Why Greece? I’ve been enjoying a relatively new podcast, “The Delicious Legacy”, about the history of food in the ancient world. (If you want to give it a try, I recommend the episode “The Orthodox Easter Food Traditions“.) So why not?
Bonus video: since I don’t really have any place else to put this, “Across the World in 3 Seconds”, a short film about Pan Am’s communications and computer systems.
Well, we have video of the reunion of the Tailhook Association…
…from 1968. I guess at some point it stopped being a “reunion” and started being a “symposium”. Or maybe it’s always been both a reunion and a symposium. I’m not clear.
There’s some interesting “a wink and a nod” stuff in here: “bold men with a zest for life”, un-orthodox use of “No Step” decals, a reference to supplies of tomato juice in Vegas being seriously depleted (because of aviators consuming Bloody Marys as a hangover cure). Then again, “…single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints“.
There’s also some nice vintage video of Vegas in the late 1960s, if that’s your pleasure.
(I kind of wonder how the admiral got his award home. But he was an admiral: that was probably a problem for his subordinates.)
(The Tailhook Association is still active, though the 2020 symposium has been cancelled due to the Wuhan flu.)
Bonus video: these are supposedly home movies of U-2 flight tests at Edwards AFB in 1972.
Time for some more military geekery. And I think that’s appropriate in this case, because this covers two interesting areas of research.
“Holloman — Frontier of the Future”, a documentary about Holloman AFB in New Mexico and some of the work going on there at the time. In addition to missile testing and flight operations, Holloman has a long (35,000 feet at the time: it was upgraded to 50,917 feet in 2000) rocket sled track: this is where John Paul Stapp did his work, and he’s interviewed briefly in the film.
Holloman was also the home base for Project Manhigh (though the balloons were launched from other sites).
Bonus video: and now for something completely different (and longer). I have not watched this yet, but I’m bookmarking it here for reasons I’ll go into in a moment.
We have Science Sunday. I think I need to declare either “Travel Tuesday” or “Travel Thursday”, for the alliterative value.
We could sort of have a two-fer today, since it isn’t just Travel Thursday, but TWA Thursday. Sit back, relax, perhaps have a cup of TWA coffee, or some TWA tea.
(Somewhere, I hear Pat Cadigan yelling “DWIGHT!” the way she used to yell “GARDNER!”)
I’m a little surprised they didn’t stop over in Hawaii. And speaking of Hawaii…
Bonus video #1: according to the YouTube notes, this is a Coast Guard video (composed of actual 8mm footage and some re-enactments) about Pan Am Flight 6.
This sounds very similar to the plot of “The High and the Mighty”, but the movie came out in 1954 (and the book in 1953).
I’ve seen that once, on TV, and I’d like to see it again. Lawrence has the DVD, but we have to wait until RoadRich can join us. (This isn’t ‘Nam, this is movie night. There are rules.)
(It’s also interesting to me that Robert Stack plays the pilot on the verge of cracking up. Compare to “Airplane!” Was this a deliberate choice? Wikipedia talks about the choice to cast Stack, but is silent on this specific point.)
Bonus video #2: inside the Eero Saarinen designed TWA Flight Center in 2014.
I’m stealing that title from great and good FotB of the blog, RoadRich, who tipped me off to this story from Plane and Pilot.
Carolyn Guertin turned 92 on June 29th.
…the State of Virginia issued a proclamation making June 29th Carolyn A. Guertin Day, and if ever there were anyone deserving of it, it is this woman. Oh, and the CAP also marked the day by awarding Guertin the rank of Colonel.
The high in Austin today is estimated to be 104. I think it is time to bring out something I’ve been holding in reserve.
“Land of White Alice”. No, this isn’t a Lewis Carroll thing. “White Alice” was a communications system in Alaska that used “tropospheric scattering” for over-the-horizon communications links.
The video makes it sound like White Alice was a major communications link for civilian traffic, but from what I’ve read elsewhere, it carried mostly military communications at this time (though it was used to coordinate between military and civil air traffic). The system went into place beginning in 1955: by 1970 or thereabouts, the military considered it obsolete, and transferred it to RCA Alascom for civilian use until the late 1970s.
I’m putting this up for two reasons: in addition to my interest in cold war tech, there’s also a lot of great vintage footage of Alaska. There’s even an Alaskan bush pilot, RoadRich.
Bonus: “Seconds For Survival”, from those wonderful folks at the Bell System.
Today’s entries are part military aviation, part general aviation. Specifically, both of these focus on the kind of mistakes that got military pilots killed (not in combat) in the 1940s: many of those are equally applicable today, as I’m sure FotB RoadRich will attest. (I don’t know if any of the planes he’s flown have talking oil temperature gauges, though.)
“Unless You Fly With Safety”. This is the short version.
Bonus: “Learn and Live”. This is the long version, but it feels like some has been cut off of the end.
I think it is time for some more virtual travel, back to the past, on a defunct airline.
Where to go this time? How about…Bermuda?
From 1961, “Wings to Bermuda” (in color!), brought to you by Pan Am (and the Periscope Film channel on the ‘Tube).
Bonus video: I’m having trouble deciding: did I post the Paul Shaffer video as a segue into “Wings to Bermuda”, or did I post “Wings to Bermuda” to give myself an excuse for the Paul Shaffer video? Decisions, decisions…
I’m easing into the July 4th weekend myself. So there’s no overarching theme here, other than: America!
“Grayhounds of the Sea”, a history of U.S. Navy destroyers, narrated by none other than Mr. Jack Webb.
Ordnance Lab builds a replica of the Syrian Hell Cannon Mortar. This is part 1: as far as I can tell, they haven’t posted part 2 yet. (The Wuhan Flu probably has something to do with that. But it looks like they’ve been doing stuff recently with the Roomba-Boomba.)
“Ten Years To Remember”. This is a promo film from the Martin Company (which later merged and became Martin Marietta, and even later on merged again and became Lockheed Martin) from 1964, covering ten years of rocket development.
1972 NASA promo film for Skylab. I’ve always been kind of partial to Skylab.
I was only going to do three, but this one popped up, and it is short: a tribute to Robin Olds from AirForceTV.
Ah, the Lockheed Electra. The L-188 version, to be clear, not the Model 10 Electra, which is what Amelia Earhart was flying when she was lost.
The L-188 story is fascinating. Lockheed started working on a similar aircraft in 1951, but couldn’t get anyone to buy it. They kept refining the design (going from two to four engines and stretching the plane for increased seating) and, in 1955, Eastern and American placed orders. The first Electra went into service with Eastern in January of 1959.
The second two accidents were a lot more complicated. Two Electras (one operated by Braniff and one by Northwest Orient) came apart in mid-air and crashed, killing everyone on board. Much of Serling’s book deals with the investigation and the controversy surrounding it. There was a tremendous amount of pressure put on the FAA administrator by Congress and even some airlines to ground the Electra completely until the cause of the accidents was determined.
Lockheed went to extraordinary efforts to find out what had happened:
Each day Bob Gross met with all Lockheed department heads and key engineers. Each day he asked the same question:
“Do you have all the people you need and all the equipment you need? If not, well get it.”
They took him at his word.
It wasn’t just Lockheed, though. Amazingly (to me) both Boeing and Douglas provided engineers and equipment to Lockheed as well, even though the companies were fierce rivals.
Where safety begins, competition ends, for public confidence is the pillar supporting all commercial aviation. Any unsolved accident is a challenge to every airline and every airframe manufacturer, no matter what individual carrier or individual aircraft is involved. Buffalo and Tell City not only were unsolved crashes, but disasters that raised doubts about the industry’s very system of designing and testing new planes. Lockheed’s methods of developing and testing the Electra were almost identical to those used by other companies.
A man named Tom Harris was running Aero Design and Engineering at the time: they made the Aero Commander, a very popular general aviation aircraft. While on the road, he heard people talking about how unsafe and not airworthy the Electra was. When he returned home, he wrote a memo to his staff:
When we have completed an aircraft, and are satisfied that we have produced a safe and airworthy vehicle, we must of course secure this government certification. These two things accomplished, we go to the public and do our best to persuade potential customers that this is the machine they should buy. How well we succeed depends on how effective our persuasive efforts are. We ask for no help from others. We do expect, however, that to the extent our reputation has substance, and to the extent this government certification is valid, that others in the industry will respect our claim for airworthiness. We ask no praise from competitors, but in fairness and in behalf of total industry growth, we believe under this circumstance other members of the industry should not attack, criticize, or infer any unsafe situation with regard to such a product…
It has developed that some of our own people have opinions that the airplane is not safe to ride as presently being operated by the airlines; that it has an inherent defect which has not been determined or remedied, and that to fly in it is foolish and unwise.
At this point, I should like to make it very clear that I do not intend to ask anyone in this organization to fly in any aircraft which he or she does not wish to fly in, either because of the opinions as to safety, comfort, or any other reason. The people of Aero Commander are free to exercise their own judgment and conscience in determining what aircraft, if any, they are individually willing to travel in.
Having made this clear, I feel impelled also to make clear that in my opinion, as responsible members of the aircraft industry, we also have the obligation to avoid making any remarks about another manufacturer’s aircraft that tend to destroy confidence in it, or impute any dangerous condition to such aircraft that would damage its reputation as well as the reputation of this industry, of which we are a part. No one is expected to make statements in praise of an aircraft that they honestly do not feel warrants praise, but an aircraft which has the reputation and experience of a sound manufacturer and the certification of the FAA should be talked about by others in our industry as being safe and airworthy, and if it cannot be praised by an individual, certainly it should not be run down.
If we cannot say something good about airplanes such as this, I suggest that we should at least remain silent.
They don’t make them like that any more.
The cause of the crashes was determined to be a little understood (at the time) phenomena called “whirl mode flutter”. What was happening was that the outboard engines could get into a mode where they’d start vibrating, and the engine mounts were not stiff enough to stop the vibration. Those vibrations could, in turn, be transmitted to the wings and set up a resonance, which would turn into a violent oscillation that only ended when it tore the wing off. Lockheed retrofitted the Electras with stronger engine mounts and engine mount supports, and thickened the struts, which resolved the whirl mode issue. But there were some other high profile crashes (for other reasons) and the public lost confidence in the Electra. Production ended in 1961, with 170 built. Many of them continued in use as cargo, rather than passenger aircraft, though some smaller carriers continued to use Electras on their routes. And Lockheed built a modified version of the Electra which became the highly successful P-3 Orion.
I enthusiastically recommend the Serling book. I don’t recommend that you pay what Amazon is asking for the Bantam Air and Space reprint, as it seems to show up intermittently at better used book stores for much less. But you can get the Kindle edition at a reasonable price, or for free if you have Kindle Unlimited.
Those two crashes were in Tell City, Indiana and Buffalo, Texas. Buffalo is about three hours from Austin: when we get out of jail, I may take a road trip up that way.
You know what I feel like I haven’t done in a while? Naval aviation. And the F-4 Phantom.
Why not a three-fer, since I also really haven’t given the Blue Angels any love here.
“Diamond in the Sky”, from the early 70s. The team used the F-4J Phantom II from 1969 to December of 1974.
Bonus video: from approximately the mid-1970s, “Portrait The Blue Angels”. It feels like there should be a colon in there, but there isn’t officially. They were flying the A-4F Skyhawk from December of 1974 up to November of 1986: the Skyhawk is what they were flying the one time (so far) I’ve seen them perform.
Who’s up for some travel on Pan Am? And what exotic destination sounds good today?
How about…Finland! It isn’t quite Paris in the the spring, but we can make do.
Bonus: Here’s something a little different. “Airline Pilot”, a 1970 documentary from BOAC, following a young pilot through his training and first flight.
According to the YouTube notes, Stephen Radcliffe (the subject) was BOAC’s youngest pilot ever.
BOAC was merged with British European Airways (BEC) in 1974 to form British Airways. According to various online sources, Mr. Radcliffe died in 1971: he fell off of a cliff while camping.
I thought it might be fun to post some more Convair promotional videos. Especially since these show some nice vintage livery from airlines back in the day.
Bonus: “The Convair Liner”, another promo film. This one covers the 240, 340, 440, and even the military variants.
I really like seeing the old Braniff paint jobs. I never flew Braniff, but I have sort of a sentimental fondness for them after reading Splash of Colors, John Nance’s history of the airline.
There’s a story in Nance’s book that I like: Braniff’s mechanics were on strike, and marching the picket line when a thunderstorm hit. Tom Braniff saw that the mechanics were getting wet, so he told one of his people to get some rainsuits, coffee, and doughnuts and take them to the guys on the picket line.
You know, the history of aviation wasn’t all Pan Am and Boeing. There were other companies involved.
Like Delta. And Convair, a division of General Dynamics (as of 1953).
“Introduction to a Champion”, a Delta/Convair promotional film for the then-new Convair 880 jet. The 880, in theory, was supposed to be a competitor to the 707 and DC-8 by being smaller and faster.
The film certainly makes the 880 look comfortable, in that sort of idealized vintage 1960s air travel kind of way. They even manage to make airline food look almost appetizing. It also places great emphasis on the alleged speed of the 880.
Unfortunately, it was not entirely successful. Convair made 65 of them from 1959 to 1962. Delta ran 17 of them between 1960 and 1974. As far as I can tell, there are no currently operational 880s, though there is one in storage somewhere in California. Most of the others have been chopped up and parts put on display (or, in one case, used in a lodge in South Africa).
There is one surviving intact (but not airworthy) example that I know of that is on display. You may even have seen it, which leads me to…
Bonus video: this is a little below my usual standards of quality, but short. “Lisa Marie: The History Tour 1960 – 2015”. You see, Elvis bought one of Delta’s retired Convair 880s in 1975 for $250,000. He then spent a truckload of money having it extensively customized:
(Probably true story, at least according to a couple of sources: Elvis originally wanted to buy a 707, and had even put down a deposit on one. He probably would have been happier long term with that plane – or at least it would have been easier to find parts, I suspect – but the 707 he put money down on was Robert Vesco‘s, and when the fecal matter of Vesco’s empire impacted the rotating blades of the Federal impeller, that deal fell apart. I don’t know if Elvis got his money back or not: I suspect the IRS or the SEC immediately confiscated it from Vesco’s people, and they didn’t have it to give back. But I digress.)
There’s some good shots in here of the “Lisa Marie”‘s interior, which I guess is pretty much what you’d expect from a plane owned by Elvis.