons, which had no ‘elephant ears’ [the horn

reMaking history Above left: The Pfalz’s new cockpit interior. Above: Carlson’s friends Håkan Pålsson and Thomas Sundström clean the Sh.III rotary engine. Left: The control column and gun trips.

balances that enhanced the D.III’s maneuverability].”

As with the D.XII, Carlson said that “The airplane must be flown all the way to the ground. There is no problem to land the Pfalz without engine as long as you keep the speed up. If you reduce the speed too high up from the ground when you take it into the three-point position, then you will pancake or make a very hard landing.”

During the war the Sh.III engine was considered unreliable, particularly using the synthetic lubricant Voltol that the Germans produced in place of unavailable castor oil. Carlson’s engine, however, has given him no trouble thus far: “On the Sh.III

counter-rotating engine, both engine and propeller rotate in the same direction; it is the crankshaft inside the engine that rotates in the opposite direction, thus providing double the speed and increased power. So far I can’t see anything that would say that the engine would have any special problems that are constantly mentioned in articles in contemporary magazines and books.” There were at least two propellers built for the D.VIII, and he used the highpitch airscrew. He added, however, that “I would look forward to flying with the lower pitch propeller—it was the better climber.”

Carlson’s resurrected “artifact” has been more than a study in authentic reverse engineering. It has provided a firsthand experience of what it was like to fly the rare Pfalz D.VIII more than a century ago.

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EXTREMES

On the shoulders of giants The Soviet Union’s Buran space shuttle lies atop its massive Energia rocket launching system.

Soviet Space Shuttle

THE BURAN SPACEPLANE NEVER LIVED UP TO ITS POTENTIAL AFTER IT WAS OVERCOME BY POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC FORCES BEYOND ITS DESIGNERS’ CONTROL Spaceplane evolution The scaled-down MiG-105 experimental piloted orbiter aircraft preceded Buran.

BY DOUGLAS G. ADLER

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ASA’s space shuttle program was famous worldwide for its triumphs and tragedies. From 1981 to 2011, the space shuttles Columbia, Discovery, Endeavour, Atlantis and Challenger lofted more than 800 astronauts and countless payloads into orbit over the course of 135 flights. But the program was also notable for the catastrophic loss of two shuttles and their crews. Many aerospace enthusiasts are unaware that there was a second space shuttle program in operation for much of the same time period—the Soviet shuttle, known as Buran.

Buran (“blizzard” or “snowstorm”) is now all but forgotten in the West but was a centerpiece of Soviet space efforts from the 1970s through the early 1990s. Officially designated the VKK (“air space ship”) Space Orbiter Program, the Soviet effort was conceived as a counterpoint and competitor to NASA’s space shuttle. While the two shuttles shared many similarities, they were fundamentally different vehicles.

NASA’s shuttles were primarily designed for civilian space applications, only carrying payloads for the Department of

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Defense on a small number of flights. Nevertheless, the Soviets were convinced that a hidden military agenda lay behind the American program. The NASA shuttles’ large payload capacity worried Soviet engineers, who were concerned the cargo bay could be used to carry weapons. The Soviets

were specifically worried about space-based lasers that could potentially disable their ICBMs and satellites. As such, Buran’s designers had clear military intentions in developing their own shuttle.

The Buran program was formally authorized in February 1976. Special cosmonaut teams were selected and began training. Initial plans called for development of the MiG-105 (which was similar to the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar) into a full-fledged spaceplane. Scaled-down versions of the MiG-105 and its successor, the BOR

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OPPOSITE, FROM TOP: SPUTNIK/ALAMY; FOXBATGRAPHICS IMAGE LIBRARY; RIGHT, FROM TOP: SPUTNIK/ALAMY; TASS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

unmanned orbital rocketplane, were test launched.

One BOR was recovered at sea and an image of the secret craft was even published in National Geographic.

Despite these efforts, the Soviets ultimately decided that their spaceplane would closely mimic the U.S. shuttle. Espionage was therefore employed to obtain as much technical information about the American space shuttle program as possible. While most of NASA’s developmental data was unclassified, the sheer amount of information to sift through was daunting. The Soviets relied on the Military-Industrial Commission (VPK) and the KGB to obtain the sensitive information and get it into the hands of their aerospace scientists. In the end, they were able to obtain enormous quantities of information from NASA-funded studies and by accessing databases at U.S. universities such as Stanford, Princeton, Caltech and MIT, all of which had teams engaged in shuttle research. This data grab saved the Soviets years of development and millions in research funding.

NASA used the shuttle Enterprise (which never flew in space) as a testbed for piloted aerodynamic studies, culminating in the so-called Approach and Landing Test (ALT) program. The ALT program studied the shuttle when it was mated to a Boeing 747, in free flight and during landing. Analogously, the Soviet shuttle could be carried on the back of an enormous Antonov An-225 Mriya aircraft. The Soviet aerodynamic testbed, known as OK-GLI (Buran Aero­ dynamic Analogue), was used for free flights as well as landings, similar to those carried out by Enterprise during the ALT. Unlike its American counterpart, however, the OK-GLI had four turbofan engines and could take off and fly under its own power.

When finally delivered in

SHuttling the shuttle Buran hitches a ride on the back of a huge Antonov An-225 Mriya cargo plane.

what goes up…

Buran lands at Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on November 15, 1988, to complete its one and only space flight.

1988, the flight article Buran (OK-1K) was eerily similar in appearance to the U.S. shuttle, but had many key differences. NASA shuttles carried seven or eight astronauts, whereas Buran could accommodate a crew of 10.

Most strikingly, Buran was designed to fly unmanned if necessary, a feat the U.S. shuttles could not match.

And, unlike the American shuttle, Buran had no engines to assist with its launch. The spaceplane was carried into low earth orbit by a massive Energia rocket capable of lifting almost a quarter-million pounds.

Buran flew its one and only mission on November 15, 1988. The Soviet shut-

tle was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome by an Energia rocket without any cosmonauts on board for a fully automated flight.

Buran orbited the earth twice and made a precise runway landing at its launch site. The flight was an unqualified success, but it would be the high point of the program.

The subsequent breakup and dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to funding troubles for Buran. Two sister orbiters were never completed. In 1993 Russian president Boris Yeltsin cancelled the program. Buran, designed in part to dock with the Soviet Mir space station, never got a chance to perform that mission. Mir was ultimately visited by Atlantis.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the flown Buran and other key components of the program came to what can only be deemed ignominious

ends. OK-1K, along with an Energia rocket, was destroyed and eight workers were killed on May 12, 2002, when the roof of its neglected hangar collapsed following a severe rainstorm. The incomplete sister ships were displayed around the former Soviet Union and subsequently mothballed. Other test articles have been variously stored in hangars, displayed in museums, left outdoors exposed to the elements, converted to attractions (including a restaurant at an amusement park) or, in the case of an elaborate, largescale wooden test model for wind tunnel studies, simply scrapped. Verified hardware from the Soviet shuttle program, most notably Buran thermal tiles, can be purchased on eBay. In retrospect, the Buran program seems to have been an incredible technical achievement that came to fruition at the wrong time.

The Soviets had the knowhow and expertise to build and operate such a marvel, but the subsequent end of the U.S.S.R. ensured that the program would never live up to its potential, unlike its American counterpart.

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Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.12

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ALL PHOTOS: PHILIP MAKANNA/©GHOSTS

NOVEMBER 2020

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STYLE For more than 40 years,

Philip Makanna has captured a treasure trove of images and shared them via his GHOSTS books and calendars. Here, we present a few of our favorites by the worldrenowned photographer.

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STYLE

Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2b and Fokker Dr.I triplane

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NOVEMBER 2020

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STYLE

© Ian Brodie Photo

Makanna’s feet dangle from the open B-25 tail gunner’s position that serves as his shooting platform.

GHOSTS: Aerial Photography signed hardcover, $50, ghosts.com

PHOTOGRAPHY

On the Calendar

GHOSTS 2021: A Time Remembered, Aviation in World War Two; GHOSTS 2021: The Great War, Aviation in World War One, $15.99 each, ghosts.com

Every year since 1980, Northern California–based photographer Philip Makanna has added to his stunning collection of books and calendars.

Along with his wife, Jeanie, the couple has produced the super-sized annuals carrying the title GHOSTS. This year, they released a new book (Makanna claims it’s his last; we hope not) and two striking calendars that celebrate the flying machines that helped shape World War I and World War II. His numerous accolades, including the International Society for Avia­ tion Photographer’s Lifetime Achievement Award, have not come without bruises. In 2001 the plane from which he was photographing crashed. “That’s just a dream now,” Makanna says. “The airplane was burning, and my pilot was unconscious.

I pulled him out and dragged him away. They say that I have title to a small patch of Duxford grass.” Makanna’s exciting new book and 2021 calendars are available from ghosts.com.

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STYLE

Fokker D.VIIIs

Supermarine Spitfire Mk. Ia

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9/24/20 10:56 AM

STYLE Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress

Polikarpov I-16 Type 24s

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9/24/20 10:56 AM

LETTER FROM AvIATION HISTORY

LOOKING UP

A view from on high Inset: Astronauts Bob Behnken (left) and Doug Hurley train in the SpaceX Dragon capsule. Top: Hurley took this image of the Great Lakes during their two-month stay at the International Space Station.

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mid a year marked by an unceasing stream of bad news (“the year of disappointments,” as a colleague’s young daughter deemed it), some good news arrived with the successful SpaceX launch of two American astronauts to the International Space Station and their safe return to Earth. The May 30 liftoff of a Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center was the first launch of American astronauts from U.S. soil since the space shuttle’s retirement in 2011, putting an end to the sad spectacle of NASA buying rides for its astronauts on Russian rockets. The return of astronauts Colonels Robert Behnken and Doug­ las Hurley on August 2 involved the first-ever spacecraft landing in the Gulf of Mexico (to avoid more bad news: Hurricane Isaias) and first astro­ naut splashdown since the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975.

“Bob and Doug’s Excellent Adventure,” as the media seemed predisposed to cover it, also repre­ sented the first launch into orbit of astronauts on spacecraft owned and operated by a private com­ pany. Ever since upstart entrepreneur Elon Musk founded it in 2002, SpaceX has been busy rede­ fining the role of private industry in spaceflight, scoring a procession of amazing accomplishments as well as a few not-unexpected failures. Musk is the latest in a long line of innovative entrepreneurs who have helped drive aerospace progress since the Wrights took flight, including a few high­ lighted in this issue (Alexander de Seversky, Bill Stout, Henry Ford and Freddie Laker).

Four days before Behnken and Hurley’s splash­ down, NASA chalked up another accomplishment

with the launch of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission. Slated to land on Mars on February 18, 2021, Perseverance carries the first aircraft ever designed to fly on another planet. If all goes as planned, while the Perseverance rover searches for signs of ancient microbial life, the Ingenuity helicopter will conduct short autonomous tech­ nology demonstration flights in the Red Planet’s thin atmosphere (1 percent as thick as Earth’s) to prove the concept for future missions. The little solar-powered copter is just 19 inches tall, weighs four pounds and achieves lift via four-foot counterrotating blades spinning at 2,400 rpm.

Now that NASA is flying American astro­ nauts again, it is gearing up for a busy decade in which Musk’s Dragon spacecraft will be joined by Boeing’s Starliner and Lockheed Martin’s Orion capsules. NASA hopes the latter will be the first to make a return flight to the moon under the Artemis program, likely carrying the first female astronaut to make the trip. This past January the newest and most diverse class of American astronauts, chosen from a record pool of 18,000 applicants, gradu­ ated from training and joined NASA’s ranks. The 11 new astronauts include five women. “When we do select the corps of astronauts that will be flying they must be reflective of the nation as a whole,” commented NASA administrator Jim Briden­ stine. “It’s about inspiration. We want every sin­ gle person to be able to see themselves doing what these American heroes are doing.”

So, when the going gets tough here on Earth and there’s no end to the bad news in sight, try looking up for inspiration.

PHOTOS: NASA

BY CARL VON WODTKE

NOVEMBER 2020

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7th Cav’s brutal fight to save a trapped patrol ‘We’re now in a war—where you can get killed’

Hitler’s Obsession With the Occult Grenades: The Good, the Bad...

The 1962 battle that shocked U.S. helicopter pilots

Mystery Death in Saigon Diamond smuggling, gunrunning, and the CIA

KILLER INSTINCT

This man taught thousands of U.S. Army Rangers how to fight dirty in World War II.

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‘bolts from the blue Beautifully restored “razorback” Republic P-47 Thunderbolts owned by The Fighter Collection (foreground) and the Planes of Fame Air Museum fly together.

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THUNDERBOLT! REPUBLIC’S P-47 WASN’T A SEXY OR GROUNDBREAKING FIGHTER BUT IT POSSESSED ONE ESSENTIAL QUALITY PRIZED BY PILOTS: IT GOT THE JOB DONE AND RETURNED THEM SAFELY HOME BY STEPHAN WILKINSON

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WORLD WAR II SAW THREE U.S. ARMY AIR FORCES FIGHTERS OF CONSEQUENCE: EVERYBODY’S FAVORITE, THE NORTH AMERICAN P-51; THE REMARKABLE LOCKHEED P-38; AND THE ABSURDLY LARGE REPUBLIC P-47. russian émigrés Both Alexander de Seversky (above, with an early P-35) and Alexander Kartveli (inset, working on blueprints at Republic Aviation) contributed to the P-47’s design.

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Curtiss P-40s made meaningful contributions as well, but the big three owned the skies—the Lightning over the Pacific, the Mustang and Thunderbolt sharing the European theater. The P-40 bore the brunt of North African combat but turned out to be overmatched by Messerschmitt Me-109s and their experienced Luftwaffe pilots.

The P-47 Thunderbolt was the AAF’s most conventional WWII fighter. Other than the fact that it had a turbocharger, it was an evolutionary design like the P-40, with its antecedents in the 1930s. Yet

it was built in greater quantities—15,683 units— than any other U.S. fighter.

In some respects, the P-47 dated back to 1931 and the earliest days of Alexander de Seversky’s struggling Seversky Aircraft Company—a firm that in 1939 would be renamed Republic. Was the Thunderbolt a Republic design, or did it owe much to the 1930s airplanes created by Russian émigré, air power advocate and entrepreneur de Seversky? The popular position is that Republic engineer Alexander Kartveli designed the P-47

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: PAUL BOWEN PHOTOGRAPHY; OPPOSITE TOP: SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM; OPPOSITE INSET: PF-(AIRCRAFT)/ALAMY; TOP RIGHT: RUDY ARNOLD COLLECTION; BOTTOM RIGHT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

on the back of the proverbial envelope during an overnight train trip to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. The most convincing proponent of de Seversky’s crucial role in the design was the late engineer and aviation historian Warren M. Bodie, whose book Republic’s P-47 Thunderbolt: From Seversky to Victory claims that de Seversky never got the credit he deserved.

Bodie argued that de Seversky was marginalized because of his difficult personality and lack of business acumen. Politics were said to have played a major role in the Air Corps’ focus on the Allison V12 engine, and well-connected Curtiss and its fighter proposals had more War Department juice than did de Seversky’s radial-engine contributions.

Nobody will ever resolve that dispute, since the principals are long gone and company records of the time have been lost. So we will climb right up onto the fence and say that the Thunderbolt was the creation of not one architect but of several, the most important of them being de Seversky and Kartveli.

The P-47’s remotely mounted turbocharger lived in the aft fuselage, with a thicket of ductwork that fed engine exhaust and intake air to the turbo. Some of the air scooped up by the P-47’s big horse-collar cowling also passed through an intercooler that removed heat from the air compressed by the blower. The turbocharger and its unusual location was a de Seversky concept.

So was the P-47’s thin, semi-elliptical, highspeed wing and airfoil, which first appeared on de Seversky’s 1931 SEV-3 amphibian. Most sources say the wing was designed by de Seversky and his chief engineer at the time, Michael Gregor.

Kartveli claimed that he designed the wing when he was Gregor’s assistant.

De Seversky and Kartveli, who had become the Seversky Company’s chief engineer, turned their all-purpose, radial-engine airframe into a basic trainer, the BT-8. Then it became a fighter, the Seversky P-35, which would become the XP-41 and ultimately the Republic P-43 Lancer.

Air Corps leaders had seen that the British and Europeans were focusing on liquid-cooled V12 engines for fighters. They became proponents of the Allison V-1710 V12, though de Seversky called it a “junk engine.” Most of the Army’s Allisonengine fighters—the P-39, P-40 and the original Mustang, the P-51A—were obsolescent by the time they went into service. Allisons, all with singlestage superchargers, were only successful in the P-38 Lightning, and only because they were turbocharged. In fact, Allison had intended all along that the V-1710 be turbo-blown. But this was a job traditionally left to the airframe manufacturers.

None but Lockheed and Republic could find space in their fighters for a big exhaust-driven blower.

De Seversky and Kartveli had modified the original SEV-3 amphibian airframe in a variety

of ways—subtracting seats, changing canopies, modifying the fuselage and trying more-powerful engines—but one characteristic that remained was the deep cabin with room for a third passenger in what was otherwise used as a baggage compartment. When de Seversky created the P-43, this gave him the space, aft of the wing trailing edge, to fit a General Electric turbocharger originally developed for the B-17. It was the first radialengine fighter in the world to have a turbo.

The P-43 was the end of de Seversky’s contributions to development of the P-47. A palace revolution in 1939 saw him booted out of his own company. Alexander Kartveli would become the vice president of engineering at renamed Republic.

Kartveli’s original XP-47 proposal was no Thunderbolt. Following the lead of General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, Air Corps planners were relying on the concept of a swarm of lightweight, Allison-powered interceptors to counter the threat of bombers attacking America’s shores.

That no such threat existed didn’t seem to concern them, so Kartveli and his staff were tasked with designing the smallest and lightest airframe that could be wrapped around a V12. Had it been built, the XP-47 would have been a 4,600-pound midget with two .50-caliber guns and a shrunken version of the Seversky-Gregor SEV-3 wing but no turbocharger.

We can thank the Navy that the XP-47 was replaced by the vastly more significant XP-47B. While the Air Corps worshipped at the Allison

room to spare The fat fuselage of de Seversky’s P-43 Lancer (top) gave him space to fit a turbocharger aft of the wing trailing edge. That turbo became an important feature of the XP-47B prototype (above).

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TECH TECH NOTES NOTES

REPUBLIC P-47D-28-RE THUNDERBOLT

PRATT & WHITNEY R-2800-59 DOUBLE WASP 18-CYLINDER RADIAL ENGINE

BUBBLE CANOPY

FRONT BULKHEAD AND FIREWALL

BULLET-RESISTANT WINDSHIELD

30-GALLON WATER TANK FOR WATER-INJECTION SYSTEM

ARMO PILO HEAD

INSTRUMENT PANEL MAIN FUEL TANK

FUEL FILLER

CURTISS ELECTRIC C5425 PROPELLER

AIR DUCT INTAKE TO OIL COOLER

EXHAUST PIPE FROM COLLECTOR RING TO TURBOCHARGER

SUPERCHARGED AND COOLING AIR FEED PIPE FROM TURBOCHARGER TO CARBURETOR OIL COOLER SHUTTERS

WHEEL COVER PLATE

FRONT WING SPAR

SPECIFICATIONS ENGINE

EMPTY WEIGHT

CEILING

Pratt & Whitney R-2800-59 Double Wasp 18-cylinder radial generating 2,000 hp dry or 2,300 hp with water injection

9,980 lbs.

42,000 feet

GROSS WEIGHT

NORMAL RANGE

14,600 lbs.

800 miles

40 feet 9 5/16 inches

MAXIMUM TAKEOFF WEIGHT

COMBAT RANGE

WING AREA

17,500 lbs.

1,221 miles with two 165-gallon drop tanks

300 square feet

MAXIMUM SPEED

ARMAMENT

LENGTH 35 feet 10 inches

426 mph +/- 3 percent at 30,000 feet

HEIGHT

CRUISE SPEED

14 feet 9 1/8 inches

260 mph

Six or eight Browning .50-caliber machine guns, two 1,000-lb. bombs on wing pylons, one 500-lb. bomb on centerline mount

WINGSPAN

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RADIO TRANSMITTER

ARMORED PILOT’S HEADREST

INTERCOOLER

AERIAL MAST RUDDER TRIM TAB

OXYGEN BOTTLES

ELEVATOR TRIM TAB

RETRACTABLE AND STEERABLE TAIL WHEEL

TURBOSUPERCHARGER

REAR WING SPAR

AILERON TRIM TAB

AILERON HINGES

BROWNING .50-CALIBER MACHINE GUNS

SHOCK STRUT COVER PLATE

PITOT TUBE

ILLUSTRATION BY STEVE KARP

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wolfpack aces After returning from a March 6, 1944, raid on Berlin in which his 56th Fighter Group P-47 pilots claimed 30 German fighters, Lt. Col. Hubert “Hub” Zemke (center) congratulates 1st Lt. Robert Johnson (left) and Captain Walker Mahurin on their victories. Below: “Bud” Mahurin talks with his crew chief while standing on the wing of his Thunderbolt.

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altar, the BuNav was pushing Pratt & Whitney to develop an air-cooled super-radial. That engine became the 2,000-hp R-2800, along with the Merlin one of the two most important Allied engines of the war. Though Kartveli was initially opposed to the idea of a remote-mounted turbo, Republic set out to design an airplane around the R-2800 plus the P-43’s turbocharger and its associated ducting. The result was the XP-47B, a six-ton monster with six and then eight .50-caliber guns.

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inally, there was a Thunderbolt. It got the nickname “Jug.” Some say it is short for juggernaut, but a far more likely explanation is that it is a reference to the Thun­ derbolt’s portly fuselage, back in the days when milk came in glass jugs.

The Army still viewed the Thunderbolt as a defensive weapon, an interceptor, so it wasn’t concerned that there was no room in its wings for fuel. Eight big .50s and their substantial ammunition boxes plus the retracted main gear meant

the gas tanks all had to go into the fuselage. Three hundred and five gallons to feed a 100-gallonper-hour R-2800 gave the Thunderbolt a combat radius of just 165 miles. (Combat radius is how far an airplane can fly and then fight for 20 minutes, before returning to base with enough fuel left to land with a 30-minute reserve.)

The first operational Thunderbolts—P-47Bs of the 56th Pursuit Group, eventually to become the 56th Fighter Group, “Hub” Zemke’s notorious Wolfpack—were assigned the job of protecting the Republic and Grumman factories on Long Island and other aviation facilities in the Northeast. They were based at fields in New York and Connecticut, so at least the domestic Thunderbolts didn’t have far to fly.

The 56th was responsible for an early P-47 myth. In November 1942, two of its pilots were doing high-speed runs at 30,000 feet and put their noses down to descend to 20,000 before repeating the exercise. Thanks to the T-bolt’s massive bulk and clean aerodynamic lines, they dove like

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dropped safes, and the two lieutenants were the first P-47 pilots to experience compressibility.

(Lockheed had encountered it with P-38s a year and a half earlier.) Their airplanes tucked under as shock waves moved the center of lift aft, and the controls froze. The pilots both swore that they saw indicated airspeeds of 725 mph, equivalent to Mach 1.2, before they were able to pull out. They had broken the sound barrier, and Republic’s PR department trumpeted the news.

They needn’t have bothered, since the fighters never exceeded Mach .83. Years ago, CurtissWright test pilot Herb Fisher explained to me why the lieutenants’ story was true as far as it went but had nothing to do with breaking the sound barrier. Fisher had done plenty of P-47 dives while testing its huge Curtiss Electric prop, so he knew that propellers have a built-in speed limit no matter how much power you feed into them. At about 560 mph true airspeed, or Mach .83, a propeller can’t be pushed any faster through the air, for at that point there is a monumental rise in drag.

So why did those pilots see an indicated 725 mph? Because the ambient air that filled their airplanes’ pitot-static systems at 30,000 feet couldn’t vent fast enough during an extreme dive to produce accurate airspeed readings.

Republic had introduced the P-47 with the boast that it was the fastest fighter in the world, which was true (at altitude). The highest speed Republic ever recorded was 504 mph, with a P-47J at 34,450 feet. The best the AAF could do was 484, so they doubted Republic’s claim. But any such boast was met with bafflement, considering the airplane’s size. Photos of P-47s sitting on ramps with helmetless technicians or engineers in the cockpit look for all the world as though a 6-year-old has snuck into the seat at an airshow. Even Kartveli reportedly said, “Nice airplane, but it is too big.”

jug handlers Clockwise from far left: Mechanics work on a P-47’s Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp; ground personnel prepare to start the engine of the 358th Fighter Squadron P-47D Chunky; crewmen load rounds for a Thunderbolt’s .50-caliber guns.

Claims about P-47 performance characteristics varied widely. A few fighter groups, notably Zemke’s Wolfpack, loved their Thunderbolts, but most preferred Mustangs. Some of the most extreme claims can be traced back to the book Thunderbolt!, by 56th Fighter Group 27-victory ace Robert S. Johnson and the late aviation author Martin Caidin. An experienced civilian pilot and hugely colorful writer, Caidin never let reality get in the way of hyperbole, and some of Johnson’s P-47 opinions in the book were almost certainly enlarged by Caidin’s lens.

Johnson claimed the Thunderbolt boasted a faster roll rate than any other U.S. fighter and had superb turning performance. It in fact possessed an average rate of roll and poor turning talent.

“The P-47 was too heavy for some maneuvers,” said one Luftwaffe pilot. “We would see it coming from behind and pull up fast, and the P-47 couldn’t follow, and we came around and got on its tail.”

And though the Thunderbolt went downhill like an express elevator, its climb rate was lousy. “It ought to be able to dive,” said P-51 fan and ace Don Blakeslee. “It certainly can’t climb.”

In 1944 Hamilton Standard paddle-blade

THOUGH THE THUNDERBOLT WENT DOWNHILL LIKE AN EXPRESS ELEVATOR, ITS CLIMB RATE WAS LOUSY. november 2020

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top gun With 28 victories, P-47 pilot Major Francis “Gabby” Gabreski (top) was the leading American ace in Europe. Gun camera film (inset) captures a Thunderbolt downing a Messerschmitt Me-110.

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propellers were fitted to P-47s, replacing the narrow-blade props that Thunderbolts had carried until then. Caidin’s book has Johnson saying that the new wideblade props “added 1,000 horsepower” and provided spectacular climb performance. In truth, the new props increased the rate of climb from miserable to acceptable.

In October 1944, examples of all the military’s production fighters were gathered at the Navy’s test facility at Patuxent River, Md., and were flown and assessed by a number of experienced combat pilots during the Joint Fighter Conference. The results, and many other P-47 facts and numbers, appear in Francis H. Dean’s splendid doorstop of a book, America’s Hundred Thousand. A sampling: The P-47 had a drag coefficient of .0217, second only to the P-51D’s and P-63A King­ cobra’s .0176.

The Thunderbolt’s guns threw 12.72 pounds of lead per second, while all other fighters delivered between 9.26 and 9.54 lbs./sec.

P-47 combat losses were exceptionally low: less than 0.7 percent of all the Thunderbolts made.

The Joint Fighter Conference pilots judged P-47 maneuverability to be from fair to poor, though it did fly best at high altitudes. Roll rate was middling—about 4.2 seconds for a full roll.

The P-47D’s turning performance was worse than that of any fighter but the F4U Corsair.

The P-47D was a ground-lover, requiring a 2,450-foot takeoff roll—worse even than the 17,000-pounds-heavier, twin-engine P-61 Black Widow.

Despite its fabled diving ability, the P-47D finished behind the P-38G, P-51D and F4U-1D in the dive tests.

s with most aircraft installations, the P-47’s turbocharger didn’t act like the turbos on Porsches and Subarus, which greatly increase a sports or race car’s power. A P-47 turbo didn’t “make power,” it simply maintained the engine’s rated power regardless of altitude, which is called turbo-normalizing. At sea level, a Thunderbolt’s R-2800 engine put out 2,000 hp at full throttle (2,100 hp on later models).

At 30,000 feet, it could still make 2,000 hp, thanks to the turbo converting thin atmospheric air into thick intake air.

The exception was a throttle setting called war emergency power, which lived within the last eighth inch of a P-47’s throttle travel. When this Pandora’s box was opened, 2,535 hp (2,800 hp on later engines with improved turbos) could be drawn from the engine. But only for five minutes and with water injection to tamp down the detonation that would otherwise quickly have melted the pistons.

The first P-47s began operating from England in March 1943, initiating the struggle to lengthen the Thunderbolt’s legs. Kartveli initially resisted demands that shackles and pylons for drop tanks be allowed to mar the clean lines of his airplane.

He called them “ornaments.” The original rangeextending tank was a 200-gallon conformal centerline belly bulge (eventually expanded to a 300-gallon monstrosity) that not surprisingly was called the Tumor.

A variety of drop-tank shapes and sizes found their way onto P-47s, but most typical was a pair of 108-gallon aluminum or paper tanks. Yes, paper. The British had developed tanks made of layers of molded and pressed paper, and they were quickly adopted by P-47 units. The tanks were good for just one mission before the fuel began to delaminate them, but they offered the added advantage of providing no scrap metal for an aluminum-hungry enemy when they were pickled.

Ultimately, Thunderbolts could be fitted with enough centerline and underwings tanks to escort bombers almost to their most distant targets—a vast improvement over P-47s that could barely make it 75 miles into France before turning back to England.

P-47s never figured prominently in the Pacific War. It was largely fought by Navy fighters and Army P-38s, which had the range that the Thun­ derbolt lacked. The exception was the ChinaBurma-India Theater, where the P-47’s rugged durability at the end of a long supply chain stood it in good stead. But much Pacific air combat was done at low and mid altitudes, against agile A6M Zeros and Ki-43 Oscars, and the lower a P-47 flew, the more its truck-like qualities became apparent.

The fact that Johnson, Zemke, Francis Gabreski and David Schilling—the highest-scoring aces in the European theater—all flew Thunderbolts has

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OPPOSITE PHOTOS & RIGHT INSET: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; ABOVE: PHILIP MAKANNA/©GHOSTS

been offered as evidence of the airplane’s superiority. But it’s really just evidence that the P-47 got into the fight early, well before the Mustang did, and fought in a target-rich environment. Overall, the leading American ace producers were the F6F Hellcat, the P-51 and the P-38. And again, it’s a matter of context: Late in the war, Hellcats were attacking Japanese schoolboys flying worn-out Mitsubishis and Nakajimas.

When the AAF threatened to shut down P-47 production in 1944 because of the airplane’s limited range, Kartveli and his team created the long-winged P-47N, for use as a B-29 escort in the Pacific. An 18-inch extension of each wing at the root allowed tankage for another 93 gallons, raising total internal fuel to 556 gallons. With full internal and drop-tank fuel (1,266 gallons, for a maximum range of 2,350 miles), a P-47N took off weighing more than 10 tons, at the time a record for single-seat, piston-engine fighters. The P-47 remained in production until the end of December 1945—longer than any other WWII Army fighter.

Yet the P-47’s fame came not from escort duty, which was soon taken over by longer-ranging P-51Ds, but from the T-bolt’s utility as a groundattack fighter-bomber. In March 1944, P-47s began flying low-level bombing and strafing missions. Their eight guns made for a potent broadside. Thunderbolts could also carry unguided rockets in underwing launch tubes. Though each rocket had the impact of a 105mm round, they were hard to aim accurately and were only effective against large targets.

D-Day planners quickly realized that Thun­ derbolts would be the perfect weapons with which to attack Wehrmacht relief columns, advanc-

ing armor, rail supply lines, bridges and other means to throw back the Allied invasion. The Normandy campaign, Operation MarketGarden and the Battle of the Bulge were the P-47’s major ground-pounding operations.

Strafing was more dangerous than aerial combat. A strafer was usually in danger from ground weapons ranging from Lugers to 88s throughout an attack run, and even a single rifle bullet could cripple a system or kill a pilot. P-47s were the least vulnerable of the Allied fighter-bombers, for they had no liquidcooling plumbing or radiators that might be disastrously holed. In fact, the big Pratt radial was a 2,400-pound steel-and-aluminum shield against frontal fire.

Despite its faults, the P-47 excelled at the two extremes of its performance envelope—as a speed-merchant bomber escort at 30,000 feet and as a juggernaut fighter-bomber at 50 feet.

Thunderbolts shot down more Luftwaffe aircraft—3,572—than any other Allied fighter, and they disposed of 170,000 locomotives, railcars, armored vehicles and trucks.

The P-51 got the glory, but the P-47 did the grunt work.

ground pounder A restored P-47D in the markings of Captain Benjamin Mayo (top) wears D-Day invasion stripes.

The “Jug” performed yeoman service in Normandy in the ground-attack role.

Thunderbolts strafe a German airfield (inset).

Contributing editor Stephan Wilkinson recommends for further reading: Republic’s P-47 Thunderbolt: From Seversky to Victory, by Warren M. Bodie, and Thunderbolt: A Documentary History of the Republic P-47, by Roger A. Freeman.

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doubling down On October 3, 1952, North American F-86E Sabre pilot Major Frederick C. Blesse shoots down a MiG-15, in There Went Number Ten, by Roy Grinnell.

“Boots” Blesse was one of several U.S. Air Force Sabre pilots who racked up double-digit kills in the Korean War.

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SABRE ACE RACE A DANGEROUS CONTEST DEVELOPED IN THE SKIES OVER KOREA TO DETERMINE WHO WOULD EMERGE FROM THE WAR AS AMERICA’S TOP FIGHTER PILOT BY DAVID SEARS

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“TELL JABARA THE MEXICAN GOT TWO.” THE TRANSMISSION FROM U.S. AIR FORCE CAPTAIN MANUEL J. “PETE” FERNANDEZ JR., INBOUND FROM MIG ALLEY ON MARCH 21, 1953, LIKELY STUNG THE PRIDE OF HIS 334TH SQUADRON MATE MAJOR JAMES “JABBY” JABARA. on the prowl Sabres from the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing (FIW) streak north over Korea’s mountainous terrain in search of MiGs.

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Once Fernandez’s ninth and 10th MiG-15 victories were confirmed, Pete (whose ancestry actually traced from Spain to Cuba) joined an exclusive club of double jet aces. Meanwhile, since returning to Korea that January, Jabby seemed to have flamed out in the Sabrejet ace race.

Jabara (himself of Lebanese heritage) had won the April-May 1951 sprint to crown America’s initial North American F-86 Sabre ace. “Stick him out in front and see what he can do,” ordered then–Fifth Air Force commander Lt. Gen. Earle E. Partridge.

After downing his fifth and sixth MiGs on May 20, Jabara was whisked Stateside for the sort of homecoming later bestowed on astronauts. “If you shoot down five planes,” novelist James Salter, himself a Sabre pilot, wrote, “you join a core of heroes. Nothing less can do it.”

Jabara’s feat, achieved during his 63rd mission, came when USAF dominance in MiG Alley—an area in northwestern North Korea along the Yalu River bordering Manchuria—was doubtful. As Blaine Harden, author of several incisive Korean War books, explained in an interview: “When the

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: ROY GRINNELL; ALL OTHER PHOTOS: U.S. AIR FORCE, EXCEPT WHERE NOTED

Korean air war began, the MiGs made it a kind of slaughter. And their pilots were Stalin’s elite.”

New to the “core” of aces that September were Captains Richard S. Becker and Ralph D. “Hoot” Gibson. Arguably, these earliest jet aces stood out for dueling Stalin’s “honchos” while piloting F-86s that were inferior to their adversaries’ MiGs. In Becker’s estimation, “We fought them to a draw.”

Jabara, unwilling to rest on such laurels, itched to get back in action.

Edging out the Communists proved just a matter of time. “Stalin’s elite were replaced by much less skilled Russians,” explained Harden, “and then by much, much less skilled Chinese and North Koreans.” Kenneth Rowe, a former North Korean pilot who defected to the West (see sidebar, P. 43), noted, “We were trained by less experienced MiG pilots.” Rowe (formerly No Kum-Sok) elaborated: “The Russians wanted to train North Koreans in a hurry so we can speak Korean in the air. Crash training and then go out and fight so they can prove North Koreans fly.”

Meanwhile, said Harden, the F-86 improved: “Increased speed, maneuverability, targeting. The MiG improved somewhat but it was a much more difficult aircraft to fly and its manufacturing tolerances were much less precise. As time went by, those things tolled.”

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oughly a month after Becker and Gibson were sent back to the States, in October 1951 World War II ace Major George A. Davis brought to Korea utter contempt for his MiG opponents. Davis, fifth to join the core of aces (Major Richard D. Creighton qualified three days before him), contracted what many termed “MiG fever”—a dangerous addiction to pursuing MiG kills.

Davis’ two kills on December 13 made him

America’s first jet double ace. Had he not been a squadron commander, Davis might have been recalled. Instead, constrained by higher-ups to one sortie a day, he pushed his luck. Finally, on February 10, 1952, during his 60th mission, he began a reckless prowl that earned him two more MiG kills, but also cost his life.

Davis’ stunning loss handed the Communists a propaganda coup and dealt a devastating blow to 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing morale. New air group commander Colonel Walker “Bud” Mahurin shared his pilots’ exasperation with the enemy’s ability to flee to sanctuary in Manchuria.

Mahurin’s men “literally saw the airfields on the other side of the Yalu River and the planes coming up,” author Kenneth P. Werrell, who interviewed many MiG Alley veterans, told me.

Skirting official policy, Mahurin secretly authorized flights across the Yalu. “It might be dirty pool,” Mahurin later conceded, but “every MiG counted.” While cross-Yalu forays were not unprecedented, the spring of 1952 marked a watershed, according to Ken Rowe. “April of 1952, that’s when American jets started coming to Manchuria openly,” he recalled. “MiGs landing, MiGs taking

ace racers James Jabara (left) became America’s first jet ace and was also determined to be the highest-scoring pilot of the war. Latecomer Manuel J. “Pete” Fernandez Jr. (above) made ace over Korea on February 18, 1953, and kept scoring until he was ordered back to the United States.

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title Contenders Above: Joseph C. McConnell Jr. lights a cigarette for rival ace Pete Fernandez during a Pentagon press conference after they were returned to the U.S. against their wishes. Right: The 26th American to become an ace over Korea, McConnell made up for lost time, ending the war with 16 victories and bragging rights.

THE USAF NOW WALKED A TIGHTWIRE TO PRESERVE ITS ACE HEROES. 40

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off—they were shot. MiGs go to North Korean skies; when they come back American jets are waiting in Manchuria.”

Meanwhile, stalemate on the ground and America’s improved fortunes aloft drew press attention to MiG Alley. Observed aviation author Thomas McKelvey Cleaver: “Air combat was played up the same way as in World War I. You had a battlefield where nobody was winning.

News reporters sensed a horse race [in MiG Alley] and they couldn’t take their eyes off it.”

That fall, Pete Fernandez, then 28, reached Korea. Though qualifying for fighters during World War II, Fernandez never saw combat.

Eventually becoming an aerial gunnery instructor at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, he watched in frustration as his students deployed. “He had trained all these youngsters,” his father, an Air Force colonel, later told reporters. “They were all gone, and he wasn’t going.”

Fernandez achieved early success as an element leader with the 334th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron (FIS). As he claimed single victories each month from October to January, however, one of his Nellis acolytes struggled to gain his footing.

Approaching age 31, New Hampshire–born 1st Lt. Joseph C. “Mac” McConnell Jr. had risen from the ranks to navigate B-24s during World War II but had not pinned on USAF pilot wings until 1948. Flying F-86s in Alaska when the conflict in Korea broke out, Mac, then 28, was judged too old to go. Still, he exuded confidence, telling another Korean-bound pilot, “I know I’m going to make ace.”

While Fernandez flew lead and racked up kills with the 4th Wing, McConnell flew with the 51st Wing. Not until January 1953 did his gunnery prowess, perfected under Fernandez’s tutelage at Nellis, earn him lead in the 39th FIS. Following his initial victory on January 14, McConnell downed three more before month’s end. Both now stood one victory shy of the core.

Meanwhile, back in the States, Jabara’s restlessness drew notice. According to a November 12 dispatch: “Major James Jabara, the Air Force’s first jet ace, today asked to be returned to combat duty in Korea. The 29-year-old…said in his application, ‘I want to…finish the tour interrupted in May 1951.’”

It was a delicate matter. After George Davis’ February loss, his grieving widow, pregnant with their third child, accused the Air Force of keeping her husband in Korea rather than returning him (like Jabara, Becker and Gibson) a living hero.

The Air Force countered that its current policy was “keeping all jet pilots—including aces—in Korea until they had finished their normal tour of 100 combat missions.”

The USAF now walked a tightwire to preserve its ace heroes. On October 3, 1952, Major Freder­ ick C. “Boots” Blesse, who’d voluntarily extended his tour, destroyed his 10th MiG during mission 123. Afterward, low on fuel, Boots parachuted offshore, forcing a rescue helicopter to dodge enemy fire to pluck him from the drink. Fifth Air Force promptly shipped the double ace home. Thus, it was no small concession to allow Jabara’s return.

“I feel it’s my duty…it’s what I should do,” Jabara insisted to reporters on January 8, 1953, as he climbed aboard a Tokyo-bound Navy R6D cargo plane.

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eporters assumed it wouldn’t take long for Jabara to score again. A February 17 New York Times article mentioned how, amid nonstop MiG Alley confrontations, “Maj. James Jabara, on his second tour of duty in Korea, damaged a MIG.” Nonetheless, Jabara’s victory count stubbornly stalled at six. For their parts, McConnell, with a victory on February 16, and Fernandez, with two victories on February 18, became America’s 26th and 27th jet aces.

The 4th Wing commander, Royal “King” Baker, then atop the leader board with 11 victories (his first a propeller-driven Lavochkin La-9), welcomed the Reds’ reckless aggression: “The more planes they put in the air…the more targets we have.”

King kept scoring into March. “I’ve always thought Friday the 13th was good luck for me,” he quipped to reporters after scoring number 13 on Friday, March 13. But the next day, after 127 missions, with his scheduled rotation still 12 days away, Baker abruptly—and voluntarily, Air Force sources insisted—stood down. “The crack flyer,” read a news service dispatch, “was quoted as having said: ‘I feel I have done my job over here.’”

Indeed, though Baker’s overall total fell one shy of Davis’, his 12 MiG-15 victories outpaced Davis’ 11 (the fallen ace had also been credited with three Tupolev Tu-2 bombers).

With Baker’s departure, the ace race focus shifted to Captain Harold E. “Hal” Fischer Jr., a 51st Wing pilot then outpacing Fernandez’s victory count nine to six. Fischer, a “shy, blue-eyed 27-year-old fellow off an Iowa farm,” was, at least according to 39th FIS personnel, certain to top both Baker and Davis. “With more than 30 missions to go,” remarked a squadron officer, “how can Hal miss?”

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Fischer’s ascendency proved brief. He made double ace with a victory on March 21 only to have Fernandez’s two kills match his total—and double-ace stature. Then, on April 7, during his 70th mission, Fischer punched out of his crippled Sabre. Captured across the Yalu, he languished in a Chinese prison as the ace race baton passed to Pete Fernandez.

One newspaper account portrayed Fernandez as having “little time for anything other than flying.” (“I hadn’t heard of Marilyn Monroe,” he claimed.) According to aviation author and MiG Alley veteran John Lowery, who occasionally flew with Fernandez, such single-mindedness enabled Pete to devise a technique that later became 4th Wing doctrine. Climbing to 49,000 feet, Fernandez flew deep into Chinese airspace before turning south. Cruising at .90 Mach he literally joined up with MiG formations. Any opponent

Alley Cats Above: Harold E. Fischer Jr. was in the race with 10 victories when he was shot down and captured on April 7, 1953. Below: Two F-86As of the 4th FIW set out for a patrol of MIG Alley in 1951.

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murderer’s row F-86 Sabres of the “Checkertail” 51st FIW are readied for combat at Suwon Air Base in South Korea.

THOUGH F-86 PILOTS HAD LONG BEEN TRESPASSING INTO CHINA— SUBJECT TO DISCIPLINE OR GROUNDING­­— NOW THE GLOVES CAME OFF. 42

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taking the bait invited a deadly spinning stall.

MiG-15 pilot Rowe recalled once battling such subsonic gremlins: “At .92 Mach, my control stick didn’t respond. Plane started shaking, like I’m being hit by rocks. You cannot do anything.” Rowe somehow managed to regain control and return to base, but a MiG pilot Fernandez encountered on April 17 didn’t. “The Red jet flew out of control in a spin and the pilot bailed out,” reported Florida’s Tampa Times. Perhaps, the paper mused, “the Red pilot…recognized his adversary…and decided to throw in the towel.” Without firing a shot, Fernandez had earned his 11th MiG victory.

McConnell, meanwhile, showed no intention of throwing in the towel. During an April 12 morning duel, Major Semyon A. Fedorets, one of the few Soviet pilots to succeed late in the war, bested him.

Fedorets registered McConnell as his sixth victory but not before Mac reciprocated, making Fedorets his eighth. The Soviet major was hospitalized for a month while McConnell, promptly rescued at sea, assured squadron mates, “I barely got my feet wet.”

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hat May, bent on bringing the Communists to terms in armistice talks at Pan­ munjom, America’s Far East Air Forces launched more than 22,000 sorties.

Though F-86 pilots had long been trespassing into China—subject to occasional discipline or grounding—now, according to Lowery, the gloves came off. “I was present when the 4th Wing intelligence officer said: ‘[Fifth Air Force commander Lieutenant] General [Glenn] Barcus says screw the Yalu River…go where they live.’”

The Communists saw it differently. It was Joseph Stalin’s March 5, 1953, death, argues military historian Xiaoming Zhang, “rather than U.S. air pressure, that finally brought a breakthrough in armistice negotiations.” Hoping to get as many ground troops combat experience as possible, the Chinese staged a big summer ground offensive supported by 350 Chinese MiGs plus three North

Korean MiG units. This bid for air superiority, however, employed many inexperienced pilots.

As a result, the skies over northwest Korea increasingly resembled an American game preserve.

New York Times reporter Robert Alden wrote, “The [USAF] pilots…are spoiling for a fight [while] the Communists seem unenthusiastic and poorly trained.”

The Sabre ace race was now a two-man contest with Fernandez, pride of 4th Wing, holding the lead but McConnell, pride of 51st, never far behind. Mission count became crucial: Pete neared 125; Mac crossed the century mark. But so did USAF concern about losing aces so close to a possible armistice.

Finally, on May 17, with Fernandez’s victory count at 14.5 and McConnell’s at 13, General Barcus intervened. “He issued an order that Pete and McConnell had enough kills,” said Lowery.

“They should immediately stop flying combat and go home. I remember when the order came into the 334th, but McConnell’s people claimed they didn’t get it, and so he flew the next day.”

Fernandez joined Barcus at Fifth Air Force headquarters on May 18. “The air was full of MiGs and Captain Fernandez bit his lips and waited,” reported the Times’ Alden. Soon, pilot transmissions came in. “My God, there must be 30 of them!” exclaimed Dean Abbott, McConnell’s wingman. “Yeah, and we’ve got them all to ourselves,” Mac replied.

Afterward, when a phone rang, Barcus took the receiver and listened. “I can’t tell him that,” the general snapped. “If I do, I won’t be able to keep him on the ground.”

Barcus sheepishly pulled Fernandez aside.

“Pete, McConnell got two this morning.”

Fernandez managed a thin smile. “Good show,” he said.

That afternoon, once McConnell tallied his third victory for the day, Barcus famously demanded: “I want that man on his way back home

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ASSESSING THE MIG-15 to the U.S.A. before you hear the period at the end of this sentence.”

In the wake of Fernandez and McConnell’s simultaneous departure, dank monsoon weather settled in, making it unlikely that others could overtake them. Yet that June, with the Communist offensive now in full swing, Sabre-MiG activity reached unprecedented levels: 1,268 MiG sightings, 507 engagements, 77 destroyed. And eager to claim his share—and likely deliver a riposte to Fernandez’s March 21 jibe—was Jabby Jabara.

It had taken Jabara until May 16 to claim his seventh victory. “I’ve made mistakes,” he conceded to reporters. “I still have a long way to catch up.” But catch up Jabara did, with a double one day in late May and five more victories (including two doubles) in June to reach 14.

Jabara played every angle, recalled Lowery, who flew at least six missions with him. “When he got on the schedule, he would tell the maintenance officer to put extra ‘rats’ [small blocks installed on the inside edge of the tailpipe lip] in the tail. It would give him more thrust.”

Not only that: “When you sat down to brief, he gave you a pill. I said, ‘Major Jabara, what’s this for?’ He said: ‘This is a MiG pill, it’ll make you see better.’ I have since learned it was an ‘upper’—I never did take it.”

Apparently, the “MiG pill” didn’t help the ace some called “Cousin Weak Eyes.” On June 15 Jabara mistakenly opened fire on 1st Lt. Richard Frailey, one of his favorite eagle-eyed wingmen.

“Jabara, you’re shooting at me!” screamed Frailey as “friendly fire” peppered his plane. Luckily, Frailey bailed out and was rescued.

Jabara’s apology to Frailey was a rare concession to a wingman. While it was customary, for example, for the first pilot in a flight who spotted a “spinner” (a MiG in a high-altitude spinning stall) to claim a victory, when Jabara led a flight all spinners were his.

Exhausting every angle, Jabara finally claimed victory 15 on July 15—the 99th mission of his second tour. He’d bested Fernandez, becoming America’s second triple jet ace, but still yearned to overtake McConnell. It was not to be. “The Wichita flier wound up his tour yesterday,” reported the Associated Press on July 18, “by prowling the skies in a vain search for his sixteenth victim.”

Afterward, grounded, Jabara contemplated the future. “I’m going to be sitting out one of those jet desk-jobs,” he groused.

On September 21, 1953, North Korean air force fighter pilot Sr. Lt. No Kum-Sok managed to escape North Korea in a new MiG-15bis.

Landing at Kimpo Air Base near Seoul, South Korea, his MiG allowed the U.S. Air Force to unlock the airplane’s secrets.

Disassembled and flown in a Douglas C-124 transport to Kadena Air Base, on Okinawa, the MiG (below) was first tested by Lt. Col. Eugene M. Sommerich, operations officer from the 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, who had combat experience against the aircraft type. He had flown to Okinawa in an F-86F-30 Sabre, which was used to chase the MiG during tests. Test pilots from the Wright Air Development Center who also flew the airplane included the center commander, Maj. Gen. Albert Boyd, Major Charles E. Yeager (above) and Captain T.E. “Tom” Collins.

The MiG’s weapons consisted of a 37mm cannon and two 23mm guns. The gunsight was a simple gyro type, similar to the Mk-18 gunsight used on the first few F-86As. Tests of the MiG showed its service ceiling was 51,500 feet, but the test pilots were able to coax it to 55,100 feet. Still, at those ultra-high altitudes the aircraft was flying very close to its lowspeed buffet boundary, or stall point, and the slightest maneuvers could precipitate a loss of control. The airplane also was found to have no perceptible pre-stall warning and was prone to acciden­ tally enter a spin, from which recovery was difficult.

At high airspeeds the building shock wave caused the flight controls to become unresponsive. The increasingly turbulent boundary-layer airflow triggered flight control buffeting at .91 Mach, becoming heavier as the Mach number increased. At .93 Mach the aircraft exhibited a strong nose-up tendency. The biggest surprise was that the MiG-15bis had a terminal velocity of .98 Mach but was officially limited to .92 Mach.

In a determined effort to establish the MiG’s maximum air­ speed, Major Yeager took the airplane to 55,000 feet and rolled into a vertical dive, with Captain Collins waiting at 48,000 to chase him. As Yeager passed by, Collins could see the MiG’s elevators moving but with no response from the airplane. At 12,000 feet the nose of the aircraft abruptly pitched up, and the controls began to react normally. But it wasn’t until reaching 3,000 feet that Yeager finally regained complete control.

“Flying the MiG is the most demanding situation I have ever faced,” Yeager wrote in his autobiography. “It’s a quirky airplane that’s killed a lot of its pilots.”

Today Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University professor emeritus Kenneth Rowe, the former No Kum-Sok, lives in retirement with his wife in Daytona Beach, Fla. His MiG-15bis is displayed at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

John Lowery

Military historian David Sears is currently completing Duel in the Deep, a forthcoming book about U.S. Navy air/sea hunter-killer groups during WWII’s Battle of the Atlantic. Further reading: Life in the Wild Blue Yonder, by John Lowery; Sabres Over MiG Alley, by Kenneth P. Werrell; and The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot, by Blaine Harden.

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THE CORSAIR’S LAST HURRAH NEARLY 25 YEARS AFTER IT FIRST SAW COMBAT IN VIETNAM, THE LTV A-7E CORSAIR II WAS HEADED FOR RETIREMENT WHEN IT WAS RECALLED FOR DUTY IN ONE LAST WAR BY MARCELO RIBEIRO

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Target: IraQ A Ling-Temco-Vought A-7E Corsair II of U.S. Navy attack squadron VA-72, armed with eight Mk-82 500-pound bombs and two AIM-9L Sidewinder missiles, embarks on a mission in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm.

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DURING OPERATION DESERT STORM, LAUNCHED EARLY IN THE MORNING OF JANUARY 17, 1991, THE UNITED STATES DEPLOYED A VARIETY OF CUTTING-EDGE MILITARY AIRCRAFT AS MAIN ACTORS IN THE AIR STAGE, INCLUDING THE LOCKHEED F-117 NIGHTHAWK STEALTH FIGHTER. Firing squad Corsair II pilots of VA-46 and VA-72 await takeoff as flight operations commence aboard USS John F. Kennedy during Operation Desert Shield, the Gulf War’s preliminary phase.

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Among the lesser lights in the arena, however, was a small attack aircraft that had left the scene shortly before the beginning of the Gulf War’s initial phase but then had to be hastily returned to service for a curtain call: the Ling-Temco-Vought A-7E Corsair II. When Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, two of the last operational U.S. Navy A-7E squadrons—the VA-46 “Clansmen” and VA-72 “Blue Hawks”—had just returned from a tour aboard the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy and were transitioning to the more advanced McDonnell Douglas F/A-18C Hornet. But

on August 3, both squadrons received an inquiry about a possible new deployment to take part in Operation Desert Shield, the regional reinforcement and preparation for a potential military conflict with Iraq. The Corsair II’s retirement would have to wait.

“There was no deploy order at that point, but we went into overdrive to be ready to answer the call as soon as it occurred,” said now-Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, the last commanding officer of VA-46. The official order came on August 6, with a departure date of the 10th.

At that time the U.S. had two carriers in the Gulf

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: JOHN LEENHOUTS/U.S. NAVY; OPPOSITE: DAVE PARSONS/U.S. NAVY; TOP LEFT: U.S. NAVY; TOP RIGHT: COURTESY OF JEFF GREER; MAP: ADAPTED BY PAUL FISHER FROM AUTHOR ORIGINAL

region: Independence and Midway. Independence was well past its scheduled return to America, so it was decided that John F. Kennedy would replace it on station. Six U.S. carriers would eventually serve in the region during the conflict.

When they arrived in the Red Sea, the air wing’s pilots honed their skills during practice missions.

“The training flights were amazing,” recalled Fitzgerald. “We flew in northern Saudi Arabia’s famous ‘Star Wars’ canyons on great low-levels.”

Throughout October, with Iraqi president Saddam Hussein showing no signs of retreat, the coalition increased its presence in the region. As the diplomatic situation worsened in December, war seemed inevitable.

The A-7E’s main mission at the start of the campaign would be suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD). The Corsair II pilots were charged with destroying command-and-control bunkers, air bases, radar systems and anti-aircraft missiles, and they knew how to do it.

On January 14, 1991, VA-46 and VA-72 were told to prepare for action. Saddam had been issued an ultimatum that he had failed to respect, so Iraq’s military forces would feel the full strength of the coalition’s might.

“I was the leader of the Navy flight heading north from the Red Sea and the first aircraft to be launched off the catapult at 0:30 a.m.,” said Fitzgerald. “We went through refueling with USAF tankers and after that we followed to Baghdad. All the anxiety and the adrenaline of the previous days left me on takeoff. All the training and discipline learned from day one of flight school was finally at work.”

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he green light for the assault on the Iraqi capital came after initial attacks with F-117s and Tomahawk missiles, which filled the skies with Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery. The A-7 Corsairs were among 84 American and British aircraft that led the initial attacks on Saddam’s infrastructure.

The A-7 mission on that first night would last about five hours. From the Red Sea the Corsairs crossed some 750 miles of Saudi Arabian desert

to Arar, on the Saudi–Iraqi border. From there, VA-46 headed on to Baghdad and VA-72 undertook its SEAD mission over H-2 and H-3 airfields in western Iraq.

Clouds covered the route to Baghdad, but as the Clansmen approached the capital the weather cleared and the attack was totally visual. “Near Baghdad, about 70 miles, the weather got clean and the sight was impressive and surreal,” remembered Fitzgerald. “There was literally a dome of lead over the city with missiles crossing the top.

The TALD [tactical air-launched decoys], the bombs and Tomahawk missiles had brought every SAM system alive.”

It was the job of a VA-46 junior officer on his first combat mission to serve as radar “bait.” Lieu­ tenant Jeffrey “Spock” Greer, who headed the flight of nine Clansmen A-7Es, would release the decoys that exposed the Iraqi air defenses to the AGM-88 HARMs (high-speed anti-radiation missiles) carried by the other Corsairs.

Greer flew the A-7E “Tartan 310,” with his name written below the cockpit, and carried four ADM-141A TALDs. “The theory was my four TALD would make me look like a flight of five,” explained Greer. “Seeing me coming, the Iraqis

bait and switch Top left: Aviation ordnance men position AGM-88 high-speed anti-radiation missiles for installation on A7-Es aboard John F. Kennedy. Top right: Lieutenant Jeffrey Greer of VA-46 stands with the tactical airlaunched decoys he used to bait Iraq’s air defenses on night one of Desert Storm.

Above: The Corsairs’ route and targets on January 17, 1991.

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A-7s In action Clockwise from top left: Commander John R. Leenhouts, executive officer of VA-72, returns to Kennedy after a strike; an A-7E refuels from a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker; Commander J.R. “Shooter” Sanders’ VA-72 Corsair shows off dozens of camel combat mission markings under his cockpit; an A-7E readies for takeoff from Kennedy on a bombing mission.

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would light me up with their radar and start shooting, allowing those behind me to launch HARM missiles up and over me to take out their radars and give the main strike package a clearer route to Baghdad.

“I was the third plane launched off the Kennedy.

Planes from all three carriers in the Red Sea rendezvoused on the three KC-135 tankers. Having roughly 36 planes coming from different directions and trying to rendezvous on the three tankers at night was just the first step. After I got my fuel, I proceeded alone on my planned mission route.

To make it more difficult to be seen at night, we turned off all of our exterior lights and went in alone. Why alone at night? You can’t fly formation off of a plane you can’t see.

“Each time we rehearsed our night-one mission, we went right up to the Iraqi border and turned around,” said Greer. “On night one, we continued.” This was the main strategy used by the coalition to carry out the first attacks on Baghdad and other locations in the early hours of January 17.

Several dozen aircraft took off daily from various locations and simulated the route they would take without actually entering Iraq. For the Iraqis, the 17th was like any other day except that the aircraft kept coming.

After Greer launched the decoys, the following Corsairs fired their anti-radar missiles. “Each HARM-equipped aircraft would fire two missiles from predefined launch positions and the third HARM could be used on targets of opportunity [TOO]—that meant any emitting sites that were still active,” said Fitzgerald. “The prebriefed shots could be fired outside missile range, but TOO range should be much closer. I fired my first missile. I remember that we were warned not to look as the missiles were being released due to the strong bright light of its engine. Of course I looked and had twinkling eyes for a while. On the next missile I didn’t look until it had climbed to its perch at 80,000 feet.”

With two HARMs fired, the missile alert systems in Fitzgerald’s A-7E, “Tartan 312,” came on and blinked. “My scope started showing a symbol totally new for me: a flashing 6 inside a blinking box,” he said. “I studied it a bit too long only to look up and see an SA-6 missile heading in my direction. I quickly shot my last HARM and hit my chaff button. I also made a very hard break turn to get out of its path. In seconds I saw an explosion of the HARM and the SAM warning disappeared, indicating that the missile had done its job.”

Lieutenant Commander Willard R. “Budman” Warfield of the VA-72 Blue Hawks did not participate in the night attacks early on the 17th, but recounted how he waited for his squadron mates to return: “We were told on January 15 that the three-day plan we had been practicing was a go, so there was plenty of time to get the adrenaline

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OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: DAVE PARSONS/U.S. NAVY; U.S. AIR FORCE; PF-(AIRCRAFT)/ALAMY; TODD BUCHANAN/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES; ABOVE: JOHN LEENHOUTS/U.S. NAVY; INSET: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; RIGHT: ILLUSTRATION BY MARCELO RIBEIRO

flowing. I didn’t get much sleep on the night of the 17th. I attended the night-one briefing, then tried to get some rest prior to the early day-one launch. It was quite a relief to see all our jets come back from night one, but there was no time to spare getting the aircraft turned around for day one. Our ordnance troops did a fantastic job reconfiguring the jets for day-one load out.”

According to Jeff Greer, they expected much more resistance the first night. “It wasn’t too long before we didn’t even see them,” he recalled. “And when we bombed targets, they didn’t know we were there until the first bomb went off. When it did, they started shooting back.” This was standard procedure for Iraqi triple-A and would be seen throughout the campaign.

Six additional VA-46 Corsairs took off shortly before noon on January 17. Four of them each carried three AGM-88 HARMs, destined for further destruction of radars, as well as AIM-9L Sidewinder missiles. Two other A-7Es were armed with AGM-62 Walleye I glider bombs.

The Blue Hawks continued to target the H-2 and H-3 air bases in western Iraq on day one. The daytime actions were a joint effort by aircraft from John F. Kennedy and Saratoga aimed at destroying the operational capabilities of the two bases.

After day one, since Iraqi radars no longer

posed a threat to coalition flights, the Corsairs of both squadrons gradually started attack missions using Mk-82, -83 and -84 conventional bombs and Mk-20 Rockeye cluster bombs, as well as the videoguided Walleye I/II bombs and SUU-25 flare launchers (illuminators). Some sorties also featured one or more AN/AWW-9 datalink pods, which were useful for transmitting video camera images from the Walleyes.

Although Desert Storm was the A-7’s last combat operation, it scored a “first” during the campaign. The third night saw the unprecedented use of the AGM-84E SLAM (standoff land attack missile) against high-value strategic targets. On that night VA-46’s A-7s fired two SLAMs at AlQa’im, where there were important uranium extraction and refining complexes.

Among the biggest challenges the Corsair pilots faced was inflight refueling. “The KC-135’s refueling process was always a challenge,” noted Fitzgerald. “We had to tank four to five times during a mission and the drogue was just an iron basket with no takeup reel. We got used to and

hunters and prey Top: Five VA-72 “Blue Hawks” return after a mission to Iraq. Inset: Soldiers examine an SA-2 missile site that was destroyed during Desert Storm. Below: VA-46 “Clansmen” commander Mark Fitzgerald flew “Tartan 312” on night one.

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TECH NOTES LING-TEMCO-VOUGHT A-7E CORSAIR II

good at doing that on them, but it was always an exciting exercise.”

SPECIFICATIONS

ENGINE

MAXIMUM SPEED

Allison TF-41-A2 non-afterburning turbofan generating 15,000 lbs. of thrust

690 mph at 5,000 ft.

WINGSPAN

RANGE

38 feet 9 inches

1,231 miles

WING AREA

ARMAMENT

374.9 square feet

One M61A1 Vulcan minigun with 1,030 20mm rounds.

Two fuselage pylons for AIM-9L Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.

Six underwing pylons for 15,000 pounds of ordnance, with provisions for a combination of:

LENGTH 46 feet 2 inches HEIGHT 16 feet 1 inch WEIGHT 19,127 lbs. (empty) 41,998 lbs. (maximum takeoff)

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CEILING 42,000 feet

four LAU-10 rocket pods with four 127mm Zuni rockets each; two AGM-45 Shrike anti-radiation missiles; two AGM-62 Walleye TV-guided glider bombs; two AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missiles; two AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles; two GBU-8 HOBOS electro-optically guided glide bombs; up to 30 unguided conventional bombs or Mk-20 Rockeye cluster bombs; Paveway laser-guided bombs; up to four nuclear bombs.

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OPPOSITE: ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL FISHER; ABOVE: PJF MILITARY COLLECTION/ALAMY

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hile the two Corsair squadrons experienced no losses on the first night of attacks, the air battle was not a strictly one-sided affair. During the flight to Baghdad, the fighters, bombers and electronic interference aircraft received information that MiG-25 Foxbats were taking off from Al-Taqaddum Air Base west of the capital. No AWACS (airborne warning and control system) aircraft flying over the region had radar contact with the enemy MiGs thus far, so the F/A-18C Hornets already chasing the threat to the west were not allowed to fire.

After the denial to engage, the Hornets returned eastward and the leader fired his HARM as planned. The second F/A-18C, piloted by Lieutenant Scott “Spike” Speicher of the VFA-81 “Sunliners,” was just behind and would be the next to shoot at Iraqi radar. But before he could loose his missile, one of the MiG-25s also turned eastward and fired a Vympel R-40 missile that swallowed Speicher’s Hornet in an explosion. “The fireball was visible to the north thru the haze,” recalled Fitzgerald. “Hornets were 5,000 feet higher than us so I could see looking up.” Speicher was the first American casualty of the conflict.

Over the ensuing days the campaign followed a rhythm of alternating between SEAD and attack missions. The A-7s participated in a number of important operations, such as the day-three attack on the Al Musayyib rocket test unit, south of the Iraqi capital, using Walleye bombs.

On February 26, two days before the end of the war, a routine mission to H-2 airfield nearly resulted in major losses for VA-72. Bud Warfield recounted the details of that night: “The original mission was to go to the KTO [Kuwait Theater of Operations] and support advancing coalition troops. They were doing fine without massive airpower, so we were sent to a new target out at H-2—a place we had been before and thought was completely destroyed. [VA-72 executive officer John] ‘Lites’ [Leenhouts] was the strike leader, but his mission was to drop the LUU-2 illumination flares before roll-in. Another officer in VA-72 was to lead the strike element. I was assigned to the spare aircraft on deck. After the strike group launched, I was on my way back to the ready room when I heard “Launch the spare!” over the fight deck loudspeaker. One of the mission aircraft had a hydraulic failure.

“I hauled back to my jet, armed with seven Mk20 Rockeyes, and did a quick align and launched.

I found the rest of the group at the tanker track and refueled. During this time, I found out that the bomber lead had problems with his radios and INS [inertial navigation system]. I was the only

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‘adult supervision’ airborne, so he gave me the lead and stayed on my wing the rest of the flight.

“We got up to the target, which we thought was a derelict airfield with no defenses. I rolled in with original strike lead on my wing and searched for a target. We were the first aircraft to attack. I saw some airplanes behind the hangar that had appeared in satellite imagery, and tossed our Rockeyes at them.

“By this time in the conflict, we had noticed that the gunners didn’t start shooting until after first bomb impact. That was true that night. As soon as my bombs impacted, they put up the best AAA show I had seen since then. Flak bursts were going off all around. I started jinking and wanted to get out of there real bad, but was thinking of the 10 guys behind us. I heard Lieutenant [Dan] Wise tell his group to target the muzzle flashes and they did some impressive work. I hit 600 knots at the bottom of the dive run, and pulled up to egress the area at speed. About that time I got a missile warning. I checked our six, and yes, there were missiles in the air. Quite the impressive fireworks show going on over my left shoulder! I expended all the contents of my chaff and flare buckets, while executing 7G break turns in both directions.

“We cleared the area and all aircraft were told to find a wingman of opportunity as all formation integrity was lost. We met up on the tanker, and Lites did a roll call. Somehow, we had all escaped from the hellhole intact. I thought it was a miracle of bad gunnery that no one got hit.

“All that fun was followed with a night trap at 3:30 a.m.,” concluded Warfield. “We debriefed and shuffled off to bed, but there was no sleep to be had.”

Burial at sea Kennedy flight deck crewmen secure A-7E “403” after it made an emergency barricade landing on January 24, 1991. The damaged Blue Hawk aircraft was stripped of equipment and pushed overboard.

THROUGHOUT THE GULF WAR, NOT A SINGLE A-7 WAS SHOT DOWN OR EVEN HIT BY ENEMY FIRE.

The aging A-7s of the two squadrons maintained an impressive operational capability, with very few aircraft unable to fly when required. An episode involving one VA-72 Corsair, though, deserves a special highlight. A-7E “403” took off for a mission on January 24, damaging its front wheel at the catapult. Unable to complete the mission, the pilot returned to Kennedy and had to land with the aid of the barrier system. All the important equipment was subsequently removed from 403 and the airplane was pushed overboard.

Throughout the Gulf War, not a single A-7 was shot down or even hit by enemy fire, despite expectations of three to five percent casualties. The end of Desert Storm also marked the final act of the A-7E Corsair II’s operational career as a frontline Navy aircraft. On the morning of March 27, 1991, VA-72’s A-7E “412” was the last Corsair to be launched from an aircraft carrier.

The legacy left by the A-7Es during the Gulf campaign is undeniable. According to the 1993 Gulf War Air Power Survey, they dropped approximately 1,000 tons of bombs in 737 combat missions over Kuwait and Iraq, totaling 3,100 combat hours during the 43 days of conflict.

VA-46 and VA-72 were officially deactivated on June 30, 1991, closing the 25-year legacy of a little aircraft that had played an outsized role in the Gulf War victory.

Marcelo Ribeiro da Silva is a Brazilian journalist, military aviation researcher and aviation artist. Further reading: Desert Warpaint, by Peter R. March, and U.S. Aircraft & Armament of Operation Desert Storm in Detail & Scale, by Bert Kinzey.

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Built to last Ford’s Tri-Motor, nicknamed the Tin Goose, showed pre-Depression America the possibility of practical commercial air travel. This 4-AT-E, operated by the Experimental Aircraft Association, first flew on August 21, 1929, and was restored in 1985.

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TALE OF THE TIN GOOSE IN THE LATE 1920S, THE STURDY FORD TRI-MOTOR HELPED CONVINCE A WARY AMERICAN PUBLIC THAT COMMERCIAL AIR TRAVEL COULD BE SAFE, RELIABLE AND ECONOMICAL BY RICHARD JENSEN November 2020

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Iron Maiden Bill Stout, head of the Stout Metal Airplane Company, poses in front of his singleengine 2-AT airliner Maiden Dearborn, an underpowered ancestor of the Tri-Motor known as the Air Pullman.

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The request, penned by Bill Stout, a Dearbornbased engineer with a flair for promotion, landed on the desks of more than 100 influential Detroit businessmen in mid-1922. Stout was looking for enough money to finish an experimental airplane.

He didn’t have a particularly clear idea of what he was going to do after that.

William Bushnell Stout was born in Quincy, Ill., in 1880. After graduating from high school in St. Paul, Minn., he briefly attended first Hamline University and then the University of Minnesota.

Stout didn’t graduate from either university, but he did take some engineering courses at Minnesota.

After a stint at the Schurmeier Motor Car Company, which went bankrupt in 1912, Stout took a job as the auto and aviation editor for the Chicago Tribune. That same year he started Aerial Age, the first aviation monthly in the United States. The newspaper business proved ill-suited to Stout’s mercurial personality, and by 1914 he was again working for an undersized auto manu­

facturer, the Scripps-Booth Automobile Com­ pany. In 1916 he was employed by the Packard Motor Car Company as a sales manager before somehow becoming the chief engineer of its avia­ tion division.

While at Packard, Stout oversaw the construc­ tion of several experimental planes under Navy contract toward the end of World War I. In 1919 he started his own engineering company in Detroit, and the following year he completed the Stout Batwing Limousine, an unusual-looking airplane with an enormous cantilevered wing (the plane was a shade under 23 feet long, with a 360-square-foot wing). It was built primarily of wood and was powered by a single Packard engine mounted in the nose.

Stout may have had a shaky grasp of aerodynamic principles, but he had a pretty clear sense of where the industry was headed. He saw a largely untapped market for safe and reliable air transportation—for both people and freight. He also

PREVIOUS SPREAD: JIM KOEPNICK/EAA; ABOVE: SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM ARCHIVES; OPPOSITE, FROM TOP: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; NATIONAL ARCHIVES; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

“I SHOULD LIKE A THOUSAND DOLLARS, AND I CAN ONLY PROMISE YOU ONE THING: YOU’LL NEVER SEE THE MONEY AGAIN!”

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: JIM KOEPNICK/EAA; ABOVE: SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM ARCHIVES; OPPOSITE, FROM TOP: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; NATIONAL ARCHIVES; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

realized that the multiple-engine approach used

by Junkers and Fokker in Europe reduced the dangers posed by mechanical failure, while the allmetal construction pioneered by Junkers greatly increased overall reliability and made larger planes possible.

Stout sold the Navy on the idea of an all-metal, twin-engine aircraft and signed a contract to build six torpedo bombers. With those orders in hand, he moved into a large building at the corner of Piquette Avenue and Beaubien Street in Detroit, just across from Henry Ford’s original Model T plant. Stout’s ST-1 bomber looked modern enough, but it wasn’t particularly stable. At a ceremony in 1922 commemorating delivery of the first plane under contract, test pilot Eddie Stinson stalled it and crashed. Stinson survived, but the contract didn’t. The Navy terminated its deal with Stout, who had spent $162,000 developing the ST-1. He later described the disastrous ceremony as the “bluest day” of his life.

Stout’s Navy bomber failure left him with little interest in selling planes to the government, and the feeling was probably mutual. His interest turned toward general aviation and the emerging market for air transportation.

Still convinced that the future of aviation was metal planes with multiple engines, Stout boldly made his request for a thousand dollars apiece from wealthy Detroiters, pitching them on the opportunity to help him make Detroit the aviation industry’s hub. Henry Ford and his son Edsel were among the investors he snagged with his pitch, and Edsel was so impressed with the idea that he helped Stout lobby other Detroit businessmen. Stout’s rather unusual fundraising campaign brought in about $30,000, with which he started up the Stout Metal Airplane Company in Dearborn, Mich.

The Fords took a keen interest in the progress of Stout’s prototype. Aviation was not an entirely new field for them. Despite the elder Ford’s pacifist leanings, the Ford Motor Company had manufac-

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tured Liberty engines for license-built de Havilland DH-4s during WWI. In 1909, at age 15, Edsel and a friend, Charles van Auken, had constructed a plane and made a few test flights—none of them more than six feet off the ground. Van Auken eventually crashed it into a tree at Detroit’s old Fort Wayne, emerging largely unscathed.

For some time after WWI, Henry Ford apparently still saw airplanes as war machines and had little interest in them. What caught his attention was Bill Stout’s talk of their value in transportation.

The first plane Stout built after his fundraising campaign, the 1-AS Air Sedan, resembled the Bat­ wing Limousine, although it was constructed of metal. Encouraged by the results, he embarked on a second round of fundraising with the Fords’ help, raising about $100,000 in additional capital.

He used that money to construct a new airplane designated the 2-AT (Air Transport—a name that underscored the machine’s practical nature).

Nicknamed the Air Pullman, the 2-AT was powered by a single 150-hp Hispano-Suiza engine and featured a more conventional wing design than the 1-AS.

branching out Top: The men behind the Tri-Motor confer next to an Air Pullman.

From left are Ford chief engineer William Mayo, Stout, Edsel Ford and Henry Ford, who is talking with a pilot named Hamilton.

Inset: Stout peers from the cockpit of his illfated ST-1 torpedo bomber in 1922.

Below: Stout’s 1-AS Air Sedan was his first metal airplane.

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Stout’s Pullman was woefully underpowered, and during test flights near Mount Clemens, Mich., in late 1924, he told Henry Ford that he needed more horsepower, and in order to get that he needed more money. Ford looked at the plane and then turned his gaze back to Stout and said, “You don’t need more money, son. What you need is more plane.”

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HENRY FORD TOLD STOUT, “YOU DON’T NEED MORE MONEY, SON. WHAT YOU NEED IS MORE PLANE.” 56

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ithin a few months the Ford Motor Company had bought out Stout’s other investors, and Henry Ford was in the airplane business. Ford went on to build airfields in Dearborn and Lansing, Ill., near the company’s Chicago South Side plant.

As Stout recalled years later, he and Ford had a conversation in early April 1925 about running a scheduled air service between the two Ford airfields. “This is Saturday,” Ford reportedly told him. “Can we start Monday?”

Stout hemmed and hawed and Ford turned and started to walk away. “We can start next Monday,” Stout called after him.

Thus, on April 13, about 1,300 pounds of Model T parts were loaded into a 2-AT in Dearborn and flown to Lansing, initiating America’s first scheduled air freight service. A few months later, Ford added a route from Dearborn to Cleveland, and in October Ford was one of the first private firms contracted to carry airmail for the Postal Service.

Meanwhile Stout was pushing forward on a larger airplane, the 3-AT, the first all-metal trimotor built in America. The ungainly aircraft

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early birds Top: Stout’s 2-AT was a logical step toward a viable airliner. Above: The grotesque 3-AT developed from it was decidedly not.

made a compelling case for the old saw that “if it looks right, it’ll fly right.” The 3-AT failed on both counts. For starters, its fuselage was reminiscent of a dirigible’s gondola. As with his ill-fated Navy torpedo bomber, Stout had mounted the outboard engines almost flush with the wing’s leading edge, while the nose-mounted engine sat well below the fuselage centerline.

Test pilots were able to get the 3-AT into the air in November 1925, but that was about it. Ford’s chief pilot Rudolph “Shorty” Schroeder delivered his unofficial opinion of the plane not long after landing: “Forget it.” Ford agreed, calling the 3-AT a monstrosity and halting all further work on it.

A couple months later, in January 1926, a fire mysteriously broke out in Stout’s factory at Ford Field, burning it to the ground and destroying the 3-AT along with a few 2-ATs that were being assembled there.

After the 3-AT fiasco, Ford sent Stout out on the lecture circuit and brought engineer William Mayo in to straighten things out. Mayo had already demonstrated his ability to navigate challenging situations. Ford had placed him in charge of planning and supervising construction of the massive River Rouge Complex in Dearborn, the world’s largest integrated factory. Mayo brought Harold Hicks on to serve as chief engineer of Ford’s aviation division.

With an expanded budget and an assignment to come up with a clean-sheet design for a multi­ engine transport aircraft, Hicks and fellow engineer Tom Towle hired three more engineers fresh out of MIT and got to work. Henry Ford’s overall directive hadn’t changed. He still wanted an allmetal airplane with three engines and a minimum payload of about a ton. As one might expect of a man who was still building Model Ts, his requirements were all about durability and practicality, and he apparently had no particular interest in how fast the plane could fly.

Ford was still operating its fledgling airline and had also bankrolled Richard Byrd’s controversial May 1926 flight over the North Pole in a Fokker F.VIIa/3m. Christened Josephine Ford after Edsel’s daughter, the plane ended up in a Ford hangar after the flight. A few months later, Harold Hicks’ team of engineers rolled out an all-metal aircraft that bore more than a passing resemblance to the Fokker.

Ford’s engineers had clearly benchmarked the F.VII, which was the absolute last word in commercial aviation at the time. The new transport, the 4-AT, would need to meet or exceed the Fok­ ker’s performance, otherwise there was no point in putting it into production.

The resemblance between the two planes was purely superficial. The F.VII had a tubular metal frame covered in canvas and plywood, standard aircraft construction materials at the time. Going

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with all-metal construction meant the skin of the wings and fuselage could support much of the load the plane was subjected to during flight, eliminating the need for an extensive frame. However, the only metal strong enough and light enough for use in aviation at the time was corrugated aluminum.

Although the Ford Tri-Motor, as the 4-AT became known, looked like the Fokker F.VII, its construction more closely resembled that of the Junkers F13. In fact, when Henry Ford tried to sell the Tri-Motor in Europe, Hugo Junkers was able to block him by successfully arguing that its design infringed on patents his company held related to the construction of all-metal aircraft.

While Hicks and his team were designing the 4-AT, William Mayo escorted Bill Stout around the country on his lecture tour. When Ford put Mayo in charge of his aircraft project, one of his primary responsibilities was keeping Stout away from the engineers. Mayo got along well with Stout, and apparently never let on that their string of speaking engagements was intended, in part, to keep Stout from trying to design another aircraft.

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ike Ford’s Model T, the Tri-Motor wasn’t noteworthy because it represented a major advancement in aviation technology.

Rather, as Ford saw it, the 4-AT would be cheap, durable and reliable, and—as with his Model T—he was willing to sacrifice performance and appearance in order to meet those targets.

Unlike the planes of Fokker and Junkers, the TriMotor was designed from the outset for mass production. Shortly after the first 4-AT had been put through its paces, Ford started a production line at a factory near Ford Field. The marketing resources of Ford Motor Company were put to work promoting the plane, and Ford even established a pilot training school at the company’s airport.

The Tri-Motor hit the market in 1926 with an initial price of $42,000, far lower than that of the Fokker F.VII, and along with that low price

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came the backing of the world’s largest auto manufacturer. The airplane was about to transition from dangerous curiosity to a mainstay of American life.

Up to a dozen passengers aboard Ford’s Tri-Motor had reading lights and curtained windows in a cabin designed by John Kolle, an interior decorator at Hudson’s department store in downtown Detroit. They were also subjected to the deafening roar of three 300-hp Wright Whirl­ wind radial engines. Sound deadening would have been a challenge even if engineers weren’t concerned about the weight it would add. As it was, conversation was all but impossible and passengers were given cotton to stuff in their ears during the flight.

To simplify inspection and maintenance, the control cables were strung from the cockpit back along the outside of the fuselage. During flight the cables would vibrate against the airplane, further increasing cabin noise and rattling passengers’ teeth. Early models weren’t equipped with heaters, which added an extra bit of unpleasantness to the noise and vibration.

Still, the planes were—as Ford had intended—

Home and abroad Top: Passengers board a Pan American Ford Tri-Motor for a 1927 flight from Miami to Havana, Cuba. Above: A crewman serves sandwiches, coffee, tea and milk on a National Air Transport 4-AT in 1930. Below: The Ford-bankrolled Fokker F.VIIa/3m trimotor Josephine Ford that Richard Byrd used on his North Pole flight influenced the Tin Goose’s design.

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SPECIFICATIONS

ENGINES

WING AREA

SPEED

Three 420-hp Pratt & Whitney R-1340-C1 Wasp 9-cylinder radials

835 square feet

135 mph (maximum)

LENGTH

90 mph (cruise)

49 feet 10 inches

CEILING

HEIGHT

18,500 feet

13 feet 8 inches

RANGE

CREW

5.0m

2 PASSENGERS 15

All measurements

WINGSPAN 77 feet 10 inches

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in WEIGHT centimeters.

550 miles

7,650 lbs. (empty)

CLIMB RATE

12,650 lbs. (gross)

1,100 feet per minute

incredibly reliable, and the first airlines in the U.S. had little difficulty selling tickets on the “Tin Goose.” Customers took confidence from the plane’s multiple engines, all-metal construction and the safety of a pilot and copilot with redundant controls, not to mention the well-known Ford brand name.

As with the Model T, Henry Ford realized that making aviation a part of everyday life would require more than just cheap, dependable planes.

Cars needed good roads, and airplanes needed good airports. Toward that end, Ford Field became a model airport where several innovations were tried out.

The airport had two runways, each over half a mile long, with most of that paved in concrete— the first time that material was used in runway construction in the U.S. In a rather odd admixture of modern and Victorian concepts, the airport terminal included a waiting room fitted out with rocking chairs and a fireplace. There was also a weather station at the field—a novelty that rapidly became standard. Ford built a hotel across the street from the terminal, with shuttle service provided into Detroit for passengers staying elsewhere.

Air traffic control got its start at Ford Field. TriMotors were equipped with radios, and pilots kept in touch with ground controllers during takeoff and landing. Cockpit radios also made it possible for Ford pilots to take the first steps toward instrument flight rules.

In addition to a powerful rotating spotlight, the field had a pair of directional broadcast antennas.

The antennas were perpendicular to each other, with one continuously broadcasting a Morse code A (dot/dash) and the other broadcasting a Morse code N (dash/dot), both at the same strength and on the same frequency. By tuning the cockpit radio to the designated frequency and navigating so that the separate dot/dash and dash/dot signals blurred into a steady tone, pilots could be assured they were on a direct heading toward the airport.

Ford built 199 Tri-Motors between 1926 and 1933, in the process introducing the improved 5-AT, with 420-hp Pratt & Whitney Wasp engines.

The company’s accounting during that era was notoriously bad, and thus it is difficult to determine whether its venture into aircraft production and airline operation was ultimately profitable.

But if Ford managed to turn a profit from these businesses, it must have been a small one.

If anything, the Tri-Motors were too reliable.

Fokker’s plywood airplanes were grounded after a thousand hours in the air, while the 4-AT came with a 3,000-hour service life. Years later Harold Hicks told an interviewer that Ford engineers had just guessed at that figure: “We hoped that they would last 3,000 hours.”

Most of them lasted a lot longer than that.

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OPPOSITE: ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL FISHER; ABOVE: ©TYSON V. RININGER

FORD 5-AT TRI-MOTOR

0.5m

1:250 10.0m

TECH NOTES

OPPOSITE: ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL FISHER; ABOVE: ©TYSON V. RININGER

In 1986, 60 years after the first 4-AT was built, Island Airlines retired the last Tri-Motor from scheduled passenger service in the U.S. Today the Experimental Aircraft Association still offers sightseeing trips in its own 4-AT and a 5-AT owned by Ohio’s Liberty Aviation Museum.

Ford Motor certainly had the resources to stay in aviation, but when push came to shove Henry Ford was not a risk-taker. According to Hicks, Edsel was always the driving force behind the company’s involvement in the aircraft business.

Advancements in aviation design soon rendered the Tri-Motor obsolete. If the 5-AT looks decidedly modern when compared with the open-cockpit de Havillands that represented the pinnacle of American aviation in the early 1920s, it looks like an antique next to the Boeing 247, launched in 1933, when the last Tri-Motor was built.

After the success of the Tri-Motor, Ford made a push into personal aircraft. The company’s first effort, the single-engine Flivver, was a diminutive single-seater that Henry Ford touted as a plane for everyman, although its suggested list price of $28,000 made that claim rather hard to believe.

Less rugged than the Tin Goose, the Flivver weighed only 350 pounds empty. A succession of prototypes were built, with the final one crashing in the Atlantic in February 1928, killing Ford test pilot Harry Brooks.

Henry had become good friends with Brooks and took his death rather hard. He apparently had

Wind in its props Built in 1929, Tri-Motor NC9612 West Wind was lightly damaged at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

The restored 4-AT is now based at Mount Pleasant, Texas.

FORD BUILT 199 TRI-MOTORS BETWEEN 1926 AND 1933.

no intention of quitting the airplane business, but the pilot’s death seems to have made him so riskaverse that the aviation division could not keep up with the times. Edsel’s and Mayo’s interest in keeping the division relevant in a rapidly changing industry often conflicted with the elder Ford’s conservative attitude and increasingly arbitrary judgment. Though Edsel was nominally the president of Ford Motor, his decisions were subject to review and revision by his father.

Not long after Brooks died, the Depression hit and Tri-Motor sales dried up. At the time Ford’s aviation division employed more than 1,600 people, with 45 engineers on staff. Most of the division was laid off in the summer of 1932, and the last 5-AT rolled out of the factory on June 7, 1933.

Ford’s foray into aviation lasted just under a decade, and although the Tri-Motor didn’t do much for the company’s bottom line, its low cost, durability and safety helped introduce Americans to passenger air travel. “My greatest contribution,” Bill Stout would say, right up to the end of his life, “was getting Henry Ford interested in building planes.”

Richard Jensen is a writer and historical preservation consultant based in Sioux Falls, S.D. Additional reading: The Fabulous Ford Tri-Motors, by Henry M. Holden; The Saga of the Tin Goose, by David A. Weiss; and The Ford Tri-Motor 1926-1992, by William T. Larkins.

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Come FLy with me Air entrepreneur Freddie Laker is in a characteristically jubilant mood at London’s Gatwick Airport on September 25, 1977, the day before the inaugural flight of his transatlantic Skytrain service.

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FREEWHEELING FREDDIE THE MAVERICK BRITISH ENTREPRENEUR ROCKED THE AIRLINE INDUSTRY WITH HIS NO-FRILLS APPROACH AND LOW-COST TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHTS BY ROBERT GUTTMAN

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TO THE AVIATION WORLD SIR FREDDIE LAKER WAS TRULY A LEGEND IN HIS OWN TIME. A TYCOON OF WORKINGCLASS ORIGINS WHO BUILT UP HIS BUSINESS EMPIRE FROM NOTHING, LAKER MAKES THE ENTREPRENEURS ON “DRAGONS’ DEN” AND “SHARK TANK” SEEM LIKE AMATEURS. 62

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Unflagging Optimism Left: Laker launches Skytrain, with tickets priced at just £59.

Inset: A Skytrain luggage tag.

Competing directly against the world’s major airlines, the low-fare carrier that the freewheeling British businessman founded in 1966 shook the commercial aviation industry to its foundations in a manner that few have accomplished before or since.

In the end it took the combined efforts of all the airlines against which Laker was in competition to drive his company out of business in 1982. Since then, however, a number of budget airlines have emulated his business model. Virgin Atlan­tic founder Richard Branson acknowledged Laker as his role model and mentor. While not all of Laker’s business decisions turned out well, his rollercoaster career will be long remembered.

Born in Canterbury, England, in 1922, Fred­ erick A. Laker briefly attended the Simon Lang­ ton Grammar School, which proudly numbers him as one of its illustrious alumni in spite of the fact that he was expelled for poor academic performance. Laker began his aviation career as an apprentice at Short Brothers and then flew for the Air Transport Auxiliary from 1941 until 1946.

After World War II he was briefly employed by British European Airways.

Impatient with working for others, Laker borrowed £38,000 and went into business for himself, buying and selling war surplus aircraft that his company, Aviation Traders Ltd., would refurbish or modify into cargo carriers. As luck would have it, ATL was in exactly the right place and at the right time to cash in on the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift. Every airworthy plane that could carry cargo was suddenly in demand, and Laker’s fledgling company did very well delivering some of the goods.

In 1952, not content with converting and selling surplus cargo planes, Laker initiated an ambitious plan to produce an original airliner of his own to replace the aging Douglas DC-3, hundreds of which were still flying all over the world. Powered by two Rolls-Royce Dart turboprops, Laker’s ATL-90 featured modern tricycle landing gear and could be configured either as a passenger airliner or an end-loading cargo plane with a hinged nose section. The ATL-90 was marketed as the Accountant, apparently in an effort to stress its economy of operation to the airline bean-counters.

First flown on July 8, 1957, the Accountant was displayed at the Farnborough Airshow two months later, but it attracted little enthusiasm from prospective buyers. Apart from the airplane’s unfortunate name, the biggest problem was that Laker was not the only one to recognize a potential market for a DC-3 replacement. By the time the

Accountant was flying, two rivals were already airborne: Handley Page’s Dart Herald and Fokker’s F27 Friendship. In addition, Hawker Siddeley was working on the similar-sized HS-748. Like the ATL-90, all of those airliners were powered by a pair of Darts, but all of them were larger and had room for far more passengers than the 28-seat Accountant. Moreover, they were all built by companies that possessed extensive production facilities, which ATL lacked.

At least Laker had the sense not to throw good money after bad and abandoned development of the airliner. In January 1959 the Accountant was grounded and the following year it was scrapped.

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TL’s next aircraft, the ATL-98 Carvair, proved both a technological and financial success. It succeeded because this time Laker aimed at a specialized niche market that the large manufacturers had either neglected or were not interested in pursuing.

Furthermore, rather than create the aircraft from scratch, Laker converted the Carvair from existing aircraft, which was already ATL’s specialty.

In 1954 Laker had founded a provisional airline, Channel Air Bridge, which flew people and their cars across the English Channel using the Bristol 170 Freighter, a twin-engine aircraft that could only accommodate three autos at a time. By

downs and ups Top: The prototype ATL-90 Accountant, an original Laker design that could be configured as either a passenger aircraft or cargo plane, failed to attract buyers. Above: Laker’s improvised ATL-98 Carvair, based on the Douglas DC-4, proved a big success as a car ferry across the English Channel.

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Welcome aboard Top: A new Laker Airways DC-10 flies over western England in preparation for Skytrain’s inaugural service from London to New York. Above: Laker toasts Skytrain’s debut with its first passenger, Sarah Jane King, a 29-yearold mother of three from Surrey.

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the end of 1958, it was clear that for the company to survive it needed a bigger airplane. A survey undertaken in 1959 indicated that it would be financially unfeasible to develop a new car ferry from scratch, and that any of the ultra-large cargo aircraft currently in production would be too expensive to buy. Laker came up with the answer: Contract ATL to convert WWII-surplus cargo planes into specialized ferries.

The Douglas DC-4 was selected for conversion into the ATL-98 Carvair. Originally developed as a four-engine transcontinental airliner, the DC-4 entered production for the U.S. Army Air Forces during the war as the C-54 long-range transport.

A total of 1,170 C-54s were delivered to the military, while others were built after the war as DC-4 airliners. By the late 1950s those aircraft had been superseded, both in military and airline service, by larger and more powerful transports. As a result, ATL was able to obtain perfectly good C-54s and DC-4s on the secondhand market for very reasonable prices.

The largest part of the conversion involved replacing the entire fuselage forward of the wings with a new nose section. The new structure added 8 feet 8 inches to the overall length and included a large side-opening door in the nose to enable

end-on loading and discharging. It also incorporated a completely new flight deck, raised above the level of the fuselage, resulting in an unobstructed cargo space from nose to tail. The raised flight deck gave the Carvair a curious resemblance to the later Boeing 747 jumbo jet. Other less obvious changes included a taller vertical stabilizer and the complete rerouting of all the controls from the cargo space.

First flown on June 21, 1961, the Carvair could accommodate five autos along with 22 passengers.

It quickly attracted a great deal of interest. While the Carvair couldn’t compete for sales to the major airlines against advanced new jets, it was perfectly suited to the specialized market sector for which it was intended. It even achieved the ultimate in high-tech product placement when it was featured in the 1964 James Bond film, Goldfinger.

ATL built and sold a total of 21 Carvairs, including three to Ireland’s Aer Lingus and two for use by U.N. peacekeeping forces in the Congo.

Once they were retired from use by their original operators, the surviving Carvairs enjoyed long and successful careers with new owners, moving oversized cargo all over the world. At least one Carvair, operated by Gator Global Flying Services and based at Gainesville Municipal Airport in Texas, is reportedly still airworthy.

Not content to rest on the Carvair’s laurels, in 1965 Freddie Laker sold off the interests he had acquired in ATL and British United Airways (for whom he had served as managing director since the company’s inception in 1960) in order to start an entirely new airline. Established in 1966, Laker Airways began as a charter airline that initially concentrated on popular British resort destinations in the Mediterranean region and the Canary Islands. Due largely to Laker’s marketing and operational innovations, it quickly became one of the most profitable charter airlines in the world.

Laker offered lower charter rates during the off seasons, as well as reasonable time-charter rates, ensuring that his airliners flew year-round. He also introduced new low-thrust takeoff procedures that saved fuel, thereby extending the distances his aircraft could fly and simultaneously reducing maintenance costs. Still, Laker had much more ambitious plans, which finally came to fruition with the 1977 launch of his budget Skytrain service.

T

he state of aviation technology had been steadily improving for decades. Yet air travel remained a high-cost luxury, available only to the so-called jet-setters who could afford it. In order to compete against the major airlines, Laker planned to offer prospective passengers transatlantic service at a fraction of the going rates.

In 1971 Laker applied to Britain’s Air Transport Licensing Board for permission to establish a bud-

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OPPOSITE, FROM TOP: DAILY MIRROR/MIRRORPIX VIA GETTY IMAGES; PA IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT, FROM TOP: MIKE MALONEY/GETTY IMAGES; BEN CURTIS/PA IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES

get transatlantic airline service with tickets priced at roughly one-third of what the established carriers were charging. Needless to say, his proposal incurred a great deal of resistance from the airline industry. After six years of legal battling, however, he was finally able to initiate scheduled air service.

To a large extent airline ticket prices were controlled by the International Air Transport Association, a cartel system established by the carriers. Laker Airways, however, was a wholly private, independent British airline outside of the cartel. In any case, Laker was not interested in competing for the luxury air travel market. Instead, his no-frills transatlantic passenger service was akin to a flying bus. Seats were sold on a firstcome, first-served basis. Laker cut out many of the amenities to which airline passengers had become accustomed, with no inflight meals and baggage limited to 30 pounds. As it turned out, plenty of passengers were willing to put up with those inconveniences for tickets priced at less than half the rates charged by major airlines. Laker had no trouble filling his flights to capacity, and his budget airline made a handsome profit.

Equally embarrassing to the major airlines was Laker’s personal marketing style. Absent were the usual images of airborne grace and elegance that normally adorned airline advertising. In their place was Freddie Laker himself, with tousled hair and working-class accent, grinning like a used-car salesman as he touted his budget airline.

Laker proudly boasted that Skytrain represented “the end of skyway robbery.” In 1978 he was even granted a knighthood. While Laker’s style may have seemed undignified to his competitors, what they really found unforgivable was the fact that his new business model was actually working.

As a result, all the major airlines against which Laker was competing lowered their fares to the level he was charging. Although they were losing money, they agreed among themselves to maintain those low fares until they had driven Laker out of business. It was a deliberate effort by the cartel to drive out a brash interloper.

The economic recession that occurred during the late 1970s didn’t help Laker’s financial situation. In 1981 the final nail in his airline’s coffin was the revelation that the company was undercapitalized and overextended. Encumbered with debts of £270 million, Laker Airways went bankrupt on February 5, 1982.

Laker filed an antitrust lawsuit against a number of the carriers that had colluded to bring his airline down. In 1985 they agreed to settle, and Laker received payments amounting to £93 million, including £43 million from British Airways alone. That victory enabled him to pay off his creditors, but since his airline was defunct it was at best a pyrrhic victory.

In 1992 Laker reentered the airline business,

but things were never the same. In partnership with Texas entrepreneur Oscar Wyatt, he established a twice-weekly service between Florida and the Bahamas. In 1997 the service expanded with weekly flights between Miami and London.

Laker’s new transatlantic enterprise proved shortlived, however, folding in 1998. Laker died in 2006, at the age of 83.

Sir Freddie Laker was an entrepreneurial swashbuckler who cut a swath through the airline industry. Many other budget airlines, such as People Express, Ryanair, Virgin Atlantic, Southwest and JetBlue, have emulated his business model, with varying degrees of success. Although the major airlines succeeded in putting him out of business, Laker’s influence continues to reverberate within the industry today.

Frequent contributor Robert Guttman writes from Tappan, N.Y. Additional reading: Fly Me, I’m Freddie!, by Roger Eglin and Berry Ritchie; and The ATL-98 Carvair: A Comprehensive History of the Aircraft and All 21 Airframes, by William Patrick Dean.

forlorn hope Top: Flight attendant Ava Huttak sits in a dumpster outside Laker Airways’ London offices during worker demonstrations in Laker’s support on February 8, 1982, three days after the company went bankrupt. Above: Richard Branson (left) joins his mentor and fellow air entrepreneur Sir Freddie Laker prior to testifying before Congress against the proposed 1997 merger of British Airways and American Airlines.

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REvIEWS

THE EARLY AIR WAR IN THE PACIFIC

EARLY-WAR MAINSTAY The U.S. Navy’s Grumman F4F Wildcat was outmatched by the Japanese Zero.

Ten Months That Changed the Course of World War II

by Ralph F. Wetterhahn, McFarland & Company, 2020, $39.95.

Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Ralph F. Wetterhahn’s books offer an unusual combination of history and personal observations from his visits to battle sites, affording him an opportunity to actually see the remains of the crashed aircraft he writes about. > > As a former F-4 Phantom and A-7 Corair II pilot (both Air Force and U.S. Navy), he brings a veteran’s knowledge of the technical and tactical aspects of the events about which he writes so well.

In The Early Air War in the Pacific, Wetterhahn revisits what many might consider well-known material, but his opening chapter, describing an encounter between a 66

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Japanese army Ki-27 “Nate” fighter and an American P-40 Warhawk in the early days of the post–Pearl Harbor fighting in the Philippines, is certainly fresh. The story has laid dormant along with the almost inaccessible sites where the two combatants’ engagement ended when they crashed into a volcano in poor weather.

The author describes the

early months of the war when the Japanese seemed unstoppable, delving into the personalities of leaders on both sides with details that are seldom included in historical narratives. He highlights the self-possessed leadership of such key figures as U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur and Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who were often in surpris-

ingly close conflict. Then he shifts gears with a description of his colorful archeological trek to the crash site of a U.S. Navy lieutenant who fought top Japanese ace Saburo Sakai on the opening day of the Guadalcanal campaign and lived to tell the tale. The story may be well known, but it lives again as Wetterhahn eventually holds parts of the American’s F4F Wildcat in his hand, as well as the pilot’s encrusted .45 pistol, recovered from the spot where it had fallen after he bailed out of his damaged fighter.

Unusual photos from the author’s travels augment the text and shed new light on what might be considered old history, now told with a completely new slant.

Peter Mersky

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THUNDERBOLTS TRIUMPHANT

The 362nd Fighter Group vs Germany’s Wehrmacht

by Chris Bucholtz, Casemate, 2018, $37.95.

Three quarters of a century after World War II, the U.S. Ninth Air Force still remains in the shadow of the “Mighty Eighth.” So does every other Army Air Forces organization from that era. But as the tactical air force supporting American ground troops in northern Europe during 1944-45, the Ninth made a significant contribution to victory. One of 20 fighter groups in the Ninth at the time of the D-Day invasion was the P-47 Thunderbolt– equipped 362nd, “Mogin’s Maulers,” first led by Colonel

Morton Magoffin.

Overall author Chris Bucholtz does a fine job, but unaccountably he describes Magoffin as “near the top” of the West Point class of 1937.

In fact, “Mort” graduated near the bottom but proved that academics can be a poor indication of combat potential. Magoffin led from the front and became one of only three aces in his command, taking it from Stateside training in March 1943 through September 1944, when he was shot down and captured.

Magoffin’s successor was

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The Foundations of American Commercial Aviation, 1918–1938

the popular, low-key Colonel Joseph Laughlin, whose command style contrasted with Magoffin’s but proved just as effective. Remarkably, both commanding officers were

Pearl Harbor survivors.

The group entered combat in February 1944, beginning 15 months of near continuous operations. After flying from two English bases the 362nd moved to France in July 1944, reaching Germany in April 1945. By V-E Day the group had scored 121 aerial victories and received two Distinguished Unit Citations. The author details successes and losses, with illuminating accounts of airto-ground missions, including precision dive bombing of an important dam.

As Bucholtz notes, attrition was constant. In all the 362nd lost more than 70 pilots, and aggressive action cost 30 aircraft in June 1944 alone.

Barrett Tillman

AS THE PROP TURNS

by M. Houston Johnson V, Texas A&M University Press, 2019, $45.

The Soul of an Old Airplane

by John Wood, self-published, 2019, $15.

In this exhaustively researched book, Virginia Military Institute history professor M. Houston Johnson V notes that American aeronautics underwent “a radical transformation” between the two world wars when “aviation grew from infancy to maturity.” During that period, commercial flying leaped from airmail delivery in flimsy biplanes to regularly scheduled cross-country passenger service in cost-effective all-metal airliners. Johnson says the key factors enabling this remarkable progression were technological advancements, the public’s air-mindedness and mostly consistent federal government policies across political party lines.

As commerce secretary in the 1920s, Herbert Hoover recognized the need for licensing standards and uniform regulations in the emerging commercial aviation industry. Importantly, the Kelly Act of 1925 granted airmail contracts to companies as an indirect form of subsidy, thereby avoiding the European model of airline nationalization. The next year, the Air Com­ merce Act codified federal authority over aviation regulation, infrastructure development and promotion.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal activism added to the country’s airways and airports infrastructure. The 1938 Civil Aeronautics Act helped to form the foundation of the air transport system that reigned until airline deregulation 40 years later.

The author’s account is an impressive scholarly study that charts new ground in interpreting and explaining the origins of American commercial aviation.

Philip Handleman

For a dozen years starting in 2004, Massachusetts-based pilots John Wood and Bill Midon owned a Waco UPF-7 biplane that they flew to airshows and in which they gave rides. In this delightful book, Wood describes the aircraft’s varied career from training platform for young men headed to military service in the 1940s to postwar crop-duster through its eventual conversion into a showpiece for modern barnstorming. Through an amazing feat of research, readers are introduced to the people whose lives were intertwined with the biplane, and it is a colorful cast of characters.

Over the Waco’s 80 years of existence, it suffered a series of spectacular accidents that could have easily led to a oneway trip to the scrapyard. Luckily, though, there was always a talented restorer ready and willing to bring the stricken ship back to life. As the book’s subtitle suggests, this account offers a window into the soul of the aircraft, baring the truth that those who fly leave a little bit of themselves etched figuratively into the machine that enabled them to make their mark in the sky.

In celebrating flights low and slow over the countryside, the author gives armchair aviators insight into the joys of piloting an open-cockpit classic. Near the book’s end, the partners mull the limits on flight hours imposed by New England winters and decide to sell their flying treasure. Thankfully, the new owners in Mississippi are equally passionate devotees who aim to be worthy stewards of this special biplane, ensuring that its story will endure and thrive.

Philip Handleman NOVEMBER 2020

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REvIEWS P-47D THUNDERBOLT VS KI-43-II HAYABUSA

New Guinea 1943-44

by Michael John Claringbould, Osprey Publishing, 2020, $22. aviation histo­rian Michael John Claringbould explains how New Guinea’s peculiar geography helped alter the odds.

The thin density of the hot, humid air over Allied Port Moresby and the Japanese airfield complex at Wewak affected the performance of both fighters, although the Ki-43’s lighter wing loading made that less of a handicap. As one consequence more P-47s were lost in operational and training accidents than in combat. As another, while the Thunderbolt reigned supreme at high altitudes and when attacking and escaping in high-speed dives, it was vulnerable at low altitudes— as even the overconfident Kearby would be reminded in his last engagement.

Even so, using the right tactics gave the powerful, rugged P-47D the edge.

P-47 PROPONENT Neel Kearby sought to prove the Thunderbolt could hold its own in the Pacific, but paid for it with his life.

Claringbould’s research into the combat reports revealed that 19 Ki-43s fell victim to them, whereas nine or 10 Thunderbolts (including Kearby’s) were shot down

by Hayabusas. If those numbers don’t jibe with the scores of individual aces, the author notes that, for reasons

worth a study in themselves, both sides overclaimed by a factor of roughly 6-to-1!

Nevertheless, steady attrition of trained pilots combined with devastating strafing and bombing attacks on their airfields ultimately made New Guinea a dead end for several Japanese army squadrons that were annihilated and never re-formed.

Claringbould’s book evaluates the Jug’s contribution to Allied victory in a fascinating new perspective.

Jon Guttman

auxiliary role in the air war of the future.

In the central battle of the story, a massive German air fleet first sinks the British and American naval fleets in the mid-Atlantic, and then continues westward to

destroy New York City completely. But once the urban areas are reduced to rubble, the Germans find it almost impossible to dominate and control the surviving rural and unindustrialized sections of the country solely from the air. That was a lesson air power theorists still had not accepted by Vietnam.

Wells’ major forecast that did not pan out was the ease with which air fleets would be able to destroy surface navies and make them obsolete.

That dead-end theory was later advocated by, among others, Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell and Alexander de Seversky. Like all of H.G. Wells’ novels, The War in the Air is full of provocative “what ifs?”

David T. Zabecki

CLASSICS THE WAR IN THE AIR

by H.G. Wells, 1907.

Among the lesser-known books of early science fiction pioneer H.G. Wells, The War in the Air was one of the first novels about the use of aircraft as instruments of war. Wells admittedly was influenced by George Griffiths’ 1895 adventure novel The Outlaws of the Air. He wrote The War in the Air in 1907, seven years before the outbreak of World War I, and well before military theorists started thinking about the potentialities of fighter, bomber and ground-attack aircraft. As with so much good science fiction, Wells’ forecasts were eerily prescient

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in their broad scope but differed considerably in the details as the history of WWI later played out in the air.

Wells postulated combat air fleets consisting primarily of Zeppelin-like airships, which “varied in length from eight hundred to two thousand feet, and had a carrying power of from seventy to two hundred tons.” In addition to carrying guns and bombs, the airships also served as airborne aircraft carriers, each capable of launching several “one-man, bomb-throwing Drachenflieger” planes. For Wells, however, the heavierthan-air craft played only an

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In late July 1943, as the Allies went on the counteroffensive in New Guinea, a new fighter unit arrived at Port Moresby to take its place in the U.S. Fifth Air Force. The 348th Fighter Group was equipped with the Republic P-47D-2 Thunderbolt and its commander, Lt. Col. Neel Kearby, was eager to prove its superiority to anything the Japanese had. Its most numerous opponent, the Nakajima Ki-43-II Hayabusa, was roughly one-third the P-47’s weight and had a 1,130-hp radial engine compared to the “Jug’s” 2,000-hp radial with turbosupercharger. It packed two 12.7mm machine guns against the eight .50-calibers in the P-47’s wings. On the face of it, then, No. 103 of Osprey’s “Duel” series seems a cut-and-dried mismatch.

But in P-47 Thunderbolt vs Ki-43-II Hayabusa, Aus­tralian

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FLIGHT TEST

AIRLINE FLAGSHIPS

MYSTERY SHIP

Can you identify this flying car? See the answer below.

Rimowa Junkers F13

3. Howard Hughes arranged to buy the first 35 of which airliner for Transcontinental and Western Air? A. Boeing 247 B. Douglas DC-3 C. Boeing 307 Stratoliner D. Lockheed Constellation 4. Which manufacturer supplied a fleet of airliners for the newly renamed Trans World Airlines in 1950?

A. Douglas B. Convair C. Martin D. Lockheed

CORRUGATED CLASSICS

Before Stout and Ford there was Hugo Junkers. Match the airplane to its characteristics.

A. J.1 B. D.I C. CL.I D. F13 E. W33 F. W34 G. S36 H. Ki.20 I. Ju-52/1m J. Ju-52/3m

2. What was the first flagship in Pan American Airways to bear the name “Clipper”?

A. Sikorsky S-40 B. Sikorsky S-44 C. Martin M-130 D. Boeing 314

1. Two-seat attack monoplane at end of World War I 2. Single-engine Canadian bush transport 3. Junkers’ only twin-engine design 4. Mitsubishi bomber based on Junkers design 5. Germany’s principal transport of World War II 6. World’s first all-metal transport plane 7. Radial-engine six-passenger transport 8. World’s first all-metal single-seat fighter 9. All-metal armored reconnaissance sesquiplane 10. First airplane to fly the Atlantic east to west

5. Which new plane did British European Airways call its “Elizabethan Class” in honor of the newly crowned queen in 1952?

A. Airspeed Ambassador B. Avro York C. de Havilland Comet D. Vickers Viscount

ANSWERS: MYSTERY SHIP: Convair 103, also known as the Spratt-Stout 8 Skycar IV. Learn more about it at historynet.com/aviation-history CORRUGATED CLASSICS: A.9, B.8, C.1, D.6, E.10, F.7, G.3, H.4, I.2, J.5. AIRLINE FLAGSHIPS: 1.B, 2.A, 3.D, 4.C, 5.A. 70

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TOP: HISTORYNET ARCHIVE; BOTTOM: HENDRIK SCHMIDT/DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/ALAMY

>

1. Who dismissed the world’s first airline as the con­cept of vulgar tradesmen?

A. Hugo Eckener B. Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin C. Ludwig Dürr D. Alfred Colsman

NOVEMBER 2020

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TODAY IN HISTORY JULY 17, 1918 TSAR NICHOLAS II OF RUSSIA AND HIS FAMILY WERE EXECUTED. YEARS LATER, CONSPIRACY THEORIES EMERGED, AND IMPOSTORS BEGAN TO SURFACE. AN EASTERN EUROPEAN WOMAN NAMED ANNA ANDERSON CLAIMED TO BE GRAND DUCHESS ANASTASIA ROMANOV, SPARED DEATH IN 1918 BY A SYMPATHETIC GUARD. TEN YEARS AFTER HER DEATH IN 1994, DNA TESTING CONCLUDED SHE WAS NOT ANASTASIA BUT A MISSING POLISH FACTORY WORKER. For more, visit WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ TODAY-IN-HISTORY

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AERO ARTIFACT

thumb down

ACE ON THE MEND Right: Günther Rall recovers after losing his thumb to a P-47 bullet in 1944. He was hospitalized for several months when the wound became infected. Rall later joined the Federal Republic of Germany’s armed forces and held the rank of Bundesluftwaffe inspector from 1971 to 1974. He died in 2009.

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TOP: NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM/GIFT OF THE FAMILY OF GUNTHER RALL; INSET: WORLD WAR PHOTOS

Günther Rall had an eventful World War II. Flying mostly Messerschmitt Me-109s, the Luftwaffe pilot was the third-highest-scoring ace in aviation history, with 275 victories. But he also was shot down eight times, three of which left him with serious injuries. In 1941 he crash-landed his Me-109 after a Soviet Polikarpov I-16 shot his engine dead. Rall broke his back in three places, paralyzing him temporarily on his right side and leg. He was flying again within a year.

Later in the war, during Germany’s home defense, Rall had more than his fair share of run-ins with P-47 “Jugs” (see story, P. 26). As he recounted in an interview with Aviation History in 1996, “The P-47…had tremendous diving speed....I learned this quickly when they chased me.” On May 12, 1944, Rall, then II Gruppe commander of Jagdgeschwader 11, squared off over Germany against the USAAF’s 56th Fighter Group under Hubert “Hub” Zemke— Zemke’s Wolfpack. After shooting down two P-47s, Rall was set upon by late-arriving Thunderbolts. Wolf­ pack pilot Joseph Powers sprayed Rall’s fighter with .50-caliber machine gun rounds, damaging the German ace’s engine and shooting off his left thumb. Rall bailed out and was tended to by German farmers before being evacuated to a hospital.

The lined leather flying glove Rall wore on that fateful mission (right), still bearing the scar of Powers’ bullet, was donated by his daughter to the National Air and Space Museum. Note the dried bloodstains on the fingers.

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!

N IO T C U D O R P Y C N E G R E EM

Actual size is 40.6 mm

Rush Production of U.S. Silver Dollars Creates 2nd Lowest Mintage in History

4,000,000

2,000,000

The Mystery of Silver Bullion A coin’s value is often tied to its rarity.

One way to determine a coin’s rarity is by its mint mark—a small letter indicating where a coin was struck. Since Silver Eagles are almost always produced solely in West Point, the coins don’t feature one of these mint marks. But this year’s Silver

2015-P

2020-P

2017-P

2016-P

2017-S

1996

0

1994

1,000,000

Philadelphia Steps Up For just 13 days, the U.S. Mint struck an “Emergency Production” run of U.S. Silver Dollars at the Philadelphia Mint.

This was great for silver buyers, and really great for collectors. Here’s why:

2nd Lowest Mintage (240,000)

3,000,000

1997

West Point, the U.S. Mint branch that normally strikes Brilliant Uncirculated (BU) Silver Eagles, went into lockdown.

Prices quickly shot up, and freshly struck Silver Eagles became much harder to find at an affordable price. To meet the rising demand, the U.S. Mint knew it had to act—and act fast.

5,000,000

1995

U.S. Mint Halts Production

Eagles were also produced in Philly—so few (a scant 240,000) that they are now the second smallest mintage of Silver Eagles ever struck! So how do we tell a 2020(W) Silver Eagle from a 2020(P)?

2016-S

O

ne of the most popular ways to buy silver is the Silver Eagle— legal-tender U.S. Silver Dollars struck in one ounce of 99.9% pure silver.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began sweeping the world, demand skyrocketed.

But there was a problem...

Certified “Struck at” Coins Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) is one of the world’s leading third-party coin grading services. Thanks to some skilled detective work, they have certified these coins as being struck at the Philadelphia Mint during this special Emergency Production run. What’s more, a number of these coins have been graded as near-flawless Mint State-69 (MS69) condition—just one point away from absolute perfection!

Buy More and Save!

We’re currently selling these coins for $79 each. But you can secure them for as low as $59 each when you buy 20 or more and mention the special call-in-only offer code below. Call 1-888-201-7639 now!

Date: Mint: Weight: Purity: Diameter: Mintage: Condition: Certified:

2020 Philadelphia (P) 1oz (31.101 grams) 99.9% Silver 40.6 mm 240,000 Mint State-69 (MS69) Emergency Production

2020(P) Emergency Production American Eagle Silver Dollar NGC MS69 Early Releases —$79 1-4 coins — $69 each + s/h 5-9 coins — $67 each 10-14 coins — $65 each 15-19 coins — $63 each 20+ coins — $59 each FREE SHIPPING on 3 or More!

Limited time only. Product total over $149 before taxes (if any). Standard domestic shipping only. Not valid on previous purchases.

Call today toll-free for fastest service

1-888-201-7639 Offer Code EPE217-01

Please mention this code when you call.

GovMint.com • 14101 Southcross Dr. W., Suite 175, Dept. EPE217-01 • Burnsville, MN 55337 GovMint.com® is a retail distributor of coin and currency issues and is not affiliated with the U.S. government. The collectible coin market is unregulated, highly speculative and involves risk. GovMint.com reserves the right to decline to consummate any sale, within its discretion, including due to pricing errors. Prices, facts, figures and populations deemed accurate as of the date of publication but may change significantly over time. All purchases are expressly conditioned upon your acceptance of GovMint.com’s Terms and Conditions (www.govmint.com/terms-conditions or call 1-800-721-0320); to decline, return your purchase pursuant to GovMint.com’s Return Policy. © 2020 GovMint.com. All rights reserved.

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