A Busy Day at Glendale

For a few magical years before World War II, Glendale's Grand Central Air Terminal was the hub of the aviation scene in Southern California, and so there was always something going on. On this day, probably sometime in 1932 or 1933, Goodyear's Type TZ airship Volunteer descends steeply for a landing while T&WA's Fokker F-32 NC-333N taxis up to the terminal. Just another day at Glendale....

The Volunteer (and the registration NC-8A) was actually a series of airships that all utilized the same gondola or "car", but which were equipped with progressively larger envelopes. Our photo most likely shows the Volunteer III, which first flew on September 5, 1931.

Also visible in the photo is Roscoe Turner's Gilmore Oil Lockheed Air Express (NR3057), a parasol-wing variant of the venerable Vega, and just beyond it, the window line of a Lockheed Orion, probably one of Varney Air's Northrop Delta (several folks, including Tim Kalina and John Underwood, wrote to correct me on this one!).

Although Volunteer wasn't based at Glendale, she was a frequent visitor. The photo below comes from the Archive's R.C. Talbott negative collection and features California Governor James Rolph getting a ride on the Volunteer; there's no way to tell whether this was on the same day as the photo above, or another visit by the airship.

Glendale had its own "pet" dirigible, the City of Glendale developed by Slate Aircraft (see our post from August 20, 2013, for a history of this ill-fated project). In the overhead photo below, the City of Glendale pokes its nose out from its hangar. Both photos in today's post come from a small collection that was saved from UPI's San Francisco bureau office just before the vast bulk of their old photo archive was discarded after the office closed.

In the view below, from Google Earth, I've tried to get the same approximate angle as in the one above.

A Fokker Chorus Line

Eighteen of the Fanchon & Marco Fanchonettes dance on the wing of WAE's

first F-32.

In 1930, Western Air Express decided to go big...very big. They agreed to purchase and operate the largest airliner then built, and the first four-engined aircraft built in America, the Fokker F-32. (We gave a brief history of the plane in this post, back when the Archive obtained its R.C. Talbot negative collection.)

At the time, WAE's headquarters were still located at Alhambra, and the company held F-32 inaugural celebrations there as well as at Burbank and Glendale. During these gala events, which drew thousands of spectators, one of the highlights was a performance by a chorus line of young, beautiful women stepping and kicking on top of the airplane's wing in almost perfect unison...the glamorous Fanchonettes.

Today, we're featuring two Fokker F-32 photos from the Glendale inaugural event, which came to the Archive as part of the Alman collection, and one of these shows eighteen of Fanchonettes in mid-kick (typical theater performances featured 48 of the girls). The original Alman photo album page doesn't clarify the location, but what identified it to me as Glendale, rather than the other venues, is that this photo was taken at almost the exact same moment as one by R.C. Talbott which is featured in John Underwoods book on GCAT (if you have a copy of the book, it's on page 47; Alman appears to have been standing just to the right and a bit forward of Talbott).

During the 1920s and '30s, F&M was a huge deal in the Los Angeles area (think of them as that era's equivalent of Cirque du Soleil). They produced spectacular vaudeville performances at Paramount Theater Los Angeles as well as at other top are venues. At the Paramount, the live performances were part of a bigger entertainment event...for the price of admission, you would be treated to the live stage show, a news reel feature, a cartoon short and the latest top Hollywood blockbuster movie. When the movie changed, F&M came up with a whole new stage show to go along with it. So to have them help publicize WAE's new "big thing" was a publicity coup for that time. So to have the F-32 turn out to be such a colossal dud after such a spectacular beginning is especially poignant.

There's a great website that details the history of Fanchon and Marco, and I've made inquiries with them to find out if they have additional details on the WAE performances, but as of this writing, I have not heard back.

This article from Air Transport World has a photo of the girls onboard the F-32.

Glendale Photo Collection Discovered

The MojaveWest Vintage Photograph Archive is pleased to announce the acquisition of a rare and unique collection of large-format photographic negatives from the 1920s and 1930s, containing what appears to be previously unknown and unpublished images of a number of well-known aviators from what has come to be known as the "Golden Age of Aviation".

One of two Fokker F-32 airliners that served for a short time with Western Air Express.

The collection, which appears to be the work of just one passionate photographer, centers on the Glendale, Calif., Grand Central Air Terminal, which at the time was the hub of the aviation activities of the glitteratti from nearby Hollywood. Included in the collection are photos showing aviation celebrities such as Amelia Earhart and husband George Putnam, Roscoe Turner, Paul Mantz, Howard Hughes, Art Goebel and Al Wilson, as well as others such as Will Rogers and Eleanor Roosevelt. There are a number of people shown who clearly were VIPs, but who have not yet been identified.

Because the negatives are all of the nitrate type, they require special handling, and are potentially subject to degradation and even, if the conditions are right, spontaneous combustion. Because of this, they have all been carefully digitized at high resolutions, in order to preserve the embedded images.

The identity of the photographer remains a mystery, but the lack of any of the images showing up in public domain databases tends to indicate that he wasn't press, and his access suggests that he instead might have been a hobbiest who hung out with the small group of Hollywood types who indulged in aviation as a pasttime.

Some of the photos will be featured in upcoming Vintage Air blog posts, while others are being saved for inclusion in a very limited-edition high-end collector's book, tentatively titled "Golden Age Air in the Golden State", will be formally announced later this year, at which time pre-publication reservations will be taken.

The photo included with today's announcement shows one of two giant, four-engined Fokker F.32 airliners which served briefly with Western Air Express, taking on some final baggage just before departing the Grand Central Air Terminal. The F.32 was the first four-engine airliner built in America, and was essentially a failure. Only ten were built, and only two actually entered commercial revenue service, both with Western. Initially, Western Air Express had ordered five, as did Universal Air Lines. The prototype, which first flew on September 13, 1929 was even painted in Universal's livery, but it crashed a mere two months after its maiden flight, while attempting to demonstrate a three-engine takeoff.

The problem with the F.32 was that it was woefully underpowered, and the arrangement of having one engine mounted behind the other led to the aft engine having cooling and efficiency problems. In an odd arrangement, the forward engine powered a two-bladed propeller, and the aft engine drove a three-bladed prop which had a smaller diameter compared to the front one. In addition to the technical problems, the plane was just downright expensive, at $110,000 per aircraft, an enormous sum during the Great Depression.

Western Air Express initially operated the F.32s out of Alhambra Airport starting in 1930, but moved to Glendale in 1932, so that gives an indication of when this photo might have been taken.

There are a couple of other informative web resources on the F.32, including this one from the Ed Coates Collection, and this one from the Dutch Aviation website, which has some rare interior shots.