The Teenie Weenies and their Silver Trimotor Adventure

It's not everyday that the world of vintage children's books, Sunday comics and aviation history collide, but today, the 101st anniversary of the debut of the Teenie Weenies, is one such day.

The Teenie Weenies are all-but-forgotten in busy 21st century America, where Facebook memes have replaced Sunday morning newspaper comics as childhood entertainment fare. But 75 years ago, they were household names, everyone knew the characters, and children all over America looked forward to the next Sunday morning comic adventure of these miniature people who lived in a town built out of old food containers safely hidden under a rose bush in the garden.

Created in 1914 (they made their publishing debut on June 14th of that year in the Chicago Tribune) by children's writer and illustrator William Donahey, the adventures of the Teenie Weenies populated kids' books, school readers and of course the Sunday comics until Donahey's passing in 1970. In 1924, though, the Tribune discontinued the comic series for a time, and with Donahey still needing to make a living, and with their popularity and the nature of their architecture, it was a natural progression for him to license the characters for commercial promotions and advertising.

One of the companies to quickly take advantage of the opportunity was Reid, Murdoch and Company, owners of the Monarch Foods brand. Many of the "buildings" in the Teenie Weenies' town were recycled food containers, so it was a perfect branding opportunity for Monarch Foods - if a bunch of delightful, family-friendly miniature people are going to make a soup can their new home, why shouldn't it be a Monarch soup can?

Meanwhile, Monarch's ad men, ever in the quest of building brand recognition and popularity, realized that the best way to build brand recognition was to find a way to bring the people to you, and in the process expose them to the wonders of your product line. The trick, then, was to attract the people in droves. And what better way than with an airplane? A year earlier, Lindbergh had electrified America with his trans-Atlantic flight, and his subsequent national tour had drawn throngs of people out to the local airfield (or merely farmer's field) to see his plane. Likewise, shows like the Inman Brothers' Flying Circus attracted huge crowds of people. The airplane was the perfect magnet to draw the people in to hear how wonderful Monarch's food line was.

So Reid, Murdoch & Co. picked up the 48th Ford 4-AT Tri-Motor (NC-7863) off of the assembly line, and named it the Independence, in a nod to all the independent grocery stores in the midwest that Monarch distributed to. Instead of the normal plush passenger interior, they built a custom "showroom" where their canned and packaged foods were neatly lined up for display (presumably they were secured in place for flight ops!). When the plane would arrive in a town, a wooden platform would be set up next to the fuselage so that the curious could peer in through the cabin windows at the food.

With the popularity of the comic and the success of Monarch's magazine advertisement campaign, it was a natural extension to make sure that a couple of live Teenie Weenie characters went along on some of the flights as ambassadors. Two characters, the General (who was the leader of the tiny village, and thus the natural spokesman to sell the public on the wonders of Monarch's foods) and the Police Officer (the symbol of trust and protection), were played by two children in costume, and were also featured in a number of Monarch publicity photos with the Ford, including our old 8x10 press print. The children sometimes actually traveled with the Ford as it visited towns large and small. Given the dates when this took place, it's possible that these two little boys are still around, although they'd likely be in their 80s. If anyone knows anything about who they were and their story, please share via the comments section below!

The advertising gimmick didn't survive the Great Depression, though, and in 1931 Reid, Murdoch & Co. sold the Ford to a gentleman named Vernon Jones, who based it in San Diego. On April 28, 1935, the plane was wrecked in Gadsden, Alabama, and parts were salvaged and used on other Tri-motors.

A Stout Ford

The history of Bill Stout's business efforts are deeply interwoven with those of Henry and Edsel Ford, which is reflected in today's photo of this Stout Airways Ford Trimotor.

Inscribed on the back: Mr. Jos. Andrews, Chicago, 8-1929.

Stout Air Services, established by William Stout in 1925, operated under a number of names, including the Detroit-Grand Rapids Airline and Detroit-Cleveland Airline as well as Stout Airways, Bill Stout originally designed the "Air Pullman", the forerunner to the Ford Trimotor, and then sold his aircraft manufacturing operation to Ford, while retaining his airline operation. And it shouldn't be confused with the Ford Air Transport Services, Ford's own airline, also established in 1925 and which started off flying Stout-built planes. Stout carried passengers, while Ford carried Ford car parts (at first) and then airmail starting in 1926. In 1928, Stout bought Ford's airmail contracts (CAM-6, Detroit-Cleveland and CAM-7, Detroit-Chicago).

On April 29, 1929, Bill Stout cashed out, selling the line to United Aircraft and Transport Corp, who was going around the country gobbling up small carriers left and right. United continued operating the service under the Stout brand, however. In September 1930, as part of the big corporate shell game that United was playing, another carrier they'd just purchased, National Air Transport "bought" the Stout division from the parent company. A year later, all these little airlines were rolled up into the new United Airlines.

Because this photo doesn't show the plane's registration number, it's hard to know which plane it is, as Stout operated at least six 4-AT Trimotors (as well as several later 5-ATs, but this photo shows the 4-AT windshield configuration). According to Larkin's The Ford Trimotor, the planes were:

• 4-AT-5, NC-1879, which carried Stout fleet tail number 3. It operate from 6/23/27 to 5/12/31.
• 4-AT-8, NC-880, tail #6, from 2/18/28 until it crashed on 10/13/28 at Detroit.
• 4-AT-9, NC-1076, from 10/6/27 to 1/16/29 when it crashed near Toledo, OH.
• 4-AT-18, NC-4806, from 5/10/28 to 11/7/30.
• 4-AT-28, NC-6892, from 8/17/28 to 11/7/30.
• 4-AT-34, NC-7120, tail #9, from 9/14/28 to /1/13/31

Since 4-AT-8 and -9 both crashed before our photo was taken, the plane shown is either 4-AT-5, -18, -28 or -34.

Fueling Ford's X-Plane for the Navy

Since I posted a Ford Trimotor photo last week, I thought I'd go for two.... In 1927, the US Navy picked up the fourth Ford 4-AT-A Trimotor off the assembly line, designating it as an XJR-1 (BuNo. A7526).

The plane first flew on 29 January 1927 and was delivered to the customer on March 9th. After an initial testing period, the Navy based A7526 as NSF Anacostia, near Washington DC and started using it as a liaison transport for senior commanders and civilian leaders (there's record that the Assistant Secretary of the Navy flew cross-country in it at least once), often flying between Washington and San Diego, CA.

The XJR-1 didn't last long, as it was badly damaged by a tornado on 18 November 1927, with the empenage crushed and the right wing broken. The plane was disassembled and sent to the Naval Aircraft Factory in August 1929, but it was judged beyond economical repair and scrapped; the plane was officially stricken from the records on 30 April1930. In the eight and a half months of service, it accumulated 971 hours of flight time.

The Navy eventually bought eight more Fords, two 4-AT-E/JR-2 (later RR-2), three 5-AT-Cs as JR-3 and one more 5-AT-C as a RR-4, as well as two 4-AT-Ds as RR-5s (both of which have survived and are at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola. The Trimotors served both the Navy and the Marine Corps until 1937.

Some links:

• This plane also shows up in an earlier Vintage Air post, Four Fords at Ford.
• The Davis-Monthan Register's page on the plane
• Pensacola Museum's page on their Ford

Tin Goose for Gray Goose

Gray Goose Air Lines Inc. was a luxury carrier based at Chicago Municipal Airport (predecessor of Chicago Midway), and operated this Ford 4-AT-B Trimotor (4-AT-17, and thus the 17th built, NC4805) as well as a Stinson for charter work, and a Laird for flight instruction. The photo was taken by the official Ford photographer at the factory on April 20, 1928, the day it was delivered to Gray Goose.

Gray Goose operated from their headquarters at Chicago Municipal and served a number of midwest cities, including nearby North Shore Airport in Glencoe, and Sky Harbor (here's Frank Murcuiro's blog post with a pic of our plane at the iconic Sky Harbor terminal).  One of the airline's directors was Merril C. Meigs, the head of the Chicago Aero Commission as well as the publisher of the Chicago Herald and Examiner, and the man that Meigs Field was named after.

The line also flew as far south as the Gulf Coast. The seven hour flight south was operated in conjunction with Chicago's Edgewater Beach Hotel (here's a neat blog post about that, and more on the hotel can be found here), and was much more stylish than the 25-hour overnight train Panama Limited, operated by Illinois Central. One advertisement from the time read, in part, "Direct to the Gulf Coast by Airplane / A Special Service for Edgewater Beach Hotel Guests. Rise from the Municipal Airport, Chicago, and after seven delightful hours, find yourself at the Gulfcoast. On wings of luxurious comfort, speed your way Southward, from Winter's blustering blasts to balmy summer zephyrs. Loll restfully against the handsomely appointed upholstery of your easy chair as you are wisped along with the speed of the wind. At your will enjoy exhilarating freshness of the open window or the snug comfort of the closed one. All the attendant comforts of travel are provided: heat, light, and lavatory."

Gray Goose Air Lines, Inc. shouldn't be confused with Gray Goose Airways, a fraudulent investor-bilking scheme based on the east coast during the early 1930s run by one Jonathan Edward Caldwell, which sold stock (the certificates were very beautiful, too) to raise investment dollars to develop several radical new types of planes, one of which, well, was shaped like a goose mounted on a motorcycle with flapping wings. It is a fascinating story in its own right, and one that's told at this page on Aerofiles. The two companies were not related, though some references confuse them, including, unfortunately, David E. Kent's book Midway Airport (Arcadia Publishing, page 15).

And beware the "e"...in some places, Gray Goose is mis-spelled Grey Goose, including on an otherwise attractive airline poster reproduction that's being hawked widely on the internet. 

NC4805 didn't stay with Gray Goose for long. On October 26, 1929, it was picked up by Chicago Air Service, then in December 1930 moved to United Aviation Corporation.  Four month later, in April 1931, the plane was bought by Skyways Inc. in Blackwell, Oklahoma. In September, Skyways started service using the plane to serve Wichita, Topeka and Kansas City. Times were hard, though, and in December they suspended service on that route. Skyways had owned the Trimotor less than a year when, on March 15, 1932, their Blackwell hangar burned to the ground, destroying NC4805 and seven other planes.

Mamer's Famous Trimotor

I'm not sure which town this photo was taken in, but something special must
have been going on, based on all the cars lined up!

Airplanes can be a lot like celebrities...the more famous they are, the more photographs exist, floating around in collections and museums, not to mention the internet. The few of the Ford Trimotors that have survived the years and gone on to post-restoration careers tend to fit into this category, and photos of a few important airframes are very common - at least modern photos. Finding original shots of such aircraft from before they came famous is another matter entirely. Such is the case with the plane in today's featured photo, Ford 4-AT-E serial number 55, registration NC9612, which is shown flying with its original owner, Mamer Flying Service.

This Ford has one of the most colorful histories of any surviving Trimotor, and in January 2009 was sold at a highly publicized auction to auto collector Ron Pratte and his Collectible Aircraft LLC for $1.1 million, and it is now kept in Chandler AZ. (The auction company's website has a lot of recent photos of NC9612, and is well worth checking out. Incidently, at the same auction, Pratte bought Ford Thunderbird #1 for a cool $600K)

Nick Mamer had been a WWI pilot and served with distinction, downing three German Fokkers at Dun sut Meuse; during the battle of Argonne, he himself was shot down, surviving the inflight fire and crash due to his skillful airmanship. The French awarded him the Croix de Guerre for his service. After the war, Lt Mamer continued flying and went on to barnstorm around the Pacific Northwest. He tried his hand at air racing, and took third in the 1927 New York-Spokane Air Derby. He then started the Mamer Flying Service, providing flight instruction and charter service as well as forest fire spotting for the Forest Service. Mamer gained a bit of fame during August 1929 by flying, along with Art Walker, non-stop for five days, covering more than 7,200 miles in a Buhl while periodically being aerially refueled. 

MAT logo from this website.

On March 30, 1929, Mamer Flying Service took delivery of the first of two brand new Ford Trimotors, NC9612 and named it West Wind (the second, 4-AT-65, NC8403, followed that July). A year earlier, Nick had started scheduled airline service between Spokane and Portland under the name Mamer Air Transport, flying Buhl Air Sedans. Flights from Spokane to the Twin Cities, in Minnesota, and when the two Trimotors came online, he added service to Seattle, now advertising MAT as a "transcontinental line". Mamer had determined to establish airline service in the Pacific Northwest despite the fact that the US Postal Service had declined to award any Contract Air Mail routes. Without those routes, though, it was tough to make enough revenue during the Great Depression to stay in business.

When Northwest received a CAM route from the Twin Cities to Billings, MAT ceased offering service east of Spokane, and soon after stopped serving Portland. When Northwest started serving Spokane in 1933, Nick gave up on MAT, sold its assets to Northwest, and hired on as a pilot with them. On January 10, 1938, Nick Mamer was flying a Northwest Lockheed Model 14 Super Electra when it crashed after structural failure of the tail due to flutter, killing all aboard.

Meanwhile, in 1936, after MAT went out of business, NC9612 was passed from owner to owner for several years until it was bought in August 1940 by Charles Knox and Robert Tyce, who together owned K-T Flying Service, based in Honolulu, Hawaii. The Trimotor was at Pearl Harbor during the surprise Japanese attack, and though it was shot at, the venerable plane came through with only minor damage from a few bullet holes, which were quickly repaired. In 1945, it was shipped back to the mainland and put into storage until 1949. 

With the 20th anniversary of TWA, the carrier leased NC9612 and painted it in TWA and TAT markings and sent it on a cross-country promotional tour, resulting in thousands of people shooting snapshots of the famous Trimotor. The celebrations over, the plane was converted in 1952 into an agricultural sprayer, then in 1957, the famed Johnson Flying Service of Missoula MT turned the plane into a fire-fighting air tanker, and it spent the next decade traveling across the country from fire to fire. 

With newer and more capable air tankers available, the time of the Trimotor was over, and in 1969 it was purchased by Korean War ace Dolph Overton III, restored to pristine condition as part of Overton's Wings and Wheels collection, and was for a time put on display at the Virginia Air Museum.

The Barrett-Jackson auction listing for the aircraft includes this description of the restoration effort: "This was a no concession, no compromise restoration in which the airframe was reworked, a new interior installed and the exterior completely re-skinned, with most work being performed under the supervision of Master Restorer Bob Woods of Woods Aviation in Goldsboro, NC. The wings were reworked and re-skinned by expert craftsman Maurice Hovious of Hov-Aire in Vicksburg, Michigan. The landing gear, including the unique Johnson bar braking system, is complete and original. The original straight-laced wire wheels have tires that were re-sculpted to replicate the correct profile and tread pattern of the period. The wood paneling of the interior has been skillfully re-created. There are no modern avionics or communications gear - just what came with the plane when it was delivered from the Ford factory in January of 1929. Exhaustive efforts were made to ensure originality in every detail with assistance from Tim O'Callaghan of the Henry Ford Museum and American Aircraft Historian Bill Larkins, author of The Ford Tri-Motor book."

On the plane's last flight as part of the Overton collection, it was flown to the auction site by legendary pilot Jimmy Leeward, who was on the podium as the gavel fell and the auctioneer declared the plane "sold".

An extensive collection of photos of NC9612, both modern and vintage, can be found here.

As the plane was prepared for auction by the Overton Family Trust, this homepage for the plane was set up.

Hi-Way Ford

"Hi-Way" was the name of NC5492, the 21st Ford 4-AT built. Larkin's encyclopedic book on Trimotors lists the initial owner as Air Cruises Inc. of Detriot, as shown in our photo, with NC5492 being delivered on June 22, 1928. From May 1931 until June 1932, it was operated by Belle Fourche Air Lines, of Belle Fourche, South Dakota, before going back to Air Cruises for a short time.

One internet reference suggests that the plane was operated by Detroit's Kohler Aviation (who showed up on this blog a few weeks ago, in our Loeing article), but other than being in the same city, I can find no direct connection between Air Cruises and Kohnler.

NC5492's time in the US was relatively short, sinc in June 1933, the plane was purchased by the Government of Peru and shipped to South America, where it disappears from history after 1940.

The University of South Florida also has a photo of this Trimotor in their collection, and the notes from their photo indicate that four names, Perry, Hutton, Edward, Hamilton were also painted on the front of the plane, although they don't appear in our image.

Ford's Stout

Though this post was originally published only a couple of weeks ago, I'm reposting it as the Archive just acquired a second photo of a Stout Pullman.

Unfortunately, the image isn't clear enough to determine which of FATS' five
Pullmans this one is.

In the early 1920s, with most of the contemporary airplanes being made of wood and fabric, the idea of a metal airplane enthralled a few engineers who could see the day when aircraft engines would be powerful enough to heft the heavier material. One of these was William Stout, who adapted some of the metal structure design aspects pioneered by the German designer Hugo Junkers. The most readily visible aspect of this technology was the use of corrugations in the metal skin to provide structural strength.

Unlike many engineers, Stout was also an astute salesman, and resorted to a gimmick to raise the capital needed to turn his ideas into reality. He sent letters to leading industrialists blatantly asking for a thousand dollars from each of them, stating, “For your one thousand dollars, you will get one definite promise: you will never get your money back.” Twenty people responded, and the Stout Metal Airplane Company started business in 1922. Two of the twenty people who responded were Henry and Edsel Ford. Henry’s success in the automotive industry led him to believe that there was a future in air transportation as well, if for no other reason than as a fast means of moving freight from one factory to another.

This photo comes from a different source than the one above, but the scene
is certainly similar.

The first Stout plane, the 2-AT Pullman (or “Air Pullman”), was a single-engine all-metal design powered by a 400-hp Liberty V-12. First flight took place on April 23, 1924, and the aircraft was christened Maiden Detroit. In all, eleven of the aircraft were built, and the Pullman lived up to the luxury hinted at by it's railroad passenger service-inspired name: passengers could expect a cabin with comfortable seats, pleasant decor including designer wall paper, and even a bathroom. In its cargo configuration, Stout advertised the 2-AT as the "Air Truck".

In 1924, Henry Ford did more than just invest a thousand dollars: he became a partner in Stout, and the company moved to a new factory facility at the Ford Airport in Dearborn, Michigan. In August 1925, while the Pullman was still under development, Henry bought out William Stout’s interest in the company, which then became the Stout Metal Airplane Division of the Ford Motor Company; Stout himself stayed on as chief consulting engineer. Henry also began sponsoring the Ford National Reliability Air Tour, an annual cross-country contest that was intended to promote aviation as a safe and reliable means of transportation. The 2-AT won the 1925 event with a perfect score.

Ford now had a capable airplane, but he still needed a commercial service to carry the freight he needed moved, so he took the first five aircraft (the Detroit plus Maiden Dearborn I, II, III and IV) and formed the Ford Air Transport Service, which flew the first scheduled commercial cargo flight in America between Ford factories in Detroit and Chicago on April 14, 1925. Besides those two cities, Cleveland was also served by FATS. While the media-derived nickname "Tin Goose" has come to be attached to the Ford Trimotor over the years, it actually was first given to the Pullman by a newspaper in December, 1925.

With the passage of the Kelly Act, which allowed commercial services to bid on U.S. Air Mail runs, Ford jumped into that game as well, and Maiden Detroit flew the America’s first commercial transport of mail from Detroit to Cleveland. On May 18, 1926, Maiden Dearborn I become the first US commercial aircraft to suffer a fatal accident, when the air mail flight crashed during poor weather. Despite the initial hype regarding the safety of the aircraft, in 1928 the Commerce Department declared that the Pullman’s wings were not safe, and so all remaining 2-ATs were scrapped.

The Packard Ford

The third in a series of three posts featuring some of the Archive's Ford images

With Trimotor production in full swing, the Ford Motor Company understood that the way to stay ahead of the competition was to be continually innovating, so a small group of producition aircraft were held back from sale and used as testbeds to try out new engine combinations. One of these was the sole model 11-AT.

Born as a standard 4-AT-E, (NC-8404; first flight July 10, 1929), serial 66 was used to test Packard's new DR-980 nine-cylinder radial Diesel engine, first designating it a 4-AT-G then 11-AT when the corporate decision was made to offer the configuration for sale. First flight in its experimental configuration took place on April 2, 1930. The engine, designed by Professor Herman Dohner and Captain Lionel Woolson, promised a drastic improvement in fuel efficiency and a power-to-weight ratio - at 550 pounds dry-weight, the 225 horsepower output resulted in a more efficient ratio than some of today's engines. Ford actviely advertised the type as more economical as well as safer, since Diesel fuel is less flammable.

Our photo is an official Ford shot, and the 8x10 glossy period print is so crisp that an enormous amount of detail can be seen by enlarging the scans.

When this engine was installed on a Bellanca CH-300, it set a world unrefueled endurance record of 84 hours, 33 minutes on May 28, 1931, a record which stood for 55 years until being broken by the Rutan Voyager.

However, there were some drawbacks. The engine was a monovalve design, and consequently was very rough running - in some applications, a flexible coupling needed to be installed between the crackshaft and the propeller. For an airliner, this was a show-stopper. Passengers demanded smoothness in their ride. In addition, many people found the smell of Diesel exhaust particularly annoying.

After NX8404's flight test program was over in, Ford dropped the idea of using Packard Diesels, and returned the aircraft to it's stock 4-AT-B configuration with three Wright J-5 R-790 Whirlwind engines (there is some indication that it later had J-6-9s). It was first sold on July 3, 1934 to Mulzer Flying Service of Columbus Ohio, then on January 25, 1936 to Oral K. Southwick of Springfield, Mo. On May 29, 1937 (some sources say it was in March, not May), the plane crashed at Belleville, Illinois, though without killing anyone. The wreckage was taken to Parks College where an attempt was made to rebuild it, but it was ultimately judged too expensive, and the remains were cut up and sold for scrapped.

(Some information for this post was derived from the invaluable book Ford Tri-Motor1926-1992 by William T. Larkins)

Four Fords at Ford

The second of three Ford Trimotor posts for this month

Today's small, innocuous snapshot is really the capture of a remarkable moment in Ford Trimotor history. Taken at Ford Airport in Dearborn, Michigan (now the site of Ford's Dearborn Development Center; for a look at how it appears today, check out this link), the photo was taken at or near the beginning of the 1927 Ford National Reliability Air Tour, which got underway on June 27, 1927 (there is another similar photo of the event, here on San Diego Air & Space Museum's Flikr site, which also appears in a book on the tour).

Lined up from left to right are:

NC3041: This was the third 4-AT-A built went to the Ford Air Transport Service; it was later was rebuilt into a 4-AT-B and then a -E configuration. After service with Ford, the plane bounced around several owners before being bought by Alton and Elizabeth Walker, who used it for barnstorming (Elizabeth was listed as the aircraft's owner). A contemporary newspaper account describes the couple as "barnstorming their way around the world in a tri-motor Ford on their second honeymoon...."

By 1935, it was being flown by Whitepass Airways from Skagway, Alaska, and in 1936 it was in B.C. Canada with the British Yukon Navigation Company (CF-AZB). It was damaged during a towing accident and after a failed rebuild attempt, it was "bulldozed into the ground as part of the construction of longer runways at Whitehorse" in 1942.

A detailed history of this aircraft, including the newspaper item quoted above, can be found at the Davis-Monthan Register site. Photos of its time at Whitepass can be seen here.

NC2492: This was the sixth 4-AT-A, first flew May 18, 1927 and was sold to Standard Oil of Indiana, who used it as a company transport and named it "Stanolind I". Two photos of NC2492 from July 1927 when it was in service with Standard can be seen at the Denver Public Library's Western History website.

At some point, the plane was sold to D. A. Seitz and operated privately. It was destroyed in a crash on February 8, 1930 in San Marcos, Texas, reportedly when the landing gear failed. There were seven on board, and it appears that there were no injuries, although the plane was written off. There is some rumors, though, that the airframe, or parts of it, were recovered and is now undergoing restoration (would love to hear comments from anyone with information!).

A-7526: The fourth 4-AT-A Trimotor was built as a demonstrator for the U.S. Navy, and assigned Navy model number XJR-1 and Bureau Number A-7526.After its initial flight test and demonstration program, it was used as an executive transport for the Navy, flying fairly regularly between San Diego and Washington DC. During the 1927 Reliability Tour, the plane was used to fly press reporters, and given the designation "Advance Pathfinder Airplane and Official Tour Airplane"...which, if this photo was taken during a Tour event, it is seen here.

By April 30, 1930, it had been stricken from the Navy's books, and presumably was scrapped.The Navy and Marines would go on to buy eight more Trimotors from Ford.

NC2435: This was the first, serial number 4-AT-1. Its first flight took place on May 11, 1926, and in October 1927, it was delivered to Ford's own airline, Ford Air Transport Service. At some point, probably at the time of delivery, the registration was changed on NC1492. On May 12, 1928, the aircraft was destroyed when it crashed on takeoff at 8:45am from Ford Airport, killing both pilots, William Munn and L.K. Parker (a newspaper account of the accident can be seen here). The cargo flight was the inaugural run of the Dearborn-Buffalo NY route, and the accident was the first fatal Trimotor crash. According to the contemporary news account, Munn, a former test pilot, lifted off with too little airspeed and the plane stalled.

While the photo on the right isn't related to the 1927 Tour photo, I thought I'd thow it in as a bonus...Henry Ford himself assisting a woman (his wife?) off of a Trimotor sometime in 1928. Our image appears to be a proof for a wire service photo.

Finally, I offer the snapshot below...a small little photo showing three Trimotors in formation flight...I have no idea if this was taken during the 1927 Air Tour, or at some other event, but this seems as good a post as any to include it.









There is a new Trimotor history website that I'm excited to see come our way...check it out and contribute if you can!

Photos of a remarkable Trimotor restoration can be seen here

Tex Johnston and the Trimotor

"I found you a couple of airplane pictures", said Keith, a generously helpful gentleman who works at one of the local antique malls. He knows I'm building an archive of vintage aircraft photographs, and has been great keeping his eyes open for me. He hands me these two rather battered and abused little snapshots. Trimotors! This put them clearly in the Great Depression years of the mid-1930s. Total bill: $4.

Little did I know the amazing adventures through the threads of history that these two 70-something-year-old photos were about to take me, a trip which culminated in the first article in a new column that I've signed on to doing for AirshowStuff Magazine. (To read the piece, you can download the September issue for free as a PDF file here, but be patient, it's a large file!). This post is all about chasing the light that came through some long-forgotten photographer's lens; and for me, the history detective game was afoot!

Inman Brothers' Fort 4-AT-B Trimotor NC5577

There were a number of things that intrigued me about the photos...clearly they were taken at the same place, the same day. It looked a lot like a dry, dusty summer day somewhere in the midwest. A lot of people were around in the background, so it was an event of some sort, probably a barnstorming airshow, which would account for why these photos were even taken. The popularity of the snapshot camera paralleled the growing popularity of these futuristic machines of the sky. There are no identifying marks on the Stinson, but after scanning at high resolution the Ford 4-AT-B's photo, it was clear that the aircraft had the registration number NC5577 (c/n 4-AT-23), and flew for an outfit called the ____man Bros. (the name being partly obscured by someone standing in front of it).

This one is a Stinson Model T, aka an SM-6000 Airliner, and wears 

old American Airlines colors. American operated them only a short 

time, then sold them to Delta, who also later sold them off. Only 

about 50 were built, and only two have survived the years.

Google to the rescue. Typed in the registration number and right away got some really great hits. First stop on the virtual journey was in Tucson, Arizona, and the website for the Davis-Monthan Municipal Airport Register. This was reportedly the very "first municipal airfield in the U.S.", and between 1925 and 1936 all the visiting pilots signed into a large leather-bound register, and it reads like a who's-who of the golden age of aviation. And NC5577 has it's own web page on the site, because it once stopped over in Tucson...in fact it stopped in on June 25, 1928, only three days after being delivered brand new by Ford to Maddux Airlines. The son of the last civilian owner of the plane had provided a lot of detailed information, including a copy of the National Air & Space Museum's data card that listed every owner the Ford ever had. And that held the key for me: two of the owners were Arthur Inman (who bought the plane on June 26, 1934) and his brother Rodger [sic] Inman (who took ownership on December 2, 1935). It was the Inman Bros. name that was painted on the side of the Tin Goose. At the time, though, the D-M website didn't have any information on the Inman brothers' operation of the plane.

So I Googled the Inman Bros., and again struck gold (after wading through all the links to the modern band by that same name). The full name was "Inman Brother Flying Circus". Based out of Coffeyville, Kansas, the Inman Brothers operated a unique barn-storming act that traveled from city to city giving airplane rides and putting on airshows, complete with skydivers.

Warman's Antiques & Collectibles 2011 Price Guide lists a poster for the Inman Bros. Flying Circus. And then, there was the website EarlyAeronautica.com, which was offering a vintage Inman Bros. poster for sale, complete with a ticket for an airplane ride that someone had pasted in the center of it. When I contacted EarlyAeronautic about the poster, owner Thomas E. Kullgren very graciously allowed me to use his image of it in the AirshowStuff  article.

The Flying Circus operated a number of different aircraft, from a Curtiss Jenny to the Ford Trimotor to a Boeing Clipper Trimotor. Art and Roger "Rolley" Inman had fallen in love with aviation in 1921. Art had taken a ride from Charles Pedelty in Mason City, Iowa, paying a pricey $7 for the privilege. He and his brother then started taking flying lessons from Charles "Speed" Holman, who later would be Northwest's first pilot. The act included Rolley's wife, Margie, who was a wing walker. Rolley himself died in a plane crash in 1944.

Following the leads on the Flying Circus, I came across one of those "aha" nuggets that history sometimes reveals. A certain young pilot and aircraft mechanic graduate of the Spartan School of Aeronautics went looking for his first aviation job from his home-town friends, Art and Rolley. This young lad was Alvin "Tex" Johnston. He was hired on to sell tickets for the airplane rides, and worked on the Trimotors' engines when needed. He needed to build flight time, so traded some of his labor for instruction and time in the Ford Trimotor. Later, during WWII, he served as a ferry pilot for the Army Air Corps, won the Thompson Trophy in 1946, and then went to work for Bell Aircraft as a test pilot. There, he helped design and test flew the revolutionary Bell X-1, which then went on to break the sound barrier for the first time while being flown by Chuck Yeager.

After Bell, Johnston went to work for Boeing as their chief test pilot, and gained public notoriety as the pilot who rolled the prototype of the Boeing 707 airliners over the National Hydroplane races in Seattle. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) was also holding their annual convention in Seattle at that time, which meant that the executives of the world's airlines which Boeing wanted to pitch their new jet to were sitting there right on their doorstep, on August 6, 1955. According to Johnston, when you wanted to sell airplanes, you demonstrated them. He said in a television interview once, "I knew the prototype [the 367-80], and there's one maneuver that you can do with no hazard whatsoever. I decided that I would do a roll to impress the people." He practiced the maneuver a couple of times out of sight, and then headed for where the crowds were. "So I came across [Lake Washington] and did a chandelle," which he then continued into a 1-G barrel roll.

The crowd was impressed, to say the least. Boeing President William M. Allen reportedly turned to a friend he was sitting with and asked if he could take some of his friend's heart attack medication. Johnston continued: "I was called into Mr. Allen's office on Monday morning, Mr. Allen asked me what I thought I was doing. I said, 'Well, I was selling airplanes,' and explained it was a 1-G maneuver, it's absolutely non-hazardous, and it's very impressive. He said, 'You know that, now we know that, but let's not do that any more.'"

Tex may have become famous by barnstorming Boeing's prototype jet airliner, but that was nothing out of the ordinary for him, after all, his first job was flying and maintaining a humble Ford Trimotor flown by the Inman Brothers Flying Circus.

(Tex wasn't the only future aviator inspired by the Inman Brothers. Mildred "Mickey" Axton took a ride in the Inman's Jenny at age nine and fell in love with flying. She went on to serve as a WASP in WWII, and then went to work for Boeing and became the first woman to fly the B-29. Her story is here.)

But while Tex was going on the fame and glory, what about NC5577? In July, 1938, the Ford was victim of a freak accident, when an Aeronca that was taxiing past suffered from a broken crankshaft. The prop flew off the small plane and went whirling through the air, and though the tail of the Ford. On February 27, 1939, the Inmans sold it to Oscar Nichols, who was one of the principals in the Phenick Flying Service in Newark, Ohio. They operated the Ford until late in 1942, when it was sold to the U.S. Government. It, along with another Ford, was taken to South America to be used by the Army Corps of Engineers during the construction of the Pan American Highway. The planes were based in San Jose, Costa Rica. After the project was discontinued in 1943, the planes were auctioned off locally, and at this point, NC5577 disappears from history. Was it operated by a Costa Rican company? Did it crash? Did it just disappear into the jungle? We'll probably never know...