Amelia's First Speed Record (of Sorts)

Vega NC-538M somewhere over the San Fernando Valley

4/19/2015-This post was originally published on August 9, 2013, but has been rewritten and updated.

During the famous 1929 Women's Air Derby, billed by the press as the “Powder Puff Derby”, Amelia Earhart flew the only Lockheed Vega (NC-31E, c/n 36) that had been entered entered to a respectable third place, which garnered yet more positive media publicity for Lockheed.

Following the Derby, Earhart flew her race Vega back to Los Angeles, and there stayed with friends Jack and Helene Maddux (of Maddux Airlines and subsequently T-A-T Airlines fame). While in LA, she decided to visit Lockheed and shop for an upgraded Vega, taking several test flights in Wasp-powered Vega 5A Executive NC-538M. Earhart recorded in her logbook that on November 18, while test flying the plane over a closed course, she flew one leg at a blazing 197 mph. “Hooray!” was her commentary.

In the Derby a few months before, Louise Thaden had won the race. Thaden also happened to hold the women’s speed record, at a paltry 156 mph. It occurred to Earhart that in the Vega, she could easily beat that. On November 21, Earhart flew the one mile course set up at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Airport - what is now known as Van Nuys Airport – with Detroit Aircraft’s chief test pilot, Lt. Carl Harper, to confirm the potential. Lockheed recognized a great publicity opportunity when they saw it, and offered to loan her the plane for the record attempt.

NAA rules specified a 24-hour notice for any record attempt, and Earhart fulfilled this obligation, indicating that on the following day she’d attempt to break Thaden’s record.

The NAA sent their official timer, a Mr. Joe Nikrent, and over four laps Earhart’s average speed was 184.17 mph, with one lap clocked by Nikrent at 197.8 mph. And yet, despite the use of the official timer, who used two calibrated chronometers, the NAA refused to recognize the achievement as an official record. The reason? The NAA informed her that the FAI did not have a category for the one-mile straightaway. They only recognized the 3-kilometer closed course, and only for absolute world records, meaning there wasn’t a separate women’s record to be claimed for that distance.

Frustrated, Earhart continued shopping for a new plane, settling on serial number 22, NC-7952 (she also took a ride in the Sirius, serial 140, that had been custom built for Lindbergh). She also began petitioning the FAI to establish a category for women’s speed records, and at length they acceded. Finally, on July 5, 1930, flying another borrowed Vega (serial 94, NC-974H), Earhart set the 3-km closed course speed record at 181.18 mph. It still took another year of fighting the FAI to get them to officially recognize the attempt as an official record, but in the end the determined Earhart prevailed.

Meanwhile NC-538M stayed on with Lockheed, who used it as a demonstrator aircraft. On October 14, 1931, the Vega crashed in Greencastle, Indiana. Supposedly, at least one of the wings was later used to rebuild another Vega, s/n 99.

The photo itself is back stamped "Grand Central Air Terminal Photo Services", and came from R.C. Talbot's camera.

Gilmore's Electra

Note: Since this was original posted in late 2014, it has been rewritten and expanded, so is being re-posted.

During the 1930s, the Bureau of Air Commerce had been trying hard to promote the advancement of aviation in general, and airline travel in particular. After Lockheed successfully introduced their 10-passenger Model 10 Electra airliner in 1935, the Bureau saw the need for a smaller yet modern aircraft to be used by "feeder" airlines, and so sponsored a contest to promote the development of such a plane.

Lockheed scaled down the Electra airframe (but kept the same 450-hp engines) and introduced it as the Model 12 Electra Junior. Because the other two competitors (one of which was the Beechcraft Model 18) weren't ready by the June 30, 1936 deadline, the Electra Junior won by default.

NC18130 is a Model 12A, serial 1226, and rolled off the assembly line at the end of June, 1937. It was bought by oil tycoon F. C. Hall as the successor to his Winnie Mae and named Villa. Hall decided to sponsor its entry into the 1937 Bendix Trophy race from Burbank to Cleveland. The Electra Junior was flown by airshow pilot Milo Burcham (who in 1933 had established a world record of sorts by flying inverted for just over four hours), and Lockheed modified the plane with an extra internal fuselage fuel tank, allowing Burcham to fly the course non-stop.

For the race, Hall and his wife flew onboard with Burcham, and even though the plane carried passengers (not a normal thing in an air race!), the Lockheed airliner was so fast that they came in only a few minutes after a Seversky racer flown by Frank Sinclair. The effort resulted in a fifth place finish.

In November 1937, the plane moved over to Gilmore Oil, where it received the company’s trademark cream and crimson colosr scheme, and lion logo. Gilmore then used it as their executive transport plane.

In November 1941, Gilmore sold the plane to the Free French Air Force (FAFL), and she headed to war in Europe. The FAFL used the plane in various roles, from anti-submarine patrol to troop transport, to VIP transport for Generals Maréchel LeClerc and De Gaulle. Amazingly, she survived, and spent the next 65 years in Europe, principally in France, England and Ireland, owned for much of that time by the British Earl of Granard.

NC18130 is one of only ten or so Electra Juniors to have survived into the 21st century, and is the lowest time airframe of the bunch. In September 2007, after sitting for many years in storage in France, the Lockheed was restored to flying condition and returned to America, where it was once again registered as NC18130.

As of this writing, the plane has received a complete restoration in Monroe, Washington, and is currently for sale! If you want to purchase (or just oogle the restoration pics), you can see its listing on the Warbird Connection website. A very detailed history (in PDF form) can be seen here.

Lindbergh and Tingmissartoq

When Charles Lindbergh finished his national tour in the Spirit of St. Louis, following his famous trans-Atlantic solo flight, he donated the now-iconic Ryan N-Y-P to the Smithsonian in April, 1928. To replace it, Ryan provided him with a B-2 Brougham, and that year he flew a number of other aircraft as well, but none of those really met his needs.

At the 1929 National Air Races, Lindbergh met Jerry Vultee of Lockheed, which had just been acquired by Detroit Aircraft Corp (which also would acquire Mahoney-Ryan the following year). Lindbergh described his ideal high-performace aircraft, and Vultee came up with some quick sketches, and the two planned to continue the discussion after the airshow. As it turned out, what Lindbergh was looking for was quite similar to the Lockheed Explorer, which Vultee and crew were developing for Harold Bromley"s planned trans-Pacific record attempt, and based on an earlier experiment started by Jack Northrop.The plane which ultimately came from the project was the Lockheed Model 8 Sirius, a two-seat, low-wing design that utilized the same molded plywood fuselage as the wildly successful Vega line.


Lindbergh's black and orange Sirius was the first of fifteen the Lockheed would build.  Originally intended to be an open cockpit aircraft, Lindbergh himself came up with the sliding canopies which he called "Coupe Tops".

On April 20, 1930, Charles and Ann Lindbergh set a transcontinental speed record from Los Angeles (presumably Glendale) to New York in 14 hours and 45 minutes. It is quite possible that our photo was taken during the preparations for that record flight.

Our photo was taken at Glendale's Grand Central Air Terminal and is an original Ray Talbot print. It appears to be one of at least two that were taken within moments of each other, the other being featured in the November 1930 edition of Popular Mechanics Magazine (the position of Lindbergh and the man he's talking to is slightly different in the two images). The accompanying article describes some of the experimentation Lindbergh participated in with the Lockheed engineers in developing the NACA cowling for optimal engine cooling.

With all the hecticness of life after his record flight and the touring the ensued, Lindbergh was ready for a break, and he and Ann decided to take a vacation which, as he described it, had "no start or finish, no diplomatic or commercial significance, and no records to be sought." That led to the couple modifying the Sirius with floats and flying to Asia in 1931. A second trip, in 1933, explored potential airline routes for Pan Am across the north Atlantic. It was during this trip that an Inuit boy in Greenland called the plane "Tingmissartoq", meaning "one who flies like a big bird". At the end of the trip, Lindbergh donated the plane to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and it is now at NASM.

For further reading:

• An article in the April 1973 issue of American Aircraft Modeler Magazine goes into great detail on the development of the Sirius from the Explorer, and even has a photo of the concrete mold which was used to produce the fuselages for the Vega/Air Express/Explorer/Sirius family.
• Lockheed Martin's history of the airplane.
• As the plane has been preserved at NASM, it's natural that they'd have a web page on it.

Tristar Turns 40

(Today's post had originally intended to run last week, but was preempted by the C-17 retirement event)

Thursday, April 26th, marked a quiet little milestone in commercial aviation history, the 40th anniversary of the introduction of Lockheed's L-1011 Tristar airliner. Launch customer Eastern airlines took delivery of their first L1011, N306EA, on April 26, 1972, and immediately put it into service on the Miami-New York run.

To celebrate, I'm featuring the only L-1011 photo currently in the MojaveWest archive, a color 8x10 print that was taken of Delta's first L-1011, N401DA (c/n 1041) as it took off from runway 25 at Palmdale's Air Force Plant 42. This plane, the 41st Tristar built, rolled off the Lockheed assembly line on September 7, 1973 and was delivered on October 3rd. There's no way to tell whether this photo is of its first flight or the delivery flight, but those two date do give a bracket for about when it was shot.

After flying with Delta for just over a decade, 701 then saw service with Total Air, Air America, Egyptair, Air Algerie and ATA; she was scrapped in Roswell NM in 2006. (A cool website documenting the last flight of a Delta L-1011 can be found here.)

At the end of their lives, some of Delta's Tristars came back to the Antelope Valley where the sat for years out at the Mojave Airport before being cut up for scrap. I was working as an inspector out there at the time, and after about 10 years of sitting there, the ownership of the boneyard fleet had just transferred to a different company, and me and my crew were tasked with inventorying them. These planes were had galleys on the lower deck equipped with big ovens, and we were surprised to find that there were ceramic dishes of dessicated, mold-covered "food" still in them!

There are plans to bring an L-1011 back to Palmdale for permanent display at the Joe Davies Heritage Airpark on the south side of Plant 42.

Note of irony: so one day, I was standing out in the sun next to the runway at Palmdale shooting a test event...almost in the exact spot that the above L-1011 photo was taken. A couple of days later I went on vacation and drove 360 or so miles north to visit family in the Sacramento area, and went antiques shopping with my brother. There, in a glass case in one of the local shops, was the 8x10 color print that is featured above. Weird!

Lockheed's Sluggard XF-90

The first XF-90 sits on the ramp at Edwards AFB.

This is the story of one plane that just didn't have what it takes. In response to a 1945 Air Corps request for a high-performance, long-range bomber-escort fighter, Lockheed adapted some of the design elements of the P-80 Shooting Star into a new, swept-wing design. Initially designated the XP-90, and then XF-90 after the reordering of things as a part of the Air Force's independence, the aircraft competed against McDonnell's XF-88 Voodoo, the forerunner of the F-101. Two XF-90s were built, and the aircraft pictured today, tail number 46-687, was the first of them.

When famed Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier coaxed the XF-90 into the air for the first time on June 3, 1949, it became readily apparent that Lockheed had missed the mark. Though the plane was built rugged, it was also built heavy. Adding to that, the pair of Westinghouse J34 engines produced a total of only 6,200 pounds of thrust, hardly enough to push the large plane, which tipped the scales at 27,200 pounds when loaded. Underpowered was an understatement. Unless the plane carried only a minimal amount of fuel, it couldn't even take off without JATO rocket assist. For the second aircraft, Lockheed added afterburners, but that only boosted the power to 8,200 pounds of total thrust. The Voodoo easily won the production contract in September, 1950, before the program was cancelled. McDonnell resubmitted a slightly larger design for a subsequent fighter competition, which won to become the F-101.

Unneeded, 46-687 was sent to NACA's Cleveland labs in 1953 were it was subjected to structural testing, in the classic test-to-destruct mode. What was left was scrapped. The second airframe, -688, was used in nuclear weapons testing, and subjected to three different blasts. It survived, in a manner of speaking, and the battered remnants are planned to be displayed at the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton to show the effects of a nuclear blast.

Another photo taken the same day as ours can be seen in the National Museum's on-line archive, here.

Alaska wrecks, Part 1: Lightning 88

Judging by the toolbox on the wing and the cables being rigged
to apparently hoist the aircraft and the work that's going on, it
appears that these two photos show a salvage/recovery
team stripping the wrecked Lightning.

Over the next month or two, we'll on-and-off be taking a look at a series of photos of WWII-era aircraft wrecks in Alaska. The photos in this series came from a larger collection taken by an Army soldier who served in Alaska. Although most of the photos that he left behind are of non-aviation subjects - he seems to have been in a unit that operated heavy equipment - one of his group's duties appears to have been wreck salvage.

First up in our series are these two photos of a P-38 crash scene. The only unit in the Aleutian Theater during WWII that flew the Lightning was the 54th Fighter Squadron. The unit has the distinction of being the first one to down an enemy aircraft with the P-38, the first kill going to a Lt. Stanley Long, against a Japanese four-engine flying boat. Flying in that part of the world had its challenges. The weather for most of the year was horrible, and far more aircraft were lost to accidents and weather than to combat.

Presumably this was one of those. I know nothing about the scene shown here, no idea of the location nor the date, so there's not much of a story to tell. The only discernible markings are the nose numbers, barely visible in the image on the left, which appears to be "88".

By enhancing the contrast and rotating
the photo 90deg to the left, it appears
that the nose number of this aircraft
is "88".

Of course, I'd love to know more. If anyone has any info as to the location, the identity of the pilot or the date when this happened, please let me know!

(The National Park Service has a nice tribute web page to the 54th here.)

The Golden Nugget Herc

Alaska Airlines operated six Lockheed L-100 Hercules freighters, the civilian variant of the venerable C-130, from 1965 through 1971. They were purchased by maverick CEO Charlie Willis in order to provide heavy equipment freighter service to the oil development industry on Alaska’s North Slope. They were also operated on charter to various locations in Southeast Asia, where this 1966 photo was probably taken, though little information on this work is available (if you have stories of the Herks in SE Asia, please comment below!)

To promote its passenger amenities, Alaska had developed the brand “Golden Nugget Service” with the advent of their Douglas DC-6s. Passengers were offered the first hot in-flight meals and could even visit an on-board honky-tonk styled lounge. With the success of the campaign, the branding goodwill was extended to the L-100 freighter operations.

Around two years after this photo was taken, on May 16, 1968, N9267R was being operated by Aerovias Ecuatorianas CA Ltd, better known as AREA Ecuador, and had landed at Macuma Airfield. The field was saturated, and the wheels of the Hercules sank 20 inches into the mud. In order to try to free the plane, timbers were wedged under the wheels, the engines fired up, and the pilot poured the coals to her. At that point, the No. 1 prop struck the ground and came apart, with pieces penetrating the No. 2 engine nacelle, resulting in a massive fire that destroyed the aircraft.

How N9267R and its sister Golden Nugget Freighter L-100s began operating for AREA Ecuador is a another interesting thread of history. Alaska’s oil pipeline customers loved the utility of the Herks, and when oil was discovered in the jungles of Ecuador, Texaco and Mobil approached Willis about using the aircraft in South America. Unfortunately, Willis didn't have an Ecuadorian air carrier certificate, so couldn't legally operate the aircraft there under the Alaska name. However, he did have a single Convair 990 airliner, one of the faster four-engine jet airliners in the business, and AREA Ecuador was trying to break into the Florida market, and needed a modern, fast aircraft. So a deal was struck to "lease" the 990 (with Alaska crews flying it), in exchange for AREA allowing Willis to use their certificate to operate the Herks on the oil contracts.

Due to financial woes and a debt that reached $22 million, Willis was fired by the board of directors, who also got rid of the carrier's cargo service, quickly disposing of the remaining L-100s in 1971.

[Big thanks to my brother Eric, who deals in military collectibles (his online shop is here) for giving me this photo, and being so encouraging of this project!]

Update 10/12: Josh Nyhus at apsocal.com pointed out that the UC-123K is still around at DM, and can be seen here: http://www.airfighters.com/photo/45644/L/USA-Air-Force/Fairchild-UC-123K-Provider/55-4535/

Aircraft info: Lockheed L-100 c/n 4146, manufactured 1966.
Photo info: 8x10 print, stamped on back "U.S. Air Force Photo 27877 '66 Uncl."; handwritten on back: "Snellgrove, Turn Key 6/733" (Anyone with info on what this inscription might refer to is invited to comment below!)