The Crowd Pleasers

by Pete Fusco

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  WAITING ON THE FUTURE

  EXCEPT to thrill spectators and sell a few war bonds, there was no reason to fly the trouble-plagued Curtiss XP-55 Ascender fighter at the Seventh War Bond Airshow at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, on May 27, 1945. Germany had surrendered a few weeks before and Uncle Sam was about to make Japan an offer it could not refuse. The futuristic XP-55 had no future, except one too far in the future for anyone to see at the time.

  The Curtiss XP-55, an experimental World War Two fighter design, had to wait for the future to catch up with it.

  None of the above reasons was enough to keep Captain William Glasgow, a veteran of eighty combat missions over Germany, out of the XP-55 cockpit that day. Nor, frankly, would those same reasons be enough to keep any real pilot from flying the XP-55 today if given the chance. For everything negative about it, the XP-55 was an exotic, tantalizing aircraft that begged to be flown.

  With a Lockheed P-38 Lightning on one wing and a North American P-51 Mustang on the other, Glasgow made a pass at five hundred feet in the XP-55. He then climbed to about fifteen hundred feet and slow-rolled to the right. The aircraft faltered after the roll was completed, lost airspeed, and crashed. Flaming wreckage traveled outside the Wright Field boundary and struck a moving car. Two persons in the car were killed and three others, including an infant, were injured. Captain Glasgow was killed on impact.

  The XP-55 was built to satisfy a 1942 U.S. Army Air Force contract that encouraged unconventional design submissions to allow better forward visibility for the pilot and extra room up front for armament. The Ascender’s comparatively small forward-mounted elevator (canard) and rear-engine placement fulfilled both of the requirements. The concept was nothing new. French designer and aircraft builder Louis Bleriot built and flew a canard-configured aircraft in 1907. For that matter, the 1903 Wright Flyer was a canard, the first one to fly successfully.

  The XP-55 looked good on paper but proved a disappointment. It was not as maneuverable or as stable as some of the other American fighters already in production. The 8,500-pound aircraft was also underpowered because the engine it was designed around was never produced. It had to settle for a lesser power plant.

  Curtiss-Wright built three XP-55s. Number one first flew in November 1943. The pilot lost control during stall testing at altitude but was able to bail out, a feat made a bit less perilous by using compressed air to first jettison the propeller. The second Ascender was successfully flown but stall tests were avoided.

  The military investigation into the Wright Field airshow accident included many eyewitness accounts. It was determined that Glasgow, after finishing the roll, may have lost too much airspeed. The aircraft started to descend in a high angle of attack; its wings rocked back and forth several times before it hit the ground. Investigators ruled that Glasgow had entered an accelerated stall, caused by the extra G loads on the wing from the high angle of attack and apparent over-control.

  The XP-55 had given Glasgow fair warning. In addition to the unacceptable stall characteristics that led to a crash on the first test flight, it was learned during the investigation that Glasgow had experienced “erratic gyrations about the thrust axis” after the second roll on his earlier flight that day.

  Glasgow said something to his crew chief, Staff Sergeant E. Brown, before he took off on the fatal flight that may explain what happened. Though buried for three-quarters of a century in a seventy-seven page military report, Glasgow’s remarks to Brown still trigger a grimace. The crew chief told investigators: “Upon asking him (Glasgow) of the condition and performance of the airplane, he said that the stability and performance was very good and that the only thing he had to watch was not to get into an accelerated stall. That is all that the Captain said to me.”

  As if to ensure no pilot would be killed in the remaining XP-55, an investigator at the hearing made a closing recommendation that “the remaining XP-55 aircraft be restricted against all aerobatics below 20,000 feet.” The crash of the XP-55 Ascender at Wright Field doomed its development. It mattered little; the age of propeller-driven fighters was at an end. Jet fighters waited in the wings.

  The Curtiss Ascender looks more modern today than it did in 1943 when it was derided as the “Ass-ender” and “Flying Goose.” While the XP-55 proved less than stellar in 1943, the design survived on a back burner until the future caught up with it. A number of contemporary rear-engine, turboprop-driven canard-type aircraft are its distant and better-behaved cousins. Many modern jet-powered fighters also utilize the canard configuration, as did the Russian TU-144 supersonic transport. Given that the XP-55 crashed due to a stall, it’s most ironic that one of the features of the canard design is improved handling in stalls.

  The lone remaining and once-unloved Curtiss XP-55 Ascender is on display at the Air Zoo in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where today it is loved and, at last, understood. Its only crime was arriving before aviation was ready for it.

  PART FOUR:

  THE AIRSHOW RETURNS

  Just as it had in World War One, the United States military had overstocked the pantry during World War Two with approximately one hundred thousand aircraft that were no longer needed. To protect the future of American aircraft, engine, and component manufacturers, the decision was made to recycle most of the surplus warbirds in the smelter.

  A small percentage of the aircraft went to public auction. Airlines, their fleets commandeered and otherwise depleted during the war, snapped up many of the large transports. Corporate and charter outfits picked through the smaller transports. Some of the bombers were used to drop borate on forest fires. Medium bombers and fighters, as happened after the last war, again found their way to Third World countries, which for a few bucks could harass each other in style.

  Most surplus aircraft sold to the public had been used for training. A favorite was the Boeing PT-17 primary trainer, better known as the “Stearman,” in which thousands of U.S. Army Air Force, Navy, and Marine pilots had learned to fly. Like the Curtiss Jenny after World War One, the public bought Stearmans in large quantities for little money. Crop dusting outfits appreciated the stout construction and city-bus sized fuselage that could hold a large hopper. To carry the heavy dust or spray, the Stearman was mated to the readily-available and inexpensive Pratt and Whitney R-985 Wasp Junior engine that more than doubled the Stearman’s original horsepower, from 220 to 450.

  Airshow pilots were quick to notice the Pratt and Whitney–powered Stearman’s potential. For show work, the match-made-in-heaven hybrid lacked only a couple more ailerons, red and white sunburst paint, checkerboard tail, and a smoke system. The Stearman has endured past anyone’s expectations. The Pratt-powered Stearman crop duster version was replaced within a couple decades, but the airshow version has become a permanent actor in a variety of roles.

  (Not all airshow Stearmans received the larger engine conversion. John Mohr, who retired after forty years of airshow flying in 2013, flew a stock 220-horsepower Stearman in a low-level routine many of his contemporaries considered the most interesting and exciting ever. Mohr was proof, if any is needed, of the irrefutable rule of spectator satisfaction in any sport: less margin for error leads to more thrills.)

  Another wartime trainer available for pennies on the dollar was the North American AT-6 Texan, a.k.a. the SNJ, the Harvard, or the Yale. It remains a popular airshow aircraft, though over time it earned a grim reputation at low level. The AT-6’s 600-horsepower R-1340 Pratt and Whitney Wasp engine pulled its 6,500-pound bulk around fine where there was enough sky to allow for mistakes, but those same mistakes often proved fatal near the ground. There is little power reserve to call upon when the AT-6 runs out of energy.

  Fighter aircraft that had literally ruled the skies over much of the world only months before were suddenly and summarily stripped of rank and turned into civilians. They were of little use to anyone except wannabe air racers. Ex-military pilots with racing aspirations were able to buy the same airplanes they had flown in c
ombat for bargain basement prices. They modified the ships in a hundred different ways, painted a race number on the side, and headed for the National Air Races in Cleveland, which also happened to be the biggest airshow in the country at the time. A public weary of war and ready for entertainment awaited as promoters once again began printing tickets.

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  HURRICANE

  AEROBATICS and air racing were the twin pillars of the airshow circuit after World War Two. Few pilots did both successfully, not due to a lack of competence but because each discipline requires different competencies. The hours spent practicing precision aerobatics did not necessarily adapt to the unique skill of banking hard at high speed around pylons in the close company of others, or vice-versa.

  Marge Hurlburt, a member of the Women’s Air Service Pilots (WASPs) during the war, was a winning air racer who tried to adapt to airshow flying. She was killed attempting a low-level maneuver in a North American AT-6 Texan at a 1947 Fourth of July airshow in Decorah, Iowa. It was her first day with the show.

  The year before, at the 1946 National Air Races in Cleveland, Hurlburt won the women’s $5,000 Halle Trophy Race with a speed of 200.5 mph in her AT-6. She was expected to repeat her Halle Trophy Race win in the fall of 1947.

  Navy ace Cook Cleland, who won the 1947 and 1949 unlimited Thompson Trophy Races, counted Hurlburt among his friends. He thought highly of her piloting skills and loaned her one of his race-prepared Goodyear F2G Corsair fighters in March 1947. In the Corsair, Hurlburt set a women’s international speed record of 337 mph, bettering by 45 mph the previous record set by Jackie Cochran in 1937. The feat drew the attention of the media, which dubbed Hurlburt “America’s Queen of the Air.” (Cochran reclaimed the record with a speed of 413 mph later in 1947, after Hurlburt was killed.)

  In the summer of 1947, Hurlburt was thinking ahead to 1948 and the $25,000 Goodyear Trophy Race, an event for small racers with a maximum of 85 horsepower. The Goodyear rules made it possible for those without great resources to build competitive aircraft. Hurlburt and two other ex-WASPs had designed and built the Hurlburt Hurricane for the 1947 Goodyear race, even though the rules prohibited women pilots from flying in the race. The Hurricane had personality but was not competitive. It made Hurlburt more determined than ever to beat the men in 1948, even if she could not race the new aircraft herself.

  How Hurlburt found herself in the unfamiliar role of airshow aerobatic pilot had everything to do with her competitiveness and passion for air racing. To earn money to construct the planned 1948 Goodyear racer, Hurlburt stepped out of her racing comfort zone and joined an air circus called “The Flying Tigers” in July 1947.

  On her first day with the act, about twenty-five hundred spectators lined Tatro Field in Decorah, Iowa, and watched Hurlburt take off in an AT-6 that she had borrowed while hers was being repaired. After buzzing the field at low altitude, Hurlburt began an aerobatic maneuver, described by various eyewitnesses as either a roll or a loop. While in the inverted position, the nose of the AT-6 dropped and Hurlburt crashed and was killed in a field near the airport. She was thirty-two years old.

  Hurlburt’s death did not go unnoticed. Time magazine listed Hurlburt’s passing in its “Milestones” section. The Chicago Daily Tribune’s Page One headline read, “World Air Speed Queen Dies In Crash.” The Tribune story quoted a member of the Flying Tigers troupe, who repeated what Hurlburt had said before she took off on her last flight. “I like speed flying,” Hurlburt said, “but I certainly don’t care for this stunt flying.”

  Hurlburt had been a junior high school teacher before joining the WASPs in 1942. She flew everything from trainers to bombers, towed targets for gunners learning their trade, test-flew new aircraft and ferried them on dangerous long-distance deliveries. Hurlburt served for twenty months before the WASPs were unceremoniously disbanded with no recognition or benefits at the end of the war.

  Marge Hurlburt’s name is not well known today. History awards her little more than a footnote. If she had not died so young, Hurlburt would likely have become a force for women in aviation. Building a racer to beat the men would have been just a start. There’s little doubt Hurlburt would have hammered away at the injustice to women that remained in 1940s America despite a world war fought to end injustice.

  Marge Hurlburt and the AT-6 Texan she flew to victory in the 1946 Halle Trophy Race. Courtesy of International Women’s Air & Space Museum.

  Hurlburt is honored at the International Women’s Air & Space Museum at Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland.

  A few months after Hurlburt’s death, her Hurricane was eliminated in an early 1947 Goodyear heat, although history is vague as to the pilot’s name. It is known, however, that Cook Cleland and Earl Ortman, both air-racing legends, had offered to fly the ship in honor of their friend Marge. The Hurricane survived the years; it is undergoing restoration in California.

  Today, women air racers regularly compete against men.

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  REVIVING THE ACT

  BEFORE World War Two, Dick Powell had enjoyed considerable success as part of a wing-walking act known as “The Unholy Three.” After the war, when most of the surviving wing walkers of his generation had retired, Powell wanted back into what he called the “big money.” He refused to bow out of the game and defer to the new, younger cast of characters.

  “We want to show present-day kids how their grandfathers flew,” Powell told the Waukesha (Wisconsin) Daily Freeman September 3, 1948.

  On that same day, Powell amply demonstrated “how their grandfathers flew.” With the reporter in attendance, Powell sat on a Stearman wing as if on a park bench. Pilot Maurie Norum dove the aircraft and entered a loop. Powell stayed glued to the wing, thanks to Isaac Newton’s discovery of centrifugal force. Powell claimed he was the only person to ever accomplish the feat, but that was not quite true. Two decades earlier, barnstorming wing walker Al Blackstone rode through loops while standing on the top wing of a Curtiss Jenny. Again, thanks to Newton.

  In 1948, Powell teamed up with pilots Norum and Sam Sharp. They called themselves “Powell’s Flying Aces.” All had been part of an earlier age. They had survived thousands of stunts, some of which defy comprehension today. Powell was both a wing walker and a movie pilot; he flew expendable archaic airplanes in Dawn Patrol and Hell’s Angels.

  To genuinely bring back the pre-World War Two era to the public, to show kids “how their grandfathers flew,” Powell needed to find some Curtiss Jennies but was frustrated in his attempt to find any that were still flyable in 1948. By then, the Jennies were decades past their expiration date. Those lucky enough to have survived World War One pilot-training duties had been criminally abused for the next twenty years and left for dead when they could give no more. Available airplanes such as the Stearman, while they were fine for the aforementioned looping stunt, simply did not have enough struts, fittings, and wires for proper wing walking, at least in Powell’s opinion.

  In 1948, Powell was forty-five years old. Since daredevils remain so for life, he was as ready as he had been when younger, at least in spirit. But he had not wing walked for a decade when he signed up for a September 27, 1948 airshow in Hales Corner, Wisconsin.

  A crowd of five thousand watched Powell climb out of the Stearman cockpit at just a few hundred feet and put on his show. All that is known of Powell’s act is that one stunt required he hang from the wing leading edge by his knees. Presumably, he would repeat sitting free on the wing during a loop for his finale, as he had done a few days before.

  Sadly, hanging by one’s knees called for physical fitness beyond what the middle-aged Powell may have possessed. When he tried to climb back onto the wing, he lacked the energy and strength. He could do nothing but dangle while his legs tired and cramped. The pilot realized Powell’s helplessness and raced for a nearby lake, where the wing walker could safely fall into the water. But before the aircraft could reach the lake, Powell fell one hundred feet to his death.

  “Old-Ti
me Wing Walker Dies as Grip Fails in New Stunt,” read the headline the next day on a story that ran in the Pittsburgh Press. The headline reduced Powell’s life and death to just a few words: He had lost his grip and was killed because he had grown old. Headlines are seldom sympathetic eulogies. Ironically, if Powell had been hanging from a Curtiss Jenny wing on the day he died, there would have been more to hang on to and he might have had a better chance to save himself.

  Little else is known about Dick Powell except that he was also a parachutist that specialized in delayed openings. He claimed to have invented mass parachute jumps and the “static line,” a cable that stays attached to the aircraft and opens parachutes without use of the hands. Untold thousands of American paratroopers jumped out of aircraft during World War Two hooked to static lines. Student skydivers still use it. (Powell’s claim notwithstanding, Charles Broadwick is generally given credit for inventing the device during World War One.)

  Pat Cuda, Powell’s friend and manager of the aerial circus, told United Press International that Powell and his waitress wife were living in a motel and barely getting by. The couple desperately needed the money from the Hales Corner show. Admittedly, it was small-time but only the first step for Powell’s planned comeback. Cuda said, “Dick was a stunt pilot first and foremost. He never wanted to do any other kind of work.”

  Like all who perform in the air, Dick Powell lived a life of calculated risk. Time after time, his skill and youth prevailed. He must have known the added years lengthened the odds against him but he unhesitatingly bet his life.

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