Aviation History November 2021

back to oshkosh: eaa airventure’s triumphant return

chasing bears

russia’s tupolev tu-95 turboprops still send fighters scrambling “bombs away” lemay: unapologetic champion of waging total war d.b. cooper mystery: what really happened NOVEMBER 2021 to the infamous hijacker?

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NOvEMBER 2021

DEPARTMENTS

5 MAILBAG 6 BRIEFING 10 AVIATORS

The historic 1928 U.S. goodwill tour of recordsetting Mexican pilot Emilio Carranza ended in tragedy in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens.

By Dennis K. Johnson

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A float-equipped Noorduyn Norseman bush plane flies near Red Lake, Ontario.

Jungle Gym, a Sikorsky S-39 amphibian with a storied past, has been returned to pristine condition by the New England Air Museum.

By Douglas G. Adler

features

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26 Bear of the Air

36 Architect of American Air Power

In November 1971 a well-dressed hijacker carrying $200,000 in ransom money parachuted from the rear stairwell of a Northwest Orient 727. His fate remains a mystery.

By John Fredrickson

52 Back to Oshkosh

More than 600,000 spectators checked out the EAA’s AirVenture in late July following its eagerly anticipated return after last year’s cancelled show.

Photographs by Carl von Wodtke & Guy Aceto

60 Wilderness Workhorse

16 EXTREMES

Curtis LeMay’s unapologetic “take no prisoners” approach to aerial warfare during his four-decade career in the U.S. military earned him countless devotees and detractors.

By Don Hollway

44 The Legend of D.B. Cooper

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Russia’s powerful Tupolev Tu-95 turboprop bomber still sends NATO fighters scrambling on intercepts nearly 70 years after it first flew.

By Stephan Wilkinson

Nineteenth-century inventor Carl Myers created one of the first maneuverable powered aircraft by attaching rudders and a bicyclepowered propeller to a hydrogen-filled balloon.

By Steve Wartenberg

18 STYLE

Showcasing products of interest to aviation enthusiasts and pilots.

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

Designed and built in Canada, the rugged Noorduyn Norseman proved its mettle to generations of bush pilots and to U.S. Army Air Forces personnel during World War II.

By Robert Guttman

ON THE COVER: Two McDonnell F-4 Phantoms close on a Tupolev Tu-95 “Bear” in a tail chase repeated countless times over international waters in the decades since the Soviet bomber entered service in 1956. Cover illustration: Adam Tooby.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: RICH HULINA/BUSH FLYING CAPTURED; NEW ENGLAND AIR MUSEUM; PAUL KENNEDY/AIR FORCE ASSOCIATION/NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM; CARL VON WODTKE

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Aviation History

Online

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

Flying on the Edge: Alaska’s Legendary Bush Pilots

During the golden age of Alaskan bush flying from 1924 to World War II, colorful aviation pioneers braved subzero cold in frail aircraft powered by undependable engines to haul passengers and provide medicine, mail and supplies to communities that even today are mostly inaccessible by road.

The Soviets’ Giant Intercontinental Turboprop Airliner

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, seeking to publicize his country’s technological achievements, turned to Andrei Tupolev in 1955 to develop a large, fast transport. Tupolev’s answer was the Tu-114—developed from his Tu-95 “Bear”—the largest airliner in the world at the time. Entering commercial service in 1961, the Tu-114 remained Aeroflot’s flagship for more than a decade and set several speed, altitude and payload records for turboprop aircraft that stand to this day.

Operation Vittles: The Berlin Airlift

In 1948 the Soviets sought to starve and freeze West Berlin’s residents into accepting communism by cutting off their land and rail access to the West.

On June 26 the U.S. Air Force launched Operation Vittles, the so-called Berlin Airlift. Under the direction of Lt. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, for the next year C-47s and C-54s shuttled in millions of tons of supplies to the beleaguered city until the Soviets finally lifted their blockade in May 1949.

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CARL VON WODTKE EDITOR LARRY PORGES SENIOR EDITOR JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR STEPHAN WILKINSON CONTRIBUTING EDITOR ARTHUR H. SANFELICI EDITOR EMERITUS STEPHEN KAMIFUJI CREATIVE DIRECTOR BRIAN WALKER GROUP ART DIRECTOR MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY PAUL FISHER ART DIRECTOR GUY ACETO PHOTO EDITOR

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A Piper Super Cub flies over Alaska.

MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL PUBLISHER ALEX NEILL EDITOR IN CHIEF

NOVEMBER 2021

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Mailbag

PEACEMAKER MEMORIES

LEFT: U.S. AIR FORCE; RIGHT: COURTESY OF HANK CARUSO

I read with interest your cover story about the B-36 Peacemaker [July].

I grew up in Albuquerque, N.M., in the 1950s and don’t remember many sounds from back then, but I do remember the low buzz that B-36s made when landing at Kirtland AFB near Sandia Army Base where I lived. After World War II, my father was head of the Fuzing & Firing Department for Sandia Corp. and the Atomic Energy Commission since he worked for both at Los Alamos Labs. He worked on our second-generation nuclear bombs, including the giant Mark 17 hydrogen bomb. > > My father told me he discovered a battery problem with one of the test nukes that indicated that when it was dropped in an upcoming Nevada test there was a 1 in 100 probability the bomb would immediately detonate when it left the aircraft. A meeting of executives discussed whether or not to tell the aircraft crew.

My father insisted the crew be told, but because the tests were crucial during the Cold War, he was overruled and the B-36 crew never knew. The crew returned from their test mission.

He also told me our intelligence community knew that the Russians were massing troops on the Eastern European border for an invasion. Dad had five nuclear bombs being constructed for tests, and was told they were needed immediately in Europe. Dad and his crew worked 24 hours a day for several days to deliver the bombs to Europe. They were moved openly on flatbed trucks so the Russians would know they were there. The Russians retreated. My father was very proud of his work and I am proud of Dad, long ago deceased.

Ron Burda Gilbert, Ariz.

Growing up in Southern California we always eagerly

anticipated anything going on at March Field in River­ side. We did school field trips from San Jacinto several times. There was no museum, but they did have static displays, most notably a B-29 near the entrance.

One of the events that sticks in my mind to this day was the B-36s that used to fly out over the San Jacinto Valley occasionally during the early to mid-’50s. Your article reminded me of the entrancing, perhaps even eerie sound of two or three of those beasts as they cruised over the valley. You described the sound as a “drone” but that doesn’t come close to the ground resonance that was created as they flew over the valley.

It was more than sound…it was a vibration that pervaded the atmosphere. Honestly, there are no words that can describe that sound. I was a young boy of 10 or so, and I loved it!

Ray Geiser Beaumont, Calif.

AVENGER DITCHING The July issue article regarding the ditching of a TBM Avenger off Cocoa Beach, Fla. [“Briefing”], awaked memories within our family and brought into clear focus an image all of us have carried throughout the years.

On December 6, 1949, my

father-in-law, Lieutenant Don Warfield, was leading a four-plane Avenger flight of students in a night rocket-training hop off the Hawaiian island of Molokai.

Don completed his initial rocket-firing pass at the sled in the water and was applying climb power when the engine quit at 1,400 feet.

All attempts at an engine restart failed, and he made a successful night ditching.

The gunner riding in the TBM’s aft turret survived the impact and was instrumental in getting the life raft out of the plane. Unfortunately, the radar operator, riding in the interior of the aircraft, did not get out.

Forty-five seconds after they hit the water, the aircraft sank. Don and the gunner paddled toward shore, where they were eventually rescued by Hawaiian locals on horseback.

Your article with accompanying photographs, as well as video of the ditching, brought home to Don’s six daughters and their sons-inlaw a vivid reminder of what befalls naval aviators at times throughout their careers.

Paul Butterworth Naval Aviator, 1971-77 Newnan, Ga.

STAR TREK TALES

I had no idea that Susan Oliver [“Aviators,” May] was such an interesting part of aviation history. The late Walter “Matt” Jefferies, art director for Desilu Studios’ “Star Trek” series, held a yearly aviation clan get-together in his hangar at Santa Paula Airport in Southern California. He relished tell-

ing us aviation artists anecdotes from his time working on the “Star Trek,” “Little House on the Prairie” and “Love, American Style” TV series. Matt was the designer of the original starship Enterprise. He described how when he first brought his Enterprise concept model to series creator Gene Roddenberry, Gene took the model, held it upside down and proclaimed it worthy.

One of his favorite tales concerned shooting the “Star Trek” episode featuring Oliver as Vina, which had an unexpected complication. When the film rushes were received from the processing lab the colors were outrageously garish and wildly inaccurate. This aberration was repeated several times until it was discovered the film lab apparently “didn’t get the memo”: Vina was supposed to have green skin! The lab had done everything it could to give her “normal” flesh tones, with the result that nothing else in the scene looked right.

Thanks so much for bringing closure to the Susan Oli­ver story. Attached is a photo I shot of Matt with his beloved 1935 Waco [above], the registration number for which (NC-17740) morphed into the registration for the Enterprise.

Hank Caruso California, Md.

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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briefing

Youngest Roundthe-World Pilot teenage dream Eighteen-year-old British pilot Travis Ludlow preflights his Cessna 172R Skyhawk (above) and poses with it (inset) on June 30, 2021, a month into his record-setting world circumnavigation.

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ravis Ludlow of Ibstone, Buckinghamshire, set a new Guinness World Record as the youngest pilot to complete a round-the-world flight when he landed at Booker Airfield/Wycombe Air Park

in Marlow, England, on July 13. Behind him lay 26,759 miles across 16 countries on four continents, with 64 stops in 44 days (including 12 rest days and 235 flight hours), averaging 836 miles per day.

Ludlow, aged 18 years and

150 days upon landing, took up aviation at age 12 and at 14 became Britain’s youngest certified glider pilot. By the time he set his sights on the round-the-world record, he was a qualified pilot with 400 hours of instrument flying in

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OPPOSITE PHOTOS: AOPA/DAVID TULIS; TOP & INSET: NASA; BOTTOM RIGHT: U.S. AIR FORCE

his logbook. His preparations for the grueling solo flight included soliciting pointers from the record-holder at the time, Louisianan pilot Mason Andrews, who was 18 years and 163 days old in 2018 when he completed a circumnavigation of the globe in a Piper PA-32 Lance.

Paramount among Andrews’ advice was that “safety is first, as it is with all aviation.”

Ludlow took off from Booker Airfield on May 27 in a Cessna 172R Skyhawk powered by a Continental CD-155 Jet-A engine. In retrospect, he said that his greatest bane was loneliness, particularly while flying a leg over Russia. “I got out of range from ATC contact and below me was nothing but forest, so it was kind of scary,” he remarked while at the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association headquarters in Frederick, Md. “That’s when it really hit me that I’m all alone out here.” Ludlow was aware that one-eyed Japanese pilot Shinji Maeda was also engaged in a global flight of his own (see “Briefing,” September 2021), and both airmen were keen to rendezvous somewhere along the way, but the vagaries of weather prevented them from doing so.

After completing the longest leg of his Atlantic flight, from Reykjavik, Iceland, to Benbecula, Scotland, in six hours, Ludlow made his way back to Booker Airfield with a new record under his seat belt. Among his future ambitions is to make the first round-the-world flight in an electric-powered airplane.

Jon Guttman

out to pasture NASA has retired the last Lockheed S-3 Viking, seen here at the agency’s Glenn Research Center facility in Cleveland, Ohio.

Air Quotes

“IF OUR AIR FORCES ARE NEVER USED, THEY HAVE ACHIEVED THEIR FINEST GOAL.” –GENERAL NATHAN F. TWINING, 1956

The Last Viking

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ne of the great overlooked warhorses in U.S. naval aviation made its final flight this past summer. From its introduction to the fleet in 1974, the Lockheed S-3 Viking flew from land bases and aircraft carrier decks as a twin-turbofan, four-man-crewed anti-submarine aircraft.

After retiring from anti-sub ops in 2009, the fuel-efficient S-3, boasting a 10-hour flight endurance, continued in supporting roles such as COD (carrier onboard delivery), aerial refueling and electronic intelligence gathering until 2016. The last flying Viking, however, is retiring after 15 years of faithful service to NASA. In 2006 NASA acquired an ex-Navy S-3B, removed all its weaponry and reconfigured it as a research aircraft with up-to-date avionics, GPS and other satellite communication systems. Since then, it had been flying a variety of missions for NASA on practically a daily basis. Among its many contributions, arguably the most important was in helping develop the communications standards used by unmanned aircraft for NASA, the FAA and private industry. As Mike Jarrell, head of NASA’s Command and Control project, noted, “This old aircraft has been a huge part of ushering in the future of aviation.”

While single-engine Beechcraft T-34 Mentors take over the S-3B’s NASA tasks, the veteran Viking will be retired to the San Diego Air & Space Museum.

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BRIEFING

Junkers Transport Explored Off Rhodes mer, Austrian Roland Domanig and Luca Merli of the Italian Air Crash Po research group, the Greek team has been able to make some tentative deductions about the plane’s identity and its fate. Ju-52/3m Werke Nr. 501111 was built in September 1943 and its original fuselage code, DR-UA, was changed that fall to 1Z-DX when the aircraft was assigned to the 13th Staffel (squadron) of Transportgeschwader 1.

Ironically, the plane was dropping inflatable equipment during a rescue mission on March 31, 1944, when it went down off Rhodes.

The divers found the Ju-52 generally intact and in remarkably good condition, thanks to the depth at which it lies. There was no sign of

MILESTONES

Bombs Away

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t took a mere eight years after the Wright Flyer first flew for a weaponized airplane to make its debut. On November 1, 1911, 110 years ago this month, Italian Sub-Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti became the first pilot to bomb enemy forces in active combat.

Soon after the Wright brothers’ first powered flight in 1903, military strategists around the world began pondering how this new asset could serve them in battle. By 1910, the United States was experimenting with potential airborne weapons, firing rifles and dropping sandbags—simulated bombs—from airplane cockpits.

Half a world away, on September 29, 1911, the Italian army invaded Ottoman-ruled Libya. A hastily organized Italian air regiment of nine airplanes and 11 pilots shipped out from Naples to support the fight, arriving in Tripoli on October 15. While militaries at the time were only using airplanes for reconnaissance and transportation, Lieutenant Gavotti wrote to his father about a package the regiment received before leaving Naples: “Today two boxes full of bombs arrived,” referring to Cipelli grenades about the size of grapefruits and weighing approximately two kilograms (4.4 pounds) each. “We are expected to throw them from our planes,” Gavotti wrote, adding, “It will be very interesting to try them on the Turks.”

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combat damage and the divers noted no ammunition in the two MG 15 machine guns they found. The left propeller was undamaged, suggesting the engine had been inoperative, while the no. 2 engine was detached and lying several feet from the nose. The landing gear and tires were still intact. The cockpit was in excellent condition and the instruments indicated that the two wing engines were on high power settings, while the no. 2 engine, which generated electricity for the

corrugated relic A Ju-52/3m lost in 1944 in the Aegean Sea was recently investigated by a dive team.

trimotor, had been on idle.

Evidently, then, engine trouble had forced the crew to ditch. According to German records three crewmen— Josef Gillitzer, Rudolf Karl and Willi Janson—had been killed while Hans Beck was listed as missing, presumed dead. Given the nature of the crash site, the Ju-52 will be left in situ as a war memorial.

first celestial assault Italian airman Giulio Gavotti with the Etrich Taube likely used to drop the first wartime bombs from an airplane.

His chance soon came. Flying the Austrian-designed Etrich Taube, a wood-and-canvas monoplane capable of speeds up to 60 mph and an altitude of 1,200 feet, Gavotti took off on November 1 for positions manned by Ottomansupporting Bedouin troops. Approaching the oasis of Ain Zara, southeast of Triploi, Gavotti reported: “With one hand, I hold the steering wheel, with the other I take out one of the bombs and put it on my lap....I can see the Arab tents very well. I take the bomb with my right hand, pull off the security tag and throw the bomb out, avoiding the wing. I can see it falling through the sky for couple of seconds and then it disappears. And after a little while, I can see a small dark cloud in the middle of the encampment. I have hit the target!” Gavotti went on to drop three more bombs that day.

The momentous nature of the event wasn’t lost on the media and governments. A wire service reported that “Ter­ rorized Turks Scatter Upon Unexpected Celestial Assault,” and agents from Europe’s great powers and the U.S. all visited the bomb sites to study the effects of the raid. While it soon became clear that Gavotti’s bombs did little more than blast away some desert sand, the potential for aerial bombardment was now a reality, and militaries sped up their efforts to produce effective weapons and strategies—efforts that would soon bear terrible fruit in the world wars to come.

TOP: AEGEANTEC; BOTTOM: GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT PHOTOS: PRIVATE COLLECTION OF RENZO FILIPPETTI

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n July 2018 the Greek diving team Aegeantec discovered the remains of a World War II–vintage Junkers Ju-52/3m trimotor 246 feet under the Aegean Sea about one nautical mile from Gadurrà airfield on the Greek island of Rhodes. Due to a lack of support facilities on the island, they were only able to give the airplane a cursory examination. In 2021, however, Aegeantec returned to give the site a more detailed investigation.

“The Ju-52 is at a maximum depth of 75 meters,” explained diver Marinos Giourgas. “For deep wreck diving we use rebreathers, which are closed-circuit breathing devices.”

By combining its efforts with those of German researcher Gerhard Stem­

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Lost and Found in the Libyan Desert

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Sands of time In 1941 an Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 force-landed in the Libyan Desert after a raid on British ships. An oil company team surveying the area in 1960 found and photographed the remains of the airplane and the crew.

or suffered mechanical trouble again.

Several other such episodes occurred during the Desert War, including the famous case of the American Con­ solidated B-24D Lady Be Good, lost in April 1943 and found by another oil exploration team under very similar circumstances in 1961.

In 1969 78-year-old Renzo Filippetti from Campi Bisenzio, Florence, met a former surveyor named Meucci for the oil company ENI, who told him he had found the wreckage of an aircraft in the Libyan Desert in the early 1960s. Meucci gave Filippetti two rolls of camera film that yielded some remarkable photographs of the SM.79’s fate more than 50 years later, published here for the first time.

Agostino Alberti & Jon Guttman

TOP: AEGEANTEC; BOTTOM: GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT PHOTOS: PRIVATE COLLECTION OF RENZO FILIPPETTI

n April 21, 1941, Italian forces spotted a British convoy southwest of Crete and two SavoiaMarchetti SM.79 torpedo bombers were sent to attack the enemy vessels. At 16:50 hours an SM.79 flown by Lieutenant Guido Robone took off from Libya’s Benghazi/Berka airfield. Delayed due to mechanical trouble, the second plane, piloted by Captain Oscar Cimolini, was off at 17:25. Robone returned to base at 21:30, claiming a torpedo hit on a merchant vessel—evidently the 6,098-ton British Lord. Soon after that, Cimolini’s SM.79 had loosed its torpedo…and then vanished.

Nineteen years later, in July 1960, an Italian oil company team exploring the area southwest of the Giarabub oasis discovered the body of an Italian airman not far from the Giarabub-Gialo strip. Three months after that, another exploration party found the wreck of the long-lost SM.79, about 60 miles south of where the airman’s remains had been recovered.

The fate of the unfortunate crew soon became clear. Its gunner, Giovanni Romanini, had left the crash site seeking assistance, but succumbed to thirst and fatigue just a few miles from one of the most traveled desert tracks in that area. The bodies of his crewmates were found near their plane’s remains: pilot Cimolini, observer Franco Franchi, copilot Cesare Barro, radioman Amorino De Luca and engineer Quintilio Bozzelli.

What caused the loss of the SM.79 remains a mystery. No signs of damage to the plane were found by the oil company members, and it had landed wheels down. Most likely the crewmen—who had arrived in Africa from Italy the day before that fatal mission and were unfamiliar with the local geography, landscape and weather conditions—became disoriented

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AvIATORS

EMILIO CARRANZA’S HISTORIC 1928 GOODWILL FLIGHT FROM MEXICO TO THE UNITED STATES AND BACK ENDED IN TRAGEDY IN NEW JERSEY’S PINE BARRENS

BY DENNIS K. JOHNSON

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wo months after completing his May 1927 New York to Paris solo flight, Charles Lindbergh took off on a goodwill tour of America, flying his Spirit of St. Louis to all 48 states.

Then he turned south to tour 16 Latin American countries between December 1927 and February 1928. His first stop was Mexico City, where he met the U.S. ambassador and his daughters, one of whom, Anne Morrow, would become his wife in 1929.

South of the border, a young military pilot, Emilio Carranza, keenly followed Lindbergh’s exploits while setting a few avia­ tion records of his own. Carranza was born in 1905 into a notable political and aviation-minded family. His father was an attaché at the Mexican consulate in New York City, his great uncle was a former president of Mexico and his cousin was director of the Mexican School of Military Aviation. As a boy, Carranza would visit the airport with his cousin and became

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Hero from the south Top: Emilio Carranza stands with his Ryan B-1, an airplane similar to Charles Lindbergh’s Ryan NYP. Above: Carranza arrives in Lowell, Mass., during his 1928 U.S. tour.

enamored of aviation. He graduated from the Mexican military academy in 1924 and participated in the last battles of the Yaqui Wars.

In 1927 Carranza made the first flight between Mexico City and Juarez, a distance of about 1,000 miles. After reaching Juarez he met Lindbergh, who had landed

just across the border in El Paso on the same day. In 1928 Carranza made the third longest nonstop solo flight up to that time, cov­ ering 1,575 miles from San Diego to Mexico City.

It was therefore not sur­ prising that Carranza was selected to represent Mexico by making a goodwill flight to Washington, D.C., in response to Lindbergh’s tour of Latin America. His air­ plane, named Excelsior after a Mexican newspaper that pro­ moted the flight, was a Ryan B-1 Brougham. Designed

by Donald Hall, who was

TOP: 504 COLLECTION/ALAMY; INSET: BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY/LESLIE JONES COLLECTION

The Mexican Lindbergh

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A Time of Freedom View the intricate workings through the exhibition back

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AvIATORS

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plete the longest nonstop solo flight in the Americas on his return to Mexico City, but summer thunderstorms repeatedly postponed his departure. Anxious to fly after a month in the U.S., Carranza suddenly decided to leave on July 12 after receiving a relatively favorable weather report while dining at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel: “Partly cloudy to cloudy sky New York to New Orleans with local thunderstorms.” Although it was not a terribly ominous forecast, experienced American pilots counseled him to wait for another day. He chose to ignore their advice and took off about 7 p.m., during a break in the bad weather and with darkness falling.

Tragically, Carranza didn’t have the luck of Lindy. He crashed in southern New Jersey’s Pine Barrens about 85 miles into the flight amid a thunderstorm. The cause of the crash could not be determined, although some presumed lightning struck the airplane while others believed Carranza was flying low, looking for a spot to land, when his plane hit the trees. According to the New York Times, “Both wings had been shorn from the fuselage and fragments had fallen for a quarter of a mile....” The Times also reported that an aircraft had been heard flying over the area around 8 p.m.

The wreckage and dead pilot were discovered the next morning by a family picking berries. Carranza’s body was found some distance from Excelsior, which many speculated meant that he was thrown from the airpane. His body was escorted by U.S. Army officers to New York City and then returned to Mexico with full military honors. Carranza was buried in the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons at Mexico City’s Dolores Cemetery, a spot reserved for national heroes. A pine tree from the crash site was planted by the aviator’s grave.

In 1931 a monument funded by Mexican schoolchildren was erected at the Pine Barrens crash site. The 12-foot granite obelisk was built from stones quarried in Mexico. Etched on it, in English and Spanish, is this inscription: “Messenger of Peace. The people of Mexico hope that your high ideals will be realized. Homage of the children of Mexico to the aviator captain Emilio Carranza who died tragically on July 13, 1928 in his good will flight.” (The date of his death on the monument is incorrect since Carranza departed around 7 p.m. on July 12 and only flew for about an hour before crashing.)

Not-so-lucky Lindy Above left: Carranza (right) is met at Washington’s Bolling Field. Top right: Carranza’s New York funeral procession was the first leg of his journey home to Mexico.

Above: A obelisk erected in 1931 marks the crash site.

Today the monument stands in a clearing among the pine trees, with Mexican yucca plants around the base.

Each July, on the Saturday nearest the anniversary of his crash, the Mount Holly American Legion Post 11, with staff from the Mexican consulates in New York City and Philadelphia, honors Carranza with a wreathlaying ceremony at the monument, which is about 45 miles northwest of Atlantic City and 35 miles east of Philadelphia (for directions, search “Carranza Memorial” in Google Maps).

ABOVE LEFT & TOP RIGHT: GEORGE RINHART/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES; BOTTOM RIGHT: DENNIS K. JOHNSON

also responsible for Spirit of St. Louis, it was very similar to Lindbergh’s airplane. (In 1957 three Broughams were modified to stand in for Spirit in the biographical film starring Jimmy Stewart.)

Carranza had planned a nonstop flight to Washington, but didn’t quite make it after being forced to land in North Carolina due to fog. On June 12, 1928, he arrived at Washington’s Bolling Field, where he was greeted by the Mexican ambassador, American officials and a throng of spectators. The next day he lunched with President Calvin Coolidge.

Flying on to New York City, Carranza landed at Long Island’s Roosevelt Field, where Lindbergh had departed for Paris the previous year. New York Mayor Jimmy Walker presented Carranza with a key to the city and hosted the aviator at several banquets, with celebrity guests including Charlie Chaplin and Jack Dempsey.

Newspaper reporters soon dubbed the 22-year-old pilot the “Mexican Lindbergh.”

Carranza flew up the Hudson River to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he reviewed the cadets, and then to Lowell, Mass., to open a new airfield.

Returning to New York City, he endured more luncheons, dinners and dances.

Carranza planned to comNOVEMBER 2021

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Field Dress For Success

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RESTORED

The Tale of Jungle Gym

A STORIED SIKORSKY S-39 AMPHIBIAN THAT SERVED WITH THE CIVIL AIR PATROL IN WORLD WAR II HAS BEEN RETURNED TO PRISTINE CONDITION BY THE NEW ENGLAND AIR MUSEUM

BY DOUGLAS G. ADLER

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he New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks, Conn., is home to dozens of aircraft spanning all eras of aviation history. Among the Grumman, Bell, Stearman and Douglas aircraft, to name a few, the museum also houses a Sikorsky S-39B. The story of the rare amphibious flying boat, known as Jungle Gym, stretches back decades and includes both triumph and disaster before the museum restored it to its former glory.

Built in 1930, the S-39 was a single-engine version of its successful twin-engine S-38 predecessor. The S-39 is an odd-looking assemblage of parts: a nautical fuselage slung under a very high wing surmounted by a Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp Junior radial engine. The tail is supported by twin booms.

With its innumerable bars and struts, the airframe resembles a child’s playground apparatus, hence the airplane’s nickname.

The museum’s S-39 was the sixth of only 23 ever built.

The aircraft rolled off the assembly line at Stratford, Conn.,

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revived dreamboat Top: The restored Sikorsky S-39 is back on display at the New England Air Museum.

Above: The aircraft sits at Rentschler Field in East Hartford, Conn., in 1937.

on July 31, 1930, and was sold for $20,000 to Charles Deeds, vice president at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft and son of Edward Deeds (who had worked closely with Orville Wright designing and building early airplanes). Deeds used it primarily for personal

transport, even occasionally hoisting it aboard the family yacht so that he could fly to business meetings near where he made port.

During the 1930s the amphibian was modified from S-39A to S-39B configuration, accommodating more passengers, and it changed hands repeatedly via private sales. Eventually it wound up in the possession of Hugh R. Sharp Jr., who in 1942 was commander of the Civil Air Patrol anti-submarine base in Rehoboth, Del.

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ALL PHOTOS: NEW ENGLAND AIR MUSEUM

Flying frequently with CAP patrolling the U.S. coastline during World War II, the S-39 was repainted, refitted and even had bomb racks installed so it could carry two 250-pound depth charges. It was during this time that the nickname “Jungle Gym” or sometimes “Jungle Jim” came into widespread use. “On one occasion she dropped six depth charges on three shuttle runs on an alleged submarine that was crippled and leaking oil,” reported Major Sharp. “The depth charges apparently had no effect and eventually the Army and Navy were called to take over. Several B-17s soon appeared and the Navy sent a bunch of [Vought] OS2Us to join the fray. Everybody made a lot of noise and, much to everybody’s embarrassment, the following day it was discovered we were all bombing an oil tanker that had been sunk there several months before and apparently one of her tanks was just starting to leak.”

Jungle Gym’s most famous mission occurred on July 21, 1942, when a CAP Fairchild 24 ditched in the Atlantic and the amphibian was dispatched to rescue the crew.

Major Sharp and his copilot, Eddie Edwards, took off in Jungle Gym from Rehoboth and flew to the crash site.

During the water landing, rough seas crushed the left

wing float and the airframe suffered many bent struts.

The Fairchild’s pilot was rescued despite suffering a severe back injury, but his observer was lost in the crash and presumably drowned.

Jungle Gym was too heavily damaged to take off and was severely listing due to the damaged float. Edwards climbed out onto the edge of the opposite wing to balance the plane while Sharp taxied to shore, a distance variously reported as being either 20, 100 or 200 miles, although the first estimate seems the most plausible. President Franklin D. Roosevelt personally awarded Sharp and Edwards Air Medals—the first given to civilians—for their heroism.

After being overhauled and returned to service, the S-39 was sold once it was no longer needed for coastal patrols. Again changing hands several times, Jungle Gym eventually wound up in Alaska, where it was used as a bush plane. In 1957, on a mission to evaluate a beached boat, an engine failure forced a crash landing and the hull was split open. The crew walked to safety but the plane was left in situ for months.

By the time the airframe was reevaluated in the spring, the wings had collapsed and the tail had separated from the airframe. To make matters worse, hunters had taken potshots at the wreck and locals

had absconded with some parts, including the wheels, wingtip floats and propeller.

The Coast Guard collected the remnants of Jungle Gym into a single outdoor pile and there they sat for six long years, exposed to the harsh Alaskan climate.

In 1963 the parts were gathered and shipped to the Bradley Air Museum (now the New England Air Museum) for a planned restoration, but no work was performed for 30 years.

Meanwhile an interested Alaskan helped search for any remaining pieces of the aircraft that had been missed.

Complicating matters, Sikorsky Aircraft no longer had the original blueprints to guide a restoration effort.

An original restoration team of 14 volunteers was augmented over time, bringing the number of people who worked on the airframe to 25. Work was performed two days a week by different teams, led by retired Pratt & Whitney engineer Conrad Lachendro. Many of the volunteers were from CAP. The restoration took three

Alaskan Rescue The amphibian served as a bush plane in Alaska (above) before crashing there in 1957 (above left). The S-39’s hull eventually made its way to Connecticut’s Bradley Air Museum in 1963 (top).

years and thousands of manhours and resulted in the amphibian being returned to near-pristine condition.

Salvageable aircraft parts were restored, others were fabricated from scratch and many were cannibalized from a spare S-39 hull the museum was able to acquire.

A replacement 300-hp Wasp Junior engine was obtained from a donor in New Hamp­ shire, as the original was rusted beyond repair.

Finished in blue and yellow paint and sporting the original wartime CAP triangle logo, Jungle Gym is currently displayed in the museum’s Civil Hangar. A monument to a bygone era of aircraft design, it is one of only three surviving S-39s in the world and is believed to be the oldest Sikorsky aircraft in existence.

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EXTREMES

Prof. Myers’ Sky-Cycle

BY ATTACHING A BICYCLE APPARATUS, PROPELLER AND RUDDER TO A HYDROGEN-FILLED BALLOON, CARL MYERS CREATED ONE OF THE FIRST MANEUVERABLE POWERED AIRCRAFT

BY STEVE WARTENBERG

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he great quest to pilot an aircraft has been accomplished, proclaimed the New York World newspaper on August 4, 1895. “A World reporter has succeeded in flying for hours here and there, backward and forward, up and down in the air,” wrote the unnamed reporter who had just flown Carl Myers’ airship in the skies over New York and lived to tell about his thrilling adventure.

Years before the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, “Professor” Myers was piloting his pedal-powered balloon, amazing the crowds below at county fairs and amusement parks in airships variously dubbed the Sky-Cycle, Aerial Bicycle and Air Velocipede. “With the aid of a bicycle attachment and a pair of wings, the problem has been solved,” wrote the World.

The first successful tests in 1783 by the Montgolfier brothers

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easy as riding a bike Top: An 1892 illustration depicts Carl Myers’ Sky-Cycle.

Above: Myers’ airship is inflated and the control car attached prior to launch.

of their hot-air balloon stirred the world’s imagination, and the race to create a maneuverable powered aircraft was on. But what would provide the power?

In the late 1880s the inven­tion and widespread adoption of the safety bicycle

sparked a bicycling craze. It wasn’t long before someone had the idea of placing a bicycle-like device underneath a balloon. The pilot worked the pedals, which turned the propellor or propellers, and the craft moved forward or to the right or left.

Or in a circle. The balloon provided the lift; the pedals and propellers added thrust.

It was simple physics.

Born in upstate New York in 1842, Carl Edgar Myers began constructing and fly-

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OPPOSITE TOP: NIDAY PICTURE LIBRARY/ALAMY; OPPOSITE BOTTOM & ABOVE LEFT: NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM ARCHIVES/CARL MYERS BALLOON FARM COLLECTION; ABOVE RIGHT: ©ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS LTD/MARY EVANS

ing hydrogen-filled balloons in the late 1870s. His wife, Mary, helped with the manufacture on their “Balloon Farm” in Frankfort, N.Y. She eventually joined Myers as he toured the country. Billed as Carlotta, the Lady Aeronaut, she jumped from balloons with a parachute.

The Myers were issued a patent on May 26, 1885, for a “Guiding Apparatus For Balloons.” There was no bicycle underneath—not yet—just a rudder on one side of the basket and a helical “screw-sail” on the other that the pilot turned by hand to steer the airship. It took another couple of years for Myers to add pedals and a propeller to his maneuverable balloon.

“Prof. Carl Myers has made several satisfactory tests with his new invention, the air velocipede, which will soon be in shape to give public exhibitions of its workings,” reported Pennsylvania’s Altoona Times on April 17, 1889. Myers tinkered with and improved his aircraft, and soon began touring the country, dem­ onstrating it to crowds of amazed onlookers.

“This is no hot air hocus-pocus where the so-called ‘aeronaut’ goes up about as high as a church steeple and then comes down, but an actual flying machine, that speeds and spins in the air like a bird,” wrote Ohio’s Hamilton Evening Journal on August 31, 1892.

“It is worked by foot pedals like an ordinary bicycle, but

raising balloons Above: Myers grows a crop of gasbags at his “Balloon Farm” in Frankfort, N.Y. Right: The Sky-Cycle is demonstrated to a crowd at Saratoga, N.Y., in 1891.

goes through the air instead of on the ground....It has made numerous outdoor exhibitions before thousands of people, and has never failed to rise and move away at the will of the rider.”

By mid-1895, Myers had further improved his airship, adding wings for greater stability and ease of turning. To drum up even more publicity, and to prove that he was the world’s greatest aeronaut, Myers made his machine available to the World, one of New York’s largest newspapers. The reporter who took it up wrote breathlessly that “No living human being on any other contrivance has ever done these extraordinary things in the air. No one else has succeeded in going against the wind. No other machine was ever able to stand still in the air....And no machine ever constructed could turn around in the air and travel backward. The wonderful flying machine does all these things.”

According to the reporter, he was able to make his way “though a forty mile breeze [that] was blowing from the South.” Several times he returned to the spot in Brooklyn where he had lifted off so that he might acknowledge, with a tip of his cap, “the mighty cheering

of thousands of unfortunate mortals who were tacked to the earth.”

The reporter/pilot then waved farewell and headed north, at an altitude of about 1,000 feet. Later, after releas­ ing ballast, he rose to about 2,000 feet. “After some maneu­­vering, however, a safe landing was made on an open field, about one mile east of Yonkers,” he wrote.

Myers received a patent for his “Sky-Cycle” on April 20, 1897.

Despite the story in the World, which ran in newspapers around the country, Arthur W. Barnard claimed he had invented the flying bicycle balloon. “Professor” Barnard gave a demonstration in Nashville in early May 1897. According to a newspaper report, “Rising as gracefully as a bird, he soared to a height of fifty feet, sailing against a somewhat stiff breeze....” After 12 miles, a propeller mishap forced him to land.

Myers was understandably

miffed when he learned of Barnard’s claim. He shot off a telegram to the World, which ran it along with a detailed description and drawing of the 1895 flight.

In the telegram, Myers wrote that Barnard’s airship was “built wholly by me here under my patent of this year, different only from World airship in elongated spindle....

The operator had no part in designating this skycycle airship, but paid for and received my best work.”

Myers continued to harvest his crops on the Balloon Farm into the early years of the next century and made some demonstration flights at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, where he also served as superintendent of the Aeronautics Concourse. And then along came the Wright brothers. Myers, his balloons and the Sky-Cycle were yesterday’s news. Myers and Mary/Carlotta retired from “farming” and flying in 1909, and moved to Atlanta to live with their daughter.

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STYLE The next chapter of flight

is only a few years away and futuristic eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft are gearing up to shuttle passengers across city skies

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eVTOL Aircraft Concept The sleek lines of Urban eVTOL’s turbine-powered LEO Coupe embody a vision of the future of personal transport.

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STYLE

FUTURE FLIGHT

Pete Bitar is busy working on the next generation of aircraft. He is the developer of the VertiPod® family of eVTOL aircraft, including the EJ-1—the world’s first patented electric jetpack—and Verti­Cycle, a flying electric motorcycle.

Along with cofounder Carlos Salaff, the duo formed Urban eVTOL, whose first project is the LEO Coupe, an all-electric, jet turbine-propelled eVTOL concept vehicle.

The LEO Coupe is both a fixed-wing aircraft and a powered-lift aircraft.

Its controls are straightforward and highly computer-assisted, and Bitar claims flight training won’t take long. The fullscale prototype (currently awaiting funding) will likely have Bitar at the helm. “I will have the most experience with the control system, which will be similar to my electric jetpack. However, for more dynamic, future flight testing, we intend to hire a more experienced test pilot.” Retail price is projected at $289,900 (batteries included).

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ASTON MARTIN VOLANTE VISION PHOTOS COURTESY ASTON MARTIN IMAGES: URBAN EVTOL

Upwardly Mobile

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IMAGES: URBAN EVTOL

ASTON MARTIN VOLANTE VISION PHOTOS COURTESY ASTON MARTIN

STYLE STYLE MUSEUM FUTURE FLIGHT

Rendering to Reality Grand Reopening Airbus, the European multinational aerospace corporation, has taken the once pie-in-the-sky city commuting concept to near completion. The company’s CityAirbus is an all-electric multicopter that features four ducted high-lift propulsion units.

Its eight propellers spin at about 950 rpm to produce a low acoustic footprint.

The failure-tolerant archi­ tecture ensures safety.

The aircraft will shuttle four passengers at a cruise speed of 75 mph on fixed routes, with 15 minutes of remote autonomous flight—perfect for aerial urban ridesharing.

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PHOTOS COURTESY IMAGES: AIRBUS SAN DIEGO AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM

Commuter of the Future CityAirbus is fully electric and battery-powered for a quieter mode of transportation than traditional helicopters. Passengers will commute three times faster than by car.

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LETTER FROM AvIATION HISTORY

AVIATION HEAVEN

W

THE SHOW GOES ON Top: Two EA-18G Growlers from Electronic Attack Squadron VAQ-129 break away from a pair of Corsairs during a U.S. Navy legacy flight at July’s EAA AirVenture. Inset: The P-51C Lope’s Hope 3rd was one of two Mustangs that flew in from the Dakota Territory Air Museum.

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ith apologies to W.P. Kinsella, it’s a readymade meme for aviation fans: “Is this heaven?

No, it’s Oshkosh.” After a two-year absence it might have seemed that way for attendees at the 68th EAA AirVenture in Wisconsin this summer (story, P. 52).

We arrived at Wittman Regional Airport to the sound of air ripping. There really is no better way to describe the aural assault of an F-16 Viper on full afterburner. The airshow was on and it wasn’t long before a pair of EA-18Gs performed their own air-rending display, then joined up with two Corsairs for a U.S. Navy legacy flight.

Over in Warbird Alley we came across the fuselage of a Douglas Dauntless and were surprised to learn it was the SBD-1 from the since-closed Fly­­ing Leatherneck Aviation Museum, the subject of our May 2021 “Restored” column. Turns out the restoration is being completed by Michigan’s Kala­ma­zoo Air Zoo Aerospace & Science Museum, not San Diego’s USS Midway Museum as we reported at the time. Dan Brant, an aircraft restoration manager at the Air Zoo, said: “Probably the first step is going to be to soda-blast the entire air­plane—get it down to bare metal—and then re-prime it. We’ve got to stabilize the airplane first.”

Brant noted that one of the Air Zoo’s main missions is using aircraft like the SBD for educational purposes. “We’ve had an entire class of 8th graders in here for a morning working on the airplane,” he said. “It’s all about education—everything on an airplane has STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) written all over it. Every

one of these museum pieces not only has a story to tell about how it got wherever it went but it also has a story revolving around technology advances.”

At a nearby display area sat two matching blacktailed P-51 Mustangs from the Dakota Territory Air Museum in Minot, N.D. Lope’s Hope 3rd and Miss Kitty III are painted in the scheme of the 23rd Fighter Group’s 75th Squadron, a descendant of the American Volunteer Group “Flying Tigers.” The former is a rare “razorback” P-51C that’s a tribute to ace Lieutenant Donald S. Lopez and the Gold Wrench Award winner as Warbird Grand Champion at the 2018 AirVenture. Chuck Cravens, historian for the Dakota museum affiliate AirCorps Aviation, called it “a no-holds-barred time-capsule restoration.” The P-51D Miss Kitty III honors Lopez’s squadron mate Captain John D. Rosenbaum, “not because he was an ace or anything like that,” said Cravens, “but because he had a long and honorable career.”

Out in the warbirds parking area we came across the Commemorative Air Force SBD-5 featured on our May cover, with its perforated dive flaps extended. Asked if he ever dove the Daunt­ less, pilot Casey Roszell said, “No, there’s a valve under there that deactivates the diving flaps—it’s part of the certification process.” That’s probably for the best, as Roszell (and our cover story) noted that “If it comes out of a dive and the flaps don’t close, you can’t hold altitude at full power—there’s just a ton of drag.”

We’d been on the fly-in grounds for a scant couple of hours and barely scratched the surface—there was so much more to see. Maybe this isn’t heaven, but it’s sure close.

PHOTOS: CARL VON WODTKE

BY CARL VON WODTKE

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BEAR OF THE AIR THE TUPOLEV TU-95—RUSSIA’S BIG, BRAWNY TURBOPROP BOMBER— STILL SENDS NATO FIGHTERS SCRAMBLING ON INTERCEPTS NEARLY 70 YEARS AFTER IT FIRST FLEW BY STEPHAN WILKINSON

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nuisance bear A Tupolev Tu-95RTs “Bear-D” flies a reconnaissance mission, escorted by a pair of McDonnell F-4 Phantoms from the 57th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Iceland’s Keflavik Air Base. Adam Tooby’s illustration depicts a Cold War scenario that continues to this day.

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AS A CHILD OF THE PROPELLER AGE AND A PILOT WHO FOR 40 YEARS FLEW AIRPLANES WITH PROPS, FOR ME THE MARK OF MUSCLE IS NOT A TAILPIPE TWINKLING LIKE A STOVETOP BURNER BUT THE BIG SILVER DISC OF THOSE WHIRLING WINGS CALLED PROPELLERS. keeping current A Tu-95MS returns to base after a longrange patrol. Based on the Tu-142 maritime variant, this “Bear-H” is designed to carry air-launched cruise missiles internally and on its wing pylons.

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Corsair, Bearcat, Thunderbolt, Sea Fury—the bigger the better. So Bear with me while I rhapsodize over the immensity and power of that Russian behemoth, the eight-prop Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bomber codenamed the Bear. (Yes, eight props: four turbine engines powering two contra­ rotating propellers per engine.) To me, the Tu-95 is the picture of power as its propellers pound the air into submission.

During World War II, the Soviets never devel-

oped a fleet of long-range strategic bombers. Why bother? Their enemy, Germany, was only a few hours’ flying time from Soviet territory, and no water intervened. By the time the USSR realized that its next opponent would be across an ocean, a solution literally fell into its lap: the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, three examples of which had landed in Siberia with battle damage or empty fuel tanks after raids on Japan.

Andrei Tupolev, the Soviet aeronautical engi-

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neer whose career veered between gulag and greatness, was assigned the task of reverse-engineering the big Boeing to metric standards so that his factory could build replicas that would become the Soviet Union’s first long-range bombers. Tupo­lev wasn’t proud of copycatting, and he tried to name what would become the Tu-4 the B-4. Ultimately, his factories built 847 Superfortskis, which served the Russians well into the 1960s.

Working with that big American airplane gave Tupolev a boost up what would otherwise have been a steep learning curve. Yet Tupolev’s sophisticated turbojet bombers—Badger, Blinder, Backfire, Blackjack—never achieved the notoriety of his greatest creation, the turboprop Bear.

In the early 1950s, when work on the Bear began, pure jet engines had lousy legs. Though they were faster, they used almost twice as much fuel as the equivalent turboprop engine. Tupolev wanted a range approaching 9,500 statute miles for his new strategic bomber and the best that turbojets would give him was 2,000 fewer miles.

Like so many precedent-setting airplanes, the Bear’s success revolved around its chosen engine—the Kuznetsov NK-12, at 12,000 shaft horsepower (eventually rising to 15,000 hp) to this day the world’s most powerful production turbo­ prop. The Russians hated to admit it, but the NK-12 was based on a German project, the Junkers Jumo 022, and it was largely designed by captured Ger­man engineers. Ferdinand Brand­

ner, who had designed the six-bank, 2,500-hp Jumo 222, led the team. (Nobody seemed to care that the Jumo 222 and the Junkers Ju-288 bomber it powered were both massive failures.)

Initial studies suggested that 23-foot-diameter props would be needed to absorb the NK-12’s tremendous power, but the technology to manufacture blades that long didn’t exist. Contrarotating props 18 feet 4½ inches in diameter would have to do the job, though at the cost of some complexity.

At the cost of the number-one Bear prototype as well. The Tu-95 first flew in November 1952, but during a May 1953 flight an engine fire brought it down, killing four members of the 11-man flighttest crew. Accident investigators quickly blamed the disaster on faulty engine mounts and condemned the two engineers responsible to death.

But then a large, broken reduction-gear wheel was excavated from the accident site. It turned out there had been several failures of the same part during bench testing, with resultant fires. The wheels were being forged from an improper alloy.

That broken gear is today part of an exhibit at the Kuznetsov factory, an interesting example of rare Russian introspection.

A second prototype was built, but the Bear had not yet been approved for production. In the spring of 1955, Nikita Khrushchev visited the airbase where it was being tested. Tupolev, knowing the Soviet leader’s schedule, drove to the base entry road and blocked it, making believe his car had

tupolev Forebear Andrei Tupolev (top) was arrested in 1937 during Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s “Great Purge” and later sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. While serving his sentence he was tasked with reverse-engineering captured Boeing B-29s to produce the Soviet Union’s first long-range strategic bomber, the Tu-4 (above).

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TECH NOTES TUPOLEV TU-95MS “BEAR-H”

broken down. Khrushchev got out of his limo to see who was delaying him, and a conversation ensued. A voluble Tupolev persuaded him to come tour his airplane, and a month later the Tu-95 was ordered into production.

SPECIFICATIONS

CREW

LENGTH

RANGE

7

161 feet 2½ inches

ENGINES

HEIGHT

Four 15,000-hp Samara Kuznetsov NK-12MP turboprops driving eight AV-60N four-bladed contrarotating constantspeed propellers

44 feet

6,521 miles (normal load), 4,039 miles (maximum load)

WINGSPAN 164 feet 2 inches WING AREA 3,110 square feet

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WEIGHT 208,116 pounds (empty) 407,840 pounds (maximum takeoff) SPEED 515 mph (maximum) 342 mph (cruise) SERVICE CEILING 34,440 feet

ARMAMENT Two 23mm autocannons in rear turret. Six Kh-55 or Kh-55M cruise missiles in a rotary launcher (Tu-95MS-6) and 10 additional Kh-55s externally or 8 Kh-101s externally in side-by-side pairs (Tu-95MS-16).

ILLUSTRATION: ©ZAUR EYLANBEKOV/FOXBATGRAPHICS; ABOVE & OPPOSITE TOP PHOTOS: FOXBATGRAPHICS IMAGE LIBRARY; RIGHT: ITAR-TASS/DMITRY ROGULIN

E

arly Kuznetsovs varied so widely in power output that pilots had to identify the weakest of their engines and then set power on the other three to match it. Worse, early Tu-95s had no auto-feathering system to quickly clean up a failed engine. By the time pilots had identified and feathered a dead engine, the airplane sometimes had gone out of control, unable to deal with the huge drag of a double prop big as a billboard.

The Bear was initially intended to be a nuclear bomber, but when the United States introduced its Century Series interceptors and then effective ground-to-air missiles, that game was up. But not immediately. The deepest penetrations into U.S. airspace ever achieved by a Tu-95 was a 1963 flight 30 miles into Alaska. Convair F-102s were scrambled to intercept the Soviet giant, but the Bear left them in its substantial wake.

Nobody is sure of the Tu-95’s true top speed, though it is well above 500 mph. During its acceptance trials in 1956, the Bear laid down a max speed of 548 mph. The airliner version of the Tu-95, the Tu-114, set an official turboprop speed record of 541 mph in 1960 and the Russians are happy to leave it at that; they have no interest in revealing the performance of one of their most important military aircraft.

Are Bears speedy because they have swept

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Being a Bear pilot or crew member is even today a prestigious job, but far from a comfy gig. Despite the Tu-95 having been designed for flights as long as 40 hours (10 to 20 hours is typical), the airplane offers no creature comforts. No coffee maker, no microwave oven, no bunks. And worst of all, no toilet, just a fancy bucket. The unwritten rule is that whoever is first to use the thunderbox must wash down the flight deck after the mission.

The cockpit is moderately loud, the seats uncomfortable, and pressurization and ventilation are primitive. The Bear has no ejection seats, despite the Soviets having designed the world’s finest rocket-propelled seats. Flight deck crew jump out through the nosewheel well, assisted by a treadmill that trundles them out of the opening. Bailout is

loaded for bear Opposite: The Tu-95V drops the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba in 1961.

Above: The early Kh-20 cruise missile was based on the MiG-19.

Below: Tu-95s operate out of Russia’s Engels-2 airbase in 2011.

ILLUSTRATION: ©ZAUR EYLANBEKOV/FOXBATGRAPHICS; ABOVE & OPPOSITE TOP PHOTOS: FOXBATGRAPHICS IMAGE LIBRARY; RIGHT: ITAR-TASS/DMITRY ROGULIN

wings? Their wings are cranked back 35 degrees, which is typical of a modern airliner. It doubtless mitigates transonic shock-wave generation, but the main reason for the sweep was that it put the main spar forward of the entire bomb bay, giving the airplane a totally unobstructed weapons area just under 47 feet long.

The Tu-95 was capable of carrying the largest bomb in the Soviet arsenal. In 1961 a specially modified Tu-95V dropped the Tsar Bomba, to this day the largest nuclear device ever exploded.

With a yield of 50 megatons, this 26-foot-long hydrogen bomb was more than three times as powerful as any weapon the U.S. has ever tested.

Its yield could supposedly have been as high as 100 megatons, but the bomb was tamped down so that the Bear might survive. At that, the crew was told they had only a 50 percent chance of making it home, though they did.

It became increasingly obvious in the mid1970s that the subsonic Bear, with “the radar signature of a big-box store,” in the words of one writer, would never penetrate U.S. air defenses.

So the Soviets began working on simple nuclear cruise missiles with nap-of-the-earth capability, to be launched from Tu-95 underwing and belly pylons. An early result was the Kh-20 Kangaroo— essentially a MiG-19 with no cockpit or canopy, carried partially in the Bear’s bomb bay and lowered into firing position. (Don’t think that Soviet flight crews have no imagination. One Kangaroobearing Bear missed an inflight refueling when its tanker was grounded by below-minimum weather, so its crew lowered the missile and fired up its turbojet. With this fifth engine’s boost, the bomber made it back to base and landed with less than 650 gallons of fuel.)

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maneuver hookups with funnels 80 feet outboard of and well behind their cockpit, the sightline further obscured by two nacelles. Tu-95s soon got their unmistakable fixed nose probe, looking like some kind of Star Wars cannon. Still, there were several instances of the hose breaking free of the tanker and thrashing the Bear, in one case taking out an entire propeller unit.

T bear chase Clockwise from above: Crewmen in a Tu-95 signal to an F-4 Phantom that has intercepted them over international waters; a Bear trails an Ilyushin Il-78 refueling tanker over Moscow during the 70th anniversary Victory Parade on May 9, 2015; an early Tu-95MS sits with gunner’s access door lowered under its twin AM-23 cannon turret.

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initiated by emergency extension of the nose gear, which opens the doors and starts the treadmill.

No crew positions are as demanding as those of the three men marooned in the cold, cramped and noisy tail compartment, totally cut off from access to the rest of the airplane. Tail gunner, observer and “defensive fire commander,” they have their own access/bailout hatch.

Boredom for the back-enders is such a problem that a number of Bear accidents and incidents have been caused by the men simply fiddling with the equipment and inadvertently opening the hatch, depressurizing the compartment or setting off the fire extinguisher. Tail gunners have also been adept at starting fires in the quilted insulation blankets during forbidden smoking breaks.

One gunner shut off the oxygen so he could smoke, then failed to turn it back on and died of hypoxia.

The Soviets intended to give the Tu-95 inflight refueling capability from the outset. Because nobody wanted to deal with a hose flopping around amid all those big Cuisinarts, Bears were initially to use a wingtip-to-wingtip system: drogue on the tanker’s right wingtip, probe on the Bear’s left wing. Not surprisingly, Bear pilots were unable to

he Tu-95 may be the Russian aircraft most familiar to Americans, thanks to its occasional appearance on the nightly news while being intercepted by U.S. or other NATO fighters. One of the Bear’s main missions is carrier-hunting—keeping track of U.S. Navy carrier battle groups despite their ability to hide from spy satellites under cloud cover. And one of the worst mistakes a carrier commander can commit is to allow a Bear to overfly him unescorted, which would mean it could have hit him with an antiship missile in a wartime scenario.

Apparently no Tu-95 has ever surprised a U.S. carrier, but in April 1969 two Bears came close to nailing USS John F. Kennedy near Spain. “The JFK got a CAP [combat air patrol] up,” said one former radar officer familiar with the incident, “but would it have been in time in a war situation? No.” It happened again in July 1975 when two Bears approached Kennedy on a day when every one of the carrier’s F-14 Tomcats was down with engine problems. The intercept had to be quickly handled by four A-7 Corsair II attack aircraft.

During the years of heavy Bear activity—1961 through 1991, generally—U.S. carriers always had a couple of manned alert fighters and a tanker on deck, and crews would compete for the onehour hot slots in the cockpit, hoping to score an intercept. Said one F-4 Phantom pilot who made several intercepts over the Pacific during the mid’70s: “We knew they were coming sometimes 12 hours ahead of time, and all the heavy guys wanted

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to intercept them. Once I called my RIO [radar intercept officer] and said, ‘Grab your cameras, Randy, we’re goin’ flying.’ We launched, and I did a deck-level burner turn and said get the damn radar going so we can find this guy. Got the nose up and I said ‘never mind.’ They were about 30 miles away, and I could already see them.

“No, we didn’t do any of that holding up Playboy centerfolds stuff, and we didn’t have a common frequency, didn’t talk to them at all. They were just doing their job, same as us.”

Aggressive acts were rare, and it was an unwritten rule that neither Bear nor interceptor were to use their adversary as a mock target. Tu-95 tail gunners typically deflect their guns to the full upright and aft position as a let’s-be-friends signal.

Bear crewmen often hand-signal interceptors, encouraging them to do barrel rolls and to position themselves for selfies.

An online poster in a military forum, however, a former Navy F-4 pilot, wrote: “I intercepted probably seven or eight times off the Coral Sea. On one occasion, they tried to fly me into the water by slowing down with a constant descending turn. I canopy-rolled over the top of them to switch sides and fly forward of their wing line. They did not like that.

“I had lots of conversations with Bears on UHF. One occurred the day after the U.S. Olym­ pic hockey team beat the Russians. ‘Very congratulations to U.S. Yankee pig-dog hockey team,’ they said.”

Another ex-Navy F-4 pilot wrote in an email: “Our mission was to escort them over the carrier battle group, and we’d try to get between them and the ships. It was exciting to see ‘the enemy,’

though we couldn’t get close to the cockpit because of those awesome propellers. They were definitely something you wanted to stay away from, and you could hear and even feel them when you were flying close. They gave off a deep, loud rumble. We’d formate on the tail and wave to the crew back there.

“I never saw a Bear make a threatening move. In fact, I was formating on one and we flew through a cloud layer, so I had to tighten up. The last thing I wanted to do was lose sight of him and have the Bear pass the ship without an escort. I was impressed that the Bear pilot flew very smoothly and didn’t make any effort to pull away when the clouds were thickest.”

escort service Top: An F-4D of the North Dakota Air National Guard’s 119th Fighter Wing “Happy Hooligans” intercepts a Bear-D over the Arctic Ocean in 1983.

Above: A Bear-D passes a U.S. aircraft carrier, with an unseen American fighter escort off its wing.

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friends and foes From top: The cockpit of a Tu-142MR; two Bears and an Antonov An-124 visit Barksdale AFB in 1992 as part of an exchange program; Bear-Hs stand ready at Ukrainka air base.

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An Air Force RIO recalled intercepting a Bear off Iceland just as his F-4 needed to refuel: “My front-seater radioed the AWACS [airborne warning and control system] and said, ‘Say location of tanker.’ The Bear tail gunner pointed up to our right, and there was the tanker a few thousand feet above us. The Soviets were monitoring our frequency and at least one of them understood Eng­ lish. I gave him a wave and we climbed to refuel.”

“An A-6 tanker would follow the F-4s and refuel them on station during an intercept,” recalled a Midway-based A-6 Intruder pilot, “and the most common risk was the Bear maneuvering while we were tanking the F-4. They liked to turn into us and vary their speed. They were also very fast.

They could go better than 350 knots IAS, and our tanker package was limited to 300 when we were passing gas.

“That airplane was big and powerful. In some ways, it was even more impressive than a B-52, with all those props spinning. They were very loud—a deep drone when you got close. You could also hear the increase in noises when they decided to accelerate in earnest.”

Those who have never heard a Tu-95 in flight often grant its props instant-deafness powers, even claiming that submariners deep underwater can hear overflying Bears. (It’s actually a sub’s electronic sensors that pick up the noise, not human ears.) From what intercepting pilots have said, the truth varies from “never heard a thing” to that Intruder pilot’s “very loud.” Listeners in the lateral plane of a prop’s rotation probably get a stronger aural impact, as do those with loosefitting helmets in leaky cockpits. Bear pilots characterize the in-cockpit noise as “moderate.”

“Bear intercepts were routine,” noted a former Navy F-4 RIO. “Our job was to monitor the Bear and take pictures, and we never felt unsafe in any way. It was just a big airplane—nothing exceptional. No, we couldn’t hear it from inside our cockpit. And it would have been impossible for a Bear to make a move that would threaten a fighter aircraft. We were exceptionally maneuverable, and he definitely wasn’t.”

Despite flying largely overwater, Tu-95s carried surprisingly little sub-detecting equipment. But by the mid-1960s, the Soviet electronics industry was creating lighter and smaller anti-submarine avionics, and Tupolev built a Bear that could carry

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them. It was different enough that it got its own designation—Tu-142, the maritime Bear. It would ultimately carry an imposing array of anti-ship missiles as well as cruise missiles on four underwing pylons, but its sub-spotting equipment turned out to be largely ineffective against U.S. boats. In 1987 India took delivery of eight Tu-142s and became the only foreign country to operate Bears, other than three former Soviet republics that seized them on their airfields when the USSR collapsed in December 1991.

By then only 23 Bears remained operational, most of them in Russia but some in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Carrier overflights, taunting air defense zone penetrations and consequent intercepts ceased. A lack of fuel made it difficult for Bear crews to retain proficiency, but in August 2007, as Vladimir Putin took off his shirt and flexed his muscles, flights over international waters began anew.

Eight years later the Tu-95 finally saw combat for the first time, during the war in Syria. In October 2015 members of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria downed a Russian airliner over Syria with a bomb in its cargo compartment, killing all 224 aboard. By November, Bears were launching cruise missiles against ISIS targets.

There was no need for such sophisticated and expensive weaponry against ragtag terrorists, but it was an opportunity to not only service-test the Kh-55 cruise missiles but to demonstrate that the Russian air force still mattered.

But does it? Bears are big, noisy and in your face, but their mission seems to be trolling rather than threatening. They posture and parade while

vacuuming up at least some intelligence data— U.S. defensive sensors, signals and frequencies— yet they pose little danger. A serious attack would require numerous Bears, which would probably be detected on the ground the minute they began loading their missiles, since the Russians have no hangars for the oversized aircraft. And intercepting Bears is so routine that it has become no more than a training mission.

Get used to these aviating anachronisms, though. In a world where stealth is king, they will be blundering around like their backyard nuisance animal counterparts until at least 2040.

testbed bear Tu-95MS Red 317, based at Zhukovsky and used by Tupolev for countless tests, flies a mission carrying full-scale mockups of Kh-101 cruise missiles.

For further reading, contributing editor Stephan Wilkinson says everything you need to know about Bears is in the handsome, 560-page doorstop of a book Tupolev Tu-95 & Tu-142, by Yefim Gordon and Dmitriy Komissarov.

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No holds barred After implementing bombing strategies that reduced many German cities to rubble, Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay moved on to the Pacific Theater of Operations, where he organized the bombing campaign against Japan. Here B-29 Superfortresses from the 497th Bombardment Group fly in formation over the Marianas.

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ARCHITECT OF AMERICAN AIR POWER FROM BOMBER GENERAL AND SELF-PROFESSED WAR CRIMINAL TO HEAD OF STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND, CURTIS LEMAY DIVIDED AMERICA BUT ALWAYS KEPT IT SAFE BY DON HOLLWAY

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INCREDIBLY, IN MAY 1938, EVEN AS WAR LOOMED IN EUROPE, THE U.S. NAVY HAD NO ATLANTIC FLEET TO DEFEND THE EAST COAST.

Early Days Above: On May 12, 1938, YB-17s led by chief navigator 1st Lt. Curtis LeMay used dead reckoning to locate the Italian liner Rex 775 miles off the U.S. East Coast. Inset: LeMay peers from the cockpit of a pursuit plane while stationed in Hawaii in the 1930s.

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The fledgling U.S. Army Air Corps boasted that its new Boeing B-17 bombers could fill the gap and would prove it by finding the inbound Italian cruise liner SS Rex hundreds of miles out at sea. The lead navigator on that mission, 32-year-old 1st Lt. Curtis LeMay, had to predict the ship’s position, compensate for storm winds on his speed and course, and contend with a planeload of reporters and radio announcers ready to broadcast his success or failure live. Journalist MacKinlay Kantor, who would co-author LeMay’s biography, wrote, “His name was LeMay, but at the moment it might have been DisMay.” That February LeMay, one of the Air Corps’ best navigators, had guided a diplomatic flight of YB-17s all the way to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

This was different. “It had all been dead reckoning,” he remembered of the Rex mission, “there were no cities or rivers or any other landmarks underneath—only thousands of square miles of agitated water.”

He had calculated time-on-target as 12:25 p.m.

At 12:23, under a low ceiling, his three-ship YB-17 formation had nothing in sight. Then, as LeMay recalled, precisely on time and 775 miles from land, “A crew member’s shout of ‘There she is!’ almost blasted off our headsets.”

The New York Times called LeMay’s feat “a striking example of the mobility and range of modern aviation,” and Time magazine gave it two pages

of coverage, even though it reported his last name as “Selby.”

Since its inception in 1926, the Air Corps had struggled against opponents in the Navy who refused to believe bombers could eclipse their shiny battleships and aircraft carriers as longrange weapons, as well as members of its own ranks who thought bombing should be relegated to the short-range, tactical battlefield role. Though trained as a fighter pilot, Ohio-born LeMay had become a disciple of the “Bomber Mafia,” the clique of 1930s generals who believed that strategic bombing of infrastructure and manufacturing could impose America’s will on its enemies. As he later asserted: “Flying fighters is fun. Flying bombers is important.”

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And the sleek B-17 Flying Fortress was the premier American ground-pounder of the day. “It was the first of our four-engine bombers and, in many ways, the greatest,” said LeMay. “…I fell in love with the 17 at first sight.”

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n the 18 months after Pearl Harbor promotions came quickly. LeMay rose to full colonel, whipping four squadrons of inexperienced recruits into the 305th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force in England. “You must train as you plan to fight,” he told his men. “…There is no room for second best. Measure up or get out.”

His hard-driven crews called him “Iron Ass LeMay.” He completely understood. “I wasn’t real, I wasn’t human,” he admitted. “I was a machine.”

He needed to be. Against German interceptors and anti-aircraft fire, the first Americans over occupied Europe judged it fatal to fly straight and level over the target for more than 10 seconds, making precision bombing impossible. LeMay would not accept that: “You couldn’t swing evasively all over the sky without throwing your bombs all over the lot too.”

From the top turret of his lead bomber he arranged his squadrons into rigid, staggered “combat box” formations, their massed machine guns covering each other. On November 23, 1942, they joined a 58-plane raid on the U-boat pens at Saint-Nazaire, France. “I told my outfit that I was going straight in,” recalled LeMay, “and that I thought we could get away with it, and that I would be flying the lead aircraft.”

They spent seven minutes over the target without a loss. “We made the longest, straightest bomb run which had ever been made by B-17s over the continent of Europe,” LeMay declared.

His combat box became the primary Eighth Air Force bomber formation, and LeMay was promoted to command of the 4th Bombardment Wing. Still, when beyond fighter escort, American bombers took horrific casualties. During the infamous August 17, 1943, attack on German ball-bearing plants in Schweinfurt and Messerschmitt fighter factories in Regensburg, LeMay flew at the front of a 15-mile-long stream of unescorted B-17s that German interceptors picked off virtually at will. His B-17s destroyed or badly damaged all six main plants at the Messerschmitt factory, but of 376 bombers on the mission, 60 were lost. “Our fighter escort had black crosses on their wings,” he grumbled.

With the enemy making it prohibitively expensive in lives and aircraft to bomb factories and infrastructure, American strategists changed objectives. If bombers could not break the enemy’s ability to fight, they would break its will. Like every other combatant in the war, the U.S. would carpet-bomb cities.

LeMay, appointed brigadier general in Sept-

ember 1943, approved of the strategy. In his opinion, “There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore.

So it doesn’t bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders.”

With the British bombing by night and the Americans by day, German cities were reduced to rubble, suffering five-figure casualties per raid, with large swaths rendered uninhabitable. The results of Allied bombing on Nazi war production are debated to this day, but according to postwar studies up to 305,000 civilians were killed, 780,000 wounded and 7.5 million left homeless, with almost half a million homes destroyed. More than 90 percent of the survivors attributed Germany’s defeat to aerial bombing.

Into the fray Top: YB-17s pass over New York City prior to their February 1938 goodwill flight to South America, on which LeMay served as navigator. Above: Colonel LeMay congratulates a B-17 crew of his 305th Bomb Group at RAF Chelveston in 1943.

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Total war Clockwise from above: The B-29 Dauntless Dotty is bombed up on Saipan for a mission to Tokyo in November 1944; B-29s fly past Japan’s Mount Fuji; Osaka burns during a firebombing raid on June 1, 1945; Superfortresses of the 314th Bomb Wing taxi to the runway on Guam.

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n June 1944, Maj. Gen. LeMay was transferred to the China-BurmaIndia Theater and then, in January 1945, to the Mar­i­a na Islands. Using the advanced Boeing B-29 Superfortress, he would do to Japan what he had done to Germany.

In the 200-mph jet stream over frequently socked-in Japan, the trouble-prone B-29s—in LeMay’s opinion, “the buggiest damn airplane that ever came down the pike”—often had difficulty just reaching cloud-covered cities, much less bombing them. During their first Tokyo raid from the Marianas, on November 24, 1944, only about 10 percent had managed to hit the target. “We were still going in too high,” he remembered, “still running into those big jet stream winds upstairs.

Weather was almost always bad.”

None of that mattered to LeMay’s superiors, however. “If you don’t get results,” he was told,

“it will mean eventually a mass amphibious invasion of Japan, to cost probably half a million more American lives.”

LeMay came up with a diabolical solution: If the Superfortresses couldn’t bomb from high altitude in broad daylight, then they would do it from low altitude at night. Without high winds or Japanese fighters to battle, they could carry less fuel, fewer guns and more bombs. And the bombs would be incendiaries—M47 phosphorus bombs and M69 napalm cluster bombs—for which traditional Japanese homes of wood and bamboo, walled with paper screens and floored with rice straw mats, would be little more than tinder and kindling. “No matter how you slice it,” LeMay told himself, “you’re going to kill an awful lot of civilians. Thousands and thousands. But....We’re at war with Japan. We were attacked by Japan.

Do you want to kill Japanese, or would you rather have more Americans killed?”

To this day Operation Meetinghouse, the firebombing of Tokyo by 279 B-29s on the night of March 9-10, 1945, remains the single most destructive air raid in history. The Superfortresses flew single file over the city, dropping 2,000 tons of incendiaries, utterly destroying almost 16 square miles. More than a million people were left

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homeless and as many as 125,000 were wounded.

Japanese authorities needed three weeks to clear away the bodies. How many burned to ashes in the inferno will never be known. Estimates range from 80,000 to over 200,000 dead—more than in the atomic blasts of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki—and almost all of them were women, children and the elderly. The Americans lost 14 bombers and 96 airmen.

“I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal,” LeMay reflected years later. “Fortunately, we were on the winning side....All war is immoral, and if you let it bother you, you’re not a good soldier.”

LeMay didn’t let it bother him. Over mid-1945 he lit up city after city, halting only when he literally ran out of firebombs. He would consider atomic weapons unnecessary: “We felt that our incendiary bombings had been so successful that Japan would collapse before we invaded.”

By war’s end his command, operating more than 1,000 Superfortresses, was the deadliest air force on earth, having killed at least 220,000 Japanese civilians, possibly more than 500,000, and left five million homeless. When he stood on the deck of the battleship Missouri to witness the signing of the peace treaty, LeMay saw to it that hundreds of his B-29s thundered overhead.

As World War II transitioned into the Cold War, LeMay relocated to England in charge of the new USAFE, United States Air Forces in Europe, rebuilding the downsized command just in time.

When the USSR blockaded West Berlin, he recommended immediately bombing Soviet air bases in East Germany. “I think we would have cleaned them up pretty well, in no time at all,” he boasted.

Instead Western powers opted for an airlift.

LeMay threw himself into the effort with equal enthusiasm, commandeering cargo planes from all over the Free World to fly supplies into the beleaguered city. Cynics called the Berlin Airlift “LeMay’s Coal and Feed Company,” but at the height of operations it was delivering almost 13,000 tons of supplies daily, with a transport touching down in West Berlin every 30 seconds.

LeMay found it personally gratifying to sustain the city, still full of rubble from his bombs. “We had knocked the place down....Now we were

Fire from above Clockwise from top left: An ordnance officer sets fuzes on a B-29’s incendiary bombs; Brig. Gen. Thomas Power (right) reports to Maj. Gen. LeMay (center) on the results of the Tokyo firebombing raid he led on March 9-10, 1945; Japanese survivors of the Tokyo bombings set up a streetside black market; a B-29 of the 313th Bomb Wing unloads on Osaka during the June 1 raid.

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New enemies Clockwise from top: President John F. Kennedy confers with General LeMay and Air Force officers during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis; 750-pound bombs await loading on B-52s in preparation for an airstrike on North Vietnam; a B-52D bombs strategic targets in Hanoi.

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doing just the opposite,” he noted. “We were building and healing.”

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ith his demonstrated expertise in assembling air forces from scratch, LeMay was called upon to take over what was to be America’s main weapon of the Cold War, the new Strategic Air Command. “This had occurred right at the time [1948] when the Air Force had gone to utter hell,” he asserted. “…We didn’t have one crew, not one crew in the entire command who could do a professional job.”

On his principle that “A force that cannot fight and win will not deter,” LeMay had just started building up SAC when the Cold War flared hot again. “I suggested informally, when the Korean flap started in 1950, that we go up north immedi-

ately with incendiaries and delete four or five of the largest towns,” he recalled.

Needless to say, his advice was not followed.

The fighting raged down almost to the tip of South Korea, up to the border with Red China and back down to the Demilitarized Zone, a draw. “And what happened?” LeMay demanded.

“We burned down just about every city in North Korea and South Korea both.”

Accused of being heartless, LeMay thought himself pragmatic. “Actually I think it’s more immoral to use less force than necessary, than it is to use more,” he reasoned. “If you use less force, you kill off more of humanity in the long run, because you are merely protracting the struggle.”

To that end LeMay, now a four-star general, molded SAC to win a war—a nuclear war— from the outset. Its motto was “Peace is Our

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Profession,” but its task was to prevent a Soviet first strike, stop any Warsaw Pact advance into Europe and then carry the war to the Russian heartland, obliterating 70 picked cities within 30 days. LeMay kept America’s ever-growing fleet of B-36 Peacemakers, then B-47 Stratojets, B-58 Hustlers and B-52 Stratofortresses, in a constant state of readiness, with bases around the world, midair refueling, aerial command centers and strategic bombers flying 24 hours a day, prepared to strike on a moment’s notice.

Yet SAC—and LeMay, a man of proven will­ ingness to kill civilians by the hundreds of thousands in pursuit of victory—was a weapon too terrible for Washington to unleash. Even as he rose to chief of staff of the Air Force, LeMay found himself butting heads with presidents. John F. Kennedy cancelled his pet project, the supersonic XB-70 Valkyrie bomber, in favor of intercontinental ballistic missiles. (LeMay oversaw SAC’s ICBM program but was not a proponent. “Missiles are spectacular and they play their role,” he said, “but they have no sense of loyalty; they can’t think; they can’t be recalled.”)

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy refused to let LeMay bomb the island’s launch sites, and during the Vietnam War Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara also restricted bombing, lest it draw the Soviets and Chinese into the war. “He was the finest combat commander of any service I came across in war,” McNamara said of LeMay, “but he was extraordinarily belligerent, many thought brutal.”

LeMay’s answer to the North Vietnamese was, unsurprisingly, “Tell them they’ve got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.” Author Kantor was accused of inventing that quote for LeMay’s biography, but it came to exemplify his approach to war.

Arguably Operation Linebacker II, the strategic bombing of North Vietnamese military and industrial targets in December 1972—the largest USAF bomber operation since World War II—

proved LeMay right. It forced Hanoi back to the negotiating table and gave the U.S. a way out of the conflict. By that time LeMay had retired— some would say he was eased out—but not before wearing four stars longer than any other general in American military history.

In 1968 he campaigned for vice president on the third-party ticket of former Alabama governor George Wallace, once a sergeant under LeMay’s command, but LeMay differed with Wallace’s segregationist views and his brusque manner didn’t play well. One journalist called him “about as politically graceful as a rhino in a game of ice hockey.”

America had changed. In the 1950s LeMay had been the “Big Cigar” or the “Iron Eagle,” the personification of a strong United States.

In the 1960s he was “Bombs Away LeMay” or even the “Demon,” a warmongering monster.

Hecklers gave Nazi salutes to the man who had done as much as anyone to crush the Nazi menace. LeMay shrugged, “I was a hero one day and a bum the next.”

He and his wife Helen, married 56 years, were instrumental in founding the Air Force Village Foundation (part of today’s Air Force Assistance Fund) in San Antonio, Texas, for surviving USAF spouses. “I always think that if he had a legacy at all, it would have been that he cared for everyone in that [SAC] command,” remembered his daughter, Jane LeMay Lodge. “Everyone played an important part and he wanted each one of them to have the best pay and the best housing that the military could provide.”

Perhaps only his troops remember LeMay, who died in 1990 at age 83, for that. Today he’s regarded more as history’s greatest proponent of strategic bombing—relentless and ruthless—but in the end Curtis LeMay was not pro-war, he was pro-victory. “If you go to war,” he maintained, “you go to win it.”

Frequent contributor Don Hollway recommends for further reading: Mission With LeMay, by Curtis LeMay and MacKinlay Kantor; and LeMay: A Biography,

by Barrett Tillman.

another arena Above: Third party presidential candidate George Wallace (left) and his running mate, LeMay, wave to a crowd during a 1968 rally in Newark, N.J. Left: The polarizing pair often drew demonstrators, including during LeMay’s visit to the Coral Gables Country Club in Florida.

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THE LEGEND OF D.B. COOPER FIFTY YEARS LATER, MYSTERY STILL SURROUNDS THE HIJACKING OF A 727 OVER THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST—THE ONLY UNSOLVED AIR PIRACY INCIDENT IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION HISTORY BY JOHN FREDRICKSON

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Skyjacking drama A Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727 jetliner awaits refueling at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on November 24, 1971.

Among its passengers is a mysterious hijacker claiming to have a bomb and demanding parachutes and $200,000 in cash.

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Thief in the night In Seattle, the hijacker (depicted above in an FBI sketch) released all the 727’s passengers.

Remaining on board were the flight crew and Tina Mucklow (top), a cabin attendant who assisted him.

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Still unsolved after five decades, this aviation mystery evolved from a short list of solid facts into an urban legend bearing a thick overlay of conjecture. A new and novel form of grand larceny in the tradition of Bonnie and Clyde seemed to have been created. Maybe a “little guy” had actually beaten the system?

A nondescript olive-skinned man carrying a black briefcase and traveling alone under the ticketed name of Dan Cooper boarded the 727 at

3 p.m. for the short hop from Portland to Seattle.

The passenger load of 36 Thanksgiving travelers was unusually light for a pre-holiday afternoon.

With the declaration of open seating, Cooper settled himself into seat 18E in the very last row and then purchased with cash a bourbon and soda while chain-smoking Raleigh filtered cigarettes.

Not long after takeoff he handed a note to the nearest flight attendant that said, in neatly drawn capital letters: “i have a bomb in my briefcase.

PREVIOUS SPREAD & ABOVE: AP PHOTO; INSET & OPPOSITE PHOTOS: FBI

THE AUDACIOUS HIJACKING OF NORTHWEST ORIENT AIRLINES FLIGHT 305 ON NOVEMBER 24, 1971, DEGENERATED INTO A FRUSTRATING QUEST FOR THE FBI WHILE REMAINING A FASCINATING “WHO DONE IT” FOR THE REST OF US.

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i will use it if necessary. i want you to sit next to me. you are being hijacked.” When the

Security Administration, intense airport passenger screening, fortified cockpit doors and vigilant passenger identification.

As authorities initially investigated a suspect named D.B. Cooper who was quickly cleared of involvement, that name erroneously slipped into one of the first press accounts and became immortalized. Attracted to the Reno airport by broadcast news accounts, gawkers lined the chain link fence, staring at the wayward airliner parked with its aft ventral stairway extended. FBI agents went to work, dusting for fingerprints and searching for other forensic evidence. Without DNA testing (not yet invented), an ashtray full of cigarette butts was lost. (DNA tests were later conducted on a sample from a tie that Cooper had left on the 727, but proved inconclusive.) Cooper was aboard the airliner for five hours, chatting freely with cabin attendants, yet shared no useful clues about his identity. Handwriting analysts were stymied because Cooper reclaimed his handwritten notes before bailout.

crime Scene Above: The hijacker positioned himself in seat 18E, at the very back of the aircraft.

Left: He purchased this ticket in Portland using the name Dan Cooper, but due to confusion about an early suspect with a similar name, press reports misidentified him as “D.B. Cooper.”

Below: Northwest Orient Flight 305’s 727 seen in the light of day.

PREVIOUS SPREAD & ABOVE: AP PHOTO; INSET & OPPOSITE PHOTOS: FBI

attendant put the note, unread, into her pocket, Cooper said, “Miss, you’d better look at that note.

I have a bomb.”

After the 727 landed in Seattle, Cooper’s demands for refueling, $200,000 in cash and four parachutes were met. His clean-cut appearance, rational demeanor and technical knowledge were all indicators of a bright, normal person. The 35 other passengers, plus two of the three flight attendants, were released in Seattle and interviewed by the FBI. Some estimated the hijacker’s age at about 45. Bill Mitchell, a college student seated in 15A, reported seeing thermal long underwear extending into the gap between Cooper’s pant cuffs and the loafers he wore.

The remaining crew of four was instructed to fly through the inky darkness destined for Mexico City at 10,000 feet, unpressurized, with flaps and landing gear extended. This high-drag configuration rapidly consumed a full load of jet fuel, requiring a refueling stop in Reno, Nev., shortly after 11. There it was confirmed that Cooper, the ransom, the bomb and a parachute were gone.

A worldwide phenomena at the time, hijackings typically ran their course and were forgotten.

The first airliner hijacked to Cuba was in 1961.

The pace quickened to three per month during the summer of 1969. Perpetrators ranged from the mentally unbalanced to political dissidents avenging a genuine (or contrived) grievance.

U.S. airlines generally obliged the demands of the hijacker because passengers, aircrews and airframes most often survived. That precedent abruptly ended with the devastating terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001—an epic event that triggered creation of the Transportation

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high jump Clockwise from above: Cooper chose one of two military-style backpack parachutes for his jump from the 727—this is the alternate; he harvested nylon risers from this sport parachute to secure the ransom money to his body; Cooper exited the 727 from the airliner’s extended aft airstair.

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lready the D.B. Cooper mystique was evolving into a cultural phenomenon. Few criminals become heroic, but Cooper had touched a nerve. The story was rife with gaps and inconsistencies, inviting speculation. The result is enough books to fill a grocery store shopping cart.

Brief glances into the briefcase convinced the crew that the bomb was real.

The demand for a flight attendant to sit next to Cooper bestowed three important benefits during the layover in Seattle: The interphone provided instant communication directly with the captain; close proximity discouraged intervention by a law enforcement sharpshooter; and, most important, her safety was the stated reason the cockpit crew remained with the airplane.

Cooper demonstrated an understanding of airport operations. Furthermore, he had an insider’s knowledge of aviation. When asked the desired flap setting, he instantly responded “15 degrees.”

The Port of Seattle, FBI and the airline acceded to Cooper’s every whim—a strategy endorsed

by Northwest Orient’s president, Donald Nyrop.

Despite some delays, nothing requested was denied; however, rounding up cash and parachutes late in the afternoon on Thanksgiving eve was a challenge. Fortunately a hoard of circulated $20 bills existed in a safe at Seattle First National Bank (Seafirst) as a kidnapping contingency ransom fund. Best of all, the serial numbers were already recorded. Each bundle, holding $2,000, was secured by a rubber band. The cache of $200,000 weighed 21 pounds. Attempts to obtain parachutes from nearby McChord Air Force Base failed. Earl Cossey, a local FAAcertified parachute packer, provided two backpack-style military parachutes via Linn Emrich’s sport jumping business, which also supplied two chest-style chutes.

Exceptionally polite, Cooper became agitated and invoked profanity only once. That was when the refueling in Seattle went awry, possibly at the behest of the FBI, though it was blamed on vapor lock. A step truck was positioned at the left front cabin door. With the arrival of cash and parachutes, Cooper ordered the other hostages to deplane. The sole remaining flight attendant,

Tina Mucklow, a deeply religious 22-year-old, scurried up and down the step truck stairway five times, each time delivering a parcel to Cooper.

Cooper first inventoried the loot before focusing on the parachutes. A military emergency parachute consists of a canopy made of ripstop nylon, 28 feet in diameter, secured to the harness by risers. With surgical precision, Cooper quickly went to work on one of the chest-style sport parachutes by opening it and using his pocketknife to harvest six-foot riser segments.

Confronted with a choice of a superior performing sport chute, Cooper instead opted for a military backpack-style parachute and began his own inspection by pulling the record booklet from its pocket. Satisfied, he deftly donned the chute.

Mucklow was impressed with how quickly he adjusted the chest and leg straps. The purloined riser cords were used to wrap a packet of cash and then secure it to his waist so that the improvised rucksack would impact the ground first—another hallmark of military training.

After daylight gave way to darkness, a radio call went out: “Tower, Northwest 305 is ready for taxi.” As is typical for late November, a fierce storm off the nearby Pacific Ocean pummeled western Washington that night.

Huddled in the cockpit, Captain William Scott was in constant radio contact with both air traffic controllers and company headquarters in Minneapolis. Cooper was not privy to this dialog, but it probably distracted copilot William Rataczak. It was his turn to fly this segment. Victor 23 is the imaginary pathway in the sky plied by airliners between the busy Seattle (SEA) and Portland (PDX) airports. Rather than the normal steep climb into the serene atmosphere above, Rataczak disengaged the autopilot and handflew the big Boeing tri-jet southward through the low-hanging storm clouds, intermittent precipitation and constant crosswinds gusting to 45 mph.

Shortly after takeoff, Cooper ordered Mucklow to extinguish the cabin lights, close the first-class curtain, go to the cockpit and stay there. The two exchanged a final friendly wave as she pulled the first-class curtain shut. Cooper was never seen again. Indicator lights in the cockpit signaled when the aft door and ventral stairway were unlatched.

At 8:12 p.m., the crew sensed a subtle airframe shudder accompanied by a change in cabin pressure, suggesting Cooper had jumped.

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ith the war in Southeast Asia winding down, I arrived at McChord AFB, between Seattle and Portland, in 1973 as an aircrew life support specialist. A friend organized a weekend hunting excursion in late 1974. After a day in the rugged terrain, the topic of Cooper’s hijacking came up as we sat in the chilly darkness around the crackling evening campfire. An Air Force Convair F-106 interceptor pilot told his story. He recalled the 318th Fighter Interceptor Squadron had stood down for an annual bash on that fateful night three years earlier. As part of NORAD (North American Air Defense Command), the normal mission of the squadron was defending the ADIZ (air defense identification zone), a boundary line over the nearby Pacific. Four of the Mach 2.2 interceptors were always on alert, ready for immediate takeoff.

During the party, pilots from another base, who were unfamiliar with the local terrain, performed alert duty. A call came in: “Hijacking in progress—scramble—this is not a drill!” Two of the missile-laden fighters belched afterburner flame as they clawed for altitude in pursuit of Cooper’s 727. Controllers barked intercept coordinates over a secure radio net. The F-106s, however, were designed for supersonic dash. As then configured, the airliner was too slow for them to follow without slewing back and forth to maintain sufficient airspeed.

The inbound airliner with a potential jumper and chase aircraft in hot pursuit motivated air traffic controllers to clear a broad pathway over greater Portland. Although the F-106s caught up with the airliner, they were unable to see anything

in the darkness and were recalled just prior to entering PDX airspace.

The 727 passed close to PDX but its exact trajectory was unclear. With copilot Bill Rataczak manhandling the controls while battling crosswinds, was Flight 305 centered on Victor 23? Or to the west, nearer the Columbia River? Or east, upwind of the Washougal River watershed? Bar patrons in the small town of Ariel clearly heard an airliner pass overhead. Or was it the sound of fighter jets disengaging from a futile chase?

The need for an eyewitness to Cooper’s jump was dire. Did the parachute open high or low?

The temperature at 10,000 feet was 22 degrees and it was windy. If Cooper’s parachute opened at high altitude, surely the gusting winds would have blown him far inland and into very rugged country. Did the canopy “stream” (malfunction by tangling) or fail to open?

The Air Force pilots who had pursued Cooper were much better prepared than he was to survive such a jump. The temperate rainforest of the Cascade foothills is tightly packed with Douglas fir and other conifers commonly growing to 250 feet. Because of the jungle war in Vietnam, the newest military chutes were equipped with a tree lowering device built into the back pad, enabling safe descent from tall trees. Also attached to the parachute by lanyard was a survival kit packed with useful items: a handheld radio, one-man life raft, gloves and wool stocking cap, matches, compass and signaling devices. Even on land, the life raft provided shelter and insulation from the cold.

Tightly laced leather jump boots were mandatory for ankle support on landing. Cooper had none of these items.

fruitless pursuit Two Convair F-106s of the 318th Fighter Interceptor Squadron scrambled from McChord Air Force Base to intercept the hijacked airliner. The Convair’s Mach 2.2 capability actually proved a hindrance in the nocturnal chase, given the airliner’s relatively slow speed.

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Lesson learned Top: FBI agents sift the bank of the Columbia River, where some of the ransom money was discovered in February 1980. Above: A simple “Cooper vane” lock was installed on every 727 to prevent the airstair from being lowered while in flight.

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as D.B. Cooper a dashing and brilliant hero or a desperate loner stumbling toward suicide? Evidently he was an eclectic mixture of both.

Despite demonstrating knowledge of both airfield operations and parachutes, his other choices were fatally flawed. Hikers, hunters and other nature lovers routinely get lost in the Pacific Northwest mountains and are never seen again.

Late November in the region is characterized by short days, persistent precipitation and temperatures near freezing.

Upon landing, Cooper would have needed to quickly seek shelter. Cocooning within the parachute canopy would provide a modicum of protection, but the worst problem was the loafers. Surely they would have been lost in the windblast of bailout. Bare feet, hands and head invite hypothermia and make travel by foot difficult on slippery rocks within steep ravines blocked by fallen trees.

Extensive air and ground searches yielded nothing. Two hundred U.S. Army soldiers from Fort Lewis (accompanied by 20 FBI agents) scouring the rugged terrain on the south shore of Lake Merwin in March 1972 found two unrelated bodies: a deceased woman in a mill pond and the remains of a man with a broken leg who had starved to death.

In 1971 only the Boeing 727 and Douglas DC-9 had aft ventral stairways. Copycats emerged who survived their jumps but got caught. What could be done? The mechanical solution was simple but ingenious, visible to all but never heralded.

The mechanism consisted of a paddle measuring about four inches in diameter, a spring and a plate.

On the ground, the spring pushed the paddle outward and allowed the ventral stair to lower. In flight, the slipstream pushed the paddle back 90 degrees, blocking the door from opening. Every 727 and DC-9 either received a “Cooper vane” or had the door permanently sealed.

Years passed without a useful clue until February 10, 1980, when eight-year-old Brian Ingram, on a family picnic, dug into the sandy spit on the north shore of the Columbia River downstream from

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its confluence with the Washougal River. Young Brian excitedly brought to his parents a stack of waterlogged $20 bills with an aggregate value of $5,800. The two soggy bundles were secured with their original rubber bands, now rotted. The third was a partial bundle. All the bills were in the same order as recorded by Seafirst bank almost a decade earlier. Together, the excited family proceeded to the Portland FBI office. Interest in D.B. Cooper exploded in the wake of this stunning discovery.

Neither the Columbia River nor the Washougal watershed had been previously searched. Did the Columbia’s relentless current sweep Cooper’s drowned body and parachute 100 miles downstream and into the Pacific at Astoria? Were the bundles of cash buried in the river bottom? Did river dredging conducted in 1974 disturb the cash by lifting a stack of it onto the spit?

Larry Carr was the last FBI agent assigned to the case and contributed to an updated profile of Cooper published in March 2009. Carr surmised that Cooper had served with the USAF in Europe as an airborne cargo handler (possibly a loadmaster). In that role, he would have been familiar with the best flap settings for airdrop. Also, he would have often donned a parachute—but never actually jumped.

Carr thinks it’s highly unlikely that Cooper survived the jump. If his job required him to throw cargo out of planes, Cooper would have worn an emergency parachute in case he fell out.

That would have provided him with working knowledge of parachutes but not necessarily the functional knowledge to survive the jump he made. Carr further theorized that Cooper may have taken an aviation job in Seattle when he got out of the military and it’s possible he lost his job during the industry’s economic downturn in 1970-71. If he was a loner with little or no family, Carr said, “Nobody would have missed him” after he was gone.

The FBI ceased investigating America’s only unsolved airliner hijacking in 2016. No additional loot was ever recovered and generous cash rewards went unclaimed despite the publication of every serial number. Agent Carr’s conclusion is logical.

In all likelihood the mystery man known as D.B. Cooper was killed in his jump and his body rotted away, either on land or underwater.

John Fredrickson is the author of five aviation history books, including the recently released (with coauthor John Andrew) Boeing Metamorphosis: Launching the 737 and 747, 1965–1969. For further reading, Fredrickson notes that a recent trip to his public library turned up a stack of 16 books on the Cooper hijacking— take your pick.

cult classic Clockwise from bottom left: The clip-on tie that Cooper left on the plane later underwent DNA testing; Howard and Patricia Ingram sit with the money their son Brian found in 1980; tests were performed with Air Force crash dummies in an effort to determine Cooper’s landing spot; the FBI’s wanted poster added to the Cooper legend.

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warbirds on parade Clockwise from top: The B-25J Mitchell Betty’s Dream, P-51D Mustang Miss Kitty and a Korean War–era Hawker Sea Fury fly together during EAA AirVenture’s commemoration of the 75th anniversary (+1) of the end of World War II. Betty’s Dream took a Silver Wrench award as Best B-25 at this year’s Oshkosh fly-in.

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BACK TO OSHKOSH

AFTER THE CANCELLATION OF LAST YEAR’S EAA AIRVENTURE, THE “WORLD’S GREATEST AVIATION CELEBRATION” RETURNED WITH A VENGEANCE THIS SUMMER PHOTOGRAPHS BY CARL VON WODTKE & GUY ACETO In a cathartic pilgrimage from July 26 to August 1, more than 600,000 aviation enthusiasts descended on Oshkosh, Wisc., for the 68th annual Experimental Aircraft Association fly-in. The gathering, the secondlargest AirVenture following 2019’s event, proved a huge hit with attendees anxious to reacquaint themselves with happenings in the aviation world and came off without a hitch despite continued covid concerns.

As has become the norm, more than 10,000 aircraft arrived for the event at Wittman Regional and nearby airports, including 3,176 show planes, with a record 1,420 vintage aircraft registered. World War II airplanes were well represented given the delayed 75th anniversary celebration of the war’s end, which saw a chronological procession of performing warbirds starting with the Battle of Britain’s Hurricane and Spitfire, continuing with the ever-popular Pearl Harbor “reenactment,” Doolittle Raid B-25s, D-Day C-47 flyover and culminating in the B-17G Yankee Lady standing in for the absent (due to engine trouble) B-29 Doc to “drop the bomb.”

In addition to the WWII celebration, the EAA placed special emphasis on humanitarian aircraft and missions and on U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command aircraft. The former included the return of the Orbis Flying Eye Hospital MD-10, the Samaritan’s Purse DC-8 and a United Parcel Service 747-8F that played a leading role in the delivery of more than 400 million covid vaccines. The SOC’s representatives featured three types of C-130Js, CV-22 Ospreys, an MQ-9 Reaper and other specialized aircraft.

Whether you were lucky enough to attend or you missed this year’s event, here’s a selection of images commemorating AirVenture’s triumphant return. We hope it will whet your appetite for next year’s July 25-31 celebration.

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on the grounds Clockwise from above: An up-close look at the dive brakes on the Commemorative Air Force’s Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless featured on our May 2021 cover; an airshow attendee walks past the giant turboprop of a Luftwaffe A400M Atlas transport; a mushroom cloud erupts from “the bomb” at the end of the warbird show; the SBD-1 formerly at the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum is now being restored by the Kalamazoo Air Zoo.

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showstoppers From top: Skip Stewart performs aerobatics in his Prometheus 2 modified Pitts Special; members of the 8th Special Operations Squadron demonstrate a deployment from one of their MV-22 Ospreys; Red Star Aero Services’ MiG-17 taxis after a flight.

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arrivals and departures From top: The Sea Fury shines with wings folded in the Oshkosh sun; a Hughes OH-6 Cayuse “Loach” takes off as the crowd looks on; the celebrated P-51D Old Crow returns from a passenger flight.

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classic lineups From above: A 1929 Travel Air 4D, winner of a Bronze Lindy as the Silver Age Champion antique aircraft, fronts a row of Boeing-Stearman trainers; an F/A-18 Super Hornet from the VFA-106 “Gladiators” comes in for a landing after an air-ripping performance; Rutan kitplanes line the homebuilt area.

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fired up From above: The B-25J Lady Luck starts its Wright R-2600 Twin Cyclone radials; an F-16C from Shaw Air Force Base’s Viper Demo Team climbs out; international flags fly in front of the “World’s Busiest Control Tower.”

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red, white & blue Clockwise from above: Among the more unusual aerobatic performers was the prop- and jet-powered Yak-110, created by joining two Yak-55 fuselages together; this AC-47 Spooky flew with an AC-130J Ghostrider in a gunship legacy flight; a member of the U.S. Special Operations Command’s parachute team brings in the Stars and Stripes; an A-10 Thunderbolt from the 122nd Fighter Wing sports a “black mamba” paint scheme.

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PRide of the North The dependable Noorduyn Norseman has consistently answered the call since the Canadian bush plane was introduced in 1935. Here a Norseman operated by Chimo Air Service flies west of Red Lake, Ontario, in 2017.

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WILDERNESS WORKHORSE DESIGNED AND BUILT IN CANADA, THE RUGGED, RELIABLE NOORDUYN NORSEMAN SET THE STANDARD FOR ALL SUBSEQUENT BUSH PLANES TO FOLLOW BY ROBERT GUTTMAN

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going dutch Above: As vice president and general manager, Robert Noorduyn (left) served as a jack of all trades within his own company. Here he stands next to Wilfred Brintnell, with whom he formed Mackenzie Air Service in 1936.

Top: Norwegian polar explorer Bernt Balchen stands in a Fokker Universal, an early bush plane that Noorduyn helped design.

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If ever an airplane was created to do just that, it was the Noorduyn Norseman. Designed and built in Canada for Canada, the Norseman was a sim­ ple and dependable airplane specifically intended to go places others couldn’t go and under con­ ditions that would leave others grounded. The Norseman began doing that in 1935 and, to this day, a few are still doing it.

The Norseman’s creator, Robert Bernard Cor­ nelius Noorduyn, was born in the Netherlands in 1893 to a Dutch father and British mother.

Noorduyn was multilingual and the handicap of losing a leg as a child did not hinder his con­ siderable peregrinations. He studied aeronautics in Germany in 1912 before moving to Britain in 1913. There he began his career during World War I, first working for Sopwith and then for British Aerial Transport under fellow Dutch air­

craft designer Frederick “Frits” Koolhoven.

When B.A.T. folded after the war, Noorduyn moved back home to work for another Dutch air­ craft designer, the legendary Anthony Fokker. In 1920 Fokker dispatched Noorduyn to the United States to run his new American subsidiary, the Atlantic Aircraft Corporation, in Teterboro, N.J. “Fokker kept a low profile in the U.S. because he’d been on the wrong side during the war,” Noorduyn later explained. “I’d been working for the Allies and he’d been working for the enemy. I was accept­ able and he wasn’t.”

While Fokker was visiting the U.S. in 1925, Noorduyn helped draw up plans for a singleengine, high-wing cabin monoplane transport, the Atlantic Aircraft Model 4. By 1926 Noord­uyn had sold seven Fokker Universals (as they were known) in Canada to serve as bush planes, where,

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“TAKE OFF TO THE GREAT WHITE NORTH” RAN THE MEMORABLE SLOGAN OF BOB AND DOUG, CANADA’S COMEDIC “MCKENZIE BROTHERS.”

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he noted, they “exceeded their operators’ expectations.” In 1929 he went to work for Bellanca, with whom he designed two more high-wing, singleengine cabin monoplanes, the Sky­rocket and the Pacemaker. Those aircraft also gained favor among Canadian bush pilots. Noorduyn changed jobs again in 1932, this time to work on Harold F. Pitcairn’s new design for an autogiro.

In 1934 Noorduyn moved to Montreal to establish his own aircraft manufacturing company.

Having already created several airplanes popular with bush fliers, he chose to cater to that demanding fraternity rather than try competing against the larger aircraft manufacturers for airline contracts. To that end Noorduyn made a point of inviting bush pilots to discuss their special requirements, as well as to examine his aircraft designs and mock-ups and suggest any improvements that should be made.

Noorduyn understood that bush flying was different from airline flying. While both required expert aviators, bush pilots had to be able to operate in remote areas for long periods under extreme weather conditions. In addition, the bush flier had to be part taxi driver, part truck driver, part ambulance driver, part porter, part navigator, part mechanic, part meteorologist and part wilderness survivalist. Bush planes had to be simple enough for pilots to maintain in the field with whatever equipment they had on hand, without access to airport facilities. The aircraft had to operate with equal facility on wheels, floats or skis to enable them to fly from rough airstrips, lakes and rivers or arctic snow and ice. They also needed to accommodate both passengers and all manner of cargo, with doors large enough to admit bulky items such as oil drums. A high-wing configuration was preferred to keep the wing clear of obstructions on the ground or alongside docks and to facilitate cargo handling. A bush plane also had

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to be affordable and efficient enough to make a profit.

Unlike commercial airliners, bush planes did not have to be particularly large or luxurious. In fact, single-engine aircraft were preferred because most multiengine types were too big, complex and expensive. A high cruising speed was not a priority; as one bush pilot put it, “You only have to be faster than a dog sled.” However, bush planes did require plenty of power in order to fly in and out of the small fields at the remote locations they serviced.

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he prototype Norseman first flew on November 14, 1935, taking off on floats from the St. Lawrence River and immediately demonstrating good handling characteristics both on the water and in the air.

Since the Curtiss-Wright Corporation provided much of Noorduyn’s financial backing, the prototype and first few Norsemen produced were powered by 420-hp Wright R-975 Whirlwind radial engines. That engine proved insufficiently powerful, however, and was soon replaced with

BEating the bush Equally effective on wheels, skis or floats, the adaptable Norseman could ferry everything from passengers (top) to cargo (above) throughout the North American wilderness.

Below: A Norseman Mark IV of the Royal Canadian Air Force stands ready for its next job in 1950.

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Allied aSSET Above: U.S. Army Air Forces crewmen inspect a Norseman before takeoff from an American base in Goose Bay, Canada, in December 1942. The USAAF bought 749 Norsemen during World War II. Below: A wartime UH-64A lands at RAF Snetterton Heath in England.

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a 550-hp Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Wasp, subsequent versions of which were increased to 600 hp. Although that upgrade increased the aircraft’s weight, thereby reducing cargo capacity by a small margin, bush pilots regarded that as an acceptable tradeoff against the improved takeoff and climb performance.

The fuselage was made of welded steel tube, faired with wooden stringers and covered with fabric. The fabric-covered wings were constructed of wood with metal-framed control surfaces. They also featured movable flaps to reduce takeoff and landing speeds, a first on a Canadian-built airplane. The Norseman’s 170-cubic-foot cabin could accommodate up to 10 people. A large fuselage door provided ready access for either cargo or passengers and the comfortable cockpit had an additional door on each side. The empennage was sufficiently large to not require additional tail surfaces when the plane was fitted with floats.

Noorduyn sold only 17 Norsemen prior to World War II. Given the generally slow sales of new aircraft due to the Depression, that quantity was considered a success. Nevertheless, the onset of WWII greatly increased the demand for all aircraft, including an order for 94 Norseman from the Royal Canadian Air Force. Originally intended as trainers for navigators and radio operators, they subsequently proved invaluable for rescue and transport work.

The Norseman’s greatest single customer, how-

ever, was the United States. When the Army Air Corps was called upon to expedite deliveries of aircraft and war materiel to Britain via Green­­land, General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold turned for advice to veteran Norwegian arctic pilot Bernt Balchen.

The recently commissioned Colonel Balchen overcame Arnold’s strong “buy American” bias by explaining that the U.S. produced nothing comparable to the Norseman for supporting operations in rugged, remote regions such as Greenland and Alaska. As a result, the Norse­man became one of the few foreign-built aircraft operated by the U.S. during the war. In fact, of the 904 Norsemen eventually produced, 749 were originally built for the Army Air Forces as C-64s and UC-64s (though the Norseman was technically too large to rate the latter “utility” designation).

Although far from the most glamorous aircraft in the AAF inventory, the C-64 served faithfully throughout the world—and not just in polar regions. Frank Davis, a typical C-64 pilot, recalled his experiences with the aircraft: “During WWII I flew several hundred hours in Norsemen in India and Burma, a combat area where we often used very short strips carved out of the jungle. Of the thousands of hours that our Norsemen flew, I can think of no incidents caused by plane failure.

My personal problems came from a replacement engine from the States with four rebuilds—no longer eligible for Stateside flying, but OK for combat! It nearly cost me a few times (cutting out, but able to be restarted). We didn’t know what weight and balance was—we just stuffed them full of supplies, drums of gas, wounded soldiers, Jap prisoners, whatever, and hoped we cleared the trees. Getting over high mountains in hot weather was a problem, but with time, and sometimes a bit of flaps, we made it. The airplane certainly did its job, and I am grateful that our organization had the foresight to use them.”

The Norseman performed most of its work, as

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Thomas Hardy would have put it, “far from the madding crowd.” One of the few conspicuous events in its career was its unfortunate role as the aircraft in which big-band leader Glenn Miller disappeared while flying from Britain to France on December 15, 1944. What actually happened remains a mystery, but when his C-64A took off the weather was so bad that practically everything else was grounded. In 1987 a British fisherman raised the wreckage of an airplane similar to Miller’s from the bottom of the English Channel when it got caught in his nets, but he returned it to the sea. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), famous for its longstanding search for Amelia Earhart’s airplane, has expressed interest in finding and recovering the wreck.

The only other blot on the Norseman’s escutcheon involved the death of 31-victory Canadian fighter ace George F. Beurling. After surviving WWII Beurling volunteered to fly for the new Israeli Air Force. On May 20, 1948, he was testflying a Norseman prior to a delivery flight from Rome to Israel when it was destroyed by a midair fire and explosion. Again, the cause of the accident remains a mystery, although there have been strong suspicions that it was sabotage. Beurling was buried in Israel with full military honors.

Beurling’s Norseman was one of 17 purchased clandestinely in Canada for the newly established state of Israel. The others were soon committed to combat. On May 10, 1948, days after arriving in the country, one of the Norseman was shot down, or crashed, while carrying out a bombing mission (a role for which it had never been intended) during the fighting to circumvent the Arab blockade of Jerusalem. The aircraft’s engine was subsequently placed on the Israeli Air Force Memorial erected at Har-Tayyasim, where it had been found.

While most WWII aircraft were scrapped soon after hostilities ended, the Norseman’s career was only just beginning. Hundreds of C-64s and UC-64s came onto the surplus market, and as

the Canadian wilderness experienced a postwar development boom, the demand for bush planes soared. Many surplus Norsemen were snapped up by Canadian operators, while others turned up everywhere a rugged utility transport was required. Appropriately, another notable user of the Norseman was Norway where, as in Canada, the airplane proved ideal for operations in the country’s far north. One Norwegian Norseman has been preserved as the only remaining flying example in Europe.

In 1946 Canadian Car and Foundry took over Noorduyn in hopes of continuing production with the Norseman Mark VII, which featured a lengthened fuselage and all-metal wings and tailplane, but only one prototype was built in 1951. Moreover, the ready supply of surplus C-64s greatly reduced the postwar demand for new-built Norsemen. The last of them was delivered in 1959, the same year Robert Noorduyn died.

The Norseman was not actually eclipsed until the 1947 advent of the all-metal de Havilland Beaver and the 1951 appearance of the similar but larger de Havilland Otter. The Otter possessed a more advanced airframe than the Norseman, but it was of a similar size and used the same engine.

Nevertheless, the Norseman remained in regular use for decades thereafter, and as of 2020 no fewer than 37 were still listed on the civil register in Canada. Although it was unfortunately cancelled that year due to the covid-19 pandemic, Canada hosts an annual Norseman Festival at Red Lake, Ontario. Closer to home, a meticulously restored UC-64 is preserved at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

Merchant Marine veteran and frequent contributor Robert Guttman writes from Tappan, N.Y. He suggests for additional reading: Aviation in Canada: The Noorduyn Norseman, Volume 1, by Larry Mil­ berry and Hugh A. Halliday; and Great Northern Bushplanes, by Robert S. Grant.

Genuine article A surviving Norseman cargo plane owned by the Norwegian National Museum of Aviation displays its enduring mettle in Norwegian livery at a recent airshow.

WHILE MOST WWII AIRCRAFT WERE SCRAPPED SOON AFTER HOSTILITIES ENDED, THE NORSEMAN’S CAREER WAS ONLY JUST BEGINNING. NOVEMBER 2021

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REvIEWS

ABOVE THE REICH

For several decades Colin Heaton has had the privilege of meeting and interviewing a wide array of international veterans, from a teenage Boer commando to a street fighter in the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and the world’s ace of aces, Erich Hartmann. In Above the Reich he and colleague Anne-Marie Lewis focus on the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II. > > Four of his five protagonists hardly need introduc­tion: second-ranking American ace in Europe Robert S. Johnson, leader of the first air raid on Tokyo and later commander of the Eighth Air Force James H. Doolittle, WWII and Vietnam War fighter ace Robin Olds and Strategic Air Command leader General 66

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Curtis E. LeMay. Seeming a bit out of place among these aerial titans are the 15 pages devoted to Edward R. “Buddy” Haydon, a North American P-51D Mustang pilot whose sole claim to fame lay in sharing in the demise of a Messerschmitt Me-262 jet and its pilot, fifth-ranking Luftwaffe ace

Walter Nowotny.

Heaton starts by introducing each of his interviewees and finishes by putting some of their remarks in context with a generous supply of footnotes. The vast bulk of the book, however, is left to the airmen to share their memories of the historic events in which they played

reich fighter Major Robert Johnson of the 56th Fighter Group scored 27 victories over Germans in his P-47 during World War II.

a leading role, unedited and uncut. Warning to sensitive readers: “Ultimate warriors” (as the authors declare them) Olds and LeMay tend to step over the line between outspokenness and rudeness…with no apologies. If one prefers a more cerebral raconteur, there’s always Jimmy Doo­ little. In any case, Above the Reich will leave readers with as personal an insight into its five subjects as they’re ever likely to get.

Jon Guttman

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Deadly Dogfights, Blistering Bombing Raids, and Other War Stories from the Greatest American Air Heroes of World War II, in Their Own Words

by Colin Heaton and Anne-Marie Lewis, Dutton Caliber, 2021, $28.

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POLES IN THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN A Photographic Album of the Polish “Few”

by Peter Sikora, Air World, 2020, $42.95.

Even as the Nazi war machine rolled over one sovereign country after another in the early days of World War II, pockets of resistance developed and refused to give up. One of those stories revolves around a handful of Polish pilots who evacuated their native land and later France, but who found refuge in Britain, where their flying skills and fighting spirit were put to the test in the war’s foremost defensive air campaign starting in the late summer of 1940. It is estimated that 146

of the expatriate pilots flew with Royal Air Force squadrons in the pivotal Battle of Britain, demonstrating their determination to defend the beleaguered island nation and to avenge the takeover of their beloved Poland.

This is a thoroughly researched, wide-ranging and extensively captioned photographic record of the Polish airmen in the months leading up to and during the epic onslaught. Included are rare images of Poland’s obsolete parasol-wing PZL P.11c and France’s late-1930s

FERRY PILOT

SOVIET FIGHTERS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

by Kerry McCauley, self-published, kerrymccauley.com, 2020, $15.99.

by Jason Nicholas Moore, Fonthill Media, 2021, $55.

Nine Lives Over the North Atlantic

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Morane-Saulnier M.S.406, as well as countless views of the familiar Hawker Hurricane. There are formal squadron portraits and the occasional “hero shot,” but

the bulk of the photos show the pilots and ground crews working on their airplanes, awaiting the next scramble outside dispersal huts, relaxing with friends and even burying their unlucky squadron mates.

A particularly poignant picture series shows the men of the famed No. 303 Squadron greeting King George VI during his visit to extend thanks at the RAF Northolt station. It is in these kinds of photographs that the book reminds readers of the dedication of fliers who had lost their country but fought on for the cause of freedom. Here are the faces behind the legends!

Philip Handleman

Kerry McCauley’s memoir offers an interesting change of pace from the numerous personal accounts of ex-military or ex-airline pilots.

After earning his private pilot’s license and racking up hours flying drop-planes for fellow skydivers, McCauley got a job delivering light airplanes across the Atlantic Ocean from North America to Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It is one thing to fly the Atlantic as a passenger in a jumbo jet, but quite another to do it alone in a small single- or twin-engine Cessna or Beech­craft. On the verge of taking off on his very first ferry flight, an extremely hazardous solo trip from New­ foundland to the Azores, and realizing he was not being paid much for it, McCauley found himself reflecting upon his reasons for going at all: “I guessed that I was doing it just for the challenge and adventure of it. In the end that would have to be enough.”

It is clear from his autobiography that “challenge and adventure” play a major role in McCauley’s life. Over the years he has lost many friends and experienced numerous close calls.

His philosophy is that every pilot starts out with two bags, a full one containing “luck” and an empty one containing “experience.” Every time a pilot survives a close call, a little bit from the luck bag transfers over to the experience bag. In order to survive, McCauley says, the trick is to fill up the experience bag before the luck bag becomes empty.

The self-published Ferry Pilot is an exceptionally well-written page-turner that deserves a look from readers—and attention from a bona fide publishing house.

Robert Guttman

The access to Soviet military records that the breakup of the Soviet Union provided has given Western aviation historians vastly improved primary and secondary sources toward writing more thorough and accurate accounts of the fall and rise of Soviet air power during World War II. In this new book, Jason Nicholas Moore has ably tapped that new information and supplemented it with 30 years of personal research.

When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the country’s principal fighters were the Polikarpov I-16 monoplane and I-153 biplane, which were slaughtered by the vastly superior Messerschmitt Me-109Fs and later FockeWulf Fw-190As. Just entering service, however, were more modern fighters, the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3, LavochkinGorbunov-Gudkov LaGG-3 and the Yakovlev Yak-1. All three were still inferior to their German adversaries, but two of them, the LaGG-3 and Yak-1, proved to be sound designs in need of some alterations and, above all, more power. By 1942 the story of Soviet fighters followed two basic tracks—those of the Yak-1’s descendants and the radically improved line of fighters following the replacement of inline, water-cooled engines with air-cooled radials in the Lavochkin La-5. Moore describes in unprecedented detail the succession of aircraft whose development led eventually to the superb Yak-3, Yak-9 and La-7, as well as the products of other design bureaus. A wealth of photographs, graphics and color profiles make Soviet Fighters of the Second World War an invaluable reference on an all-too-often-dismissed factor in the Allied victory.

Jon Guttman NOVEMBER 2021

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REvIEWS AIRWARE WINGS OVER FLANDERS FIELDS

Between Heaven and Hell II OBD Software, overflandersfields.com, 2021, $45.

It’s been years since the appearance of Wings Over Flanders Fields, but the developers of that program, an addon to Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3 (CFS3), continue to expand and improve it. The latest iteration is a stand-alone product subtitled Between Heaven and Hell II (BHH).

This is one of the most thorough add-ons ever made for Combat Flight Simulator. A BHH campaign takes the player through the World War I pilot’s experience, starting with training flights in the observer’s seat and proceeding to bombing runs or white-knuckle dogfights against German aces. Every aspect of BHH receives high attention to detail.

Weather—including rain, wind and snow—adds tangible character to the flying. The developers have also significantly enhanced the graphics engine. Lighting is better and the terrain is heavily populated with buildings and vegetation. Even the sounds seem improved and provide feedback on the aircraft as it claws through the sky or takes damage.

As a campaign progresses, the available aircraft and the weather keep accurate pace with the historical time period, and player victories and losses influence the evolution of the battle front.

One of the welcome product improvements is logistical: Players no longer need to acquire CFS3 separately to install and play BHH. CFS3 is still there under the hood and visible when browsing directories on the computer, but it’s a great

HOGS IN THE SAND

A Gulf War A-10 Pilot’s Combat Journal

by Buck Wyndham, Koehler Books, 2020, $31.95.

The Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt, often referred to as the “Warthog” or simply the “Hog,” is legendary for its enormous nosemounted Gatling gun. Designed for ground attack, the aircraft is best-known for its service in the Middle East.

In Hogs in the Sand, Buck Wyndham provides an up-close and personal view of his experiences flying the A-10 to repel Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm.

Wyndham does an outstanding job of conveying what it felt like to fly such a heavily armed, singleseat aircraft. An intuitive pilot, he describes rolling in on a target in the A-10: “You simply maneuver yourself in the proper direction, look at the target, and command it to die.”

Initially based in the United Kingdom as part of an A-10 squadron during the Cold War, Wyndham and his fellow Hog drivers had their green aircraft painted gray before they were sent to an air base in Saudi Arabia. He describes the highs and lows of Desert Storm: the thrill of finally flying a combat 68

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convenience, especially for new players, to buy just one product in one place.

While BHH’s developers have done well taking the CFS3 engine to places no one expected, the sim is still sometimes clunky. The interface can be a little daunting for newbies, there are known incompatibilities with some peripherals and tweaking the software can involve digging into the file directories to find documentation or going online to get help. There’s also no support for multiplayer modes.

In addition, comparison to the more modern WWI simulation Rise of Flight is inevitable. For WWI fans, it is easy to recommend both but if limited to one, BHH has a slight edge.

Rise of Flight has many appealing features and is a technically impressive work, but BHH is unmatched in delivering the single-player experience.

BHH is well worth the play if you want to get a sense for how a pilot’s flying career tracked in WWI. I read Arthur Gould Lee’s No Parachute to prepare for revisiting this game, and during play encountered many of the same challenges as Lee. You’ll frown in disappointment when weather cancels a flight, groan when taking the Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2 against more maneuverable German foes and curse gun jams. You’ll sympathize with the plight of the infantry below and marvel at the wonder of the world from above, somewhere between heaven and hell.

Bernard Dy

high on the hog A Thunderbolt maneuvers during 1991’s Desert Storm.

sortie and bombing an enemy target for the first time, the periods of enforced boredom between missions and how the stress of the war gave him constant nightmares and a twitch in one eye.

Interspersed with all of this (and central to the narrative) is Wyndham’s infatuation with and pursuit of an American maintenance officer he met in the UK named Sarah, who deployed with his squadron to Saudi Arabia. Their relationship follows a somewhat unusual trajectory. All things considered, it is a potent tale.

Douglas G. Adler

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BEYOND

The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space

by Stephen Walker, HarperCollins, 2021, $29.99.

Ask the man in the street who was the first person to fly into space, and you might get John Glenn or Neil Armstrong as answers.

Some will name Alan Shepard, who indeed was the first American to reach space, but few will remember Yuri Gagarin, the low-time Russian fighter pilot who actually led the way.

This excellent book celebrates that achievement and at the same time gives insights into the cautious, dilatory NASA program. “We had [the Soviets] by the short hairs,” said Shepard, “and we gave it away.”

The Soviet equivalent of the Mercury Seven original astronauts were the Vanguard Six cosmonauts, and life for them was a world apart from what the American spacemen experienced. There was no Cocoa Beach with its strip clubs and groupies, no dollar-a-year Corvettes to race—though

straight-arrow Gagarin, 27 and married with two daughters, did succumb to some womanizing during the victory laps he took around the Soviet Union after his flight.

There was a different mindset in the USSR. The question was, as this book notes, “Gagarin or Titov?

Who should be sent to their certain death?” Gagarin won the toss, largely because he was handsome, charming,

first step Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (with his family, right) flew the Vostok 1 capsule (above) to become the first man in space on April 12, 1961.

energetic and obedient, with a winning sense of humor unlike his moody rival Gherman Titov. (Titov was even downvoted because his first name sounded too much like “German.”)

“Gagarin’s space flight,” the author writes, “…gave

hope and color to peoples’ lives, purpose to their sacrifices, pride in their nationhood and their political creed....it gave [the Soviet Union] a massive, euphoric injection of confidence.”

Stephan Wilkinson

the Operation Crossroads nuclear bomb tests and later became LeMay’s chief of staff at the newly established Strategic Air Command, eventually succeeding him in command of SAC upon

LeMay’s promotion to Air Force chief of staff.

Power’s public statements reflected an attitude of apparently sadistic ruthlessness, as well as an overt contempt for and opposition toward civilian authority, which alarmed much of the American public at the time. He may well have inspired the fictional Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s famous satirical film Dr. Strangelove.

Yet Ziarnick argues that Power’s unauthorized actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis may actually have contributed to defusing that explosive situation. In either case, To Rule the Skies illuminates one of the more important figures in the history of the U.S. Air Force.

Robert Guttman

TO RULE THE SKIES

General Thomas S. Power and the Rise of Strategic Air Command in the Cold War

LEFT: U.S. AIR FORCE; TOP RIGHT: GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES; INSET: ADN-BILDARCHIV/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES

by Brent D. Ziarnick, Naval Institute Press, 2021, $39.95.

General Thomas Sarsfield Power commanded the U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command during the critical Cold War period from 1957 to 1964, including the Cuban Missile Crisis. In this new biography, Brent D. Ziarnick makes the case that Power has been largely overlooked as a major figure in American military history. Overshadowed by his famous predecessor, General Curtis LeMay, he has frequently been depicted as nothing more than a henchman. The author believes that Power’s own merits

deserve reappraisal.

The son of Irish immigrants, Power joined the Army Air Corps in 1928 and rose to become the Air Force’s last general officer who did not possess a college degree. Although he spent most of the early portion of World War II in charge of Stateside training commands, he eventually saw combat in Italy during 1944 and led the first firebombing mission over Tokyo on behalf of Maj. Gen. LeMay’s XX Bomber Command.

After WWII Power played a prominent role during

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FLIGHT TEST

HI, JACK!

>

1. Three DC-3s from which airline were involved in the first mass air hijacking on March 24, 1950?

A. El Al B. Interflug C. Lufthansa D. Czechoslovak State Airlines

MYSTERY SHIP

Can you identify this carrier-based turboprop? See the answer below.

Tupolev Tu-144

3. What was the intended destination of the first in-air hijacking attempt over American soil on July 31, 1961?

A. Havana, Cuba B. Smackover, Ark. C. New York, N.Y. D. Chico, Calif.

Match the airplane in Andrei Tupolev’s career with its virtue or vice.

1. World’s first cantilever monoplane four-engine bomber (1930) 2. Twin-engine general-purpose warplane (1929) 3. Versatile jet bomber introduced in 1954, still used by China 4. Collided with an escorting fighter over Moscow, crashed 5. Intercontinental airliner, flew to U.S. while still in testing stage 6. First bomber to carry parasite fighters on its wings 7. First supersonic airliner, crashed at 1973 Paris Air Show 8. Excellent twin-engine bomber got Tupolev out of prison 9. World’s largest supersonic aircraft, built after Tupolev’s death 10. Notoriously difficult and dangerous to handle

5. Who was involved in the hijacking of an Air France A300 to Entebbe, Uganda, on June 27, 1976?

A. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine B. German revolutionary cells C. Idi Amin D. All of the above

ANSWERS: MYSTERY SHIP: Westland Wyvern. Learn more about it at historynet.com/aviation-history.

HI, JACK!: A.4, B.9, C.10, D.6, E.3, F.8, G.2, H.5, I.1, J.7. TUPOLEV’S TRAVAILS: 1.D, 2.C, 3.B, 4.B, 5.D 70

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TOP: ©MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY; BOTTOM: SPUTNIK/ALAMY

4. When did the U.S. and Cuba sign an agreement to return or prosecute airline hijackers?

A. 1963 B. 1973 C. 1981 D. 2010

TUPOLEV’S TRAVAILS

A. ANT-20 B. Tu-160 C. Tu-22 D. TB-1 E. Tu-16 F. Tu-2 G. ANT-7/R-6 H. Tu-114 I. TB-3 J. Tu-144

2. On April 9, 1958, the first aerial hijacking in the Western Hemisphere ended up at which airport?

A. Havana, Cuba B. Miami, USA C. Mérida-Rejón, Mexico D. Santa Clara, Cuba

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TODAY IN HISTORY DECEMBER 18, 1934 FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT VISITED BEAR RUN IN SOUTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA AND REQUESTED A SURVEY OF THE AREA AROUND A PARTICULAR WATERFALL. PITTSBURGH BUSINESSMAN EDGAR J. KAUFMANN HAD COMMISSIONED WRIGHT TO BUILD A COUNTRY HOME WITH A VIEW OF THE WATERFALL. THE FAMOUS ARCHITECT SURPRISED HIS CLIENT

BY INSTEAD DESIGNING THE HOME OVER THE WATERFALL. FALLINGWATER COST $155,000 TO COMPLETE IN 1941. THE HOME WAS MADE AVAILABLE TO VISITORS IN 1964.

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

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AERO ARTIFACT

general issue

From U.S. Army Air Corps cadet to Air Force chief of staff, General Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay’s four-decade career (story, P. 36) is among the most decorated and controversial in U.S. military history. Below, a collage of personal relics assembled from the collection of the National Air and Space Museum chronicles LeMay’s life of service.

Serving as a backdrop are (from top) LeMay’s flying suit, his sage-green type K-2B flying suit and his flying jacket and service cap, all issued while he was a four-star general. On LeMay’s portrait lay some of his many medals: Of particular note are (top row, from left) the Distinguished Service Cross, Distinguished Service Medal (with Oak Leaf), Silver Star, Distinguished Flying Cross (with Oak Leaf) and Air Medal (with three Oak Leaves). Third from left in the second row is the Medal for Humane Action, awarded in recognition of LeMay’s work coordinating the 1948 Berlin Airlift. While the Soviets may have cursed that particular effort, they were more appreciative of LeMay’s effective leadership as a World War II ally. To the medals’ right is LeMay’s Order of the Patriotic War, awarded by the Soviet Union to those who showed “fortitude and courage in battles for the Soviet Motherland.”

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PAUL KENNEDY/AIR FORCE ASSOCIATION/NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM

8/25/21 6:00 PM

Retro-style chronograph with precision accuracy

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oaring over English skies in 1940, Royal Air Force pilots knew they were all that stood between the British people below and the impending Nazi invasion. Day after day, these brave men took their Hurricanes and Spitfires to the air, relying on nothing and no one but their instruments and each other, to engage the invaders, defend their countrymen, and change the course of history by handing Hitler his first defeat of World War II. “Never, in the field of human conflict, was so much owed by so many to so few,” said Winston Churchill.

The Co-Pilot Men’s Watch is inspired by what was accomplished in the Battle of Britain. We studied classic aviator timepieces to match the vintage design and then gave it a 1940s price. Our watchmakers updated the movement for the 21st century, making it even more accurate than the originals. It features markings to calculate velocity, and a stylish sepia-toned dial carrying three classic complications: 24-hour at 3 o’clock and chronograph 60-minute at 9 o’clock. A vintage-style distressed brown leather strap recalls the battle-worn bomber jackets of the 1940s.

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75

An ni ve th rs ar yS et

WII Genuine W ge id Shell Cartr t! n Ce

I

The Coins That Stormed the Beaches of Normandy

t was risky. The entire force might have been pinned down on the beaches and slaughtered, ensuring a total German victory. But on June 6, 1944, General Eisenhower went ahead with the invasion of Normandy.

The American soldiers stormed Omaha Beach with more than 5,000 ships, 11,000 aircraft and thousands of paratroopers. It was a hard-won victory, but one that spelled doom for Hitler.

75th Anniversary D-Day Collection

While our soldiers fought on, the U.S. Mint was doing their part by striking the circulating coinage used to pay workers making the supplies that helped our troops win.

Now, on the 75th anniversary of D-Day, you can take home a piece of the Allied victory with this authentic 1944 5-Piece D-Day Collection. Each set contains a Lincoln Wheat-Back Cent, Jefferson Nickel, Mercury Dime, Washington Quarter and Walking Liberty Half Dollar, all struck in 1944.

Real American Silver, Real WWII Shell Cartridge Cents

Actual sizes are 17.9–30.6 mm

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In addition to this 5-coin set, you’ll receive a genuine military note issued to troops in Allied-controlled France, featuring a Franc denomination and the French flag.

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GovMint.com • 14101 Southcross Dr. W., Suite 175, Dept. DDS227-01 • Burnsville, MN 55337 GovMint.com® is a retail distributor of coin and currency issues and is not affiliated with the U.S. government. The collectible coin market is unregulated, highly speculative and involves risk. GovMint.com reserves the right to decline to consummate any sale, within its discretion, including due to pricing errors. Prices, facts, figures and populations deemed accurate as of the date of publication but may change significantly over time. All purchases are expressly conditioned upon your acceptance of GovMint.com’s Terms and Conditions (www.govmint.com/terms-conditions or call 1-800-721-0320); to decline, return your purchase pursuant to GovMint.com’s Return Policy. © 2021 GovMint.com. All rights reserved.

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