Aviation History May 2022

Lost at Sea: A B-24 is found at the Bottom of the Adriatic

The Luftwaffe’s Lost Cause how Air Power woes Doomed Germany at the Battle of Kursk Where There’s Smoke: pilots combat forest Fires from the sky Money Talks: A Wealthy Sportsman Becomes an Aviation Pioneer

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DEPARTMENTS

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Richard “Steve” Ritchie was the Air Force’s only ace pilot during the Vietnam War—and its last one, too.

By Douglas G. Adler

14 RESTORED

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Soviet Il-2s dive to attack a Nazi column during the 1943 Battle of Kursk.

A family-owned British air museum gives its prize Avro Lancaster a new lease on life.

By Angela Youngman

features 26 The Luftwaffe’s Lost Cause Germany required reliable air support to win 1943’s pivotal Battle of Kursk, but a depleted Luftwaffe soon gave the Soviets the edge.

By Dan Zamansky

36 The War Hawk and the Pelican Inventor, explorer and Wright brothers contemporary Hugh Willoughby made his own unique mark on early aviation.

by David Boehnlein

44 A Baptism by Fire

60 Divers in the Adriatic Sea examine wreckage of a B-24 that disappeared during a mission in 1945.

In the 1950s, a squad of agricultural pilots from Willows, California, learned how to battle forest fires from the air.

By Ted Atlas

52 The Father of Aerial Bombardment The airplane was still a relatively new phenomenon when U.S. Army Lieutenant Myron Crissy realized that it promised the ultimate high ground.

By Daniel J. Demers

14 16 EXTREMES

The massive Douglas XB-19, once the world’s largest aircraft and an American cultural icon, has since faded into obscurity.

By Robert Guttman

18 PortfoLIo

World War I posters capitalize on the perceived glory of the air war.

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

60 Lost and Found Almost 70 years after an American B-24 vanished, its trail led to a mysterious wreck at the bottom of the Adriatic Sea.

By Jeannette Gutierrez

ON THE COVER: Hans-Ulrich Rudel demonstrates the tankbusting abilities of his Ju-87G Stuka during the Battle of Kursk in July 1943. Cover illustration by Adam Tooby.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: AKG IMAGES/RIA NOVOSTI; ©KARIS YOUNGMAN; COURTESY OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MARTIN COUNTY/ELLIOTT MUSEUM; STEFANO CARESSA

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Aviation History

Online

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

Myth of the Tankbuster

Luftwaffe legend Hans-Ulrich Rudel claimed to have destroyed 519 Soviet tanks, most of them while piloting a cannon-armed Junkers Ju-87G “tankbuster.” Hero of the Soviet Union Aleksandr Yefimov reportedly took out 126 German tanks in his Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik. But a close examination of the historical record reveals that ground-attack aircraft in World War II were not as successful against armor as is commonly believed.

Firebombers! Flying on the Edge to Fight Fires

Since 1955, when pilots of the Willows Flying Service first cut a hole in a Stearman and dropped 170 gallons of water onto a California forest fire, a wide variety of aircraft have been converted to fight Western wildfires. TBM Avengers and PBY-5A amphibians were among the first of many U.S. warbirds adapted as firefighting tankers, while converted 747-400s and DC-10s have ushered in the more recent era of the megatanker—even though firefighting doctrine increasingly favors controlled, accurate drops from small, single-engine air tankers.

The Birth, Life and Death of a B-24 Liberator

Movie star Gloria Swanson personally signed B-24H no. 42-52117 as it rolled off Michigan’s Willow Run assembly line in 1943. Later named Two Ton Tessie from Nashville, Tenn., the B-24 flew 30 bombing missions in Europe with the Fifteenth Air Force before being shot down over Austria on May 29, 1944. The crew survived, but Tessie’s run ended that day. Still, the Liberator’s career typified the stellar service of countless Allied bombers in the European theater.

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MAY 2022 / VOL. 32, NO. 5

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An ex-Navy P-3 fights a fire in 2008.

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Mailbag

EYEWITNESS

HISTORYNET ARCHVIES

Your story in the March 2007 issue (and a mention in Stephan Wilkinson’s article about the P-80 Shooting Star in January 2022) about Richard Bong brought back all my images and bad memories.

You see, I saw him die.

Bong’s P-80 flew over my house in North Hollywood, California, and crashed about a quarter mile, or less, away. My bad memories are of him being dragged behind his plane, because his opened parachute was snagged on the plane’s tail. His plane whistled past my house, coming in from the northeast, about 250-300 feet high. His figure was distinctly visible and I saw both arms and both legs.

His arms were loose and his hands weren’t clutching anything. His head was lowered onto his chest. > > His plane was in a leftwing-down attitude, so I saw the tops of both wings and the top of the plane.

The cockpit canopy was open. It continued past and exploded directly over the high-tension electrical towers in the large vacant field just south of my house.

The field was very large and was a play area for kids.

We flew gliders and rubber-band model airplanes there. I remember running to the crash site and walking around in awe. There were parts of smoldering airplane everywhere. I don’t remember seeing any large parts, just pieces.

I saw where Major Bong’s body was, but I was scared to go closer. Several kids and adults did, and a small group of people gathered around his body. I heard several boys remarking about his many ribbons, attached to his uniform, showing through his burned flight suit.

I remember being fascinated by the front landing gear, knowing it to be the nose gear as it had a landing light. It was very hot when I touched it. The area smelled hot due to small grass fires and weeds burning.

After a short time, we were being yelled at by people telling us to “go home” and “don’t touch anything.”

Some kids took “souvenirs,” and I assume some adults did, too. A day or two later, military authorities were going door to door, collecting the airplane parts that had been taken.

My father, William B. Whetsone, worked at Lockheed as a foreman on the P-38 assembly line. He told me it was Major “Dick” Bong whom I saw crash.

Major Bong’s name was very familiar to my friends and me as we were all airplane enthusiasts (I still am) and this crash and its results brought life and death, and the spirit of adventure in the air, to a sobering reality.

William G. Whetsone Fountain Valley, Ca.

INTERNATIONAL SERVICE

In your article about the Shooting Star [January], you mention that in the mid1950s the United States sold several P-80s to Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay, but that the only time those planes were used in anger was when they made low level,

next-time-I’ll-shoot passes in Peru. Allow me to make a correction on this. Nicaragua acquired six Shooting Stars around this same time, and they were used during the civil war that toppled the Somoza regime in July 1979. Some of these planes did fire in anger, strafing and dropping bombs on rebel positions. I am from Nicaragua, was there during this war and personally saw those attacks being carried out. These planes were left in Nicaragua when the rebel Sandinistas took over, but they did not use them because they acquired Mi-24 attack helicopters from the Soviet Union.

Arturo Altamirano Miami, Florida Thanks for writing. Those airplanes were actually AT-33 Shooting Stars, the attack variant of the two-seater trainer version of the P-80.

The U.S. sold four of them to Nicaragua in 1961. -Ed.

“R” FOR RACER

I read with great interest Stephan Wilkinson’s article about the P-80 Shooting Star. On page 34 you mention the P-80R. That airplane is in the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, where I volunteer as a docent and tell visitors the story of that airplane breaking the speed record.

I have, however, been guessing at what the “R” stands for. I have suggested it stands for “Race,” since I’m quite sure there were not enough models to go from P-80A to R, and then I

your article said they called her Racey. Perhaps that is what the R stood for?

Frank Alfter Colonel, USAF (Ret) Beavercreek, OH We queried contributing editor Stephan Wilkinson about your question, and he responded that the “R” in P-80R certainly stood for Race/Racer/Racey, but there is no document he’s aware of that specifies which word was “official.” We think you’re safe in saying the R stood for Racer. -Ed.

NOT THE FIRST

I read with interest the “Milestones” entry in the March issue. I would like to point out that Linda Finch was not the first woman to re-create and successfully complete Amelia Earhart’s 1937 attempt to circumnavigate the globe. In 1967, just 30 years after Earhart’s attempt, Ann Holtgren Pellegreno made the first successful re-creation of the world flight. Flying a Lockheed 10A, a sister ship to Earhart’s aircraft, she completed the flight, which included dropping a memorial wreath on Howland Island. Ann wrote a book documenting her flight entitled World Flight: The Earhart Trail.

Dave Jackson Peoria, Il. You are correct! In our defense, we did not say that Finch was the first woman to re-create Earhart’s flight, but Pellegreno’s historic flight certainly deserved a mention. -Ed.

SEND LETTERS TO:

Aviation History Editor, HISTORYNET 901 North Glebe Road, 5th Floor, Arlington, VA 22203 OR EMAIL TO aviationhistory@historynet.com (Letters may be edited)

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road trip The fuselage of B-52 Stratofortress nicknamed Damage Inc. II travels from Arizona to a Boeing facility in Oklahoma. There it will be reunited with its left wing and used as a mock-up for Air Force-led modernization efforts on the B-52 fleet.

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n January 3, 2022, people in Arizona witnessed a unique spectacle. A Boeing B-52H Stratofortress, or at least its 160-footlong fuselage, was hitting the road.

The bomber in question, B-52H 61-0009, known as Damage Inc. II, had served the U.S. Air

Force actively from 1961 to September 25, 2008, when it was retired to the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Then it was recalled to duty to help develop a new generation of B-52s. The B-52J “Centuryfortress” program will see the installation of new sensors, communi-

cations equipment, avionics, defensive countermeasures and Rolls-Royce engines in the remaining 76 B-52s to improve their efficiency and sustainability until at least the year 2050.

Damage Inc. II will serve as an “integration model” for the research and development of the B-52J and the hypersonic weapons initiative

TOP: U.S. AIR FORCE; INSET: RAMÓN C. PURCELL/BONEYARD SAFARI

A B-52 Becomes a Road Warrior

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that will arm it. In accordance with the Air Force’s $2.8-million contact to aerospace engineering firm J.F. Taylor in Maryland, the fuselage and left wing will serve that purpose in Oklahoma City, while the right wing and horizonal stabilizer will go to McFarland Research & Development in Kansas for the B-52H Aircraft Structural Integrity Program.

“As new weapons are developed and come on hand, we can use it to see how the weapons attach, what needs to change, and if they fit on the aircraft,” explained Colonel Louis Ruscetta, B-52 senior materiel leader with the Bombers Directorate. “This is an asset that will help us integrate different items onto the aircraft quicker. An additional benefit is the cost to maintain a mock-up is fairly low.”

The bomber began its journey in July 2021 at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, where it underwent four months of disassembly. From there, the parts, including the fuselage, were transported cross country, with Worldwide Aircraft Recovery overseeing the project and Ball & Son handling the actual moving.

With the still-gigantic parts taking up two lanes of traffic, the transports had to halt frequently to allow wide-eyed drivers to pass. Navigating some turns and underpasses left only inches to spare. The fuselage reached its destination in Oklahoma on January 22 after a 1,407-mile journey.

Long as it was, the road trip was still much cheaper than getting the bomber back into the air for a single, last flight would have been.

Jon Guttman

Bird’s-eye view The Wolfsonian-FIU exhibit is all about perspective, whether the view is from an airplane window or from the top of a tall building.

Air Quotes

AIR POWER MAY EITHER END WAR OR END CIVILIZATION. –WINSTON CHURCHILL, 1933

Exhibit merges Airplanes and skyscrapers

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orn in Miami in 1939, Mitchell Wolfson Jr. is an expert on design, architecture and the decorative arts, with a particular penchant for exploring their impact on the human condition. Wolfson was attracted to artistic expressions dating from the late industrial revolution in 1885 until 1950, and from an early age he began collecting whatever objets d’arts captured his fancy.

He had acquired more than 180,000 by 1985, when he bought the Washington Storage Company facility in the heart of Miami Beach’s Art Deco District. In 1992 “Micky” Wolfson hired architect Mark Hampton to renovate the building and convert it into a museum and research center to interpret and display the emotional and psychological persuasiveness of art and design. The museum opened to the public in 1995 and in 1997 became part of Florida International University (FIU).

The latest exhibition at The Wolfsonian–FIU, “Aerial Vision” combines two new perspectives on viewing the earth offered by the advent of multistory buildings and airplanes. Skyscrapers completely changed the urban landscape, not only by accommodating more business and living space, but also by providing an unprecedented look at the earth from an upper-story window or a topfloor restaurant. At about the same time, the development of the airplane offered an even wider view, the sky literally being the limit. Both were then seen as harbingers of a leap forward in human progress and as such inspired a vast outpouring of artwork.

“Aerial Vision” is on display at The Wolfsonian–FIU, 1001 Washington Avenue, Miami, Florida, through April 24, 2022.

Jon Guttman

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merican newlyweds Christopher and Mary Yule were coming to the end of their French honeymoon on April 7, 1922. The couple, both employees of a Boston confectioner, had sailed to Europe from New York after their February wedding and were en route to London on their way home. Even though they had already booked train and boat tickets for the crossing to Britain, the Yules at the last moment decided instead to fly across the English Channel. Along with a French passenger, a Monsieur Bouriez, they boarded a Farman Goliath biplane at Paris’ Le Bourget Airport and settled in as the pilot, Jean Mire, took off on Grands Express Aériens’ daily noon service to Croydon, South London.

A mechanic sat with the pilot, bringing the airplane’s occupancy to five.

Meanwhile, a British de Havilland D.H. 18A biplane from Croydon was flying south into France, heading to Le Bourget on a scheduled mail run. At the controls was Robin E. Duke, a Royal Air Force lieutenant and also a “composer of some reputation,” as the Associated Press described him. Also on board was a cabin boy, Edward Hesterman.

The weather over northern France was miserable, with drizzle and fog obscuring visibility. Both airplanes were flying close to the ground, following a railroad track to stay on course. At about 1:15 p.m., near the town of Thieuloy-Saint-Antoine, 70

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commemoration Local citizens gather for the unveiling of a monument to the crash of a wartime C-47 in Bavaria.

92, who remembered the crash and had shared their recollections of it with Bittmann.

Ironically, the C-47 was a combat survivor, accepted by the U.S. Army Air Forces in April 1944 and assigned to the 100th Troop Carrier Squadron, 441st Troop Carrier Group of the Ninth Air Force. On D-Day it transported paratroopers of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment to a drop zone near Sainte-Mère-Église in France, and the next day towed a glider with men from the 82nd Airborne Division for another drop. Transferred to the 30th Air Depot Group at Illesheim in Germany after the war, it was loaned to the 344th Bombardment Group at Schleissheim just before its fatal mission.

Guenter Braun aftermath Airplane wreckage is strewn across the French countryside after two airplanes collided in 1922.

miles north of Paris, witnesses saw both airplanes suddenly emerge from the fog at a height of 500 feet, heading directly toward each other. As the New York Times reported, “Those watching had no time to think before a sinister crash resounded through the air” and the two airplanes “crashed burning to the earth.” All seven people aboard both airplanes were killed in the first-ever mid-air collision between two commercial airliners.

A few eyewitnesses reported that the D.H. 18A had strayed off the generally accepted flight path and was flying too far to the left. Later that month, France, Britain and the Low Countries established defined air routes and ruled that airplanes should always pass each other to the right. As London’s Guardian newspaper reported, “Thus, even in conditions of poor visibility, when two pilots flying in opposite directions were following their land-line closely, the fact that each of them was flying well away to the right of it would prevent any risk of such a collision as that which occurred at Thieuloy St. Antoine”—a collision that took seven lives one hundred years ago in April.

TOP PHOTOS COURTESY OF PETER BITTMANN; BELOW: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES

n November 1, 1945, the crew of a Douglas C-47A on a flight from RAF Bovington in England to Schleissheim Airfield north of Munich apparently lost its bearings in bad weather. Thirty people were aboard—four crewmembers and 26 soldiers returning to their base at the airfield. At around 5:00 that morning the airplane should have been near Augsburg along the Lech River. In fact, it was near Karlsruhe and the Rhine. After following the river south for about 30 miles, the pilot, Lieutenant Bahne H. Andressen of Iowa, made a left turn and climbed back into the clouds. Within minutes the airplane plowed into the top of Mount Bernstein in Bavaria’s Black Forest, cutting a swathe through the trees that remains visible today. All four crewmembers died; four passengers managed to exit the burning wreck.

Local historian Peter Bittmann grew up hearing stories about the incident and decided to create a memorial for the crash site. He had hoped to unveil the marker on the accident’s 75th anniversary but COVID-19 forced a delay until October 27, 2021. The small group assembled for the ceremony included two citizens from local villages, aged 90 and

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Teen becomes youngest woman to circle the world

“I

made it,” cried 19-year-old Zara Rutherford after her plane touched down at Kortrijk-Wevelgem airport in Belgium on January 20, 2022. She had ample reason for her excitement. Rutherford had just flown 32,300 miles (52,000 km) over 41 countries and five continents to break two Guinness World Records as the youngest women to circumnavigate the globe and the first woman to do so in a microlight aircraft. But as Phileas Fogg learned in Jules Verne’s 1872 novel Around the World in 80 Days, traveling around the planet is not so easy.

The dual Belgian-British citizen took off on August 18, 2021, in a Shark Aero with an extra fuel tank in the passenger’s space. She expected her journey to take three months.

That, however, was before bad weather forced her to make an unscheduled landing at Washington-Warren Airport in Washington, North Carolina, delaying her intended visit to Jacksonville, Florida, and Shaesta Waiz, the Afghan American pilot who had set the previous record as the youngest woman to girdle the globe in 2017 at age 30. It was just a prelude of things to come. Rutherford braved heavy cloud cover over Colombia and lightning flashes over Mexico and made an unscheduled landing at Redding, Calif., because smoke from

wildfires in the Seattle area hampered visibility. She also experienced delays in Alaska and Russia for “visa and weather issues” before finally reaching Vladivostok. She was also denied permission to fly over China and narrowly avoided straying into North Korean airspace.

The most challenging leg of her flight was over Siberia. “It was minus 35 degrees Celsius on the ground,” she said. “If the engine were to stall, I’d be hours away from rescue and I don’t know how long I’d have survived for.”

Bad weather delayed even the final leg of her flight by a week, but despite the obstacles, Rutherford never quit until she reached her goal—around the world in 155 days.

Jon Guttman

A Loss Over the Hump Accounted For—77 years later

TOP: OLIVIER MATTHYS/GETTY IMAGES; BELOW: BOTH COURTESY OF MIA RECOVERIES, INC.

TOP PHOTOS COURTESY OF PETER BITTMANN; BELOW: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES

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or much of World War II in the China-Burma-India theater, the only means of transporting aircraft, ammunition, supplies and personnel between India and China was across the Himalayas, the highest mountain range on earth. Between April 1942 and November 1945, airmen carried 650,000 tons of cargo to China “Over the Hump,” as they called it.

Each flight was a test of courage, skill and luck in the face of Japanese aircraft, mechanical failure and—more often— the elements, which together claimed a total of 594 aircraft and 1,659 lives.

On January 6, 1945, Curtiss C-46 Commando serial No. 42-96721 left China’s Kunming-Wujiaba airfield for Chabua Air Force Station in India. It never arrived, reporting stormy weather before vanishing somewhere in the Himalayas with its four-man crew and nine passengers.

More than 70 years later, an adventurer named Clayton Kuhles led an expedition to find the lost C-46 at the behest of Bill Scherer, the son of 1st Lt. William K. Scherer, one of the aircraft’s passengers.

“Lieutenant Scherer was an engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and was in Kunming working on upgrading the airfield to accept B-29 aircraft,” says Kuhles, who has been climbing in the Himalayas since the mid-1990s and made his first discovery of a wrecked aircraft in the fall of 2002.

While engaged in the search, Kuhles learned of airplane wreckage discovered years earlier by the local Lisu people. “I was merely fortunate enough to meet the right people and to get them to guide me to the crash site location,” he says.

He established the wreck’s identify via a serial number from the site. Snow cover

revealed Above: Melting snow uncovers remains of a C-46 in the Himalayas. Right: William K. Scherer perished in the crash.

kept Kuhles from finding any human remains, but his Lisu guides said they had seen remains and personal effects on previous visits.

Although Lieutenant Scherer’s remains have not been positively identified, his son, who was only 13 months

old when his father disappeared, thought the discovery was good news. “All I can say is that I am overjoyed, just knowing where he is,” he said in an email to the Agence France-Presse news agency.

“It’s sad, but joyous.”

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AvIATORS

The First Air Force Ace of the Vietnam War

YOU NEED FIVE AERIAL VICTORIES TO BECOME AN ACE. RICHARD “STEVE” RITCHIE KNOWS HOW DIFFICULT THAT IS

BY DOUGLAS G. ADLER

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Arriving in Vietnam in 1968, Ritchie completed his first combat tour without scoring any air victories despite flying almost 200 combat sorties.

After a stint as both a student and later an instructor at Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base, Ritchie requested a second tour in Vietnam. He joined the 432nd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing and flew out of Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base as part of the 555th (“Triple Nickel”) Tactical Fighter Squadron.

On May 10, 1972, Ritchie and Weapons Systems Officer Charles DeBellevue were participating in Oyster

MiG Mauler Above: Captains Richard S. “Steve” Ritchie (left) and Charles H. DeBellevue ponder their second aerial victory. Inset: Ritchie celebrates after victory No.5.

flight, a group of F-4Ds assigned to patrol over North Vietnamese airfields and provide cover for U.S. fighters and bombers flying that day as part of Operation Linebacker. Oyster flight was flying at low level to ambush any planes that might take off to pursue Balter flight, a different group of F-4s that were very visible at 22,000 feet.

BOTH: U.S. AIR FORCE

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he Age of Aces may be behind us. Since the Vietnam war, no American pilot has successfully shot down five enemy planes to earn the title. The pilot who came closest, Cesar Rodriguez, amassed three kills of Mikoyan-Gurevich (MiG) fighters across two wars spanning almost ten years in the 1990s. There are several reasons for this, but it mostly stems from the fact that few air forces want to challenge American pilots in the skies anymore, while ground-based anti-aircraft systems have become so effective that up-close, air-to-air combat has become far less common.

The Vietnam war produced a total of five American aces, only two of whom were pilots: Randall “Duke” Cunningham of the Navy and Richard “Steve” Ritchie of the Air Force. The other three American aces were Weapons Systems Officers.

Born in 1942, Richard Stephen Ritchie grew up in North Carolina’s tobacco country and attended the U.S. Air Force Academy, graduating in 1964. Initially trained to fly the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, Ritchie transitioned to the McDonnell F-4 Phantom II, which was widely perceived as the ticket to obtaining a combat assignment in Southeast Asia.

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last air force ace?

Above: The crew of “Oyster 03”—from left, “Chuck” DeBellevue, Crew Chief Sgt. Reggie Taylor, Steve Ritchie and SSgt. Frank Falcone— celebrates a fifth star. Right: Brig. Gen. Ritchie, the U.S. Air Force’s only ace fighter pilot since the Korean War.

Shortly before 10 a.m., MiG-21s and Shenyang J-6s (Chinese-built versions of the MiG-19) began taking off from Noi Bai airfield. In the ensuing melee, Ritchie got a lock on an enemy aircraft and ripple-fired two of his AIM-7 Sparrow missiles, scoring a hit with his second shot.

(While most record this as a victory against a MiG-21, as does Ritchie, at least one account of the battle states that the downed airplane was a J-6.) The celebrations after the flight were muted: flight leader Bob Lodge and his backseater Roger Locher had been shot down by a J-6.

Lodge was killed but Locher would be rescued just over three weeks later.

Ritchie downed his second MiG on the last day of May 1972. While flying a combat air patrol specifically looking for MiGs (MIGCAP), Ritchie was alerted by radio to the 12

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presence of a flight of MiG21s closing from his rear. He entered a long, descending turn until he was behind the enemy airplanes and his backseater, Captain Larry H. Pettit, obtained a radar lock.

Ritchie fired all four of his Sparrows. One hit the target.

On July 8, 1972, Ritchie, again flying with DeBellevue in a cannon-armed F-4E, scored two more MiG kills in under two minutes. The men were flying as part of a MIGCAP to protect another group of aircraft when they encountered a pair of MiG21s. Initially passing the lead MiG, Ritchie waited before turning to attack it to ensure that it was not being followed by another MiG. It was. After passing the trailing MiG, Ritchie executed a reversal that put him behind the aircraft and he fired two Sparrows, one of which impacted the MiG’s engine.

Controlling for speed and energy, Ritchie was able to pull in behind the lead MiG and fire off a missile that destroyed the target.

At this point, Ritchie was certainly aware that he might achieve ace status.

Competition among fighter pilots is a fierce thing and at the time Ritchie was not

the only Air Force airman with four kills in Vietnam.

Interestingly, both Ritchie and his main competitor, Captain Jeffrey Feinstein (a WSO who also had four kills to his name), had each claimed to have downed an additional aircraft but credit for both were denied due to insufficient evidence.

On August 28, 1972, Ritchie got the chance he was looking for. Once again teamed with DeBellevue, Ritchie engaged a MiG21, one of a pair that was approaching head-on. A quick turn put him behind the MiGs and he fired two missiles in an attempt to force the enemy pilot into making a turn. Both missiles failed to impact. Selecting one of the two MiG-21s, Ritchie fired a second pair of missiles, one of which impacted the target. The kill was witnessed by another aircrew, so it was considered “official.” After seven years of air combat in Vietnam, the Air Force finally had an ace, joining Navy pilot Duke Cunningham, who had earned the distinction on May 10, 1972.

In addition to the five Americans, 17 North Vietnamese pilots ultimately achieved the ace title. It

should be mentioned that DeBellevue also eventually became an ace with six victories (four of which occurred while flying with Ritchie), as did Feinstein with five.

For the vast majority of American pilots in Vietnam who downed an enemy aircraft, one confirmed kill was all they got. Further emphasizing how hard it is to obtain the title of ace, many pilots completed their full tour of combat sorties without ever even seeing a MiG in the air.

After his second combat tour in Vietnam, Ritchie flew for the National Guard and the Air Force Reserve. A run at public office ended in defeat and he did a short stint in the private sector working for the Coors Brewing Company. Currently 78 years old, Ritchie and his wife work as motivational speakers.

When asked by an interviewer in 2014 about what contributed to his success in the air over Vietnam, Ritchie replied, “The same factors as lead to success in anything.

The basics. Preparation, teamwork—hard work—discipline, responsibility, integrity. And a ‘never give up’ attitude. The fundamentals are the same for success in any arena.”

LEFT: U.S. AIR FORCE; RIGHT: GETTY IMAGES

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RESTORED

Just Jane Gets a Facelift

A BRITISH MUSEUM GIVES ITS PRIZE LANCASTER A NEW LEASE ON LIFE

BY ANGELA YOUNGMAN

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red and Harold Panton created the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre in East Kirby, Lincolnshire, to honor the memory of their brother Christopher, who died in an Avro Lancaster bomber during a raid over Nuremberg in 1944.

At the heart of this family-owned historic aircraft collection is Just Jane, a Lancaster in the middle of an extensive restoration to get it back to flight status.

Built in April 1945 by Austin Motors in Birmingham, the Lancaster, tail number NX611, was intended for service in the Far East, but the British eventually sold it to the Aéronautique navale (French naval aviation) instead. In 1964, the four-engine bomber returned to the United Kingdom, where the Historical Aircraft Preservation Society flew it for several years.

With operating costs climbing, the society put the Lancaster up for auction in 1972. The Pantons placed a bid but were unsuccessful. The Lancaster failed to reach its reserve price, but a private deal led to a new mission as the gate guardian at Royal Air Force Scampton airfield.

The Pantons finally succeeded in purchasing NX611 in 1983. They named the bomber Just Jane after a comic strip from the war years and made it the centerpiece of their growing museum. Ten years later, they started returning Just Jane to operational taxiing standard. That involved a total restoration of the airframe as well as considerable work on the airplane’s four 1,640-hp Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. The engine work alone required 700 hours of labor, at a cost of around $9,400.

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In 2017, the museum launched a new 10-year program to restore the Lancaster to airworthy status. It will cost about $4 million and require a complete overhaul, which means checking every part— including the radome, fuel tanks, control surfaces, engine cowlings, bomb bay doors and instrument panels—and the replacement of all the rivets. By November 2019, the starboard tail fin, rudder, engine subframes and all four propellers had been removed, inspected and replaced.

The Lancaster’s engines were adequate for taxiing but required replacement before a return to the air was possible. The museum had one but needed to purchase and overhaul three more at a cost of $168,000 each. “The next step was to work out the logis-

before and after Top: Just Jane prepares to taxi. Above: Stripped down, the Avro Lancaster awaits the extensive work that will return it to flying status.

tics and make sure we had all the knowledge, drawings and spares,” said museum director Andrew Panton. “We received old drawings and spar jigs from the RAF—we knew they would fit because our Lancaster had provided the measurements. During 2016/2017 we worked on obtaining spares. I flew to Alberta, Canada, to obtain three-and-a-half engines’ worth of spares, as well as four aircraft worth of undercarriage pieces. We had nine propeller blades come from Tampa, Florida. We bought new tires from Dunlop, who

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have the largest aircraft tires in production.”

One of the museum’s supporters purchased a box of Lancaster instruments and gauges on eBay. “The box came over from Ireland in the post,” Andrew said. “The pieces were covered in radio luminescent paint, which came up as radioactive when scanned in the post, so they had to be totally unpacked and repacked before we could have them.” When the seller learned why the museum wanted the instruments, he said that his father had flown Lancasters during the war.

“He had a company called Mass Aviation and offered to do the paintwork,” Andrew says. That meant removing four or five layers of paint, and an additional eight to ten layers on the roundels. “It took them 12 days to do the paint stripping.”

There was also some corrosion under the wings that required attention. The task of stripping, cleaning and painting Just Jane took 1,680 hours and required 270 gallons of paint stripper, 100 rolls of masking tape, 2,000 sheets of polythene,

5½ gallons of green paint, 3 gallons of dark earth paint, 16 gallons of black paint and 21 gallons of primer.

Between November 2019 and April 2020, the restoration team had planned to focus on the rearmost fuselage section, from the rear turret to the first transport joint, at an estimated cost of $161,000. During that period, the plan was to service all the engines, remove the rear turret and do a full restoration of the rear fuselage—but then COVID-19 put all the work on hold. As a result, restoration of the rear fuselage and wings has only just begun.

Winter is the time for restoration work. During the rest of the year the Panton family helps raise money for the restoration with Taxy Rides, when paying customers can take a ground-based ride in the Lancaster. Each Taxy Ride experience takes 45 minutes, with about 15 of them spent riding in the airplane. Participants can sit in the rear turret, middle turret, radio operator’s seat, navigator’s seat, cockpit or bombardier’s position. “Taxiing helps

to provide restoration funds,” Andrew says. “It takes place from May to November each year, and there are about 60 days taxiing involved—about 120 journeys in all. There are nine or 10 people onboard in the cockpit and other areas of the aircraft, about 1,200 people each year. They get a tour onboard, see the different points where the crew would have been placed, then the engines are revved up and the plane taken around the grassy airfield. It is a very dramatic sight. People are very enthusiastic. Often they have family links to the Lancasters with family members having flown in them during the war.

We often get people coming who still remember them.”

During the summer the museum has five full-time engineers and three control staff working on Just Jane for the Taxy Rides. When restoration starts up for the winter months, it takes the services of eight full-time engineers and five volunteers.

The museum remains very

overdue overhaul Clockwise from top left: A worker takes on refurbishing Just Jane’s fuselage; the Lancaster shows off its newly applied camouflage and markings; the airplane’s nose art was originally commissioned in the 1980s for a newspaper article about women in the RAF.

much a family affair. Andrew is Fred’s grandson. (Fred died in 2013.) His sister Louise also works at the center as the museum curator and a guide on Just Jane.

“The collection has been built up over the years, some things we have acquired and there have also been donations from veterans who could see that the items would be well cared for here,” says Andrew. “We aim for displays that complement the aircraft we have on site such as a Mosquito, Hampden and a Bristol Blenheim.” Before long, hopefully, they will have an airworthy Lancaster as well.

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EXTREMES

Big in its Day

THE DOUGLAS XB-19 WAS ONCE THE LARGEST AIRCRAFT IN THE WORLD, BUT FEW REMEMBER THIS BOMBER PROTOTYPE NOW

BY ROBERT GUTTMAN

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The XB-19 wasn’t just big, it was humongous. It was 132 feet long, had a wingspan of 212 feet and weighed 162,000 pounds on takeoff. To put the scale of the mammoth aircraft into perspective, it was twice the size of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and 30 percent larger than the later Boeing B-29 Superfortress. In fact, the XB-19 was not bested in size until the advent of Convair’s B-36, which did not fly until 1946. The XB-19 also cost $2½ million to build, a million of which Douglas Aircraft had to absorb.

Operated by a crew of up to 18, the XB-19 was so

Big deal Top: Mechanics “prop” an engine on the Douglas XB-19 to clear oil from the lower cylinders. Above: The huge airplane takes wing.

large that its massive fuselage contained two decks and it had tunnels within the wings so the flight engineer could attend to the engines in flight.

The XB-19 could carry up to 36,000 pounds of bombs and had a range of 5,200 miles.

Although the defensive armament included two 37mm cannons and five .50-caliber and six .30-caliber machine guns, by the time the bomber flew it was already tacitly

TOP: WARREN M. BODIE COLLECTION; BOTTOM: U.S. AIR FORCE

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t is somewhat ironic how well-known the XB-19 was in its own time, considering how obscure it has become since.

When first flown on June 27, 1941, the Douglas Aircraft Company’s creation was not only the largest bomber in the world, it was also the the largest airplane ever built. The bomber was a top-secret Army Air Corps prototype, but it proved impossible to keep such a gargantuan creation under wraps, and 4,500 people turned out to witness the aircraft’s first flight at Clover Field in Santa Monica, California. It was front-page news in the New York Times. “Biggest Bomber Passes Air Test” read the headline; “Aloft 56 Minutes in Maiden Trip.” Read the article, “Among the spectators were many of the men who worked in the plane’s construction. They cheered wildly as it passed overhead.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt personally telephoned Donald Douglas to congratulate him on his company’s achievement. The XB-19 became featured everywhere in the media, advertisements and animated cartoons. It even received mention in George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s comedy, The Man Who Came to Dinner, in which characters dropped the names of every notable person and institution of the day.

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BOTH: U.S. AIR FORCE

TOP: WARREN M. BODIE COLLECTION; BOTTOM: U.S. AIR FORCE

acknowledged that the 37mm and .30-caliber guns would be of little practical use.

Why did this super-bomber not appear on the forefront of America’s air arsenal in World War II? For one thing, the aircraft was based upon an Army Air Corps specification that had been issued back in 1935, six years before the United States entered World War II. Those six years were critical, because the state of the art for aviation technology advanced considerably during that period. As an operational bomber, the XB-19 was obsolete before it was even finished. For another thing, engine technology had not kept pace with airframe technology. The engine originally intended to power the XB-19, the Allison V-3420, was delayed, so the design had to be modified to accept lower-powered alternatives.

The XB-19 was actually powered by four early examples of the same Wright

R-3350 engines subsequently installed in the B-29. The XB-19, however, was so heavy that it was chronically underpowered; to the point where the aircraft had to fly with its engine cooling flaps always open, contributing drag and hampering performance.

Well aware that the XB-19 would never receive a production contract, by 1938 Donald Douglas requested that the project be cancelled.

His company was engaged in much more profitable and higher-priority projects, such as the DC-3 airliner, A-20 Havoc medium bomber and SBD Dauntless dive bomber.

Apart from the drain on company facilities, personnel and time, the XB-19 turned into a money pit that ended up costing the company $1 million more than the Air Corps paid for it. Nevertheless, the Air Corps insisted that Douglas complete the aircraft.

Apart from its publicity value, the XB-19 proved its worth as an invaluable “flying laboratory” for the development of new technologies that were applied to subsequent large, long-range bombers like the Boeing B-29 and Convair B-36. In fact, it has been said that the technologically advanced

B-29 might never have been developed in time to serve in WWII had it not been for the XB-19.

In 1944 the XB-19 finally received four of the longawaited Allison V-3420 engines for which it had originally been designed.

The engines had also been proposed for an upgrade of the B-29 to be designated the B-39. Although the powerful new engines improved the Douglas bomber’s performance, they never went beyond limited production.

After a long and active, if somewhat obscure, career as a flying testbed, the XB-19 was finally relegated for use as a very large cargo carrier in 1944, although it

testbed Top: The XB-19’s huge main wheels are the only parts of the airplane remaining.

Above: The retired testbed awaits scrapping in 1946.

does not seem to have seen much active service in that role. Laid up at Arizona’s Davis-Monthan Airfield in 1946, the giant bomber was finally scrapped in 1950.

Well known in its time, the XB-19 is now almost totally forgotten. The only traces it left behind are two enormous wheels from its landing gear; one at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Ohio and the other in the collection of the Hill Aerospace Museum in Utah.

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portfolio

WORLD WAR I POSTERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD SOUGHT TO CAPITALIZE ON THE GLAMOUR OF AIR COMBAT

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owered flight had barely advanced past infancy by 1914, when the assassination of Austria-Hungary’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo sent Europe plunging into World War I. While ground forces in western Europe settled into a miserable stalemate inside a network of trenches that grew to zigzag across the continent, a new breed of warrior took the fight into the skies. Despite the aura of romance bestowed on these “knights of the air,” the aviators’ war was miserable in its own way. Pilots lucky enough to survive their training faced

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long odds once they reached the front, where the average life expectancy for fliers was no more than six weeks.

Still, the idea of fighting among the clouds excited the imagination, and that was something governments sought to exploit. By celebrating war’s glamour, colorful posters attempted to lure new recruits into the flying services, raise money through war bonds and arouse patriotic emotions. The air war may have been hell for its participants, but it could be made to look exciting and romantic for those on the outside.

Deutsche Luftkriegsbeute Ausstellung This German poster, featuring an Albatros D.V, advertises a Munich exhibition of war booty captured by German forces. The artist was Julius Ussy Engelhard. Born in Indonesia in 1883, he died in Munich in 1964.

ALL ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS EXCEPT WHERE NOTED

Public Appeal

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Join the army Air Service: Be an American Eagle When World War I started in Europe, the United States was woefully unprepared for an air war, with a mere six airplanes in its military. By the time America entered the war in April 1917, that number had increased to around 200. Obviously, it still needed more airplanes—and men to fly them. In this poster by artist Charles Livingston Bull, an American bald eagle takes on a black eagle of Germany. Bull had studied wildlife and taxidermy before the war, making this a natural subject matter for him.

For Action Enlist in the Air Service The action, in a poster by Otho Cushing, appears to be in training, which was dangerous enough for fledgling pilots. Illustrator Cushing joined the Army Air Service in 1917 as a captain and worked to camouflage airfields in Europe.

Join the Air Service: Give ’er the gun With this piece, artist Warren Keith appealed to his audience’s patriotism and sense of adventure while also pointing out the appeal of a steady paycheck. The Nevada native had been an illustrator for the Hearst newspapers in San Francisco before relocating to New York. He drowned in Nevada in 1920.

ALL ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS EXCEPT WHERE NOTED

Join the Air Service and Serve in France By the time the Americans reached France, the star insignia on their airplanes had been replaced by red-blue-white cockades similar to Russia’s, due to concerns that trigger-happy soldiers might mistake the star for a German cross. The airplane is a reasonably accurate depiction of a Standard J-1 trainer, a backup to the more famous Curtiss JN-4D Jenny. Belgian-born J. Paul Verrees did the artwork.

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Aufwärts: OberbaŸerische Flugspende The text for this fundraising appeal translates as “Onward, Upper Bavarian Aviation Fund.” The artist was Fritz Erler, who was an interior designer as well as a painter. His wartime propaganda posters were effective fundraisers for Germany.

Subscribe to the 5½ percent war loan The airplane in the dramatic Russian poster at left is a Deperdussin TT, on which the French experimented in February 1914 with a mounting that allowed the observer to fire a machine gun over the propeller…by standing up.

Although the airplane saw some action with the French, Russians and Italians in 1914-15, it is doubtful that this gun mount saw much use before the warring air arms found much better ways to install a forwardfiring machine gun.

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Skilled Mechanics Urgently Needed The work of the Imperial Royal Flying Corps mechanics was not as action-packed as this Canadian poster indicates, but it was essential.

The artist is Canadian Joseph Ernest Sampson. The airplanes appear to be a Nieuport 16 and a Fokker E.III Eindecker.

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DAVID POLLACK/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

portfolio

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TOP RIGHT: GHI/UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE VIA GETTY IMAGES

DAVID POLLACK/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

Und Ihr? Zeichnet Kriegsanleihe The text of this German poster translates as “And you? Subscribe to the War Loan.” The image, another work by Fritz Erler, appealed to the emotions by depicting a wounded pilot with his arm in a sling. Erler’s impact as a World War I propagandist for Germany has been compared to that of Uncle Sam artist James Montgomery Flagg’s for the United States.

Join the Royal Air Force and Share Their Honour & Glory In this British poster by an unknown artist, British and German airplanes duel in the sky—with the “Beastly Hun” getting the worst of it. The aircraft seem to have been copied from an earlier poster—the state of the art had advanced considerably by the time the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service were amalgamated into the Royal Air Force on April 1, 1918.

Mechanical Training: Enlist in the Air Service Pilots were essential, but so were the mechanics who kept the airplanes flying.

Perhaps the idea of learning a trade that would translate to peacetime was a selling point in this American poster by Otho Cushing. Cushing had gained fame for his Teddyssey, depictions of President Theodore Roosevelt in scenes from Homer’s Odyssey.

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LETTER FROM AvIATION HISTORY air supply An American C-54 Skymaster brings supplies to Berlin in 1948. Inset: Gail Halvorsen became known as the “candy bomber” during the Berlin Airlift.

The Candy Bomber

I

n this issue of Aviation History, you will read about many people who dropped things from airplanes. “Borate bombers” dropped retardant on forest fires; U.S. Army Lieutenant Myron S. Crissy developed ways to drop explosives from airplanes; and B-24 Liberator crews dropped bombs on Europe while Soviets and Germans dropped bombs on each other. (As I write this, Russians in today’s world are dropping bombs on the Ukraine.)

Gail Halvorsen also dropped things from airplanes. A farm boy from Utah who died on February 16 at the age of 101, Halvorsen did not drop bombs during World War II, having served as a transport pilot outside of the war zones. When he reached Berlin in 1948, he saw a city that Allied bombers had transformed into a “moonscape.” In the new Cold War that followed the old hot one, the Soviet Union tried to gain total control over divided Berlin by blocking the West from land access to the city. The Western powers responded by supplying Berlin via the Berlin Airlift. Halvorsen flew transports as part of the effort, which was known as “Operation Vittles.” Over the next 11 months, the Western powers delivered 2.3 million tons of supplies to the beleaguered city.

One day Halvorsen was at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport when he encountered German children who were waiting outside the fences. He gave them a couple sticks of gum, all that he had at the time, and watched as the youngsters who didn’t get any found some satisfaction by sniffing the empty wrappers. At that point Halvorsen had an epiphany. He told the youngsters he would return and deliver gum from his airplane the next day.

Halvorsen turned handkerchiefs into makeshift parachutes for his bundles of sweets, which he dropped from his airplane as

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he flew over the devastated city. That was the start of what he later called “Operation Little Vittles.”

Word got out and people around the world, including the Girl Scouts and the National Confectioners’ Association, began sending Halvorsen candy and handkerchiefs. By the time the Soviets lifted the blockade the following year, Operation Little Vittles had dropped 21 tons of sweets. “All from two sticks of gum in 1948—unbelievable!” Halvorsen told an interviewer in 2009. Halvorsen remained a hero in Berlin, which he revisited over the years, the last time in 2019. The story of the “candy bomber” remains inspiring, a bright contrast to the terrible aerial onslaught of World War II. On a personal note, this is my first issue as editor of Aviation History. It is an honor and pleasure to be here. Former editor Carl von Wodtke, who retired after an amazing 26 years at the helm, left behind a tremendous magazine and great staff, and I hope to continue his legacy of quality. Fasten your seatbelts, put your seatbacks and tray tables in the upright and locked positions and let’s enjoy the ride together. In the meantime, do yourself a favor and check out our completely redesigned website at historynet.com. The new site looks great and contains a treasure trove of historical material. Set aside some extra time and take a look.

BOTH: U.S. AIR FORCE

BY TOM HUNTINGTON

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TankBuster In an illustration by Adam Tooby, German ace Hans-Ulrich Rudel banks his Ju-87G above the Russian steppes after attacking a Soviet tank during the Battle of Kursk.

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THE LUFTWAFFE’S LOST CAUSE EVEN BEFORE BATTLE BEGAN RAGING AROUND THE RUSSIAN CITY OF KURSK, THE ODDS WERE STACKED AGAINST NAZI GERMANY—THANKS TO A LACK OF AIR SUPERIORITY. BY DAN ZAMANSKY

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protect and defend Top: As Operation Citadel advances, Junkers Ju-87Ds overfly an advancing armored unit in the Belgorod-Oryol region as they return from a close support mission on July 10, 1943.

Above: The crew of a 20mm Flak Vierling 38 mounted on an 8-ton Sd.Kfz. 7/1 halftrack scans the sky for Soviet attack airplanes.

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The German pilots in their Messerschmitt Me-109s and Focke-Wulf Fw-190s had a field day against their Soviet adversaries and their inferior Yakovlev fighters. The Germans reported 367 victories that day. In terms of numbers, that made it the Luftwaffe’s greatest day of air combat in the entire war. Yet despite this initial success, the seeds for a German defeat at Kursk had already been sown, in the air and on the ground.

The Kursk battle is most often remembered as a gigantic tank clash, when German Tigers, Panthers and Ferdinands crashed into Soviet defensive lines that bulged westward around the Russian city. This is how Adolf Hitler viewed it.

Even in February 1943, five months before the battle began, Hitler spoke of his new tanks as a “gigantic concentration of the newest offensive weapons” that would restore German superiority on the Eastern Front. Tanks alone weren’t enough, though. Without air power, the Germans lacked a vital ingredient for their projected Blitzkrieg.

The Luftwaffe had proven essential during

the Third Battle of Kharkov in March 1943, a German counteroffensive that made the July attack on Kursk possible. “The enemy is again attacking us heavily with his air force,” said one Soviet report that emphasized the importance of German air power. Another noted that “the movement of enemy tanks takes place under the cover of his aircraft.” This close cooperation between the Germany Army and Luftwaffe was the linchpin of Germany’s entire war machine, and thus the key to any possibility of victory in the planned attack on the Kursk bulge, called Operation Citadel.

The problem for the Germans was that the Luftwaffe was not what it had been in the early days of the war. German aircraft, especially fighters, were no longer state of the art and the introduction of new equipment had suffered catastrophic delays. German production chiefs were beginning to panic. The planned piston-engine successor to the ubiquitous Me-109, the Me-209, had been cancelled in favor of a technological breakthrough, the Me-262 jet fighter. Yet less than

PREVIOUS SPREAD: ADAM TOOBY; TOP: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM; INSET: BUNDESARCHIV BILD 101I-022-2926-37

EVERYTHING SEEMED TO TILT IN THE LUFTWAFFE’S FAVOR ON JULY 5, 1943, THE OPENING DAY OF WORLD WAR II’S BATTLE OF KURSK.

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Oryol

CHRONICLE/ALAMY. MAP BY JANET NORQUIST FOR CREATIVE FREELANCERS VIA WORLD WAR II MAGAZINE

PREVIOUS SPREAD: ADAM TOOBY; TOP: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM; INSET: BUNDESARCHIV BILD 101I-022-2926-37

•

a month before the attack on Kursk, production of the Me-262 had not advanced beyond the discussion phase. For the moment, Germany would have to struggle for air superiority with the Me-109 and the Fw-190, even though neither airplane could match their British and American opponents.

The planning for German bombers had meanwhile lost all touch with reality. Production of the antiquated fixed-undercarriage Junkers Ju-87 Stuka, the technological opposite of the Me-262, was planned to continue at a steady rate of 150 a month until September 1945. The plans did not mention how Nazi Germany intended to survive that long. In July 1943, the only place the Stuka could fly in daylight was in the East; on other fronts it was little better than an aerial target.

Even now, more than 75 years after the war, the true extent of Germany’s production crisis remains obscured. The full set of German monthly aircraft delivery reports from 1939 to 1943, recently discovered in a German federal archive, shows just how few advanced aircraft the Luftwaffe accepted from factories in June 1943, on the eve of battle.

This included a mere six Heinkel He-177 heavy

bombers, none of them combat ready. The only new type on the verge of mass production was the Messerschmitt Me-410, originally intended to replace the obsolete Me-110 in the role of bomber destroyer. In practice, all 52 of the new Messerschmitts were delivered as fast bombers, since Germany desperately needed something

flying tank Far left: An Ilyushin Il-2m3 drops a bomb on a German ground target. Shielding its engine and crew in an “armor bath,” the Il-2—the most-produced warplane in history—also packed two 23mm cannons.

Left: The German strategy envisioned taking the Kursk bulge with a pincer movement, while the tanks were protected by the Luftwaffe.

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better than the Stuka. Crew training had not kept up either, so only a small number of Me-410s entered combat in June and these went to the Mediterranean as reconnaissance planes, in the hope that their higher performance would allow them to evade the swarms of fast Allied fighters. Any of the “newest offensive weapons” the struggling German aircraft industry produced went to fight Britain and America. The forces at Kursk would have to make do with what they had.

T

he effect of the production debacle was reinforced by the strategic one. The most urgent reinforcement priority in Germany’s air war lay far away from the low hills around Kursk. The African campaign had ended in May in a catastrophe worse than Stalingrad, with not only the surrender of a German army, but the near annihilation of Axis air and naval forces. German air units in the Mediterranean barely existed. For example, one fighter group had an official strength of 40 pilots and 52 Me-109s, but in fact it had only 19 pilots and three operational Messerschmitts. To make

PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: BUNDESARCHIV BILD 101I-502-0183-08; HISTORYNET ARCHIVES; COURTESY OF EDDIE NIELINGER. AIRPLANE ART BY ADAM TOOBY

german aces Clockwise from top left: Hans-Ulrich Rudel flew 2,530 combat missions, mostly in Ju-87s; Johannes Wiese of Jagdgeschwader 52 (left, being awarded the Knight’s Cross by General Günther Korten, who was later executed for his involvement in an assassination attempt against Hitler) claimed 12 Il-2s before crash-landing on July 5; Edmund Rossmann of JG 52 scored 93 victories in 630 missions before being taken prisoner on July 9. Below: In 1943 the Ju-87D and G (top, and opposite below) and the Me-109G-6 (bottom) were attempts to upgrade aging designs.

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sure that the remaining pilots at least had aircraft to fly, the Mediterranean needed every airplane that Germany could send. For every fighter allocated to the Soviet-German front, two went to the Mediterranean. In the West, the need for reinforcements was also urgent, as Anglo-American air forces based in Britain were directly menacing Germany’s heartland. In consequence, the Eastern Front received less than a third of the total number of aircraft that had become available in June, and less than a fifth of all Fw-190s.

For the Luftwaffe, the East became the lowest priority among the three theaters of the air war over Europe. Typically for Hitler’s haphazard way

TECH NOTES

of war, his plan of attack, to encircle the Kursk salient, existed in a strategic vacuum. Without sufficient Luftwaffe forces, Citadel was on the brink of failure even before the attack began.

With other fronts robbing the East of reinforcements, the Luftwaffe could count on only 1,787 aircraft at the start of the battle, including 354 fighters. It reached this number by stripping other sectors of the Eastern front of almost all air units.

Of the eight fighter groups involved, one arrived from the Leningrad sector on July 2 and another two flew in from the Kuban bridgehead in the far south on July 3 and 4.

Facing the Germans were the 2nd, 16th and 17th Soviet air armies with 3,028 aircraft, of which 1,414 were fighters. Thus, the Soviet side possessed a 4-to-1 superiority in fighters from the first moment of the battle. In addition, the 1st and 15th air armies, the 9th air defense corps and almost all bombers of the Soviet long-range bomber force would soon be sent into the bat-

role changes Left: An underside view of a Ju-87G-1 shows the twin 37mm antitank cannons mounted under its wings. Above: Heinkel He-111s seek out logistical targets in the southern Soviet Union in 1943.

JUNKERS JU-87G-1

RIGHT: ADAM TOOBY; TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF EDDIE NIELINGER; TOP RIGHT: BUNDESARCHIV BILD 101I-641-4527-17

PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: BUNDESARCHIV BILD 101I-502-0183-08; HISTORYNET ARCHIVES; COURTESY OF EDDIE NIELINGER. AIRPLANE ART BY ADAM TOOBY

MG 81Z TWIN 7.92MM MACHINE GUNS

SPECIFICATIONS

ENGINE 1,400-hp Junkers Jumo 211J MAXIMUM SPEED 214 mph MG 17 7.92MM MACHINE GUN

BK 3.7 37MM ANTITANK CANNON

SERVICE CEILING 24,016 feet RANGE 621 miles

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tle. These accounted for another 2,900 aircraft, including 1,070 fighters. Therefore, the Soviet air force had more than three times as many aircraft as the Luftwaffe in the Kursk and Oryol sectors, and seven times as many fighters. Even without knowing the details of Soviet strength, it should have been obvious to the German command that its forces at best were sufficient for mobile defensive warfare. Instead, it made an all-out gamble,

TOP: SPUTNIK; BELOW: AKG-IMAGES/TT NEWS AGENCY; AIRPLANE ART BY ADAM TOOBY

Soviet skies Top: Flying the new Lavochkin La-5 fighter, Soviet ace of aces Ivan Kozhedub scored his first of an eventual 62 victories during the Kursk campaign.

Below: By 1943 the Yak-9 (top) and the Il-2 (bottom) were proving at least competitive with their German counterparts—and they were being built in overwhelming numbers. Right: This was the view from the gunner’s position of the Il-2, which had originally been a single-seater.

trying to compensate for its grotesque numerical inferiority by forcing pilots to fly and fight to the limits of their strength.

The Luftwaffe’s weakness was not apparent on July 5, the first day of the attack. This was because Stalin’s military machine relied on the ruthless exploitation of numerical superiority. Training pilots to fight and, more important, survive and fight another day was not a priority. Most Soviet pilots entered combat after a very short time in flight schools. Despite many exaggerated claims about the performance of Soviet aircraft, the facts show that in the East, unlike in the West, Germany retained a great technological lead. The engine of the most common Soviet fighter at Kursk, the Yak9, was a 1,180-hp Klimov V-105PF. By comparison, the Me-109G’s Daimler-Benz DB 605 provided 1,455 hp, a power superiority of 23 percent.

The Soviet combination of barely trained pilots with inferior aircraft led to the Luftwaffe’s triumph on July 5. For example, in the southern sector, Hauptmann Johannes Wiese of I Gruppe, Jagdgeschwader 52 (I./JG 52) flew five sorties and reported shooting down 12 Ilyushin Il-2 attack aircraft. Another indication of how overmatched the Soviet pilots were on the first day of battle is that the average altitude of combat was just 4,265 feet, as the Russians sought safety at low altitudes.

The real extent of Soviet aircraft losses on July 5 remained unknown because many Russian pri-

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mary sources remain concealed by obsessive state secrecy, but the pilot losses have been counted here, for the first time. A total of 166 pilots died or went missing in action, 111 of them junior lieutenants, the lowest Soviet officer rank, and another 22 sergeants. Both ranks were received by graduates of flying schools at the end of their training. The tragedy of these young Soviet pilots was that their sacrifice meant little to the regime they served, because Stalin’s military could always find others to replace them.

F

or the Luftwaffe, the lopsided victories created an illusion that they had secured air superiority. In fact, the cost of German victory was too high. It is often written that the Germans lost only 26 aircraft, but this count includes only those reported that day. When all losses were tallied, German losses totaled 55 aircraft and 20 pilots. Those of the fighter force, which was already too small for its assigned task, included 23 aircraft and 12 pilots killed or missing.

RIGHT: ADAM TOOBY; TOP LEFT: CHRONICLE/ALAMY; TOP RIGHT: SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG PHOTO/ALAMY

TOP: SPUTNIK; BELOW: AKG-IMAGES/TT NEWS AGENCY; AIRPLANE ART BY ADAM TOOBY

TECH NOTES

Hans Grünberg, a German ace who flew on July 5, reported that his day began when he was urgently called back to his home airfield from an early morning scramble. The base was under attack from “light furniture vans,” the disparaging nickname German fighter pilots used for the Il-2.

Grünberg claimed four of these. Yet, the Soviet air force had so many planes that they simply kept on coming. Later that day, the German ace watched as waves of Soviet aircraft “rolled over our tank and infantry advance columns.”

In direct support of the ground troops, the Luftwaffe’s efforts were also exceptional and insufficient. On July 5, German pilots flew 3,359 sorties to attack ground targets, 1,942 of them in the southern sector. With this support, SS divisions broke through two of the three Soviet main defense lines. Yet by the evening of the next day, the commander of the Fourth Panzer Army in

ILYUSHIN IL-2

turning tide Left: A musician turned Il-2m3 pilot, Captain Sidorenko (with guitar) plays with other musicians between missions. Above: Even with the additional 12.7mm machine gun in the back, the armored Il-2 was not invincible, as this one that came down behind German lines attests.

BEREZIN UBT 12.7MM MACHINE GUN

VYA-23 23MM CANNON

SPECIFICATIONS

ENGINE: 1,700-hp Mikulin AM-38F MAXIMUM SPEED: 251 mph SERVICE CEILING: 18,045 feet RANGE: 475 miles KMB CANISTER (FOR 192 PTAB HOLLOWCHARGE ANTITANK BOMBS)

SHKAS 7.62MM MACHINE GUN RO WING-MOUNTED ROCKET RAILS FOR 82MM RBS-82 OR 132MM RBS-132 ROCKETS

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the south, Generaloberst Hermann Hoth, asked the Luftwaffe to assign most forces to support the 48th Panzer Corps, fighting immediately to the west of the SS troops, because the army formation lacked sufficient help from the Luftwaffe and was advancing very slowly. Obviously, Germany’s air force was stretched too thin. From the start, it could help only some Panzer units while others had to manage with inadequate air support. This was true in the northern sector as well. On July 7, a German corps attacking from the north was already reporting “bomb attacks by strong enemy air formations” as a pillar of the Soviet defense.

July 7 was the day when the Luftwaffe admitted its strength was fading. Its aircraft were flying too many missions with not enough time for required maintenance. Fewer and fewer airplanes remained mission ready.

In this gigantic tank battle, it did not help that the Luftwaffe had only a handful of tankbusters. By the end of June, German industry had managed to produce a mere eight Ju-87 and 16 Me-110 tankbusting aircraft, both with 37mm anti-tank guns. At Kursk, both types saw service only in the northern sector, with one exception.

Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Germany’s best-known ground attack pilot, kept his personal Ju-87G and used it in the south. On the opening day of the battle, Rudel destroyed 12 Soviet tanks with his twin 37mm guns, often going in so low his Stuka was scorched by the explosions. But Rudel was an exception. In practice, the only militarily significant tankbuster was the armored Henschel Hs-129 with its 30mm gun. All four squadrons operated in the south, and it was only on July 8 that

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SAMMLUNG BERLINER VERLAG/AKG IMAGES; V. KINELOVSKY/SLAVA KATAMIDZE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; NATIONAL ARCHIVES

agony of defeat Clockwise from top left: Waffen-SS grenadiers examine a downed Yakovlev fighter in the BelgorodKursk area in July 1943; a shell-shocked German artilleryman sits surrounded by dead teammates beside his disabled howitzer at Kursk; a Ju-87D-3 from StG 2, Rudel’s command, comes to grief on on the Russian steppes at Kharkov. In March 1943, the Germans at Kharkov stopped the Soviet follow-up to Stalingrad and threw the initiative on the Russian front back into the air—to be settled once and for all at Kursk.

they made their first successful deployment. Of the total of 1,380 attack sorties flown in the area that day, Hs-129s flew only 53. The Germans reported destroying a total of 84 tanks by all the different aircraft types, “11 of these set on fire.” Even if that was not an exaggeration, it was just a minor break in the rising steel tide of Soviet armor.

By July 9, on the fifth day of the offensive, the German army was already on the cusp of failure.

In the north, there was talk was of a “temporary pause in the offensive,” while in the south General Hoth complained that “the operation has temporarily run out of steam.” The truth was not so ambiguous. The Luftwaffe, in particular, was exhausted. It could only manage 481 attack sorties in the north that day, a third of what it had achieved on July 5. In a sign of desperation, reconnaissance aircraft employed as improvised bombers flew 110 of these sorties. Individual pilots were exhausted and overwhelmed. As the future highest-scoring Soviet ace, Ivan Kozhedub, remembered it, Russian pilots routinely flew three or four sorties a day at the peak of the fighting, while the outnumbered Germans flew even more. A German bomber pilot, Oberleutnant Martin Vollmer, had a particularly bad time. Already suffering from a lack of sleep, he remembered that “idiotic flying in bad weather” made things even worse. On his third mission on July 8, Vollmer not only failed to find his target, he completely lost his bearings. He eventually received fire from a Soviet anti-aircraft battery and bombed it as a target of opportunity.

He barely made it back to base.

In the south, Unteroffizier Edmund Rossmann of III./JG.52, an ace with 93 victories, led a weather reconnaissance mission on July 9. In confused combat in heavy clouds, one pilot was shot down and the Me-109 of another, 25-victory ace Feldwebel Ernst Lohberg, was damaged.

Lohberg made a forced landing and Rossmann touched down to rescue his wingman. The pilots thought they were 12 miles west of Oboyan, but they were in fact closer to 20 miles west and only a mile or so from a Soviet communications battalion. Soviet soldiers rushed out, shot Lohberg dead and knocked Rossmann out with a rifle butt. The Soviets captured both Messerschmitts. The Soviet

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TOP: BUNDESARCHIV BILD 101I-390-1220-19; BELOW: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SAMMLUNG BERLINER VERLAG/AKG IMAGES; V. KINELOVSKY/SLAVA KATAMIDZE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; NATIONAL ARCHIVES

air force was able to test Lohberg’s but Soviet ace Captain Ivan S. Kravtsov destroyed Rossmann’s, a new Me-109G-6 model, while attempting to take off. Rossmann was lucky to survive six years in Soviet camps.

Somewhere, additional forces had to be found to reinforce the exhausted Luftwaffe, but none could be spared from other fronts. Only a single unit resting in Germany, a bomber group flying long-obsolete Heinkel He-111s, could be spared, and only because it had already been planned to send it to the northern sector of the Eastern front.

It was sent to the Oryol bulge instead.

This would not be enough, so a decision was made that essentially admitted that the German plan had collapsed. By July 10, all the Hs-129 tankbusters were ordered to the Oryol area, leaving Rudel as a one-man anti-tank air force in the southern sector. With no other reinforcements available, the Germans could reinforce only one of the two pincers of the Citadel plan, meaning victory was impossible. Clearly, German commanders did not wish to face this reality, so in practice the Hs-129 units were still flying in the south as late as July 12.

They flew north two days later.

By then the Battle of Kursk had become irrelevant to German strategy. On July 10 the Allies landed in Sicily. Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, commanding the northern sector of

the Kursk bulge, realized the implications. A message he sent to all his troops (which was intercepted and included in a German intelligence report) read, “The Allies have landed on the island of Sicily. The commander of the defense salutes you.

Hold your positions, victory will be ours.”

Rokossovsky was correct. The Germans had no more reserves for their forces in the East. The full weight of Anglo-American military power now aimed at Germany and Italy. Stalin’s demands for a second front had been fully met almost a year before the Normandy landings, though the Soviet dictator would never acknowledge this. The battle for Kursk was over. The best that German forces could now hope for was to avoid a repeat of the Stalingrad disaster in the Oryol bulge to the north, where a Soviet counter-offensive was about to begin.

field work Above: Armorers bore-sight the guns of an Me 109G-6 of II Gruppe, JG 54 “Green Hearts” as the Luftwaffe goes onto the defensive. Below: A 1963 Soviet stamp, showing a T-34/76 tank and battle map, commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Battle of Kursk.

Dan Zamansky is a British-Israeli independent historian, educated at Oxford and King’s College London.

Fluent in English and Russian and with a working knowledge of German, the focus of his research lies in re-evaluating contemporary history using newly available sources. He suggests for further reading: Thunder at Prokhorovka: A Combat History of Operation Citadel, by David Schranck; and The Luftwaffe: A Complete History 1933-1945,

by E. R. Hooton.

PHANTOM VICTORIES One story to emerge from Kursk is that of Lieutenant Aleksandr Konstantinovich Gorovets, a deputy squadron leader with the 88th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 8th Guards Fighter Division. On July 6, 1943, Gorovets supposedly shot down nine Junkers Ju-87s before being shot down and killed. Gorovets’ alleged exploit set a one-day Soviet record and earned him posthumous recognition as a Hero of the Soviet Union. His story, however, owes less to his flying skills than to the efficiency of Soviet propaganda. The Luftwaffe lost 11 aircraft in combat in Gorovets’ sector on July 6, about half of them to anti-aircraft fire, making the claim for him an impossibility. Given that the area

south of Kursk is largely prime agricultural land and therefore easily accessible, the fact that the Soviets didn’t find Gorovets’ wrecked Lavochkin La-5 until 1957 shows how little they cared about his fate. In truth, the Red Army suffered a serious defeat in that sector on July 6, and the Gorovets story, concocted by the political section of the 8th Guards Fighter Division, was intended to obscure this fact. It was particularly convenient for the Soviets that Gorovets had disappeared. Dead men tell no tales.

D.Z.

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THE WAR HAWK AND THE PELICAN INSPIRED BY THE WRIGHT BROTHERS, HUGH WILLOUGHBY SET OUT TO MAKE HIS OWN MARK ON THE NEW WORLD OF AVIATION BY DAVID BOEHNLEIN

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beached Hugh de Laussat Willoughby’s Pelican sits ready for flight in Florida. The floats and tail assembly differ somewhat from other photographs, suggesting that Willoughby continued to tinker with the basic airframe.

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Up, up and away Above: Willoughby stands in a balloon gondola at far right before soaring over Paris in 1900. Top: Willoughby took this bird’s eye view of the French capital during his ascent.

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Among the many diversions available to visitors was the opportunity to go aloft in a balloon. A photograph taken of one such group of amateur aeronauts shows a group of men in hats and high collars, looking very serious—all except one. This man, Hugh de Laussat Willoughby, stands slightly apart from the others, unable to contain a smile; it radiates from his crinkled eyes, as if going up in a balloon is the greatest lark of his life. For him, that would be saying quite a lot.

Willoughby was born in 1856 to a well-to-do family in Middleton, New York. He studied mining engineering at the University of Pennsylvania but never worked in that field. Independently wealthy, he put his time and money into things that interested him. These included yachting, motorboats, bicycles and aviation. He declared ballooning to be “the king of sports,” but balloons would eventually lose the crown to airplanes.

In 1897 Willoughby made a name for himself

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MARTIN COUNTY/ELLIOTT MUSEUM EXCEPT WHERE NOTED

IT WAS 1900 AND THE CITY OF PARIS GREETED THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WITH THE EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE, A WORLD’S FAIR TO CELEBRATE THE ARTS AND SCIENCES OF THE PAST CENTURY AND TO ANTICIPATE THE WONDERS OF THE NEXT.

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FROM TRIUMPH TO TRAGEDY

as an explorer. He undertook an expedition to sail around the southern tip of Florida through poorly charted waters and little-known islands. He and a guide then took to canoes and crossed back to Miami through the Everglades. In doing so, he became the first non-native to cross this region, though he acknowledged in Across the Everglades, his memoir of the journey, that the Seminole Indians had been doing it for a long time. Although Willoughby gained considerable respect for the Seminoles during his time in the Everglades, they had never mapped the region. Willoughby did, employing the inventiveness that he would later use in his flying machines. Since he made his journey through the Everglades entirely by water flowing through tall grass, he could use neither a surveyor’s wheel nor a ship’s log to measure the distances. Instead, he fitted a bicycle wheel with paddles, connected it to an odometer, and attached it to his canoe. The wheel turned as the boat moved through the water, measuring each day’s travel.

Satisfying though that achievement may have been, however, Willoughby realized that unknown lands were becoming ever fewer as the twentieth century approached; new technology was becoming the new frontier.

RIGHT (BOTH): LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MARTIN COUNTY/ELLIOTT MUSEUM EXCEPT WHERE NOTED

explorers of swamp and sky Above: A photograph from the Everglades shows the contraption Willoughby attached to his canoe to measure distances through the swamp.

Below: Thomas Selfridge prepares for the flight that will cost him his life (inset).

When Hugh Willoughby volunteered to help Orville Wright demonstrate his Flyer at Fort Myer, Virginia, in September 1908, he did not expect to be an eyewitness to tragedy. August and September that year were supposed to be triumphant times for the Wright brothers, who planned to convert the unbelievers and find buyers for their invention. Wilbur became an international celebrity when he demonstrated his airplane for enthusiastic crowds in France that August. Back in the United States, Orville’s flights at Fort Myer, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., provided another Wright success. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the president’s son, was there for Orville’s initial flights on September 3 and he noted that “the crowd’s gasp of astonishment was not alone at the wonder of it, but because it was so unexpected.” Later flights were even more impressive. Aviation enthusiast Gutzon Borglum (later the sculptor of Mount Rushmore) witnessed Orville in action on September 10. “Well, hell’s popping—the gasoline motor is in the air, and man with outspread sheets is astride of it!” he wrote his brother. “Orville Wright has broken all previous records. He flew 67 minutes in a 16-mile wind, handled his pair of planes like a chauffeur, and rode the air as deliberately as if he were passing over a solid macadam road.” (By “pair of planes,” Borglum was referring to the Flyer’s two wings.)

Tragedy struck on September 17 when Orville made a flight with Army Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge as his passenger. He was not happy with his companion, as Selfridge was allied with the Wrights’ main competitors, the Aerial Experiment Association led by Glenn Curtiss and Alexander Graham Bell. “I don’t trust him an inch,” Orville wrote to Wilbur about Selfridge. But the 26-year-old lieutenant also represented the Army, and the Wrights wanted the military to buy their airplanes. During the flight, one of the wooden propellers cracked, a wire to the rudders snapped and the airplane plummeted to the ground. Selfridge was mortally injured and Orville was badly hurt. “The death of poor Selfridge was a greater shock to me than Orville’s injuries, severe as they were,” Wilbur wrote to his sister, Katherine, when he heard the news. “I felt sure ‘Bubbo’ would pull through all right, but the other was irremediable.”

Orville did pull through and so did the brothers’ relationship with the Army. “Of course we deplore the accident,” said Major George Squier of the Army Signal Corps, “but no one who saw the flights of the last four days at Fort Myer could doubt for an instant that the problem of aerial navigation was solved.” It was solved, perhaps, but that still left plenty of opportunities for aviation enthusiasts like Hugh Willoughby to advance the new technology.

Tom Huntington

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n 1899, Wilbur and Orville Wright began to study seriously the problem of powered flight. The Wright brothers succeeded in flying an airplane in 1903, but they did not give any public demonstrations until 1908. Orville put the Wright Flyer through its paces at Fort Myer, Virginia, hoping to get a contract with the United States Army for flying machines. Meanwhile, his brother Wilbur was in Paris, sounding out the M AY 2 0 2 2

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French government as a potential customer.

To clinch the deal with the Army, Orville had to demonstrate that the Wright Flyer could meet a set of rigorous requirements. The demonstrations went on for two weeks. It’s likely that Willoughby had started corresponding with the Wrights by this time, for he traveled to Fort Myer and assisted with the demonstrations, while also seeking to discuss his own ideas with Orville. No doubt he made careful observations of the airplane while he was there.

Orville’s demonstrations came to an abrupt and tragic end on September 17, 1908. To demonstrate the Flyer’s passenger-carrying capabilities, Orville took an Army observer, Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge, aloft with him. One of the wooden propellors broke during the flight and the airplane became uncontrollable. The resulting wreck killed Selfridge, giving him the unenviable distinction of becoming the first person to die in the crash of a powered aircraft. (See sidebar, P. 39.)

Orville Wright was seriously injured in the accident, but during his recuperation he and Willoughby corresponded. It is clear from the letters that Willoughby was already planning to build his own airplane. His letters to Orville included questions about flying among inquiries about

Wright’s improving health. In one of his replies Orville wrote, “I don’t want you to go to any considerable expense in your experiments, for as I told you at Washington, I could only give permission to use our invention till we have some of the machines built and for sale.” That seems friendly enough, but it could be also taken as a warning not to infringe on any of the Wright brothers’ patents.

Orville did not need to worry about Willoughby’s expenses; he could afford them. A common quip among modern-day private pilots goes, “If God had intended man to fly, He would have given him more money.” If this is indeed the case, then God intended Hugh Willoughby to fly. But he was not interested in buying a Wright machine.

He wanted to build one himself and before long was patenting inventions of his own. Chief among these was what Willoughby called his “double rudders,” although the 1909 patent (U. S. Patent No. 1,008,096) is simply titled “Airship.” According to the description, the invention was suitable for “aeronautical machines of all types, but particularly adapted to that class known as aeroplanes.”

It was an arrangement of fore-and-aft elevators (“horizontal rudders” in the terminology of the day) that allowed more responsive pitch control.

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patented Willoughby registered patents for his double rudders (left) and an “aeroplane engine controlling mechanism.” He noted that his rudder patents would be suitable for “aeronautical machines of all types, but particularly adapted to that class known as aeroplanes.”

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birdlike Above: Ready for takeoff, Willoughby’s Pelican displays floats that differ from those shown on pages 36-37.

Left: Willoughby’s War Hawk was arguably the first tractor engine airplane to fly. Below: The Pelican, showing off its triangular ailerons, taxis across the water for another test flight.

another safety device. Willoughby also took ideas from other sources to create a unique system of controls. For roll control, the War Hawk used the Wright brothers’ system of wing warping, operated with a shoulder harness developed by Glenn Curtiss. There were control wheels at the sides of the cockpit for pitch and yaw.

Willoughby worked on his airplane for more than a year in Ventnor, New Jersey. It must have been quite a sight, for he coated it with paint made,

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The two elevators moved in inverse directions, so that as the forward “rudder” drove the nose up, the one in the rear pushed the tail down and vice versa. The Wright brothers and Anglo-French aviation pioneer Henri Farman incorporated this innovation into some of their machines, but the first aircraft to use it was Willoughby’s War Hawk.

Despite the name, Willoughby never intended the War Hawk for military use. He named his airplane after the frigate bird, or man-o’-war hawk, that he had seen in Florida.

Besides having Willoughby’s double rudders, the War Hawk was a remarkable airplane in many other respects. With a wingspan of 44 feet, it was the largest airplane in the world in 1909.

Furthermore, it was the first tractor biplane on record; that is, the propellor was at the front of the airplane and pulled it through the air, rather than pushing it from behind as other biplane designs of the time did. (In France, Louis Blériot was developing tractor monoplanes.) Willoughby was convinced that this was a superior configuration for aerodynamics, but also considered it a safety feature. In a crash, the pilot would come down on top of the engine, rather than the engine on top of the pilot. The engine power was controlled by a unique device that Willoughby would also patent as an “aeroplane engine controlling mechanism” (U. S. Patent No. 1,024,303). This was a foot pedal that, unlike the accelerator of an automobile, reduced the power as the pilot depressed it.

Depressing the pedal all the way would shut off the engine, a feature that Willoughby touted as

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HE COATED THE WAR HAWK WITH PAINT MADE FROM PURE BANANA OIL AND GROUND ALUMINUM. well suited Right: Willoughby, photographed in his 70s, got his flying license at age 53 and for many years was the oldest licensed American pilot. Below: Willoughby checks out a Thomas T-2, probably at the Thomas factory in Ithaca, New York, around 1915.

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he said, from “pure banana oil and ground aluminum.” By September of 1910, Willoughby got the War Hawk into the air. Contemporary accounts are not specific about how high, how fast or how far the War Hawk flew, noting only that it did. For an airplane the size of the War Hawk in 1910, that was achievement enough.

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he following year, Willoughby was ready to move on to his next project. At his winter home on Sewall’s Point in Florida, he began work on a “hydro-aeroplane,” or seaplane. French aviator Henri Fabre flew the first successful “hydravion” on March 24, 1910, but Glenn Curtiss, Gabriel Voisin and Hugh Willoughby were not far behind. Willoughby named his new machine the Pelican, claiming that, when diving, the namesake bird moved its head and tail in the same manner as his double rudders operated. While Curtiss and the Wrights would build hydro-aeroplanes on a flying boat design, Willoughby built the Pelican with a pair of pontoon floats under the wings, a configuration that remains a standard on modern seaplanes. Like the War Hawk, the Pelican was a tractor biplane with Willoughby’s patented double rudders and engine control. He built the parts at Sewall’s Point and then tested the machine at his summer home in Newport, Rhode Island. Although Willoughby proclaimed satisfaction with the tests, the Pelican was underpowered, with its engine producing only 30 horsepower.

Upon bringing the floatplane back to Florida, Willoughby developed another innovation to help with water takeoffs. This was the Pelican Nurse, a catamaran motorboat with each of its twin hulls

outfitted to hold one of the Pelican’s floats. With the Pelican mounted on the Nurse’s nose and both the boat and airplane engines running at full throttle, the pair would roar across the water until reaching takeoff speed, when the airplane would be released and take to the air. That, at least, was the concept, but Willoughby eventually discarded that cumbersome plan in favor of adding a 50-horsepower

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engine that improved the Pelican’s performance.

Some things seem inevitable in the history of flight: air mail, passenger travel, the armed might of an air force. But aviation pioneers conceived of many uses for the airplane. Some came to pass and some did not. With the success of his Pelican, Willoughby developed his own vision for the hydro-aeroplane based around his interests as a wealthy sportsman, an avid yachtsman and a motorboat enthusiast. Prior to the First World War, Willoughby viewed aviation primarily as a sport and he believed the hydro-aeroplane was the ultimate sports machine. With that in mind, he formed the Willoughby Aeroplane Company at Sewall’s Point and set out to build seaplanes for other wealthy sportsmen.

Willoughby hoped to persuade potential buyers by emphasizing the safety of the hydro-aeroplane, especially when flown at low altitude over water.

“There is no longer any excuse for flying over cities or mountainous countries where the stopping of an engine means death,” he wrote in 1912, adding “the safe touring in the future will be done by the hydro-aeroplane, using it as a motorboat on the surface of the water…and as a flying machine attaining the wonderful speed of the aeroplane.”

Willoughby put his proposition to the test several years later. On June 18, 1918, the Coast Guard life-saving station at Gilbert’s Bar, near Sewall’s Point, reported a “most unusual rescue.”

Willoughby was flying a Curtiss flying boat when he had to ditch in the Indian River near the station.

The surfmen, spotting the crippled aircraft, helped Willoughby get to shore. He was not injured but

rough waves damaged the wing and hull of the Curtiss as it washed ashore. The Coast Guard report states that the aviator’s primary concern was to salvage the engine.

At that time Hugh L. Willoughby, at age 61, was America’s oldest pilot, a status he retained until his death in 1939. He did not see his patented double rudders, of which he was so proud, become a standard of aircraft design, although some early models of Wright, Curtiss and Farman biplanes did use them. However, the tractor biplane, of which the War Hawk was a pioneering example, did prove to be an enduring design, from the combat aircraft of World War I to the aerobatic biplanes that thrill modern airshow crowds.

Today the Historical Society of Martin County, Florida, is the parent organization of two museums that commemorate Willoughby’s remarkable career. The Elliott Museum in Stuart, Florida, boasts a replica of the Pelican, along with other mementos from Willoughby’s time as an aviator and explorer. The society also operates the Gilbert’s Bar House of Refuge Museum, where Willoughby and his engine were rescued by the Coast Guard. Hugh Willoughby would be proud of his legacy.

David Boehnlein is a retired high energy physicist who occasionally transformed aviation fuel into noise with a Cessna 150. He now resides in Hampton, Virginia, where he is a freelance writer, master naturalist and a volunteer docent at the Virginia Living Museum’s Abbitt Observatory. For additional reading, he recommends Across the Everglades by Hugh Willoughby.

Legacy A reproduction of the Pelican hangs in the Elliott Museum in Stuart, Florida.

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on call Pilot Ray Varney (with two unidentified loaders) readies himself for a flight in an N3N biplane. The former Navy trainers formed the core of the Mendocino Air Tanker Squad in Willows, California.

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A BAPTISM BY FIRE THERE WERE TWO REASONS WHY PILOTS IN WILLOWS, CALIFORNIA, SPEARHEADED THE IDEA OF BATTLING FOREST FIRES FROM THE AIR. THEIR NAMES WERE JOE ELY AND FLOYD NOLTA BY TED ATLAS

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pioneers Top: Floyd Nolta used a Travel Air biplane to sow rice before he became a firefighter.

Above: The Forest Service’s Joe Ely teamed with Nolta to develop ways to fight fires with airplanes.

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Those two men were Floyd “Speed” Nolta and Joe Ely, and they pioneered the use of airplanes to drop water on forest fires. They had contrasting backgrounds—Floyd from a blue-collar timbering family in Oregon and Ely an Ivy League Midwesterner—but together they provided an example of American ingenuity at work.

Nolta was already a highly regarded mechanic at 17, when he enlisted in the Army after the United States entered World War I. The Army sent

him to Rockwell Field near San Diego to serve as a mechanic. (While at Rockwell, Nolta met Jimmy Doolittle, not yet a legendary aviator, and the two men became lifelong friends.) Nolta had his first airplane flight while in the Army, and he learned to fly after the war when he settled in Willows in Northern California’s Sacramento Valley. There he formed the Willows Flying Service to provide crop dusting services.

In 1928, Nolta developed a way to speed rice

PREVIOUS SPREAD AND TOP: COURTESY OF GARY HENDRICKSON; INSET: COURTESY OF FRANK ELY

WERE IT NOT FOR THE EFFORTS OF TWO MEN WHO SETTLED IN THE TOWN OF WILLOWS, CALIFORNIA, THE AUGUST COMPLEX FIRE, THE LARGEST IN THE STATE’S HISTORY, MIGHT HAVE DEVASTED EVEN MORE THAN THE MILLION ACRES IT RAVAGED DURING THE SEEMINGLY ENDLESS FIRE SEASON OF 2020.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF BOB FISH; COURTESY OF BOB FISH; COURTESY OF LILA PRENTICE; COURTESY OF GARY HENDRICKSON

for protecting forests, particularly in the event of Japanese incendiary balloon attacks. Ely, therefore, continued his forestry career. In contrast, Nolta flew as a Hollywood stunt pilot before re-enlisting in the Army Air Forces and joining the First Motion Picture Unit. He piloted aircraft for training and morale-boosting films and flew a B-25 Mitchell bomber under the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge for Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, a fictionalized account of his friend Jimmy Doolittle’s 1942 bombing raid on Japan.

smokewatchers Clockwise from top left: Floyd’s brother Vance also joined the flying service. Frank Prentice loads retardent in 1957. The original MATS pilots gather for a photo.

Below: Prentice makes a practice run.

PREVIOUS SPREAD AND TOP: COURTESY OF GARY HENDRICKSON; INSET: COURTESY OF FRANK ELY

planting by mounting a hopper on the fuselage of his Hispano-Suiza powered Travel Air biplane. A sliding valve with a threaded knob allowed him to measure precise amounts of fertilizer and seed that dropped from the hopper into a box. The wash from the propeller spread the product over a 50-foot swath. Nolta’s system vastly improved rice propagation. According to Thad Baker, a modern-day certified crop advisor and rice farmer, pilots around the world still use Nolta’s device.

In addition to agricultural flying, the Willows Flying Service had contracts to provide various services to the U.S. Forest Service. It flew personnel to remote areas, airlifted supplies, conducted aerial searches for fires and dropped seed for forest fire remediation.

While Nolta was building a career at Willows, a young man 11 years his junior was pursuing an Ivy League education that placed him on an intersecting trajectory. Born in Wisconsin in 1911, Joe Ely earned an undergraduate degree at Dartmouth College and obtained his master’s degree in botany from the Yale School of Forestry in 1935. He joined the Forest Service after getting his master’s, and he would spend his career there in a variety of posts.

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olta and Ely both ended up in Willows after the war. Nolta continued his stunt work but returned to his flying service after recovering from serious injuries he suffered in a crash of a P-38 Lightning near Los Angeles in 1948. Ely eventually settled with his family in Willows after being promoted to Fire Control Officer in the Mendocino National Forest, one of the most active fire areas. Located in the Northern Coast Range Mountains, the forest covers 900,000 acres, has upwards of 6,000 feet in elevation change and features a mix of evergreen forest, oak woodlands and heavy chaparral woodland ecosystems. California chaparral is the densest brush in the world, consisting of trees and plants with waxy leaves and a high oil content that allows plants to survive dry summers, but also makes them highly flammable.

Those conditions led to tragedy on July 9, 1953, when the Rattlesnake Fire broke out 28 miles northwest of Willows. Fifteen young men, mostly 20-something missionaries serving as volunteer firefighters, lost their lives when they became trapped in a canyon by flames that raced toward

PHOTOS COURTESY OF BOB FISH

Flying circus Top: Nolta’s fleet of agricultural airplanes await on the tarmac in a photo from some point in the 1950s.

Above: In 1955, the first MATS air tanker drops water during a test run.

them at 15 miles per hour. One of the men who died that day was a Forest Service ranger. It was the worst loss of life in the history of the U.S. Forest Service until 19 firefighters perished in the Yarnell Fire in Arizona in 2013. In reaction, the Forest Service and other agencies established Operation Firestop, a program to find workable ideas to fight fires. In the spring of 1955, Ely received permission from his supervisor to explore the possibility of using water drops as part of the program.

Dropping water from airplanes onto fires was not a new idea. It had been considered as far back as the 1920s, but none of the various methods tested after World War II had been implemented.

Ely’s idea was to use the agriculture pilots in Willows to do the job. According to Ely’s handwritten account, “I took the air tanker proposition first to Lee Sherwood, the Airport Manager, and perhaps some others, but they were looking out the window. Anyhow Floyd (Speed) Nolta, of the Willows Flying Service caught fire real fast. All I had to do was remark that he sure had a lot of experience dropping materials out of airplanes onto farms and did he think he could do the same thing on a forest fire. He said to come back in a week.”

Ely had other things on his plate a week later, so he asked a colleague to meet Floyd and Floyd’s brother, Vance—also a pilot—at Nolta’s private airstrip near Willows. Nolta had cut a hole in the bottom of his Boeing-Stearman Model 75 Kaydet biplane and installed a 170-gallon tank with a hinged gate, a snap and a pull. Vance flew the plane over a controlled burn for demonstration. “Vance came over low and pulled the rope and put out the fire,” Ely later wrote. “The air tanker was born.”

A few months later, Vance Nolta became the first pilot to make a free-fall water drop when he assisted a crew on the Mendenhall Fire in the Mendocino National Forest on August 12, 1955.

And so it began.

Ely established the Mendocino Air Tanker Squad (MATS), the first aerial tanker unit in the world, in 1956. The squad of local agriculture

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF BOB FISH

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pilots consisted of the Nolta brothers—Floyd, Vance and Dale—Ray Varney, Frank Prentice, Lee Sherwood, Harold Hendrickson, L. H. McCurley and Warren Bullock. Except for the Nolta brothers’ Stearman and Lee Sherwood’s Tri-Pacer monoplane, the fleet of seven planes were Naval Aircraft Factory N3N-3 biplane trainers. Sherwood flew his monoplane with a Forest Service observer onboard. Later Ely recalled of these pioneers, “The local pilots were the last of the silk scarf and leather helmet boys and they would try anything.”

The MATS pilots fought 12 fires in August 1956, their first month of operation. They spent five days in September assisting with a fire near Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino National Forest. Because agriculture planes did not have radios until the 1957 fire season, the tanker pilots initially had to get their directions while they were on the ground taking on retardant. Although it is not clear when they first used an observation airplane, the fire prevention officer for the forest reported that the pilots were eventually directed by “a radio-equipped Cessna used as a bird dog.”

That role later became known as “Drop Coo” for Drop Coordinator. The pilots “can scramble at the crackling of a spark to their planes,” said an article in the Sacramento Bee from October 1956.

“Their biplanes resemble a World War I pursuit squadron as they wing to a target with liquid ‘bomb loads.’ They fly through smoke, heat and wind storms created by the blaze to drop water and chemicals from only 30 to 90 feet above flaming tree tops.” Adding to the military ambiance, pilot Hendrickson’s 11-year-old son, Gary, added nose art to his father’s airplane, which he named Mr. Mendocino. The artwork depicted Smoky the Bear in a biplane’s cockpit.

The agricultural flying season ended in June, just as the fire season began, providing many more months of work for the MATS pilots. Pilot Frank Prentice recalled that they were paid $60 an hour (around $575 an hour today). Ely also had a $4,000 budget to pay for standby time, but the pilots remained so busy earning flight pay that the standby funds remained untouched.

Word spread to state and federal forestry units that if they needed firefighting airplanes, all they had to do was call dispatcher Charlie Lafferty in Willows. Lafferty would then call the pay phone in Lee Sherwood’s hanger. An unwritten law was that no one could make lengthy calls on the pay phone during the fire season.

Lila Prentice, Frank’s wife of 71 years, remembers she had a crystal radio tuned to the Forest Service frequency. When she heard two watch towers report smoke in the same location, she would call the hanger to alert the pilots. Her husband would then notify pilot Harold Hendrickson in the neighboring hanger and they would be ready to go by the time dispatcher Lafferty called with the coordinates for the initial water drops.

Agricultural flying and aerial firefighting both require flying close to the ground, but the newly minted MATS pilots found that the similarities ended there. Quite literally, they had a baptism by fire. As Prentice recalled, firefighting required “orbiting down in the hole” (maneuvering the aircraft into deep canyons) and “the marksmanship to hit the target and to not overshoot it.”

The pilots had to fly over mountains and through smoke while battling high winds and rapidly rising air currents. They flew as low as five feet above treetops and directly toward mountains, learning that the air flowing over ridges could force their airplanes down. Over time the pilots learned how to time each water release to hit the right spot while allowing them room to clear any ridges. An N3N weighs just over 2,000 pounds, so when an airplane released 1,200 pounds of water it leapt up, helping with clearance over any oncoming heights.

But the pilots and Ely discovered another challenge: evaporation. They realized that on hot days very little water actually hit the ground. The solution was to mix water with sodium calcium borate,

plan of attack Left: Joe Ely’s handwritten map indicates how he wanted the pilots to handle a fire in 1958. “Farm ships” refers to the Stearmans and N3Ns; the “twins” are Twin Beech aircraft. Above: In 1961, pilot Frank Prentice waits as tanker No. 21 gets loaded. The pink substance on the ground is spilled retardant.

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to three days after being dropped and contain fertilizer to promote regrowth.” Those requirements led to compounds such as Bentonite, a clay that swelled up and stuck better, but sometimes came down in a chunk instead of a spray. By the 1960s, the firefighters were using a retardant with diammonium phosphate.

The thicker retardants’ viscosity made them a challenge to mix and load quickly into airplanes.

Ely found another local solution with Wim Lely of Lely’s Orland Manufacturing Company, who developed a device that could mix a thousand gallons of retardant and pump it into an airplane in a matter of minutes. Lely supplied his equipment to the Forest Service for years.

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producing a substance that not only made it to the surface but had a melting point twice as high as the 900 degrees ignition point of a forest fire.

Because the white substance stuck to brush and reflected heat, the pilots dropped it on a fire’s flanks to control spread. They soon realized, though, that shortly after being dropped, the sodium calcium borate blended in with the vegetation so they could not see where they had deployed it. Borate also sterilized the soil, so it was soon phased out. The name “Borate Bombers,” however, stuck.

Harold Hendrickson’s son, Gary, joined the field in 1972 as the copilot of a Boeing B-17 aerial tanker and he later flew Grumman AF Guardians and TBM Avengers as well as Douglas DC-6s during a 40-year career. According to Gary, the Forest Service required that retardants “had to be viscous, bright colored in order to use prior drops as a reference point, still provide fireproofing up

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF BOB FISH

growing arsenal Clockwise from top left: Among the replacements of the original firefighting biplanes were the Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateer, the North American B-25J, the Eastern Aircraft TBM-3U Avenger and the Grumman F7F-3 Tigercat. All are shown operating from Willows in 1959.

he MATS pilots were soon fighting blazes all over California. Some of the biggest fires they fought in their first year were in Southern California. To find their way there they would simply follow U.S. Highway 99.

Often the pilots would be gone for days with no way to contact their families except through dispatcher Lafferty, on whom they could always rely to call their wives with news from the front.

Even under such basic conditions the MATS pilots made an impact. One fire boss for the 1956 McKinley Fire in the San Bernardino National Forest wrote, “The fire was crowning in the heavy brush, but the chemical drops kept knocking the fire down so that the sector team and 50 men were able to complete their line. I do not believe this would be possible without the drops.” A study done at the end of 1956 recorded that MATS assisted in 23 Forest Service fires and that aircraft were a deciding factor for controlling 14 or them and a definite factor in assisting ground crews in four more. They made no effect on another four,

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF BOB FISH

and were detrimental in one, when they accidentally extinguished a backfire the ground crews had set to stop a fire’s spread, causing a loss of control.

Others were experimenting with aerial firefighting around the same time. Floyd Nolta’s former Army Air Forces boss, Hollywood stunt pilot Paul Mantz, did some informal testing in 1953 and formal experiments as part of Operation Firestop in 1954. He conducted simulations at Camp Pendleton in Southern California. There he deployed sensors to measure dispersal, wind drift, effectiveness and other factors. Mantz did further tests for the California Division of Forestry, but his work did not become operational until 1958, five years after he first investigated it. In contrast, by bypassing bureaucracy, Joe Ely and Floyd Nolta had an operational aircraft ready in one week, and within a month they were already helping put out dangerous wildfires.

Following that first historic season of firefighting with adapted biplanes, larger aircraft began joining the fight, including warbirds such as Grumman TBM Avengers, Consolidated PBY Catalinas, Boeing B-17s, Grumman F7F Tigercats and other surplus military planes. When loaded with thousands of gallons of retardant, the heavier airplanes lost some maneuverability, Prentice recalled. The extreme loss of weight that came from dropping the payload did not affect the larger airplanes as much, but that also meant they did not get the same “bounce” the biplanes exploited to clear approaching ridges. TBM pilots learned to pull the airplane’s nose high while continuing level flight and let the wings pull the airplane up. Sadly, Prentice recalled, that “the mountain would happen before they gained altitude and we lost a lot of them.” The first aerial firefighter pilot to lose his life was Joseph Anthony, who crashed on August 19, 1958, making a retardant drop near Sequoia National Park while flying for Paul Mantz Air Services. Anthony was at the controls of a TBM Avenger that Mantz had used for his tests at Camp Pendleton. By 1973, 11 more TBMs crashed while firefighting, killing the pilots in all but one incident.

More pilots joined MATS in 1958 and some original pilots went on to sign contracts with the California Division of Forestry. Preferring lighter planes, Prentice bought an N3N from Florida and spent one winter assembling the airplane after it arrived in pieces lashed to a pickup truck. Prentice flew the N3N as his own personal air tanker until 1963. Floyd Nolta remained active in the flying service until his death in 1974. His legacy lives on through his invaluable contribution to the profession of aerial firefighting. The Forest Service Air Tanker unit continued to be based at the WillowsGlenn County Airport until 1982.

Joe Ely eventually retired from the Forest Service and passed away in 2006. His son, Frank, said that his father had been highly motivated to find bet-

ter methods to fight fires after the devastating loss of life in the 1953 Rattlesnake Fire. He sought ways to reduce the severity of fires so that “men could get to them safely.”

Summing up the early days, Frank Prentice said, “Willows had the right combination of airplanes, pilots and high fire zones, as did other areas like the San Joaquin Valley, but only Willows had Joe Ely and Floyd Nolta.” Prentice was the last surviving member of the Mendocino Air Tanker Squad when he died on July 16, 2020. As if in tribute, dry lightning strikes a month later started numerous fires in the same area as the Rattlesnake Fire of 1953. The resulting August Complex Fire took nearly three months to contain. It was the largest fire in California history—and aerial firefighters helped battle it, following the lead of the scrappy pilots who once flew out of Willows.

Ted Atlas is a 4th-generation Californian. After a career with the Santa Clara County Sheriff ’s Department, he turned his interest to writing about California history.

He published his first book, Candlestick Park, in 2010. He first became aware of this story in 1986, when his brother and sister-in-law bought a house that Floyd Nolta had owned in Willows. For further reading, Atlas recommends Fire Bomber into Hell: A Story of Survival in a Deadly Occupation by Linc Alexander.

survivors Top: Frank Prentice stands in front of Harold Hendrickson’s N3N-3 —the last of the original air tankers—in 2006, the MATS’ 50th anniversary. Above: Hendrickson’s then11-year-old son Gary drew the nose art on his father’s airplane.

This is a reproduction of the original.

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THE FATHER OF AERIAL

BOMBARDMENT NEAR THE DAWN OF THE AIR AGE, AN ARMY LIEUTENANT REALIZED THAT THE AIRPLANE PROVIDED THE ULTIMATE HIGH GROUND. BY DANIEL J. DEMERS

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bombs away Sottotenente Giulio Gavotti stands in front of one of two Etrich Taubes that accompanied the Italian army’s invasion of Ottoman-controlled Libya in 1911. Gavotti used a Taube to drop bombs on the enemy.

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first drop On November 1, 1911, Gavotti dropped grenades on Turkish and Bedouin forces near Tripoli—to little effect.

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Below him he could see a camp in the Libyan desert that was occupied by Turkishsupported Bedouin troops who were battling the Italians in the Italo-Turkish War. Gavotti identified his target and then, one by one, dropped four grapefruit-sized grenades, each weighing four pounds, over the side of his airplane into the enemy camp. The grenades inflicted no casualties, but they did enter the history books.They were the first bombs dropped from an airplane in war.

They were not, however, the first bombs dropped from an airplane.

It did not take long after the Wright brothers made their historic airplane flights in December 1903 before people began considering how to turn the flying machine into a war weapon. As early as 1906 the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Chief, Brig. Gen. William Crozier, was thinking about the concept, although he thought it would be easier to drop bombs from a balloon than a rapidly moving airplane, and he stressed the importance of avoiding “the destruction of Red Cross hospitals, churches, seminaries, and all the establishments usually immune in time of bombardment.”

In fact, people had already dropped bombs from balloons. The first tactical military use of airborne bombs took place in July 1849 during an Austrian siege of Venice. The Austrians launched unmanned paper balloons—exactly how many is not known, and reports range

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ON NOVEMBER 1, 1911, ITALIAN SUB-LIEUTENANT GIULIO GAVOTTI LEANED OVER THE EDGE OF THE COCKPIT OF HIS ETRICH TAUBE MONOPLANE.

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from two to 200— from the paddle-wheeler Vulcano, the world’s first aircraft carrier.

Each carried a bomb with up to 30 pounds of explosives. The details of the attack remain obscure, but the idea apparently came from Lieutenant Franz von Uchatius of the Austrian artillery. The results were not what the Austrians had hoped. Said one account, “[T]he balloons appeared to rise about 4,500 feet. Then they exploded in midair or fell into the water, or, blown by a sudden southeast wind, sped over the city and dropped on the besiegers.” Venetians who had gathered outside to watch the spectacle cheered and clapped when the bombs exploded over the Austrian lines.

In North America a few years earlier, visionaries suggested using balloons to drop bombs on Vera Cruz during the Mexican-American War or employing them to subdue Apaches in the Arizona desert, but nothing came of those ideas.

In the United States in the 1890s and early 1900s, dropping explosives from balloons at state fairs became a fad. By the end of 1908, balloonist Roy

Knabenshue had used a dirigible to demonstrate how easy it would be to attack an unsuspecting city from the air. He flew over Los Angeles at 10:00 p.m. to show that a powered airship couldn’t be heard or spotted during the night and dropped two bags full of confetti onto the unsuspecting people below. In March 1909 the Westminster [Md.] Democratic Advocate was encouraging the creation of an aeronautical defensive force. The article wondered what would happen if an enemy air fleet dropped explosive devices on New York City’s skyscrapers, “wrecking them completely.”

in the beginning Counterclockwise from top: Roy Knabenshue sent a warning when he dropped confetti on Los Angeles from a dirigible in 1908.

Austrians tried bombing Venice with balloons in 1849.

Gavotti flies his Etrich Taube over Bologna.

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eggs in place of “bombs and hand grenades” on his home town “to determine the accuracy of this kind of warfare,” according to an article in the United Press.

wright stuff Above: Theodore Roosevelt saw the potential for aerial warfare when aviator Arch Hoxsey took him aloft. Top: Phil Parmalee and Myron Crissy (left) prepare to drop a bomb from a Wright airplane on January 15, 1911.

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The paper speculated about future air combats, asserting they “would be battles royal.” Six months later Ronald Legge published a novel called The Hawk: A Story of Aerial War. Set in London, the book told the story of the Hawk, a gigantic military dirigible that the British used to drop “terror and destruction” on invading Germans and Frenchmen. Around the same time, an aeronaut whose name is lost to history circled above New York and dropped harmless projectiles onto the roofs of buildings. In May 1909, Boston millionaire Charles Glidden announced plans to drop

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bviously, the idea of taking warfare into the skies was gaining currency. Even Theodore Roosevelt was thinking about it. When pioneering aviator Arch Hoxsey took the former president aloft over St. Louis in October 1910, Hoxsey reported that Roosevelt became excited when he spotted a fake canvasand-wood battleship that had been constructed for the airshow. In the ensuing torrent of words from the ex-president, Hoxsey was able to make out “war,” “army,” “aeroplane” and “bomb,” and he realized Roosevelt was seeing the faux vessel “with the keen eye of a man who saw the real battleship that could have been put out of business with a bomb.”

A month later, at an air meet in Baltimore where Brig. Gen. James Allen, chief of the Army Signal Corps, became the first senior army officer to fly, the program included a “bomb-throwing” event.

Competitors vied for a $5,000 prize offered by the Baltimore Sun by dropping bags of flour on a life-size outline of a battleship deck. Frenchman Hubert Latham won the event by collecting 15 points on six drops—one of which would have “dropped into the funnel of the battleship.”

Aviators bombed another battleship outline, this time using oranges, at the Los Angeles International Air Meet that December. Arch Hoxsey participated, and the Los Angeles Herald reported that when he ate one of his oranges the

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its front end to keep its nose down as it fell. With financing from local businesses, Crissy had the sixpound bomb constructed at a local iron works and packed it with bullets and a half-pound of common black powder.

Before putting his bomb to the test, Crissy had to figure out how to drop it from an airplane. He consulted old Army ordnance tables from the time of the War of 1812—believing that the older powder charges would be more applicable than modern ones when it came to the low speed of a bomb dropped from an airplane—and studied the way air currents affected differently shaped projectiles.

On January 15, Crissy went aloft with a civilian pilot named Phil Parmalee (who had competed with Hoxsey in the orange-dropping competition) and released a bomb from a height of 550 feet.

Parmalee said the airplane was traveling at about 45 mph when Crissy released the bomb and he banked the airplane to watch its descent. He and Crissy could not hear the explosion, but they could see its effects. Aided by the drop angles he had calculated, Crissy placed his bomb within two feet of a large X marked on the ground and blasted a hole two feet deep that was “about the size of an ordinary wash tub,” according to Crissy. He added that “the bullets with which the shrapnel had been loaded were so widely scattered that barely a third of them could be found and recovered.” An article in the Salt Lake Tribune stated that the bomb’s “destructive zone” had a 70-foot radius.

“This was my first experience in an aeroplane

THE BOMB BLASTED A HOLE TWO FEET DEEP AND ABOUT “THE SIZE OF AN ORDINARY WASH TUB.” weaponized Bulgarian airmen prepare for a mission to drop a bomb from their Blériot XI aircraft during the First Balkan War, circa 1913. The Bulgarian Air Force was the first to use airplanes for offensive military action.

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judges made him forfeit three points. (Hoxsey died in an airplane crash the next day.)

But the Army had already been thinking along Roosevelt’s lines. The year before Roosevelt took to the air, Army Lieutenant Paul W. Beck participated in Los Angeles’ first air meet as a passenger.

The San Francisco Examiner reported that from 250 feet he dropped “small canvas money bags packed with sand, each weighing around two pounds.”

He was not happy with the results, writing that “the accuracy should have been spelled with an ‘in’ in front of it.” Beck next served as the secretary for an air meet held the next month in San Mateo County, 12 miles south of San Francisco.

The venue was a makeshift airfield constructed alongside a horse racetrack and named Camp Selfridge in honor of Army Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge, a native San Franciscan who became the first airplane fatality in 1908. Beck took advantage of the event to direct some military experiments, marking the first time the United States Army and Navy officially took an active role in experimenting with aircraft.

It was at the San Francisco meet in January 1911, that Army Lieutenant Myron S. Crissy of the 70th Coast Artillery designed and tested the first bomb specifically intended to be dropped from an airplane. Born in Bay City, Michigan, in 1881, Crissy had graduated from West Point in 1902. The bomb he built was pear shaped and had two sticks, 2.5 feet long, a half-inch thick and three-quarters of an inch wide, attached to

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but it isn’t going to be my last,” Crissy told a local paper. “I am convinced that accurate throwing of bombs from a machine at great heights is entirely feasible,” he said, and speculated about rigging a tube or chute so aviators could drop bombs with more accuracy and prevent a dropped bomb from hitting the airplane on release. He also said that he had already designed a more powerful bomb.

Crissy and Parmalee were at it again two days later, this time dropping a pair of bombs. The first one, released from 680 feet, “splashed in a mud puddle near the target” but failed to explode, the San Francisco Call reported. The second landed eight yards from the target—leaving a hole “two and a half feet square and nearly three feet deep [with a 50 yard] zone of destruction.” Crissy was pleased with the result, writing that it “proves the accuracy of bombarding from the skies…taking into account the velocity of the wind and the speed of the aeroplane, both of which I figured out before I released each shell.”

Lieutenant Beck described Crissy’s next bomb design as cylindrical in shape, with “a truncated conical nose” and weighing 20 pounds. This time Crissy attached an 18-inch-long rod with a pair of propellers to the bomb’s nose. As the bomb fell, the wind-driven propellers would make it rotate like a spiraling football, keeping it on a straight course and helping it penetrate deeper into the ground.

To drop these heavier, more complex bombs,

Crissy planned to attach them to the airplane and release them by either cutting or jerking a cord.

The drop was scheduled for January 22, 1911, this time with Charles Willard (another orange-dropping competitor) piloting a Wright biplane. Crissy found that the airplane’s bracing wires made it difficult to drop the bombs and he did not place explosives in his projectiles, fearing that they would fall too close to the meet’s grandstand. He said he made the drop mainly to calibrate fuses. According to Beck the two bombs were released “from altitudes varying between five and seven hundred feet, each producing a close shot.”

Crissy planned to drop a live bomb the following day, but foul weather intervened.

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hat ended Crissy’s experiments with dropping bombs from airplanes, but others were more than happy to pick up where he left off. Before the year was out, Lieutenant Gavotti entered the history books when he dropped his four grenades on the enemy.

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bomb evolution Right: A German soldier attaches a bomb to an airplane early in World War I. Above: Women install detonators at a Marlin Rockwell Corporation plant in Philadelphia on June 24, 1918.

Below: Less than four decades after Crissy’s experiments with bombs, the Boeing B-29 Enola Gay gets positioned over the loading pit (far left) containing Little Boy, the Hiroshima bomb.

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Unlike Crissy’s projectiles, though, Gavotti’s bombs had not been designed to be dropped from the air. In October 1912, Captain Simeon Petrov, an engineer and member of the Bulgarian army air force, developed several bomb prototypes by taking grenades, adding fins and increasing the amount of explosive. On November 17, 1912, Major Vasil Zlatarov, riding as a passenger/bombardier with pilot Giovanni Sabelli (an Italian volunteer), dropped one of those bombs during the First Balkan War, fought by the Balkan League (Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro) against the Ottoman Empire. Petrov’s design— fins attached to a square explosive device—was hardly aerodynamic, but it provided the next step in the evolution of the aerial bomb.

Myron Crissy lived long enough to see his idea taken to its most horrifying extreme, with the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than 35 years after he had conducted his first experiments. Just as the Boeing B-29 Superfortresses that dropped them were a far cry from the wood-and-fabric airplanes that Crissy used, the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were many orders of magnitude removed from his primitive experiments. The Hiroshima bomb, Little Boy, weighed almost five tons and had a yield equal to 15,000 tons of TNT, while Fat Man—the Nagasaki bomb—was even larger, weighing in at nearly 11,000 pounds and exploding with the force of 21,000 tons of TNT. In Crissy’s day a height of 550 feet was considered a perilous attitude; the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the Hiroshima bomb from 31,000 feet. Gavotti’s historic bombing raid hurt nobody; the atomic bombs and their radiation each killed about 140,000 people.

Perhaps Crissy pondered about his role in the path that led to such destructive power being rained from the skies—not just over Japan but also during the strategic bombing campaign over Europe, during which Allied airplanes dropped some 2,700,000 tons of bombs. After his history-making bomb experiments in 1911, Crissy remained in artillery. During World War I he was slated to command a field artillery regiment, but the war ended before he could carry out the assignment. After World War I he became involved in

grave registration and the return of more than 4,000 U.S. dead to the United States. Throughout the 1920s, Crissy served in various administrative capacities involving the reserve army. He was forcibly retired for a disability in 1934 as a lieutenant colonel. Crissy died in 1946 at 66, the unacknowledged father of bombardment by airplane.

Daniel J. Demers is a retired businessman who writes about events and personalities of the 19th and 20th centuries. He holds a B.A. in History from George Washington University and an MBA from Chapman University. He and his wife Christina live in Portugal.

For further reading, he recommends Governing from the Skies: A Global History of Aerial Bombing

by Thomas Hippler.

the atomic age Clockwise from top left: Fat Man is prepped on Tinian before being loaded onto the B-29 Bockscar for the mission to Nagasaki. A mushroom cloud billows 20,000 feet over Hiroshima. Enola Gay’s ground crew gets a photo op with the pilot, Col. Paul W. Tibbets (in the center smoking his pipe).

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sea hunt Divers in the Adriatic Sea near Grado, Italy, bring the stabilizer from a B-24 Liberator to the surface. The recovery answered questions that dated back to February 28, 1945.

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LOST AND FOUND ALMOST 70 YEARS AFTER A B-24 LIBERATOR FAILED TO RETURN TO ITS BASE, AN ITALIAN SLEUTH SOLVED THE MYSTERY OF ITS DISAPPEARANCE

BY JEANNETTE GUTIERREZ

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brothers in arms Top: The original crew of B-24J number 42-51642 was made up of (standing, left to right) James S. Cox, Darrell E. German, Edward H. Betz, Howard Hanson, Antonio D. Fermano and Lawrence W. Brady; and (kneeling) Thomas M. McGraw, Albert Acampora, Adolph Turpin and Lawrence F. Nally.

Clarence Dragoo replaced Fermano on the final mission and Richard Horwitz was added on radar. Inset: Howard Hanson was the pilot.

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The mission plan called for the entire Fifteenth Air Force, based in southern Italy, to strike targets along the Nazis’ strategically important Brenner Pass supply line, which linked Austria to the front in northern Italy. Rumors had reached Allied intelligence that German troops in Italy were being moved north up the Brenner route so they could be redirected to fight in Russia. A successful attack on surrounding bridges and marshaling yards would disrupt an orderly retreat and create traffic backups that would provide easy targets for succeeding waves of Allied bombers.

All four groups of the Fifteenth’s 47th Bomb Wing shared the assignment of destroying the Isarco-Albes railroad bridge, a critical span at Albes, Italy, south of the Brenner Pass. The Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bombers of the 449th Bombardment Group (Heavy), known as the Flying Horsemen, would lead the mission.

The 449th had four units and one of them, the 716th Bomb Squadron, would fly lead in the formation. Pilot Howard Hanson and the 10 members of his crew received the assignment to fly in

the deputy (second) lead position of the first formation. Their airplane was a B-24J with the serial number 42-51642. The bomber had rolled out of the Willow Run plant near Ypsilanti, Michigan, in the summer of 1944, one of the 6,972 B-24s the factory would complete during the war. The Liberator was a shoulder-winged airplane powered by four Pratt & Whitney R-1830-65 Twin Wasp engines, each producing 1,200 horsepower.

The plane bristled with weapons, including guns in a powered nose turret that had been added to the bombers starting with the H model. Fully loaded, a B-24 like Hanson’s could carry 8,000 pounds of bombs, with a cruising speed of 215 mph and a range of 2,100 miles.

Bomber 42-51642 was what the men called a “Mickey ship,” outfitted with then-new radar technology. The idea was that radar would allow the bomber crews flying lead or deputy lead to locate their targets even under poor visibility.

The British had developed the technology and shared it with the United States. The American air-to-ground system, dubbed H2X, had emerged

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ON FEBRUARY 28, 1945, AMERICAN FORCES UNDERTOOK AN AMBITIOUS STRIKE AGAINST THE AXIS POWERS.

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from a top-secret program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with the first systems installed on B-17F/G Flying Fortresses at Grenier Field in New Hampshire. The retractable H2X units had been installed under the bombers’ noses and behind the chin turrets. When extended, the units had an awkward, bulbous appearance. Lt. Col. Fred Rabo, an officer in the first unit assigned to use the device, took one look and said, “That radome looks like Mickey Mouse!” Even though the units on B-24s replaced the ball turret and looked quite different, the Mickey name stuck.

The crews of the 449th began taking off from their base at Grottaglie, Italy, at 8:46 a.m. on February 28, with bomber formations spaced 12 minutes apart to allow smoke to dissipate between bombings.

Just before takeoff, Hanson’s navigator, Antonio “Tony” Fermano, was ordered off the bomber and assigned to another aircraft in the formation.

Fermano had flown with Hanson’s crew since it assembled Stateside in 1943, and he wanted to stay put, but orders were orders. Clarence Dragoo, a navigator from another crew, took Fermano’s place so he could gain experience flying in a lead position. Bomber crews considered such last-minute reassignments to be bad omens, and the men were upset.

The other members of the crew were pilot Hanson, copilot Edward H. Betz, bombardier Darrell E. German, flight engineer Lawrence W. Brady, left waist gunner Adolph Turpin, radio operator Lawrence F. Nally, nose gunner Thomas M. McGraw, ball gunner Albert Acampora (serving as right waist gunner that day) and tail gunner James S. Cox. To handle the Mickey technology, Hanson’s crew had an extra man, Richard Horwitz, a specially trained radio operator.

It was close to noon when the 716th Bomb Squadron reached the IP, the initial point of the

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bombing run, at an altitude of 24,000 feet. The airplanes were encountering moderate but highly accurate anti-aircraft fire. All eight Liberators of the 716th took hits and, due to the extensive damage they received, dropped their bombs short of the target. The remaining three squadrons of the 449th Bomb Group scored some hits on the bridge, but also took damage. They were followed by formations from the 450th, 98th, and 376th Bomb groups, which achieved good bomb coverage of the target and lost only one B-24.

After dropping their loads short of the bridge, the damaged airplanes of the 716th turned to limp home. Hanson’s B-24 had lost two engines and soon began to fall behind the formation.

From his new airplane, navigator Tony Fermano had a good view of the crippled ship. He saw smoke coming from the aircraft and knew his friends were in trouble. Through his headset, Fermano heard Hanson calling, “Mayday, Mayday.” Fermano watched as the B-24 dropped behind and descended in a slow spiral. He waited for what seemed like an eternity to count parachutes spilling out of the airplane. He saw none. When the airplane carrying his friends finally dropped out of sight

missing in action Above, clockwise from top left: Richard Horwitz manned the radar; Clarence Dragoo navigated; Thomas McGraw was nose gunner. Below: Hanson’s Liberator was a “Mickey ship.”

Bottom: The radome of this B-24 Mickey ship protrudes below the fuselage in place of the ball turret.

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it was flying somewhere over Austria.

Three of the 716th’s Liberators managed to land at friendly fields to get aid for their wounded.

Other B-24s of the squadron made it back to base despite heavy damage. Hanson’s Liberator never reached Grottaglie or any other airfield.

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ictory in Europe was declared just over two months later. One critical task undertaken in the chaotic aftermath of the war was to identify war dead, notify families and properly bury or re-bury the remains of those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Allied forces classified the Hanson crew as missing in action after the Albes mission. During the summer of 1945, however, the bodies of gunner Turpin, bombardier German, gunner Cox and copilot Betz washed ashore near various Italian towns along the northern edge of the Adriatic Sea. Townspeople buried them in local cemeteries.

American authorities learned of the burials later that year and had the men re-interred in American military cemeteries in Italy.

This, of course, was evidence that B-24J 42-51642 and her crew had crashed at sea on their return from the Albes mission. But the location of the wreckage remained a mystery and the matter was not investigated.

Years later—in 1950—a fishing boat netted Acampora’s remains and hauled them aboard

TOP: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; BELOW: COURTESY OF THE 449TH BOMB GROUP ASSOCIATION

the mighty 15th Top: B-24s from the Fifteenth Air Force fly a mission over Italy.

Above: Hanson’s crew manned one of the Fifteenth Air Force’s Liberators that flew out of the airfield in Grottaglie.

near Chioggia, Italy. The gunner was buried in a local cemetery. American authorities were not notified. Not until 1957, when the German War Graves Commission was in the area retrieving German war dead for reinterment, were Acampora’s remains exhumed, identified by dog tag and returned to the U.S. for burial in the ball gunner’s home state of Connecticut.

Time passed and divers and fishermen near the town of Grado on the Adriatic Sea became aware of an aircraft wreck about eight nautical miles off the coast. The airplane’s identity remained unknown. Over the years souvenir-hunting divers removed armaments, propellers and other parts from the wreckage.

As the 21st century dawned, retired Italian archaeologist and aviation researcher Freddy Furlan took an interest in the wreck. Although Furlan was born after the war, he grew up amid wreckage and artifacts from the conflict and many in his village of Aiello del Friuli remembered an air battle from January 30, 1944, when American bombers attacked northern Italy’s Udine airfield.

The Americans lost five bombers and three fighters in the raid. In 2005, Freddy began researching this battle in earnest. His work led to the location and identification of B-24 41-29217, one of the bombers lost on the Udine mission. Since then, Furlan has worked with the American, British and German governments to identify WWII wrecks in northeastern Italy. When he heard about the Grado wreck, Furlan went to work.

Previously, it had been widely assumed that the Grado wreck was Vivacious Lady, a B-24H from the 484th Bomb Group that was known to have ditched in the area when it was shot down on June 13, 1944. Furlan remained unconvinced.

Unfortunately, photos indicated that nothing bearing the airplane’s serial number remained in the wreckage. The radio and guns would have had their own serial numbers that could have been traced, but they were long gone, too.

When Furlan examined photos of the Grado wreck he noticed that the No. 3 engine had been feathered. From official documents, he learned that none of the aircraft known to have ditched in the area had lost a No. 3 engine. That included the Vivacious Lady, which had lost engines 1 and 2 before witnesses saw it go down. The feathered propeller seemed to rule out the Lady and other contenders, without offering any indication of the wreck’s true identity.

Furlan finally got a solid lead when he learned that in the fall of 2009 a fishing boat near Grado had netted a Browning M2 machine gun from the ocean floor. He traced its gun’s serial number back to ship 42-51642. Since the Hanson crew’s Missing Air Crew Report (MACR) stated that the airplane was last seen over land in Austria, Furlan wondered how one of its guns ended up in the Adriatic

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Sea. The MACR also noted, however, that the airplane was last seen with the No. 3 engine out and the propeller feathered.

Digging further, Furlan examined the Individual Deceased Personnel File (IDPF) of pilot Hanson.

This document noted the 1945 discoveries of the remains of Turpin, Betz, German and Cox in the Adriatic and speculated that the Liberator had crashed in the sea near Venice, with ocean currents carrying the remains east in the direction of Grado.

When Furlan studied the Adriatic’s prevailing currents he became convinced that the IDPF’s speculations were wrong and that 42-51642 most likely crashed near Grado, where Turpin’s body and the Browning gun were found. Currents likely carried the other crew members’ remains closer to Venice.

Furlan continued to investigate the wreck’s postwar history. He learned that a serial number on one of the wreck’s oil tanks linked the tank to the Willow Run plant, where Hanson’s B-24J had been constructed. The Vivacious Lady and nearly 7,000 other Liberators had also come from Willow Run, so this was not a definitive link to Hanson’s airplane. However, a diver at the wreck site had picked up a glass tube that came from a radar set. Since Hanson was flying a radar-equipped “Mickey ship,” this provided another vital clue. All the evidence indicated that 42-51642 was the B-24 at the bottom of the Adriatic.

TOP: COURTESY OF FREDDY FURLAN. BELOW: GRADO CIVIL PROTECTION ITALY

TOP: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; BELOW: COURTESY OF THE 449TH BOMB GROUP ASSOCIATION

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n 2013, Furlan presented his research to local Italian marine protection authorities, who organized a special dive to search for artifacts that could positively identify the airplane. The divers found one. Buried in the sand near the wreck they discovered the airplane’s right vertical stabilizer, which bore the aircraft’s serial number. After 69 years, the fate of the doomed Hanson crew and their Willow Run bomber was finally revealed.

The divers also found possible human remains, so Grado’s Civil Defense Department began guarding the site to prevent further disturbance by souvenir hunters while the dive’s findings were reported to the United States Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), an office dedicated to the accounting of American casualties from all conflicts. In May 2014 the DPAA dispatched an underwater team to conduct its own investigation of the Grado crash site. The team officially confirmed Furlan’s identification of the wreck and recommended recovery operations.

Those took place between August and October 2015. A specially trained DPAA underwater recovery crew operating from the U.S. Navy’s salvage ship Grasp collected remains, personal effects and artifacts from the site and sent them to the U.S. for analysis. DPAA laboratory technicians first put the recovered bones through a desalination process to prevent them from shattering when they dried. Desalinated and dried, the bones could

then undergo lab analysis and DNA testing to make positive identification possible after 70 years in the sea.

The DNA testing resulted in three positive identifications. By comparing DNA donated by near relatives, the agency confirmed that the remains were of nose gunner Thomas McGraw and last-minute navigator Clarence Dragoo. A recovered dog tag also helped identify the remains of “Mickey” operator Richard Horwitz. The bodies of Hanson, Brady and Nally have yet to be found.

In September 2017, McGraw’s remains were laid to rest during a ceremony in Cleveland, Ohio.

More than 60 family members from across the United States attended. On October 14, 2017, funerals for Horwitz and Dragoo took place simultaneously in their hometowns in Massachusetts and West Virginia. The ceremonies coincided with the annual reunion of the 449th Bomb Group Association.

Tony Fermano had returned to an empty barracks on that dark day in February 1945. He never forgot his lost crewmates. He remained with the United States Air Force through the Korean conflict, then attended law school, and eventually retired as chief of police for Malden, Massachusetts. From the time of his return Stateside until he died in 2014 at the age of 92, Tony Fermano went to church every February 28 to light a candle in memory of his friends.

Author Jeannette Gutierrez is a volunteer with the American Rosie the Riveter Association (ARRA) in Michigan. She thanks the 449th Bomb Group Association for providing the information for this story.

For more information about the 449th Bomb Group in WWII, visit www.449th.com. For more information on the Willow Run bomber plant and the “Rosie the Riveters” who built B-24 Liberators there, visit www.arrawillowrun.org.

wreckage Top: A diver hovers above the wreck of Hanson’s B-24. Above: For Freddy Furlan (right, with Giuliano Felluga, director of Grado Civil Protection Italy), the B-24’s recovered stabilizer provided the final clue to the wrecked airplane’s identity.

TONY FERMANO RETURNED TO AN EMPTY BARRACKS ON THAT DARK DAY IN FEBRUARY 1945.

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REvIEWS

WINGS OF GOLD

The Story of the First Women Naval Aviators

by Beverly Weintraub, Lyons Press, 2021, $ 32.95.

> Weintraub focuses on the first six women Navy pilots, beginning with their training in 1973. The Navy was the first armed service to train women pilots alongside men, but its narrow interpretation of a federal law limited the women’s career options. The law forbade women from flying aircraft in combat or serving on ships with combat 66

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missions. That meant women couldn’t land on an aircraft carrier; the two helicopter pilots in the group couldn’t even hover over a ship. The four other women couldn’t initially train on jets; eventually Rosemary Mariner became the first to fly a tactical jet, although only to train male pilots.

Scattered around the

country, the women worked on solving problems on their own. Mariner found a mentor in an African American commander. Some women wrote letters to senior Navy leadership to request additional opportunities. Another woman joined a lawsuit. But the challenges persisted. By the early 1980s, four of the six had left active duty after

realizing that the Navy held no future for them.

In 1991, the Persian Gulf War opened the public’s eyes to the fact that women were serving in combat theaters.

In 1993 the problematic laws were overturned and the services started training women to fly in combat, although it was too late for the original six. Despite that, Wings of Gold is an inspiring story about strong women who never gave up on their goal of making things better for future generations of women.

Eileen A. Bjorkman

U.S. NAVY

breaking barriers Rosemary Mariner settles into the cockipt of a Grumman S-2 Tracker. She was the first woman to command a naval aviation squadron.

Little has been written about the women military aviators of the 1970s and 1980s who paved the way for women to fly in combat.

Beverly Weintraub’s Wings of Gold begins to overcome that drought. Blending thorough research with firsthand accounts, Weintraub paints a fascinating tale of the first women pilots in the U.S. Navy who eventually succeeded in overturning archaic laws and policies.>

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AIR BATTLE FOR MOSCOW, 1941-1942

by Dmitry Degtev and Dmitry Zubov, Pen & Sword, 2021, $34.95.

Innumerable books have been written about the 1940 Battle of Britain. Almost nothing has been published in the West concerning the equally pivotal World War II aerial campaign waged over Moscow between Germany and the Soviet Union during 1941 and early 1942.

Although the Luftwaffe commenced bombing Moscow from the day Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the air campaign really began in earnest in October, when the Wehrmacht launched its offensive to capture the Soviet capital. Adolf Hitler intended that to be the final offensive on the Eastern Front, after which

the Soviet Union would capitulate and Germany could redirect its forces toward the Mediterranean and the invasion of Britain.

Like Napoleon before him, however, Hitler was proven wrong. Napoleon’s seizure of Moscow did not end his war, while Hitler never captured Moscow at all.

As depicted by the Russian authors of Air Battle for Moscow, the aerial struggle became an instance of irresistible Luftwaffe force versus an immovable Soviet object.

The former was commanded

by Wolfram von Richthofen, cousin of the “Red Baron” Manfred von Richthofen of World War I fame. According to the authors, beginning

U.S. NAVY

DORNIER DO 217 UNITS OF WORLD WAR 2

by Chris Goss, Osprey, 2021, $24.

When Dornier introduced its sleek twin-engine Do-17 in 1935, it was hailed as the “Flying Pencil.” By 1940, however, the Do-17Z was regarded as inferior to Germany’s other two principal bombers, the Heinkel He-111 and Junkers Ju-88. In January 1942 the Luftwaffe began receiving a larger, more powerful redesign of the basic Do-17 formula, the Do-217. The bomber took on a variety of other roles, including reconnaissance plane and night fighter, and could accommodate such advanced weaponry as air-to-surface missiles and guided glider bombs. For all that, the Do-217 was the last Dornier bomber to reach production and was virtually absent in the last eight months of World War II. Evaluating one after the war, British test pilot Eric Brown summed it up as “a moderate aircraft which established an undistinguished but honourable operational record.”

In Dornier Do 217 Units of World War 2, retired Royal Air Force officer and specialist in Luftwaffe operations Chris Goss draws on firsthand accounts by both the bomber crews and British night fighter pilots who fought them to chronicle a warplane caught up in a reversal of fortune for its users. Although most crews regarded the Do-217J and N night fighters as insufficiently maneuverable if they encountered their British counterparts, Goss does not neglect their exploits, including the experiences of the Italians who briefly used them in the summer of 1943.

The author admits to having scant information on the Eastern Front. Still, the book provides plenty of interest, including 30 color profiles that show the aircrafts’ camouflage and markings, as diverse as the nature of their missions.

Jon Guttman

with the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, “the sight of burning ruins and thousands of corpses gave Richthofen extraordinary pleasure, as he repeatedly wrote in his diary.”

Opposing Richthofen was Ivan Klimov, commander

of the Soviet air defense units over Moscow, who, the authors note, “skillfully falsified documents…telling Stalin about continuous victories over the city.”

Indeed, the authors freely acknowledge that “to this day, Klimov’s falsified reports continue to ‘mislead Russian historians.’”

A 1978 television series about WWII on the Eastern Front was entitled The Unknown War. Air Battle for Moscow might qualify for the same heading in its depiction of events within that conflict about which almost nothing heretofore has been known outside of Russia.

That makes this new volume, derived from both Russian and German sources, particularly welcome.

Robert Guttman

HUMP DRIVERS

An American Pilot’s Account of Flying Over the Himalayas during WWII

by Arthur La Vove, Schiffer, 2021, $24.99.

Many firsthand accounts have been written by pilots who flew during World War II. Hump Drivers, however, stands out by having been written by a pilot who was also a journalist. Born in 1909, Arthur La Vove was an experienced airline pilot well before WWII began. He had also studied journalism at Columbia University, had worked as a reporter and was a talented artist.

Hump Drivers consists of text that La Vove wrote during 1946-47, while events were still fresh in his mind, to accompany drawings he had made while flying cargo and troops across the Himalayas between India and China. Both the text and the drawings are included in the book.

The fall of Hong Kong and Burma early in 1942 cut China off from Allied aid except from the air. The result was the establishment of an unprecedented supply system consisting of overworked pilots flying overloaded cargo planes out of primitive airfields over some of the most dangerous terrain in the world. In effect, they were aerial truck drivers, and the author notes that they actually referred to themselves not as “pilots” but as “drivers.”

Hump Drivers presents a vivid and very personal account of an aspect of the war that few outsiders knew about at the time, and which is still considered somewhat obscure. Although they experienced little actual fighting, those cargo plane “drivers” had every bit as difficult a time as those who did, and the losses they suffered were as real and as bitter as those sustained by the crews of merchant ships on the oceans.

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REvIEWS VIDEO UNSETTLED HISTORY

America, China and the Doolittle Tokyo Raid Paradox Communications, 2022. Airs in April on public television stations. Check local listings for day and time.

On April 18, 1942, 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers under the command of Lt. Col. James Doolittle lifted off the stormtossed deck of the carrier USS Hornet and headed west across the Pacific toward Japan. Forced to launch earlier than planned after encountering a Japanese picket boat, the bombers had to fly an extra 200 miles to reach Tokyo.

After dropping their bombs on various targets, the Mitchells continued west, with the aim of landing somewhere in China. (One reached Siberia.) Of the 80 men involved, eight were captured (the Japanese executed three, and one died in captivity) and three died in crashes or shortly afterwards. Bomb damage to Japan was minimal but the attack had a huge psychological effect on both Japan and the United States.

A new documentary, Unsettled History tells the story of the raid but concentrates on the aftermath in China, where citizens put themselves in danger to aid the downed Americans.

Through interviews with children of the airmen and of their Chinese rescuers—and even some Chinese citizens who encountered the Doolittle raiders 80 years ago—the film

raiders Left: A Doolittle B-25 lifts off from the USS Hornet to attack Japan.

Above: As the new documentary shows, many crews received assistance from Chinese citizens.

focuses on this somewhat overlooked part of the story. As Unsettled History explains, the Chinese paid a terrible price for helping the Americans. Japan, which had begun its war of conquest against China in 1931, killed some quarter-million Chinese in reprisal for helping the raiders. Was the raid worth such a bloody toll? The attack certainly shocked the Japanese military and may have provided a motivation for attacking the Pacific island of Midway—the battle that turned the Pacific war in favor of the United States. What can’t be denied is the bravery of the Doolittle raiders and of the ordinary Chinese men and women who risked all to assist them.

Tom Huntington

75 YEARS OF THE ISRAELI AIR FORCE Volume 2: The Last Half Century, 1973-2023 & Volume 3: Training, Combat Support, Special Operations, Naval Operations and Air Defense, 1948-2023 Reading the second volume in Bill Norton’s granular three-volume history of the vaunted Israeli Air Force gives one pause. Since 1973’s Yom Kippur War, the hightech hardware employed by the air arm of the habitually embattled state of Israel seems able at best only to hold the country’s irregular foes at bay in an endless standoff. With chapters titled “Lebanon Quagmire” and “Growing Complexities,” the message is that the IAF has struggled to quell the persistent guerrilla fighters who lie in wait on Israel’s borders.

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Still, Volume 2 points out that in the post-conventional war era, the IAF has scored major successes, like the September 2007 strike on the nuclear reactor being completed by Syria. While the author contends that Israel is more secure today, the existential threats never seem to go away as Iran’s nuclear program continues to loom.

Interwoven with descriptions of the periodic flareups between the belligerents is a running commentary on the platforms acquired by the IAF and the systems developed by the indigenous

aerospace industry.

The trilogy’s final volume examines overlooked aspects of the IAF, including training and air refueling. But it serves mainly as a fact-filled compendium of the IAF’s past and present aircraft, featuring captioned photos of everything from the

Avia S-199 to the Lockheed Martin F-35I. Both follow-on volumes, which contain sharp color profiles and unit insignia, are welcome additions to the excellent first volume (see the review in the January 2022 issue of Aviation History).

Philip Handleman

TOP AND INSET: U.S. AIR FORCE

by Bill Norton, Helion & Company, Ltd., 2021, $29.95 each.

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AIRWARE I AM AN AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER 4 TechnoBrain Co., Ltd., $59.99.

Air traffic controllers are like linemen in American football.

They are the unsung players on the field without whom no one would go anywhere. I Am an Air Traffic Controller 4 (requires a 64-bit version of Windows 10, 8GB RAM, 3GB hard drive space) offers a glimpse into this demanding job. Although the original IATC debuted in 1998 in Japan, its fourth and most current version recently became licensed for sale in the United States.

IATC4 tasks the player with managing the space around Japan’s largest airport, Tokyo’s Haneda, with other airports available for purchase as add-ons. The players take responsibility for both ground control and tower duties. They’ll determine how to move planes between airstrip and terminal and when to direct airborne aircraft to and from the airport.

Departures start at a terminal and need clearance for backout, taxiing, lift off and handoff to a departure controller.

Arriving flights need the corresponding items in reverse.

The game’s mechanics are driven primarily through button clicks as the player chooses from a bank of icons to select an aircraft to communicate with. Communications are likewise driven by a button click on a set of choices; for example, between authorizing or postponing a landing. This type of communication makes up most of the game’s activity. While it seems simple, a game session can become frantic when numerous aircraft wait for direction.

The software’s substantial age yields both pros and cons.

The mature code base runs stably and a three-dimensional Haneda is full of rich details, including vehicle traffic, radio calls, current and correct aircraft types and weather and time of day effects that create an active environment. All

these aspects have likely benefitted from years of curing. The graphics though, while certainly functional, still have a dated feel, especially considering the standard of Microsoft Flight Simulator’s latest version. Other quirks in IATC4 seem like things that should have been long overcome. Weak documentation and heavily accented radio calls make the game harder to learn and understand. More concerning is the inability to trigger a click to send a communication while a current radio call is completing, a frustration in a game that scores the player on promptness of communicating orders.

Several of the game’s limitations compromise player efficiency. Issued directives cannot be rescinded. The inability to tell an aircraft to follow another to a runway or put airborne aircraft in a holding pattern leads to redundant micromanagement. The ground traffic panel makes it easy to choose an aircraft’s taxi path but lacks visibility to existing traffic so it’s also easy to authorize a taxi and be surprised moments later when a ground collision ends the game.

Nonetheless, IATC4 has enough realism and action that fans of air traffic control and airport operations will find the game entertaining and educational. Continued improvement and evolution can help it deliver a more manageable and more realistic experience.

Bernard Dy

EYES OF THE FLEET OVER VIETNAM RF-8 Crusader Combat PhotoReconnaissance Missions

TOP AND INSET: U.S. AIR FORCE

by Kenneth V. Jack, Casemate, 2021, $39.95.

The Navy and Marine Corps F-8 Crusader community was known for stratospheric morale despite the speedy Vought’s reputation as a pilot killer. But “Last of the Gunfighters” remains the ’sader’s lingering image, even though the type retired from U.S. service in 1987.

However, the “MiG Master” role was only part of the story. Kenneth V. Jack, a former member of the light photographic (VFP) community, has an intimate knowledge of the Crusader’s reconnaissance role. His previous book, Blue Moon Over Cuba,

addressed his squadron’s RF-8 operations over Cuba in collaboration with the VFP-62 skipper, Capt. W.B. Ecker. In this one, Jack begins with the background of carrier-based photo-reconnaissance, including a dip of the wing to the Marine squadron, VMCJ-1. However, VFP-63 sent RF-8 detachments to Tonkin Gulf carriers literally from before the beginning of the Vietnam War. The first combat loss was a USS Kitty Hawk jet in June 1964, two months before the Tonkin Gulf incident, but the pilot escaped captivity.

Thereafter photo-reconnaissance pilots and maintainers were a constant presence off Vietnam, including a few detachments of VFP-62 and VMCJ-1.

Dating from World War II, photo-recon pilots prided themselves as “unarmed and

unafraid” (although one pilot said, “Speak for yourself !”) and “first in, last out.” The North Vietnamese knew that pre- and post-strike photos were routine, and prepared accordingly. About 30 RF-8s were lost to all causes with 12 pilots killed and six captured.

Jack provides details and insight on each.

The only thing lacking is an index, which the publisher declined to provide.

Otherwise, the book has nearly 170 good-quality photos, many in color. Well documented with notes, Eyes of the Fleet provides not only a close-up look at the RF-8 over Southeast Asia but useful appendices covering the broader aspects of the Vietnam air campaign.

Barrett Tillman

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FLIGHT TEST

B-24 LORE

MYSTERY SHIP

Can you identify this sleek but awkward flying behemoth? See the answer below.

Glenn Curtiss’ A-1 Triad rolls ashore from a test flight near San Diego, Calif., in 1911.

TREND SETTERS Match the aircraft or inventors with their innovations A. Goupy II, 1909 B. Farman III, 1909 C. François Denhaut, 1911 D. Junkers J1, 1915 E. Jacques Charles and Les Frères Robert, 1783 F. Henri Fabre Hydravion, 1910 G. Sikorsky Bolshoi Baltitsky, 1913 H. Octave Chanute, 1896 I. Curtiss A-1 Triad, 1911 J. Zeppelin LZ.1, 1900

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

First multi-engine airplane First rigid, self-propelled airship First forward-staggered wing biplane First hydrogen balloon First amphibious airplane Biplane glider with mutually supporting wire bracing 7. First floatplane 8. First all-metal cantilever airframe 9. First airplane with ailerons hinged behind wing spar 10. First flying boat

2. When Stoyan Stoyanov shot down a B-24D on August 1, 1943, what did it represent?

A. Intercepting a violation of airspace B. A side action to the bombing of Ploesti C. The first Bulgarian air-toair victory D. All of the above 3. Which Hollywood actor became chief of staff to the Eighth Air Force’s 2nd Air Division?

A. Clark Gable B. James Stewart C. Jack Palance D. Wayne Morris 4. Which B-24 variant was distinguished by a single vertical tail?

A. B-24M B. PB4Y-1 C. PB4Y-2 D. C-87 5. What was the longest daylight target for B-24s?

A. Rabaul B. Balikpapan C. Truk D. Palembang

ANSWERS: MYSTERY SHIP: LWF Model H Owl. Learn more about it at historynet.com/aviation-history.

TREND SETTERS: A.3, B.9, C.10, D.8, E.4, F.7, G.1, H.6, I.5, J.2. B-24 LORE 1.A, 2.D, 3.B, 4.C, 5.B. 70

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TOP: LIGHTROOM PHOTOS/AGE PHOTOSTOCK; BELOW: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

>

1. Who led the first bombing raid on the Ploesti oil complex in Romania?

A. Col. Harry A. Halverson B. Brig. Gen. Uzal Ent C. Col. Keith K. Compton D. Col. John R. Kane

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TODAY IN HISTORY FEBRUARY 18, 1930 PLUTO WAS DISCOVERED AS THE NINTH PLANET FROM THE SUN. THE NAME PLUTO— WHICH REFERS TO A MYTHICAL GOD OF THE UNDERWORLD—WAS PROPOSED BY VENETIA BURNEY, AN ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD SCHOOLGIRL FROM OXFORD, ENGLAND. SHE WAS AWARDED £5—THE EQUIVALENT OF $487 USD IN TODAY’S CURRENCY. IN 2006 PLUTO WAS RECLASSIFIED AS A DWARF PLANET.

For more, visit WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ TODAY-IN-HISTORY

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AERO ARTIFACT

Spreading wings

Aviation clubs began popping up around the world not long after the Wright brothers’ first flight in 1903. In 1905, members of the Automobile Club of America, itself only six years old, founded the Aero Club of America, with the goal of promoting the new sport and industry of aviation in the United States. The Aero Club soon joined seven similar European clubs to form the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the first worldwide aviation advocacy organization.

For decades the Aero Club, which morphed into the National Aeronautic Association (NAA) in 1922, was the sole U.S. organization issuing pilot licenses—although they weren’t required by federal law. That changed with the passage of the 1926 Air Commerce Act, when pilot licenses became mandatory and the Commerce Department took over responsibility for their administration. The NAA continued to issue sporting licenses, and still does, required if a pilot wishes to enter air races or break official aviation records. Air pioneer Hugh L. Willoughby (story, P. 36) acquired the NAA license above in 1929, making it more than likely a sporting license. Of note is the signature of Orville Wright, who headed the NAA’s Contest Committee at the time.

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COURTESY OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MARTIN COUNTY/ELLIOTT MUSEUM; INSET: NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM

BADGE OF HONOr The early 20thcentury Aero Club of America offered brass badges (below) as well as licenses for its member pilots.

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51072 ..................................$7.50 Mini Backdrops 5.5x8.5 master.indd 5

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B-24 Liberator of the Mighty 8th 8.5x5.5" backdrop card

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matte finish

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U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, WWII $45.00

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U.S.A.A.F. Bombardier England, 1943-45 $45.00

10077

U.S.A.A.F. Navigator England, 1943-45 $45.00

10078

Each one of our 1:30 scale metal figures is painstakingly researched for historical accuracy and detail.

The originals are hand sculpted by our talented artists before being cast in metal and hand painted – making each figure a gem of hand-crafted history. Please visit wbritain.com to see all these figures and more from many other historical eras.

U.S.A.A.F. Bomber Captain, England, 1943-45 $45.00

10080

British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, 1944-45 $45.00

10067

George H. W. Bush U.S. Navy, 1944 $45.00

13053

U.S. Sailor in Whites, 1941-45 $45.00

10082

13039

10059

Rosie the Riveter, 1941-45 $45.00

U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, 1940-45 $45.00

U.S.M.C. Pilot Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, 1943 $45.00

10084

U.S. Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, WWII $45.00

13030

U.S.M.C. Women’s Reserve 1941-45 $45.00

13031

Shore Leave U.S.N. Sailor on Liberty with Date, 1942-45 $78.00

25027

13014

U.S. Navy Pilot, 1941-45 $45.00

R.A.F. Pilot with Model Spitfire and Child $72.00

25025

I’ll Be Seeing You R.A.F. Pilot and Girl Kissing Goodbye $72.00

25029

Got A Light?

U.S.A.A.F. Pilot Lighting Cigarette for R.C.A.F. Pilot $72.00

See our complete collection of 1/30 scale W.Britain historical metal figures at:

Tel: U.S. 740-702-1803 • WBHN-AVN 01-28-2022 ©2022 W.Britain Model Figures. W.Britain,

WBHN-AVH 01-28-2022 Aviation History.indd 1 AVHP-220500-001 Wbritain.indd 1

wbritain.com • Tel: U.K. (0)800 086 9123

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W.Britain Model Figures, Chillicothe, OH

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