TALESPINNERS - December, 2002

Hangar Flying
with Stu Faber

WILLOW RUN.  A former B-24 pilot in the WW II 8th Air Force over Europe loaned me a book by that title.  The author, Warren B. Kidder, was a lad on the family farm which was taken for the Willow Run B-24 plant which Henry Ford agreed to build and operate.  England's situation led Pres. Roosevelt to call for 50,000 planes per year and in Jan. of 1941 Ford's Chas. Sorenson and others went to Consolidated in San Diego to see B-24s being built.  Sorenson realized their old methods could never build fast enough and overnight sketched a plan for a one plane per hour factory.  In 7 months, using 4 sq. miles of very wet land near Detroit, a large airfield was built and over 1,000,000 sq. ft of buildings erected with a mile long assembly line.  15,000 machine tools were designed, redesigned, and built, and 40,000 unskilled workers hired and trained.  In 1944 a B-24 rolled out the door every 59 minutes!

EARLY AIRPLANE?  On Nov. 20 the Wall St. Journal carried a story bylined Pittsburgh, TX about a local claim that a preacher named Burrell Cannon flew a plane of his own design in late 1902.  He claimed his inspiration came from the first and tenth verses of Ezekiel in the Bible.  Few hard facts are available but there is a photo and a newspaper story.  The photo is quite small but it appears to be a series of tent like structures with some large wheels equipped with paddles underneath.

     An 80 HP engine spun the wheels forcing air up into the structure and then deflecting it down somewhat like a hovercraft.  Five witnesses, all dead, claimed it was flown to a height of 12 ft and hovered for a short distance over the field.  The pilot, who was not the inventor, said he shut it down due to the vibration of a drive chain.  A number of people invested in the project.  Shortly after, when on its way to St. Louis to claim a prize at the Worlds Fair, it blew off the train and was left to rot at that spot.  The inventor said that God evidently didn't want it to fly and left it at that.  There is a book on the story compiled by the Pittsburgh/Camp County Museum .

NAPIER LION ENGINE.  First built in 1917 it was a prominent engine in the 1920s.  A "W" configuration with 3 banks of 4 cylinders, six overhead cams, 4 valves per cylinder, and a roller bearing crank.  One bank was upright and two others at 45^o on either side.  It was water cooled and an over square 1461 c.i. and 490 HP.  In 1927 a supercharged version at 1400 HP won the Schneider Cup in a Supermarine racer.  It also powered Sir John Cobb's car to a land speed record.  It had a wide frontal area.

     In 1931 a Rolls V-12 "R" engine of 2230 c.i. and over 2000 HP powered the Schneider winner.  To cool all that power the plane was built with a double skin fuselage with water circulating between the skins.

PV-1.  As you probably know the WW II PV-1 medium bomber was a souped up version of the Lockheed 18 transport and/or Lockheed Hudson A-29.  Flight Journal Magazine for Feb 2003 carries an interesting article by a WWII crew member about his experiences in the South Pacific.  He thought they were great airplanes - fast and quick.  There were some in the Aleutian Islands and my memory of them was that the large engines in a light airplane caused a number to run off the runways due to take off torque.  That sometimes caused the onboard bombs to explode spectacularly.  A crewchief received a medal for taxiing his B-17 away from a crashed PV-1 while it was burning.

OH WELL!  During wars each side wants to get samples of the other side's equipment to better combat it.  This was true during WW II as well and to some extent both sides succeeded.  Some was captured, some stolen, and some delivered.  According to an article in Flight Journal, Feb 03, on June 23, 1942 an FW-190A-3, after a dogfight over England, headed for home on the French coast.  After crossing a narrow stretch of water it landed in the Wales area of England, 180 degrees off course.  The pilot was taken prisoner.  The water crossed was the Bristol Channel not the English Channel.  The German pilot's name was ...... Oberleutnant Armin FABER.

Copyright © 2002 by Stu Faber.  All rights reserved.