Dream Aircraft

by Schiff, Barry

  During a subsequent telephone conversation with Connie Bowlin, Holden said matter-of-factly, “I don’t know why I should help you to sell this airplane. I should be the one to buy it.”

  She recalls thinking that she could not afford the airplane but simply had to have it. “You don’t go looking for love; it finds you.”

  Holden adds, “I purchased the airplane sight unseen in June, 2005 even if it might mean having to mortgage my home, sell my firstborn, and letting the county bury me in a pauper’s graveyard. I placed my faith in the ancient aviators who will help me to find a way to keep and fly Ellie [so named by Holden from the initials of the Lockheed Electra].”

  Holden had no buyer’s remorse even though she had no idea how she would get it from Griffin, Georgia to her home in San Luis Obispo, California. She had neither a taildragger endorsement nor a multiengine rating. Fortunately, she was able to “sweet-talk” her close friend, Curt “Rocky” Walters, a captain for American Eagle, into going to Georgia with her and getting checked out in the airplane.

  Walters flew the airplane to California with Holden riding shotgun and grinning all the way. He, too, fell in love with the airplane and became Holden’s partner. They immediately began the process of restoring “old number 240” to its original condition and TWA livery.

  The untrained eye often mistakes the Lockheed Electra Junior for the venerable Model 18 Twin Beech. They are very similar in appearance, and there are so many more Twin Beeches than there are Electras. Lockheed had built only 130 Juniors when World War II began, necessitating a shift in the factory’s focus from civil to military aircraft. Less than a dozen are still flying worldwide.

  The fuselage tapers to distinctive and petite vertical fins, a trademark of its legendary designer, Kelly Johnson. The landing gear was designed by Lloyd Stearman.

  With a maximum cruise speed of 225 mph, it was the fastest transport airplane of its day.

  The Electra Junior was the airplane in which Victor Laszlo and his wife, Ilsa Lund, escaped from Morocco in the classic 1942 film, Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

  Paraphrasing author Bob Grimstead, “the Electra Junior is reminiscent of an elegant era when style was an integral part of all great designs.” Lockheed’s next airliner, the curvaceous Constellation (colloquially called Connie), was arguably the most stylish of all.

  The airplane has two cargo compartments, one in the nose and another aft of the cabin. They carry a maximum of 450 pounds, 250 up front and 200 in the rear. The center-of-gravity limits reportedly cannot be violated as long as neither cargo compartment is overloaded.

  Cabin entry is made through a passenger door behind the left wing. You then climb up the inclined cabin, over the wing spar, and into the cockpit.

  Walters invited me to sit in the hallowed left seat, the same seat that decades ago had been occupied by famed TWA aviators such as Frye, Richter, Daniel “Tommy” Tomlinson, and the most famous of all, Howard Hughes. (Although Hughes flew many of TWA’s airplanes wherever and whenever he wanted, he never flew one in passenger service.) It almost felt as though I were walking on a grave.

  Cockpit ambiance reeks of aviation’s Golden Age. Even the smell is from a bygone era. I slowly and reverently allowed my fingers to wander and lightly touch and become familiar with the old controls, levers, knobs, switches, and instruments.

  I pulled out the large, square knob that is the master switch, completed the Before-Start Checklist, and began the busy, 2-handed sequence of steps needed to awaken the supercharged, 450-hp, Pratt & Whitney engines. The procedure is more art than science. Like other radial engines, it comes to life one or two cylinders at a time, belching and coughing great swarms of smoke guaranteed to create instrument conditions for anyone standing behind.

  Before taxiing, Walters told me that I was the only one with access to the toe brakes. “The bad news is that the airplane has poor brakes,” he cautioned. He then added with a smile that “the good news is that it has poor brakes.” I understood; although we would not be able to stop in a short distance, the ineffective brakes made it less likely that I would ground loop or cause their beloved taildragger to nose over during a botched landing.

  Over-the-nose visibility is not great. Shallow S-turning is helpful during taxi to ensure that it is clear ahead.

  After a conventional runup, I taxied onto the runway, lined up with the centerline, and engaged the tailwheel lock to tame the taildragger during its takeoff roll. Flaps are not used for takeoff.

  I advanced the throttles leading slightly with the left to help keep Junior tracking true. The tail comes up by itself at about 40 mph, but some forward pressure is required with a cabin full of passengers. Ellie shows that she is ready to fly by serenely levitating without any help from the pilot, thank you.

  The engines are limited to 450 hp for 1 minute. Maximum continuous is 400 hp.

  Surprisingly, there are no cowl flaps, and as expected, high oil temperatures can be a problem.

  In-flight visibility from the cockpit is fair to poor because of the small windscreens and huge engine cowlings acting like a pair of blinders.

  Did I mention that the cockpit is noisy? It is. There are two reasons to keep the power low, to preserve fuel and hearing. Noise level in the cabin, though, is pleasantly acceptable.

  The airplane flies nicely about all axes at all speeds, except that the ailerons are a bit heavy and create considerable adverse yaw effect without appropriate rudder assistance.

  Many of the V-speeds and performance information to which modern pilots usually have access are not available to Electra pilots. Niceties such as landing distance, VX (best angle-of-climb speed), and VYSE (best rate-of-climb speed with an engine out), for example, can only be estimated.

  The fuel system consists of 4 tanks, a forward and an aft tank in each wing, that hold a total of 200 gallons. Either engine can be supplied by any tank. A safety feature usually found only on larger airplanes is that the forward fuel tanks can be dumped to improve engine-out performance at heavy gross weights.

  Each engine has a vacuum pump to spin the gyros, but you must select which one you want to use. The other serves as a standby pump.

  The landing gear is extended electrically between 120 and 140 mph. At more than 140 mph, the motor has difficulty pushing the legs down and forward against the relative wind and into the locked position. At less than 120 mph, the gear clunks hard against the forward stops.

  The main landing gear legs are physically interconnected, so if one comes down, you know that the other is down, too. The tailwheel, however, is welded down.

  Once the main gear has been extended you can accelerate to the redline airspeed of 275 mph (if desired).

  There are no wheel-well doors. When the gear is retracted, half of each wheel protrudes from the bottom of its nacelle and would help to protect the airframe in the event of a wheels-up landing.

  The Electra Junior is strictly an electric airplane. Hydraulics is used only to operate the disc brakes.

  With a 2-foot chord, the electrically operated split flaps are large and effective, but they move slowly, requiring 22 seconds to go all the way down. As the flaps extend, the ailerons droop about 10 degrees providing the effect of full-span flaps.

  Both the landing gear and the flaps can be raised or lowered using a hand crank in case of an electrical malfunction.

  I retired from TWA in 1998, and my airline ceased to exist when American Airlines acquired TWA in 2001 and immediately stripped away the historic logo from wherever it existed. The sense of déjà vu was almost overwhelming when I heard the voice of San Luis Obispo Tower coming through the headphones after I reported downwind. “TWA One Three Seven, you’re cleared to land.”

  The cockpit seemed filled with ghosts. I could almost hear a TWA graybeard with four gold stripes warning me as I turned onto
final approach. “Don’t screw up the landing, kid. We’re watching.”

  I came over the fence at 85 mph and touched down with a wheel landing at 65 mph. The long-legged Lockheed rolls on effortlessly making even a mediocre pilot look good. The elevator is so effective that forward pressure on the control yoke keeps the tail off the ground until slowing to almost taxi speed.

  The Lockheed Electra Junior first flew on June 27, 1936, six months before the Twin Beech, and was an advanced airplane for its time. It was a slim, scaled-down version of the Model 10E Electra, the larger airplane in which Amelia Earhart attempted to fly around the world in 1937. With the same engines and much less weight and drag than the 10E, the Junior has superior performance leading some to speculate that Earhart might have succeeded had she used the more efficient 12A. (Only 2 Model 12Bs built. These were identical to the 12As but had less-powerful, 420-hp Wright Whirlwind engines.) The “Baby Electra” carried 8 passengers in airline configuration but only 4 or 6 as a corporate aircraft.

  Only 6 Electra Juniors were purchased by the airlines; the rest were sold as corporate, private, and military aircraft. The airplane was so well designed and built that it is one of very few never to have had an airworthiness directive issued against it.

  Thanks to Holden, Walters, and The Spirit of TWA (the official name they have given to their airplane), the memory of TWA is alive and well.

  Holden and Walters do not consider themselves owners of the Electra Junior. They instead regard themselves as guardians of a living, flying legacy. They insist that the airplane belongs to the public in general and to the TWA community in particular. They use it to bring joy and inspiration to all who experience it.

  The airplane touches your soul.

  There is nothing that can be written about the North American Aviation P-51D Mustang that hasn’t already been said. It is the ultimate single-engine, propeller-driven airplane, a sculpture of aerodynamic eroticism that stirs a pilot’s heart. The distinctive snarl of its liquid-cooled, V-12 engine turns heads wherever and whenever it is heard.

  Can there be a pilot who has not wanted to fly one?

  The clearance crackled through my headphones, “Mustang One Five One Delta Papa, cleared for takeoff.”

  This was the moment of which dreams are realized and memories are made.

  I pushed forward on the control stick to unlock the Mustang’s full-swiveling tailwheel for the turn onto Camarillo’s Runway 26. Pulling the stick back limits tailwheel swivel to 6 degrees left or right, enough to make wide-radius taxiing turns.

  I held in position to collect my thoughts, to ensure that I was ready for what lay ahead. The idling Merlin engine made that distinctive popping sound. I nudged the throttle to 1,500 rpm for a final check of the gauges.

  At 69 I was about to solo a Mustang for the first time and felt as much anxiety as when I had made my first solo flight 53 years ago. I dried my hands on my pant legs.

  I couldn’t help thinking about the Mustang’s reputation for being difficult to control during the takeoff roll. An unsettling rumor says that more P-51s were lost during training than in combat, although Bob Hoover doesn’t agree with that. It was comforting, though, to know that the typical World War II pilot stepping into the single-place fighter for the first time had only 200 hours of flight time. I had a wee bit more.

  The long nose seemed to slope up and away for as far as the eye could see but is thankfully slender. Although I could not see directly ahead, I could see a considerable length of the runway edges. More of the runway is visible than when flying many airplanes equipped with wide radial engines that block more of the view. The 11-foot propeller made humongous, blurred slices across the sky.

  I rechecked rudder trim: 6-degrees right. The canopy was locked, engine-coolant temperature was in the green, boost pump was on, and the mighty Merlin was feeding from the left tank.

  Toe brakes firmly applied, I advanced the throttle to 2,300 rpm and 30 inches of manifold pressure. The Mustang trembled slightly as if champing at the bit, impatient to be cut loose.

  Brakes released, we began to accelerate, and I kept my feet dancing to arrest directional transgressions. As airflow increased across the rudder, I advanced the throttle to 3,000 rpm and 40 inches. (The geared propeller turns at only 1,437 rpm.) I held the stick fully aft to keep the tailwheel on the ground and assist with tracking. I had been taught that the best way to maintain directional control is to increase power in steps as control effectiveness increases.

  At 50 knots I slowly but forcefully pushed the stick forward. The end of the runway came into view, and I increased power to 55 inches (120 gallons per hour of fuel flow). I began to appreciate why the British (for whom the P-51 was developed) called this airplane a Mustang, a wild stallion of the American prairie. The unbridled acceleration, energy, and noise level are startling and impressive.

  Although 61 inches of manifold pressure are available for takeoff, I was not ready for the combination of twisting and turning forces that accompany 1,490 horsepower slinging that huge propeller. (Torque alone is impressive and causes the left tire to wear much faster than the right.) A takeoff using maximum power could wait until I had more experience.

  Besides, a lightly loaded Mustang inspired by 55 inches of manifold pressure performs better than a wartime edition loaded with armament and drop tanks using 61 inches. During emergencies, combat pilots could pull 67 inches (1,720 horsepower), and modified Mustangs racing at Reno develop as much as 155 inches.

  I raised the nose at 100 knots and the Mustang was immediately unlike any other piston-powered single I had ever flown. With landing gear retracted, the climb at takeoff power is exhilarating, almost 4,000 fpm.

  I was relieved to discover that it takes less right-rudder pressure during initial climb than a Cessna 210. The immediate goal, though, was to accelerate to the best glide speed of 150 knots, just in case.

  If you have to make an off-airport landing, I was admonished, be certain that the gear is up. If the Mustang flips onto its back when landing on an unimproved surface, the top of the canopy could wind up pressing against the ground. Getting out would be impossible. Also, don’t ditch; the P-51 wants to dive for the bottom.

  Although the Mustang can be trimmed easily, it is almost a constant process when maneuvering. Rudder and elevator trim are needed with even the slightest changes in power or airspeed.

  In-flight visibility is unlimited in all directions. Maximum speed for opening the canopy is 130 knots. The down-sloping cowling initially gives the impression that the nose is too low during cruise. As advertised, control pressures increase and stiffen with airspeed but are not heavy.

  THE CHALLENGE BEGINS

  Wanting to solo a Mustang and doing it are obviously two different things. I was fortunate to have a friend who owns one. I had known David Price for years but never had the courage to ask if I could fly his pride and joy, Cottonmouth.

  Price is a 5,500-hour Navy pilot who has owned a wide variety of warbirds. These include a Messerschmitt Me-109, a Mitsubishi Zero, a Hawker Hurricane, and a pair of Spitfires. He has flown 40 types of warbirds and 8 unlimited races at Reno in his highly modified P-51, Dago Red. He owns the Supermarine jet center at Santa Monica Airport and is the founder and president of American Airports, an organization dedicated to the management of airports.

  Recognizing that I was not getting any younger, I kiddingly but on the square asked Price when he was going to let me fly his cherished Mustang. Surprisingly and without hesitation, he said, “Whenever you’d like.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, I’m not. Just get some back-seat time in a T-6 to prepare for the Mustang.”

  Needing no further encouragement, I joined the Southern California Wing of the Commemorative Air Force. After two hours of touch-and-go landings from both seats of the T-6, CAF instructor, Steve Barber, who
was also an experienced warbird pilot, felt that I could handle the Mustang. He said that the T-6 is actually more difficult to fly than a Mustang. Sure, I thought skeptically.

  I called Price and announced my readiness. His insurance company, however, had other ideas. The underwriter said that I could fly Cottonmouth but only after obtaining an endorsement to solo a Mustang from a P-51 instructor.

  Stallion 51 in Kissimmee, Florida is the only place in the world to obtain formal, FAA-approved Mustang training. The school has two magnificent TF-51s, Crazy Horse and Crazy Horse 2. These are P-51Ds that have been highly modified with a second, fully-equipped cockpit.

  Although many P-51s have a jump seat replacing the 85-gallon fuel tank installed behind the pilot in wartime editions, these seats have no access to controls or instruments.

  Stallion 51’s curriculum is not a quick-and-dirty checkout; it is a full-blown program that is as professional and comprehensive as the transition courses I had taken at TWA. Instructors there take their responsibilities seriously.

  My instructor was Lee Lauderback, who I am tempted to call Mr. Mustang. He has more than 7,000 hours in P-51s and might know more about flying the airplane than any man alive. His modesty, however, defers that honor to Bob Hoover.

  Lauderback began his aviation career as a youngster soloing at 16 and worked his way up the ladder to eventually become Arnold Palmer’s chief pilot. In 1987 he and a partner, Doug Schultz, purchased a P-51 under the terms of a contract they had with the Navy’s test pilot school. The pair eventually recognized that there was no formal way for pilots to learn to fly a Mustang. This led to the organization of Stallion 51. Lauderback’s younger twin brothers, Peter and Richard, were Air Force mechanics and are responsible for preening, primping and maintaining the two Mustangs as well as other warbirds that Stallion 51 maintains.