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Twenty-three year old George Schmitt, with a passenger, in his Baldwin Red Devil biplane, in Rutland, Vermont, during 1913. On September 2, 1913, he carried 54 pieces of air mail aloft, in a mail bag, in his biplane, from the Rutland Fair Grounds Aviation Meet, which was held from September 1st to 5th, and over the city. He was killed, shortly after this flight, when his biplane crashed, from an altitude of 200 feet, while carrying J. Dyer Spellman, as a passenger, who was severely burned, in the crash, after his clothing caught fire. Schmitt, himself, suffered a fractured skull and hip, in the crash, after the engine's radiator fell on him. |
George Schmitt in his biplane. |
The crash of George Schmitt's biplane, on September 2, 1913. |
A 1913 newspaper article about his crash can be read on this web
site at
AVIATOR
KILLED BY FALL
Shirley J. Short was the pilot of the 1929 two-engine experimental Bellanca TES X-855e The Blue Streak, that was built for The Chicago Daily News, when it crashed on May 26, 1931. Loaded with cargo, the aircraft was torn apart in flight by vibration in its rear propeller drive shaft, which killed Short, Richard K. Peck, the copilot, Louis Rice, the radio operator, and Robert W. Gormley, a mechanic. He was also an exhibtion flyer, for the Locklear Flying Circus, and an air mail pilot for the United States Post Office, from March 2, 1923 to August 31, 1927. In 1926, he was awarded the Harmon Trophy for flying air mail without a serious accident. |
OF WINGS AND THINGS: THE BELLANCA BLUE STREAK
The Fokker F.VIIb-3m Southern Cross trimotor monoplane that Australian Captain Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, along with Australian copilot Captain Charles T. P. Ulm, American navigator Lieutenant Harry W. Lyon, Jr., and American radio operator James W. Warner, used to make a 7,316-mile transpacific flight from Oakland, California to Eagle Farm Airport in Brisbane, Australia, via Hawaii and Fiji, from May 31st to June 9th, 1928. Later, on September 11th, he, along with copilot Charles Ulm, navigator Litchfield, and New Zealand radio operator T. McWilliam, used the Southern Cross to make the first flight across the Tasman Sea, from Brisbane to Christchurch, New Zealand, in 14 hours and 12 minutes. He and Charles Ulm had, earlier, in June 1927, set a record for flying around Australia, in about 10 days. He also won a 1930 England to Australia air race, was knighted, by King George VI, in 1932, for his aviation achievements, and made the first transpacific flight from Australia to the United States, in 1934. He was born on February 9, 1897, in Brisbane and became a pilot in the Number 23 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps, in July 1917, during World War I. He disappeared, on November 7, 1935, while flying the Lockheed Altair Lady Southern Cross from Allahabad, India to Singapore, which was part of a flight that he was making from Australia to the United Kingdom. Part of the aircraft was later found, in May 1937, on Aye Island, off the southern coast of Burma, though the bodies of its crew were never found. Charles Kingsford Smith International Airport, in Sydney, Australia, is named after him and the Southern Cross, which was built from two Fokker airplanes that Captain Sir George Hubert Wilkins had used in Alaska, in 1927,(1) is now on display at the Brisbane International Airport. (1) Page 113, Baldwin H. Ward, Flight, Year, Los Angeles, 1953. |
FIFTY
AUSTRALIANS SMITHY
ACEPILOTS
CHARLES KINGSFORD SMITH
CHARLES
KINGSFORD SMITH
Eric Springer was the test pilot for the Douglas Cloudster biplane, which was the Davis-Douglas Company's first aircraft and the first aircraft to fly cargo weighing more than its own weight. It first flew, with its 400 hp Liberty engine, on February 24, 1921 and on March 20, 1921 it set an altitude record for the Pacific Coast, when it reached 19,160 feet. Springer, reportedly, gave the Douglas Cloudster its name, when he remarked that it was a "real cloud duster". The aircraft had been designed for a transcontinental flight across the United States of America, which it attempted on June 27, 1921, from March Field, in California, but it had to abandon its flight to Curtiss Field, in New York, over Texas, when it experienced engine trouble. The aircraft was later rebuilt as a 10-passenger airliner and, in 1925, it was sold to Ryan Air Lines, where it served on their San Diego to Los Angeles, California route. The Douglas Cloudster was destroyed by a high tide, in 1926, after it had been damaged in an attempted beach landing, during a charter flight to Ensenada, Mexico. |
THE
CLOUDSTER PASSENGER BIPLANE
THE
BEGINNINGS: 1892-1938
DOUGLAS
"CLOUDSTER"
It was Northrop test pilot Max Stanley, along with copilot Fred Brechter and flight engineer Orva Douglas, who first flew the experimental Northrop XB-35 flying wing bomber, from Northrop Field, in Hawthrone, California, to Muroc Army Air Field (now, Edwards Air Force Base), in California, on June 25, 1946. Designed as a four-engine, contra-propeller-driven, intercontinental bomber, during World War II, only two XB-35 bombers were produced, with serial numbers 42-13603 and 42-38323, before the order for 200 B-35A bombers was cancelled, in August 1945.(1) Its experimental use continued, however, until the aircraft were scrapped, in August 1949. Northrop continued to pursue its flying wing design, in 1947, with the experimental Northrop YB-35 bomber, using single rotation propellers, and its jet-powered version, the experimental Northrup YB-49 bomber, which was also flown for the first time by Max Stanley, on October 21, 1947. Two YB-49 bombers were built and the second was destroyed in a crash, when its wing failed in a test dive, on June 5, 1948, killing its crew, including pilot Captain Glen Edwards, who Muroc Field was later renamed after. (1) Page 32, Bill Gunston, "Northrop's Flying Wings", Wings of Fame, volume 2, Aerospace Publishing Ltd, 1996. |
Though ten additional B-35 airframes were intended to be converted for jet power, under the designation RB-35B, only one was completed, as the YRB-49A, with serial number 42-102376, which first flew on May 4, 1950 and was scrapped in October 1953. This research into flying wings, which also led to the unexpected discovery of their stealth capability, in being difficult to track with radar, finally led to the development of the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit bomber, which was put into service with the 509th Bomb Wing, of the United States Air Force, on December 17, 1993. The XB-35 had a wingspan of 172 feet, a length of 52 feet and 1 inch, and a height of 20 feet. Its range was 8,150 miles and it could carry 16,000 bombs of bombs, in a bomb bay, with a crew of fifteen. The production version of the aircraft was to have seven turrets for twenty 0.5-inch or 20mm guns. These photos show the XB-35 version of the Northrop B-35 bomber. |
NORTHROP B-35
NORTHROP
XB-35
NORTHROP
YB-35
NORTHROP
GRUMMAN B-2 "SPIRIT"
THE
NORTHROP FLYING WING AND THE B-2 BOMBER