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Milo Burcham, who was born in Cadiz, Indiana, on May 24, 1903, learned to fly in 1929 and flew this Lockheed 12-A Electra Junior, which had been modified, with cabin fuel tanks, to a fifth-place finish in the 1937 Bendix Trophy Race, winning him a $1,000 prize. The airplane carried race number 20 and two passengers, during this flight, which were F. C. Hall, the airplane's owner, and his wife. This 2.043-mile air race, from Los Angeles, California to Cleveland, Ohio, was part of the 1937 National Air Races. In 1938, he became a test pilot for the Lockheed P-38 and was the chief Lockheed test pilot when he was killed, on a test flight, when his Lockheed P-80 jet fighter lost power in a dive, on October 20, 1944. |
Another photo of Burcham's Lockheed 12-A Electra Junior, with its propellers turning and registration number R18130 on its wing. |
The Ford Tri-motor AT-4-B Floyd Bennett that United States Navy Commander Richard E. Byrd used, as flight leader and navigator, to make the first flight over the South Pole, on November 29,1929, after taking off from Little America, in Antarctica. The aircraft was piloted by Richard Balchen, with Harold June as the copilot, and Ashley McKinley as the flight photographer. The aircraft was named after Floyd Bennett, who had made a flight to the North Pole with Commander Byrd, on May 9, 1926, and who had died on April 25, 1928. When Commander Byrd was over the South Pole, a stone from Bennett's grave, which was wrapped in an American flag, was dropped from the aircraft. Floyd Bennett Field, in New York, is also named after him. |
A 1926 photo of the Fokker VII-3m Josephine Ford that Lieutenant Commander Byrd's expedition used for their 1,535-mile flight to the North Pole, from King's Bay, Norway, on May 9, 1926. With Floyd Bennett piloting the airplane and Commander Byrd navigating, the expedition claimed to have circled the North Pole at 9:02 a.m., after a flight of about 16 hours. The flight was sponsored by Edsel Ford, of the Ford Motor Company, whose daughter the airplane was named after, and John D. Rockefeller. |
RICHARD
BYRD AND FLOYD BENNETT
70
YEARS LATER, BYRD'S MEMORY STILL FLYING
RICHARD
E. BYRD
FLOYD
BENNETT
FLOYD
BENNETT FIELD
HISTORIC
FLOYD BENNETT FIELD BROOKLYN, NY
FLOYD
BENNETT FIELD....HISTORIC AIRFIELD
Fred Carlson was the test pilot for the first flight of the experimental Bell Model 30 helicopter, with registration number NX41867, on December 29, 1942. Designed by Arthur Young, the Model 30 served as the basis of the Bell Model 47 helicopter, which was used in the Korean War and was the first helicopter to be certified for commercial service. Two additional Model 30 prototypes were built, numbered NX41868 and NX41860, and the first prototype, which is shown in this photo, among a crowd of onlookers, was rebuilt twice, after it was damaged in crashes. It is now in the collection of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, District of Columbia. |
The Wright-Bellanca WB-2 Miss Columbia that was used by Clarence Duncan Chamberlin and Charles A. Levine to make a non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, with a broken compass, in 42 hours and 45 minutes, in 1927. Starting from Roosevelt Field in New York, on June 4th, they landed in a wheat field, near Eisleben, Germany, on June 6th, about 100 miles from Berlin, Germany, which was their destination. Though they were able to continue their flight to Berlin, after another landing , near Cottbus, and a propeller replacement, the 3,911 miles that they flew, non-stop, was about 300 miles more than Charles Augustus Lindbergh had flown, in his Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis, when he made the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, in May of 1927. |
The Miss Columbia made a second transatlantic flight, on October 9, 1930, with Captain J. Erroll Boyd and Lieutenant Harry P. Connor, and was later destroyed in a hangar fire in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, in 1935. The Miss Columbia was, also, Charles Augustus Lindbergh's first choice for his 1927 transatlantic flight, but the manufacturer refused to sell it to him, when he refused to agree to the terms that they had imposed on its use. Chamberlin had learned to fly in 1918 and had been a test pilot and exhibition flyer. |
CLARENCE
CHAMBERLIN
AEROFILES
CLARENCE CHAMBERLIN
CHAMBERLIN,
CLARENCE DUNCAN
CLARENCE
D. CHAMBERLIN RECALLS HIS HISTORIC FLIGHT
CHARLES
A. LEVINE
CHARLES
LEVINE AND HIS FLYING MACHINE