The Surly Bonds of Earth

Listing of CLash of Wings episodes on Military Channel

Walter Boyne — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:35:58 +0000

This URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_of_Wings_(TV_series) will take you to a wikipedia article on Wingspan’s Clash of Wings series of episodes. It is a good right up except that it does not give enough credit to John Honey or to the film researchers … Continue reading →

Look at this URL for a fascinating glimpse of history

Walter Boyne — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:00:04 +0000

Here is a great URL to use to while away a few hundred hours: < http://imageevent.com/okbueno/mopic >

Rickenbacker the Warrior

Walter Boyne — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:15:47 +0000

RICKENBACKER THE WARRIOR
If you seek a definition of warrior, there is one word that says it all: Rickenbacker. Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, as he has come down to us in legend, was a warrior in two wars, becoming the American Ace of Aces in 1918, and demonstrating rare qualities of leadership and courage during World War II.
Rick, as he preferred to be called, was also a peacetime warrior, fighting to keep his several businesses alive, and never once ceasing to be a watchdog for his perception of the interests of the United States. Beloved by many and hated by not a few, Rickenbacker was the quintessential American leader-patriot of the twentieth century, a real-life John Wayne who fought with his fists, his brains and his name to protect his interests and to promote those of the United States. Like Wayne, he had his weaknesses, too, including a fondness for liquor, an inability to bear fools lightly, a predisposition to speak rashly and a cranky insistence that his coworkers deliver 110 percent of their effort.
By today’s standards, he was an abused child, for his father William Rickenbacher regularly beat him with his belt. (The Teutonic-sounding name caused Rick many problems when the war came with Germany, and he changed it to Rickenbacker in 1918, the one-letter change somehow giving him comfort.)
Rick responded to his fathers abuse by becoming a juvenile delinquent, a small-time petty thief and bully, so quick with his fists that his impoverished parents thought he would wind up in reform school. Yet when his father was murdered on the job, young Edd, as he was then called, underwent a transformation. At the age of ten, he assumed responsibility for the support of his family, even though he had an older brother. He immediately dropped out of school to begin working a 72-hour week in a sweatshop glass factory where he earned a princely nickel per hour–$182.00 per year. It was the start of a Horatio Alger career that would see him swiftly take on a series of ever-more responsible jobs for which he was both too young and too uneducated. By the age of 17 he was supervising a dozen adult professionals in an experimental engineering laboratory for the Columbus Buggy Company, which was then launching a new line of automobiles. His swift ascendancy was in part fueled by the courses he took from ICS, the International Correspondence School, an institution that helped many a poor lad, Walter Chrysler among them.
Rick was on the road to riches. He found he was a natural salesman and a manager; soon he was earning $150 a month at a time when lawyers and doctors made less than that. By the time he was 19, he had grown to be six feet two inches tall, weighed 165 pounds and was sharpening his skills as a professional racing car driver. He would reach the top ranks of his new profession in less than eight years, earning $60,000 annually, the equivalent of a $1 million today. Rick drove with his brains as much as with his body, carefully preplanning his races to maximize his advantages. He developed practical leadership skills, and drilled his pit-crew into teams able to change tires and re-fuel faster than any competitor. Rick pre-planned every race, taking into consideration the track, the weather and how his equipment compared to the competition. Then he drove with a cool precision that pushed the envelope of risk, but without being reckless. Although he had already developed his trade-mark smiling persona, Rick became known as a “mean driver” by his colleagues, one who used every trick he could devise to win races. It was good training for a future fighter pilot.
He did not let his growing celebrity go to his head, for he was painfully aware of his lack of education. Rick took self-help courses and always tried to expand his vocabulary. Now often thrust into exalted company, Rickenbacker watched how leaders in politics and business behaved, and modeled himself on them. (It would not be until the mid-1920s that he took note that most of these leaders had a middle initial, which he lacked. He selected “V” for his own, then picked the name Vernon to go with it.)
Although Great Britain was at war, the Sunbeam Motor Car Company invited him to England in 1916, in the hope that Rickenbacker would form a team to race their cars in the United States. During the visit, agents of the English intelligence service kept Rickenbacker under close surveillance, convinced that he was a German agent. Far from being pro-German, Rickenbacker wanted to fight for the Allied cause by raising a squadron of flyers composed solely of his racing driver friends.
The U.S. Army shrugged off his idea as impractical. The racing drivers had three strikes against them. They were over 25, the maximum age for applicant pilots to the Air Service, they lacked college educations, and worst of all, they knew too much about engines and “might be hesitant about going into combat” if their engine was malfunctioning.
When war came in April, 1917, Rickenbacker patriotically volunteered to go join the Army as a staff driver, exchanging his celebrity status and his $60,000 a year income for a sergeant’s pay. He went to France confident that he could worm his way into the flying service, trading his steering wheel for a joy-stick.
In France, Rickenbacker proved himself to be an excellent chauffeur, but never drove for General Pershing, as is often alleged. On one trip he dazzled none other than Colonel Billy Mitchell with his road-side repairs of their Hudson staff car. Mitchell, who drove wildly and furiously himself, liked having the personable and famous Rickenbacker drive for him.
An old friend of Rickenbacker, Captain James Ely Miller, had been tasked to supervise the establishment of the huge new flight training center being created at Issoudon for American aviation cadets. Running into Rick in Paris, Miller asked him to become his Engineering Officer, a crucially important job, and one that Rick was eminently suited for. Rickenbacker quickly agreed, on the condition that he could take flight training. Miller agreed, and Rick persuaded Mitchell to release him. It remained only for him to lie about his age and fake his way through his physical, where he managed to get his visual problem (floaters) overlooked.
Rick entered the French primary flying school at Tours, starting on the little clipped-wing Penguins, and then soloing after only two hours with an instructor pilot. He flew 25 hours in 17 days and graduated as a 1st Lieutenant in the Signal Corps. He was now an officer and a gentleman, and headed for straight for trouble at Issoudon.
Gentlemen Rankers
From the very first, aviation had attracted young wealthy students at elite American universities. The Yale Flying Club and the Lafayette Escadrille personified this staking out of the air war as a gentleman’s game. More than a thousand young American pilot candidates, many of them from good schools and families, found themselves sent to Issoudon for training, only to find that construction of the 3rd Aviation Center was far from complete. They came expecting to go immediately into flight training, and instead they were put to work constructing roads, buildings, latrines, hangars and railroad spurs often under the supervision of the newly commissioned rough-neck, Eddie Rickenbacker. Worse, while they labored in the mud, former colleagues who had remained in the United States were arriving as commissioned officers.
The cadets were furious with the system, and took out their anger on Rickenbacker, openly mocking his poor grammar and rough language. In Rickenbacker’s ghost-written autobiography he says that he understood how these highly educated young men from good families resented that he, “a Swiss-German engineer with a grammar school education,” was in a position of authority over them. In truth, he was angered by their sarcastic remarks and got even by assigning them even rougher tasks, such as digging latrines, to further offend their sensibilities.
Had the cadets been more mature, they might have seen that Rickenbacker was driving himself harder than anyone, trying to change Issoudon from muddy vacant fields into a flying school in just a few months.
Unknown to them, he spent all of his spare time bootlegging ground school and additional flying training. He even persuaded the tough Major Carl Spatz to let him go to gunnery school at Cazeau, in preparation for assignment to an operational squadron. (Spatz did not add a single letter to “de-Germanize” his name to Spaatz until 1938.)
Rickenbacker Joins the 94th Pursuit Squadron
Both the 94th and 95th Pursuit Squadrons were initially stationed at Villeneuve-les-Vertus, twenty miles behind the front lines. As the pilots and mechanics began to assemble, their new Nieuport 28 fighters began to dribble in during March, 1918.
The French had declined to use the Nieuport 28, but gladly sold them to the United States for $18,500 each. It was one of the most beautiful fighters of the war, powered by a 160 horsepower Gnome rotary engine. Fast, maneuverable and dangerous, its delicate lines concealed fatal flaws. The tremendous vibration generated by the whirling rotary engine and by machine gun fire routinely cracked the rigid fuel lines connecting the fuel tanks and engine. Gasoline would spew over the fuselage, causing many sudden, catastrophic in-flight fires. If the Nieuport did not catch fire, it could break-up in a dive, for a build-up of airspeed could cause the leading edge of the upper wing to tear off, allowing the fabric to balloon up and leaving the wing devoid of lift. Depending on where and when this happened, the pilot had only a slight chance of landing safely.
Thus Rickenbacker and his colleagues were going to war against veteran opponents in superior airplanes, in a Nieuport 28 in which they had never trained, one that tended to catch fire spontaneously and often lost its wing in a dive. Rick could hardly wait to do so.
Lufbery
It was almost inevitable that Rick would find a mentor in Major Gervais Raoul Lufbery, a man clearly after his own heart. Lufberry had distinguished himself with the Lafayette Escadrille, shooting down 17 enemy planes. Many members of the Escadrille said his score was far higher, for the diminutive, taciturn Lufbery often flew alone, and rarely reported his kills.
Lufbery was assigned to the 94th to supervise their entrance into combat and he and Rick hit it off from the start, for both had been mechanics. They understood engines and the men who worked on them, and regarded grease under the nails as a badge of honor, not a mark of shame. Lufbery tutored Rickenbacker, escorting him on his first flight over the lines, and Rick was later to say “everything I learned, I learned from Lufbery.”
Rickenbacker spent much of his spare time on the ground working with the mechanics to improve the performance of the Nieuports. In other squadrons, the Gnome engines normally ran only about 30 hours before requiring an overhaul. At the 94th, Rick helped the mechanics (most of whom had never seen a 160 horsepower Gnome engine before) find ways to drill the cylinders to increase lubrication, and in doing more than doubled the time between overhaul. Rick’s work with the mechanics was regarded with bemused contempt by some of the more cultured members of the squadron; his grammar and his profanity were still regarded as the signs of a blue-collar worker, not an officer. Yet in just a few weeks, when he repeated the engine improvement process with the SPAD XIII’s much more complex water-cooled Hispano-Suiza vee-8 engine, it would alter the course of his life.
As with all new combat pilots on their first missions, Rickenbacker found that he saw only a small percentage of what was going on in the air. Worse, he found he had a tendency to get air sick when he followed the cautious cork-screw evolutions that Lufbery used to avoid being surprised. In time he overcame both difficulties, and concentrated on two goals: to be the first to shoot down a German, and to be the first to become an ace.
Lt. Douglas Campbell was to deprive him of both goals, for Campbell, along with Lt. Alan Winslow, shot down the 94th’s first two Germans, a Pfalz and an Albatros, on April 14, 1918. Campbell added insult to injury by becoming the first ace with his fifth victory on May 31st. (Rickenbacker would actually score his fifth victory on May 30th, but it was not confirmed until after Campbell’s kill had been confirmed. As badly as he wanted the honor, Rickenbacker never contested Campbell’s claim to be first.)
Rickenbacker was a serious pilot, firmly believing in Lufbery’s maxim that you scored no victories sitting in the hangar. He flew often and scored his first confirmed victory on an April 29th flight with Captain James Norman Hall. Hall, with Charles Nordoff, would write the history of the Lafayette Flying Corps as well as a series of monumental novels that included Mutiny on the Bounty. Hall and Rickenbacker both dived and fired on a Pfalz, Rick closing to within 150 yards before firing. The claim was confirmed even before the two pilots touched down—Rickenbacker had broken the ice.
(In 1969, the United States Air Force Historical Study No. 133 re-evaluated combat claims, and decided that Rickenbacker and Hall should receive credit for one-half victory each. Similar assessments reduced Rickenbacker’s total from the familiar 26 with which he was long credited down to 24.33. Not every one is happy with Historical Study No. 133.)
At the time, Rickenbacker had no doubt that the Pfalz had fallen to his guns, and apparently Hall felt the same way. The victory gave him confidence and his angst with the patronizing treatment given him by his squadron mates is reflected in a sentence he wrote long after the event, saying “There is a peculiar gratification in receiving congratulations from one’s squadron for a victory in the air. It is worth more to a pilot than the applause of the whole outside world.” With each victory, Rickenbacker was considered less of an outsider, and was increasingly forgiven for not having been born a gentleman.
On a second flight with Hall, Rickenbacker shot down an Albatros while Hall’s Nieuport was shedding the leading edge of its wing. As the Nieuport’s ailerons were on the lower wing only, Hall was able to nurse the airplane back toward Allied lines until an anti-aircraft shell smashed into his engine. Hall landed behind enemy lines and was captured, but many years later, his testimony would confirm the kill for Rickenbacker.
The low level of experience of the 94th’s pilots was high-lighted by Rickenbacker being named to replace Hall as a flight commander. He had been at the front for less than two months, and his total flying time was less than 150 hours. Yet he was now going to lead men into combat.
On May 17th, Rickenbacker flew with Reed Chambers on a voluntary patrol. Bitterly cold in their open cockpits at 20,000 feet, the two men had no oxygen, just as they had no heat, parachutes, or radios. Rick spotted three Albatros fighters, and with his judgment possibly impaired from a lack of oxygen or his anger over Lufbery’s loss, put his Nieuport in a headlong dive. He fired at the first enemy plane at about 14,000 feet, killing the pilot, then pulled up sharply. His upper right with failed with a tremendous crack as his leading edge ripped off and the Nieuport was thrown into a swift turning tailspin. The other two enemy planes followed him down, snap-shooting. By applying full power Rick managed to pull out at 4,000 feet and, controls hard-over, staggered back to a very-hot landing on the 94th’s home field.
Only two days later, Rick and the 94th suffered a blow when Lufbery lost his life in an attack on a high-flying Rumpler observation plane, leaping or falling to the ground from his flaming Nieuport.
The desire to become an ace obsessed Rickenbacker, and he flew many solo patrols, an increasingly risky business, for the Germans had just introduced what would be recognized as the best fighter of the war, the lethal looking Fokker D VII. Despite his obsession, Rick never compromised on his leadership duties. He took his responsibilities as a flight leader seriously, giving new comers lots of ground instruction and always accompanying them on their first flights over the lines.
Rickenbacker had now mastered his trade; he “saw the sky” as clearly as any man, and was able to identify enemy aircraft at great distances. He countered the enemy’s technology by making use of the Nieuport’s good features while avoiding the bad. Rick scored victories on May 28th and 30th , reaching the coveted status of ace—and beginning a period of pain.
The Summer of 1918
In its first few months of existence, the 94th had run up 16 victories; it then seemed to disintegrate under the force of circumstances. A new German offensive had brought with it the very best in German airpower. During June, July and August, the 94th Pursuit Squadron received credit for 3-1/2 victories, while suffering eight losses.
Rickenbacker was confined to bed for most of the long, hot summer with a recurring fever. Grounded for weeks at a time and periodically hospitalized, he nevertheless insisted on flying whenever he could drag himself to an airplane. Combat required swift climbs and swooping dives, not good for an ailing ear, and he was confined to hospital first to have an abscess lanced, and then for a mastoid operation. His doctors assumed he would never fly again, but did not reckon with Rick’s determination.
A lesser man than Rickenbacker might have decided that he had done enough; he was a commissioned officer, an ace, and he had a ticket home. Instead, on July 5th, Rickenbacker went to the huge aviation depot at Le Bourget, outside of Paris, and picked up the very first SPAD XIII that would to the 94th.
The SPAD XIII was an advanced version of the highly successful SPAD VII, and was powered with a 235 horsepower geared Hispano-Suiza engine. The engine was far more complex than Gnome, and for the duration of the war, it was not unusual to have 50 percent of all SPAD XIIIs unavailable because of engine problems. The pilots liked it when the engine ran, however, for it was strong, able to dive swiftly and pull out sharply with no fear of structural failure.
Rick familiarized himself with the SPAD during a lull in the fighting in July and August, and was able to take a significant role during the September Battle of St. Mihiel. As anxious as he was to increase his score, Rickenbacker spent most of the battle in ground attack sorties, leading his flight down ground level. On September 14th he scored his sixth victory (his first in four months) and began a streak that would end with his becoming the Ace of Aces. Meanwhile, military politics was going to play a role in his future.
Lt. Colonel Harold E. Hartney had been appointed Commander of the 1st Pursuit Group on August 21, 1918, and had inherited two major problems. The first of these was the bad morale of the four squadrons (94th, 95th , 27th and 147th) as a result of their heavy losses. The second was an ongoing and futile quarrel over the SPAD XIII replacing the Nieuport 28s. As hazardous as the Nieuports were, they had a higher in-commission rate, and this made them more attractive to some.
Hartney had been observing Rickenbacker leadership in combat and on the flight-line. Despite strong opposition from headquarters (where Rickenbacker was still perceived as “not officer material”) and from some of the hard-line blue-bloods in the squadron, Hartney appointed Rickenbacker to command the 94th.
Rick was delighted, and immediately called two meetings. The first was with the mechanics. He told them he knew of their problems with the SPADs and would give them 100 percent support. They responded, and within weeks, the 94th’s Hispanos were obtaining as much as 100 hours flying time between overhauls, compared to 30 hours in other squadrons.
The second meeting was with his pilots. He set forth his rules: there was to be no military nonsense on the flight line; everyone was to take care of the mechanics as much as possible. More importantly every man was to fly as often and aggressively, for the only reason they were there was to shoot down Germans.
In just two conversations, Rick turned the 94th around starting it on the road to becoming the crack American fighter unit of the war, with more victories and more hours over the lines than any other.
First Day on the Job
On September 25th, Rick put his words into action in a solo mission over the lines. He spotted to L.V.G. observation planes, escorted by a flight of five of the deadly Fokker D VIIs. Rick attacked, killing the pilot of one Fokker, then plunging on to shoot down an L.V.G. before diving on out oif the fight. On May 6, 1930, Rickenbacker was awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery in attacking a superior formation and shooting down two planes.
Rickenbacker would run his score up quckly, scoring twice more in September, and another 14 times in October. His promotion to Captain, held up by the sour-pusses at headquarters, came in October, long after it was due, but rank did not mean much to Rickenbacker .
What did matter to him was the success of the 94th, which became the highest-scoring American squadron, ending the war with 66-1/2 victories and 18 losses. Rickenbacker was truly the Ace of Aces—but he was also the C.O. of C.O.’s. He forged his leadership at the anvil of combat, seeking battle himself, and insisting that his squadron seek it out as well. Just as with his racing, he always took advantage of the odds, avoiding casualties wherever possible. Perhaps most important of all, he did not see aerial combat as being gallant; he termed it, accurately, as “scientific murder.”
After the War
Rickenbacker came home as the ideal national hero, the sportsman ace. He steadfastly refused to capitalize on his heroism, refusing to appear in films, and avoiding endorsements. He helped found the Rickenbacker Automobile Company, which from 1922 to 1927 produced 35,000 advanced cars but no profits. When it went bankrupt, Rickebacker took on the debt, and in the midst of the depression, paid it off.
He had greater success with other ventures, including the Indianapolis Speedway, but his biggest challenge was taking over stewardship of Eastern Air Lines in 1935. He ran it with a tight hand, and made it one of the most profitable airlines for many years. The role of a hero came naturally to him, even as the head of an airline. On February 26, 1941, he was a passenger aboard an Eastern Douglas DST that crashed near Atlanta, severely injuring him. It was Rickenbacker who rallied the other injured passengers, making sure that no one lit a match that might have set the broken plane on fire.
He was walking, with a limp a few months later, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He immediately volunteered his services. He refused cabinet-level positions in the government as well as the offer of a Major-General’s rank in the Army Air Forces, preferring to serve the government in a civil capacity. After some routine tours inspecting bases, in October, 1942 he was given a top secret assignment, ironically to defend his old nemesis, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Secretary of War, “Colonel” Henry L. Stimson, tasked him to carry a stern reprimand from the President to none-other-than General Douglas MacArthur, who had been making statements critical of the administration. On October 21, the Boeing B-17 in which he was flying was forced to ditch in the Pacific Ocean, and Rickenbacker and his seven companions were forced to spend three weeks on a raft. One man died to exposure, but Rickenbacker, by dint of his personality and his forceful leadership—and by the miracle of his catching a sea bird which landed on his head—brought the others through.
Not all the survivors felt kindly toward Rickenbacker, whose tough, rasping manner was too rough for some to endure. The fact remained that Captain Eddie, 51 years old and suffering still from the injuries in the February crash, not only pulled through, but pulled others through as well.
Stimson admired Rickenbacker, even if Roosevelt did not, and he used him for other missions that took him all over the world. Peace might have been an anti-climax if it had not allowed him to go back to Eastern and continue to run it with an iron hand. Times had changed, however, competition was tougher, and Rickenbacker would make a number of errors in selecting equipment, including opting for the ill-fated turbo-jet Lockheed Electra at the very time when other airlines were beginning to acquire jet transports. Eventually he was forced to turn over the reins of Eastern to others, and spent his twilight years traveling, making speeches and seeing to the ghost-writing of his “autobiography” Rickenbacker. He died in his sleep at the age of 83, on July 23, 1973.
Neither the autobiography nor any other account of Rickenbacker’s life has been satisfactory, for they never reached the core of his being as a warrior. The definitive work on his life was written at Auburn University by a true Rickenbacker scholar, Professor W. David Lewis; it reveals how multi-faceted Rickenbacker was, and how much our country owes him.

Rickenbacker never downed a triplane.

Testing Air Defenses

Walter Boyne — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:02:49 +0000

UNTESTED PHOENIX: AMERICAN AIR DEFENSE
When two Boeing F-15A Eagles from the Louisiana Air Guard’s 159th Fighter Wing intercepted two Tupelov Tu 95 Bear bombers near Icelandic air space a few years ago, their wings cast a shadow back over more than eighty years of air defense history.
In April, 1916, no less a visionary than Alexander Graham Bell warned about the possibility of air ship raids. For the next twenty-five years, a few individuals would study the problem of air defense and lay the foundations for the future. During World War II, there was a sizeable effort to defend America from aerial attack, against a threat that fortunately did not materialize.
Then came the Cold War, and the rise of a magnificent system of air defense.
Fiction versus Fact
A modern techno-thriller could be built upon the premise that a potential enemy power using pirated technology has developed the capability to deliver a nuclear strike upon the United States. We face that situation today, with China reaping the fruits of its espionage in its growing intercontinental ballistic missile capability.
We also faced exactly the same situation in the years immediately following World War II, when the Soviet Union presented a threat with Tupelov Tu-4 bombers armed with nuclear weapons. The Tu-4 was a reverse engineered copy of interned Boeing B-29s, while the nuclear weapons were the combined product of first rate espionage and first rate engineering. The Soviet Union would expand its threat over time.
The United States’ initial reaction to the bomber threat was slow, because of the drastic adverse effects of the demobilization of the USAAF and the absurdly limited post-war budgets. In time, the newly independent United States Air Force would meet the bomber challenge of the Soviet Union’s threat head-on with a massive response.
In retrospect, there are two haunting aspects to the creation of an air defense for America. The first was its scale, variety, advanced technology, political complexity and longevity. From a very small beginning, more than a dozen types of ever-more sophisticated interceptor aircraft were introduced, ranging from World War II Northrop P-61 Black Widows to today’s F-15s. Total numbers rose from a single P-61 to a peak strength of almost 1,500 aircraft.
In addition to the planes, there were sophisticated surface to air missiles, immense radar systems built through the trackless Arctic, a huge, enthusiastic Ground Observer Corps, picket ships, Texas Towers and airborne command and control aircraft. All were integrated into a series of computer-based control systems.
There were also myriad and hotly contested political issues of all kinds. At the most basic level in the Air Force, there was concern that funds diverted to create an “impenetrable defense” would be siphoned away from the Strategic Air Command’s mission of deterrence. There were also the normal intra-service and inter-service clashes over roles and missions. The battles with the Army over control of anti-aircraft and surface-to-air missiles were particularly bitter.
One unusual twist to the roles and missions argument was periodic attempts of the Air Defense Command to give the seemingly impossible air defense mission away. There were never any takers, for not only was an “impenetrable” air defense an impossibility, the best estimates indicated only ten to thirty percent of the attacking force could be destroyed.
Other problems included intricate political issues with Canada, NATO, and, of course, the Soviet bloc. As for longevity, the decades long efforts to create an air defense system will continue indefinitely, as the need for an anti-missile defense becomes generally accepted.
The second haunting aspect, one filled with irony, was the shift in air defense emphasis from battling bombers to the surveillance of missiles. The United States’ official policy forbade a pre-emptive nuclear strike but promised overwhelming retaliation in the event of an enemy attack. The initial air defense requirement was to stop a handful of conventionally armed enemy piston-engine powered bombers on a one-way mission, flying a predictable course. The threat swiftly grew to the prospect of an attack by hundreds of turbo-prop and jet bombers armed with thermonuclear weapons and attacking from different directions. Then, very early in the process, official concern switched abruptly to the threat of ICBM attack. Just when, in the late 1950s, the air defense system rose from a shambles to reach the peak of its effectiveness, its primary mission switched from killing bombers to becoming a trip wire that would allow the Strategic Air Command sufficient time to launch its retaliatory forces.
Despite the shift in focus, the air defense system remained essential to permit a counterstroke. Its establishment consumed hundreds of billions of dollars and required foresighted leadership and brilliant science. But, more than anything else, its success rested upon the utter dedication of pilots, mechanics, radar operators and all the other anonymous personnel who fought off the cold and endless hours of boredom to stand guard against an enemy they hoped would never come.
The Post-World War II Threat
On March 21,1946, Air Defense Command (ADC) was activated at Mitchel Field, New York as part of a general reorganization of the United States Army Air Forces. It was commanded by Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer, a 1915 graduate of West Point and former Commander of the AAF in China. Stratemeyer had a pleasant personality and drove himself attempting to accomplish tasks for which the resources would not be forthcoming.
In 1946, the USAAF had more than enough experience with air defense systems, having been confronted by the Luftwaffe in three vicious years of fighting over Europe. The Japanese air defense system, while less formidable than those of Nazi Germany also presented many problems to be solved. It also had experience with its own development of radar stations and interceptor units within the United States. The leading specialist in air defense was Gordon P. Saville, who graduated from flying school in 1927 and formulated his ideas as a Captain at the Air Corps Tactical School. Saville, like all of the later leaders in air defense, did not dispute the primacy of the bomber as an offensive weapon. He simply argued that air defense required the aircraft and the ground support necessary to defeat an enemy attack.
The Georgia-born Saville was a tough customer who, if necessary, ran rough-shod over opponents to accomplish his mission. He was given assignments other than air defense from 1943 to 1948, but returned in that year to become the driving force in ADC’s build-up. His flamboyant personality and regulation-defying ways were regarded as the price the Air Force had to pay for his brilliant intellect. Fortunately, Saville had a mentor and a protector in the Vice Chief of Staff, General Muir S. Fairchild, a man also renowned for his intellect.
Saville was assigned as a Special Projects Officer in June, 1948, with the mission of reviving ADC from the shambles of demobilization. What both Stratemeyer and Saville lacked were the planes, personnel and funds to undertake ADC’s defined mission of the air defense of America. ADC was also tasked for the protection of coastal shipping, training the National Guard (soon to be the Air National Guard), administering the air reserve and the ROTC and coordinating shore-based Navy and Marine aircraft units. The inclusion of the Air National Guard was significant, for the ANG was tasked with the mission of defending our borders from the start, a mission it continues to fulfil.
Assets were almost non-existent. There were two night fighter squadrons, the 414th and 425th.The former was a purely paper organization, while the latter initially had one officer and two enlisted men. Two bases, Mitchel and Hamilton Fields, were assigned, and a single Northrop P-61 Black Widow was available as equipment.
From this primitive beginning, the air defense of America would grow to a powerful force of aircraft, missiles and radar systems, but not before going through an agonizing period of shortages, false starts and bitter political in-fighting.
Low Point for ADC
Post-war budgets for the military were cut beyond the bone, and on December 1, 1948, the new United States Air Force combined ADC with the Tactical Air Command (TAC), the Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard into the new Continental Air Command, with Stratemeyer in command.
A stunning succession of Cold War events should made obvious the need for an expanded Air Defense Command. On August 3, 1947, three Tupelov Tu-4s had made a fly-past over Red Square in Moscow. In February, 1948, the Communists conducted a coup in Czechoslovakia. Two months later the Berlin blockade began. Five years ahead of the expected schedule, the Soviet Union detonated an atomic bomb in August, 1949. In June, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, and in November of that year, the Red Chinese intervened.
Despite this catalog of threatening news, the Air Defense Command’s low point was reached on July 1, 1950, when budget short falls forced it to be officially disestablished and the air defense mission transferred to the Continental Air Command. It would not be reinstated until January 1, 1951, when Lieutenant General Ennis Whitehead would be named Commander, and ADC headquarters would be located at Ent Air Force Base, Colorado. Whitehead had been called the “Murderer of Moresby” by Tokyo Rose for the furious Fifth Air Force assaults on Port Moresby during World War II, and his ADC subordinates usually came to consider this as perhaps too kind a term, given his fierce style of leadership.
The Money Begins to Flow
One important result of the Korean War was the realization that the era of the citizen soldier was over, and that the United States would require a professional military establishment to counter the escalating Cold War. In August, 1954, Premier Georgi Malenkov announced that the Soviets possessed the hydrogen bomb and on October 4, 1957, an 84 pound thunderbolt called Sputnik was placed into orbit. As a result, the Congressional attitude toward military budgets changed radically.
The primary response of the United States to the mushrooming threat was the deterrent power of the Strategic Air Command, which grew steadily in offensive power with the acquisition of jet bombers and tankers, followed by the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Yet the requirement for air defense was now widely recognized and backed up with huge appropriations for an adequate interceptor force operating with a succession of ever more sophisticated radar systems, and supplemented by advanced surface-to-air missiles.
The Interceptor Force
When the Cold War began, bomber technology surpassed night-fighter technology, and would continue to do so for almost a decade. The hardy veteran of World War II, the P-61 did not have the performance necessary to engage the Tu-4, nor did its successor, the North American F-82 Twin Mustang. The F-82 was particularly disappointing, being delayed in production, and not performing well in inclement weather.
Armament for ADC fighters would improve in lethality over time. The P-61 had a relatively heavy armament of four fixed forward firing .50-inch machine guns and four 20-mm cannon in a top turret. The F-82 carried six .50-inch machine guns in the wing center section.
Early jet fighters, such as the Lockheed P-80 and Republic P-84, lacked an all weather capability and were deemed practically useless for air defense purposes. Much hope was placed on two purpose built jet-powered interceptors, the Curtiss XP-87 Blackhawk and the Northrop XP-89 Scorpion. They, in their turn, proved to be totally inadequate. The XP-87 was cancelled (ending Curtiss’ long career as a supplier of fighters) and the Scorpion had to undergo an extensive redesign.
Despite the redesign, the F-89 would have a troublesome introduction into service, with many accidents occurring to the C and D models. The reliability of the aircraft and the effectiveness of its armament would eventually be improved. The Northrop F-89B was armed with six 20-mm cannon in the nose and provision for sixteen rockets under the wing. The F-89C and D received wing-tip tanks which carried no less than fifty-two 2.75 inch Folding Fin Aerial Rockets (FFARs). (In 1952, the author landed at Hamilton AFB as an aviation cadet on a cross-country from Reese AFB. The Airdrome Officer asked me if I knew the difference between the F-89C and the F-89D. When I admitted I did not he told me “On the F-89C the wings fall off, but on the F-89D, the engines blow-up.”) The F-89H had the wing-tip pods redesigned to carry the three of the new Hughes Falcon missiles and 21 FFARs. The final Scorpion, the F-89J was equipped with the Hughes MG-12 fire control system and could carry two of the Douglas MB-1 Genie, an unguided nuclear tipped rocket as well as four Falcons.
While the Scorpions were maturing, the Lockheed F-94 Starfire was pressed into service as an “interim” interceptor carrying four .50 inch machine guns. It saw service in the Korean War. A redesigned version, the F-94C, carried enormous fire-power for the time, with 24 Mighty Mouse 2.75 inch rockets in the nose, and twelve more in pods on each wing. The F-94C also had the Hughes E-5 fire control system, which was a step toward the future.
North American pushed an interceptor version of the Sabre, the F-86D, in 1949. Despite its complexity and the demands it made upon a single pilot, the F-86D was backed by both Saville and then Colonel Bruce K. Holloway. Some 2,500 would be built and it would in time be the most numerous interceptor in the ADC fleet, with more than 1,000 in service by the end of 1955. It was not ideal, however, for its afterburner consumed a great deal of fuel in getting it to altitude, and the pilot was overburdened with the combined complexity of the aircraft, radar and fire control system. The F-86D’s armament of twenty-four 2.75 inch aerial rockets was powerful, if unsophisticated.
At the same time that a decision was made to use the F-86D, a design competition for a “1954 Interceptor” was held by the Air Force. The criteria for the 1954 Interceptor called for a long range, supersonic aircraft with a high altitude capability. It was to be integrated with the ground based radar system and be guided automatically to the target. The interceptor’s own radar and fire control system would make the interception, fire the weapons and then guide the aircraft automatically back to the home field.
Convair won the competition for the 1954 Interceptor, but its F-102 Delta Dagger did not enter service until 1956, and then as an interim measure for the later F-106 Delta Dart. The F-102 carried a variety of armament over its service life, including the AIM-4C, AIM-26B (with a nuclear warhead) and unguided 2.75 inch Folding Fin Aerial Rockets.
The F-106 became operational in 1959, and, when the inevitable bugs were worked out, fulfilled all of the expectations of the 1954 Interceptor competition. It had the advanced Hughes MA-1 electronic guidance and fire control system and carried the AIR-2A Genie unguided nuclear tipped rocket plus four internally stored Falcon rockets.
To augment their interceptor force, ADC brought the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter into service in 1956 and the McDonnell F-101B Voodoo in 1959. The F-104 carried an internal 20-mm Vulcan cannon and four Sidewinder missiles, but was too small to house all the necessary equipment for a first line interceptor. It was retired to the Air National Guard by 1960. The F-101s proved to be excellent interceptors, almost equal to the F-106s, and remained in service until the 1980s. The F-101B armament included both the unreliable Falcon and potent Genie missiles.
Duty in ADC (which became the Aerospace Defense Command in 1958) was almost always difficult. Many of the bases were located in the north and weather conditions were often miserable. In the early days, the bases had few amenities, and alert crews had to stand by their aircraft in drafty hangars. In the far-north, the snow was sometimes so deep that an aircraft taking off could not be seen until it lifted above the snow-walls lining the runway. After an intercept, most often of an airliner that was somehow off course, the landings were made at the snow-bound runway with minimum visibility and ceiling. The superb ADC pilots tended to be rugged individualists, in the air and on the ground.
The Radar Game
World War II had proved the necessity of radar for detection of enemy aircraft and the control of defending fighters, and a great deal of experience was gained in the United States. Saville had given a great deal of thought to the Claire-Chennault style warning system that incorporated ground observers connected to central filter stations. In 1941, Saville wrote the Army Air Force’s handbook “Air Defense Doctrine.” By 1944, most people considered the probability of an air attack as negligible and Saville was given other duties. Nonetheless, he had overseen a systematic growth of radar stations, ground observer corps, and control centers that would be useful for the future.
As the Soviet threat became more generally recognized, the need for adequate early warning received more interest. An initial plan, the “Radar Fence” called for 411 radar stations and 18 control centers and was projected to cost $600 million. It was clearly beyond the Air Force’s budget capability and Saville was asked to develop a less expensive version.
This became known as the Permanent System, and was to consist of 85 radar stations and eleven control centers, in the United States and Alaska. The cost was estimated to be about $116 million, spread over 1949 and 1950. To meet the immediate threat, a temporary system, sarcastically but aptly called “Lashup,” was built at forty-four sites. The system used World War II AN/CPS-5 search radar systems that were deficient in range and in low-altitude detection capability.
Lashup had the great value of getting the concept of a radar air defense system started again in the United States. It was soon augmented by three far more effective systems whose inputs would be fed to one of the bigger gambles of the period–the Semiautomatic Ground Environment (SAGE) system, designed to control and fight the air defense battle.
Pinetree, Mid Canada, DEW Line and SAGE.
The Royal Canadian Air Force proved to be a boon partner with the United States when it came to building an adequate defensive system, both in the responsibilities it assumed in the construction of the warning systems, and in the provision of effective air defense squadrons. (In some respects, the air defense mission was to the RCAF what SAC’s mission was to the USAF—its raison d’ etre.)
The Pinetree Line was built by the USAF in conjunction with the RCAF in the early 1950s and was completed by June, 1954. Consisting of thirty-three stations, it extended on both sides of the Canadian/American border and provided warning and GCI activities. The United States paid for 22 of the stations, and provided personnel for 18 of the stations.
Canada took the bit in its teeth and constructed the Mid-Canada line entirely with its own resources. Built along the 55th parallel, the early warning system was also called the McGill Line, after the scientists at McGill University who planned and designed it. Not so much a radar warning line as an unmanned microwave fence, the line signaled when something–anything–flew over it. The Mid-Canada line became operational in January, 1957 and cost approximately $170 million.
The 55th parallel is often bitter cold and wind-swept yet a warning line had been built there. This led to the prospect of a warning line built in the far north, inside the Arctic Circle. The cost of such a line disturbed Air Force leaders, who believed the money could be better spent on bomb shelters and base dispersal efforts. However, the USAF conducted experiments in conjunction with the Lincoln Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and became convinced that a Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line was feasible.
Once again working in cooperation with the RCAF, the USAF placed a contract with General Electric’s Western Electric division for the construction of the DEW Line in December 1954.
Constructed along an irregular line extending from Cape Lisburne, Alaska to the west coast of Greenland, with auxiliary stations situated even further east, the DEW Line was a mammoth undertaking. It was the largest construction project ever attempted in the Arctic, and involved hundreds of ship-loads of material and thousands of sorties by American transport planes. The work force toiled day and night, seven days a week to make the July 31, 1957 date when responsibility was transferred to the USAF. Twenty-five lives were lost in the process.
The success of the DEW Line smoothed the way for the creation of the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) which was completed in 1963 after five years of intensive effort. The BMEWS sites included Thule, Greenland, Clear, Alaska and Fylingdales Moor, in England. Later in the decade, BMEWS would be followed by the later surveillance satellites, including SAMOS (Satellite and Missile Observation System) and MIDAS, an infra-red Missile Defense Alarm System.
The Pinetree, Mid-Canada and DEW Lines were integrated into the SAGE system, which began with the Air Defense Systems Engineering Committee, formed in December , 1949, and headed by an eminent MIT scientist, Dr. George W. Valley. Valley had the vision to see that computers would develop to the point that they could be used to control an air defense system, and his efforts led to the establishment of the Lincoln Laboratory. He was backed in this by the ADC Commander, the brilliant General Benjamin W. Chidlaw. A West Point graduate, Chidlaw had done remarkable work during World War II, supervising some of the most advanced projects at Wright Field before performing well as a combat commander in Europe. Chidlaw had assessed ADC’s capability to destroy an incoming bomber force as less than ten percent, and he was determined to improve the situation with technology.
After almost a decade of development effort, the SAGE system became operational when the New York sector came on line on June 26, 1958. Air Force enthusiasm for SAGE led to the planning of an intricate network of eight air defense regions within the Continental United States and thirty-two SAGE direction centers.
Like the Air Defense Command in general, SAGE was overtaken by events, as the Air Force shifted emphasis from intercepting bombers to detecting ICBMs. It also had initial operating difficulties, with operators tending to prefer well-known manual techniques of controlling interceptors rather than relying on automated information.
SAGE was never tested in battle, but it provided the United States Air Force with a crash-course in computer technology that would utilization that would stand it in good stead in the future.
Other Systems
The need to extend the radar warning lines, and to fill gaps in coverage, particularly for low-flying aircraft, led to the use of other means of detection. In 1953, the USAF began using the Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star as an early warning aircraft. The military Connies flew out of Otis AFB on the East Coast and McCllellan AFB in the west.
The early EC-121s had relatively primitive electronic systems, and were not very reliable. Overtime, however, the equipment improved and the EC-121s could be linked directly to the SAGE network. The success of the EC-121s could be attributed to the hard-working crews who flew the long missions and to the incredible patience of the ground crews who kept the oil-dripping, maintenance prone airplanes airborne. The success of the EC-121s led to the later generation of AWACS aircraft.
During World War II, more than 1,500,000 civilians had trained as observers in the Ground Observers Corps. They were almost too enthusiastic, and tended to deluge the GCI sites with phone calls. The program was discontinued in 1944, when it was obvious that air raids were no longer a threat. In February, 1950, General Whitehead called for a Ground Observer Corps of 160,000 members to help plug the gaps in low-altitude coverage. The GOC was initially considered indispensable to air defense, and was not deactivated until January 31, 1959.
The radical extent to which the USAF would go for radar warning time was best evidenced by the sea-based platforms called “Texas Towers.” These resembled oil-drilling rigs and were placed on shoals about 100 miles off the northeast coast of the United States. Five towers were proposed, but only three were built, the first one, Texas Tower Three (TT-3) beginning operation 110 miles east of Cape Cod in December, 1955
Fifty-five people were required to staff the towers, which rolled and groaned from the sea and from the vibration of the equipment. It was difficult duty and turned tragic when a caretaker crew of 28 people were killed when a winter gale caused the collapse of TT-4 on January 15, 1961. The last of the towers, TT-3 was decommissioned on March 25, 1963.
A more conventional water-borne means of extending radar coverage was the use of U.S. Navy picket ships. The ships could not mount as large radar units as the Texas Towers could, but they were far safer to operate.
BOMARC and Nike
The question of the control of air defense was always an issue between the Army and the USAF. The Army wished to retain control of its anti-aircraft artillery, and felt that their priority was enhanced by the development of the Nike surface-to-air missile. The Air Force developed its own SAM, the BOMARC, and wished to control all aspects of air defense.
It was a difficult issue, going to very heart of roles and missions, and it was ultimately decided that the Army would deploy the Nike for point defense, while the Air Force would deploy the BOMARC for area defense. The BOMARC name derived from BO for Boeing and MARC for Michigan Air Research Center, a competitor with MIT for Air Force technology contracts. It was an ambitious project, and more than seven years passed before the missile became operational in December, 1959. Some 500 nuclear-tipped BOMARC’s were deployed at ten sites (two in Canada) and the missile was integrated into the SAGE system. Performance was remarkable for the time, with a speed of Mach 2.5, a ceiling of 80,000 feet and a range of 400 miles. The BOMARC’s on-board radar guided it to its target. The proximity-fused nuclear warhead was intended for use against Soviet formations. The missile stayed in service until the early 1970s.
Shift in Emphasis
In 1954, General Chidlaw produced a plan for a United States Air Defense Command. This was essentially a joint command that called for the close coordination and cooperation of Army, Navy and USAF units concerned with air defense. He also suggested that Canada be invited to participate. Despite outraged disapproval by the Army, Chidlaw’s proposals were adopted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his plan was incorporated in the formation of the Continental Air Defense Command on September 1, 1954. CONAD was commanded by Chidlaw and headquartered in Colorado Springs. It was the direct antecedent of NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command, which was established on September 12, 1957. NORAD (after 1981, the North American Aerospace Defense Command) came into being only after lengthy and heated military and political negotiations had taken place. The actual operation of the unified command has been smooth from the start.
NORAD would be expanded by the Soviet ICBM threat, but even as it expanded, the emphasis on air defense against bombers was sharply reduced. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara believed that the threat of the ICBM was so overwhelming that the threat of follow-up attacks by bombers was relatively inconsequential. His successor, James W. Schlesinger, felt the same way.
The Aerospace Defense Command had risen from the ashes of deactivation to become one of the most sophisticated air defense systems in history. The very computer technology which had lifted it to the heights had simultaneously provided the cause for its obsolescence, the nuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missile. ADC’s mission was reduced over time and transferred to the Air National Guard and to the USAF Reserve. In 1980, ADC was once again inactivated, and its assets were divided between TAC and SAC.

F-22 and F-16

Gee Bee Genius: Howell Miller

Walter Boyne — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 19:29:14 +0000

/HOWELL MILLERS MAC-1

In the early 1930s, the name Gee Bee became synonymous with speed as the bullet-shaped racers blazed a winning trail at Cleveland. Yet the beautiful planes, with their gleaming red and white finish, soon acquired the reputation as pilot killers. And so they were—in the 1930s.

The Granville Brothers—Zantford, Thomas, Robert, Edward, and Mark—used their wide range of skills to create a series of advanced biplanes, some good looking sport monoplanes and a single brilliant racing aircraft, the Gee Bee Model Z, the City of Springfield, to propel themselves from shade-tree mechanic status to a full fledged, highly respected aircraft manufacturing company. Led by Zantford (better known as “Granny”) the brothers combined design, flying, welding, woodworking and other skills to create beautiful, record setting airplanes.

But Granny was wise enough to know his own limitations, and he engaged the personable Bob Hall as his Chief Engineer. Hall, later to be a famous test pilot with Grumman, was the perfect complement to Granny. He could translate the elder Granville’s visionary ideas into rugged designs, and he also had many contacts in the industry. The two men decided that they would build an aircraft capable of winning the 1931 National Air Races, and fell to with a passion, creating the Gee Bee Model Z in just a few months.

The City of Springfield won all five races in which it was entered at Cleveland, including the prestigious Thompson Trophy Race at a record 236.239 mph, with Lowell Bayles flying. In a single racing meet, the Model Z put Granville Brothers Aircraft in the forefront of aviation.

Sadly, on December 5, 1931, Bayles was killed in an official attempt on the world’s land plane speed record. Newsreel cameramen were filming as he blazed though the speed trap and they caught the City of Springfield as its right wing snapped off. The plane crashed into the ground, leaving a long trail of debris and burning gasoline. This snippet of celluloid, with the Gee Bee representing any number of aircraft, was subsequently used hundreds of times in dramatic films and television productions.

Bayles’ accident began a saga of fatal crashes which led the public to believe that all Gee Bees required super-human pilots such as Jimmy Doolittle to fly them and live. The inherently bad reputation was disproved forever when the great pilot Delmar Benjamin and his team created a perfect replica of the Gee Bee Super Sportster. From his first flight on December 23, 1991, Delmar demonstrated to everyone that the Gee Bee was not a killer aircraft but instead a superbly aerobatic airplane.

But sixty years earlier, the crash of the Model Z had devastated the Granvilles. Hall resigned, later building his own racer, the gull-wing Hall Bulldog. When Russell Boardman placed an order with Granville Brothers Aircraft for two new racers, Granny hired Howell W. “Pete” Miller to serve as Chief Engineer.

The swift but troubled Super Sportsters were essentially Granny’s design, fulfilling his vision that a tear drop was the ideal streamlined shape, a concept that Miller validated in wind tunnel tests. The Super Sportsters, with their famous numbers, 7 and 11, reached their peak in 1932, with Doolittle winning the Thompson Trophy and setting a world’s land speed record of 296.287 mph. Unfortunately in the following years Gee Bee crashes killed many famous pilots, including Granny himself, Russell Boardman, Florence Klingensmith, Cecil Allen and Francesco Sarabia.

The depression, the crashes and the generally limited market for racing aircraft forced Granville Brothers Aircraft out of business. Granny, Miller and Don DeLackner formed a consulting firm. Their first design was a lengthened Gee Bee. Called the “International Sportster,” it was used by the famous aviatrix (a term used at the time) in the 1934 “MacRobertson” race from London to Melbourne.

Disaster struck before it was built, when the thirty-two year old Granny was killed in a crash at Spartanburg, South Carolina, on February 12, 1934. Miller and the rest of the firm pressed on, and completed the R-6H, known as the Q.E.D. (Quo Erat Demonstrandum—for “So It is Proven). The aircraft, painted in “Lucky Strike Green” was flown by Lee Gehlbach in the 1934 Bendix, but encountered mechanical problems and did not finish. The aircraft was then shipped to Great Britain where Jacqueline Cochran (the “Lucky Strike Girl”) and her co-pilot, the far more experienced Wesley Smith, made it to Bucharest before calling it quits.

The Q.E.D., despite its 260 mph cruise speed and 1,850 mile range, was unsuccessful in the 1938 Bendix, and was sold to Captain Sarabia, the “Mexican Lindbergh.” Finished in white and renamed “Conquistador del Cielo” Sarabia brought the R-6H its own success in a record setting flight from Mexico City to New York. Feted as a hero in the Big Apple and Washington, D.C., he was killed when a rag was sucked into his carburetor intake after takeoff from Washington. He crashed into the Potomac and was killed.

Undaunted, Miller and company went on to greater airplanes—and greater disappointments. One of the major figures of American aviation, an aging Frank Hawks, needed a fast new airplane to stay competitive. He turned to Miller, who created his masterpiece, the HM-1, the beautiful Time Flies.

Miller formed the New England Aircraft Company, with himself as president and Hawks as vice president. The firm functioned exactly as the old Granville Brothers firm, with many of the same personnel. Design work began on June 12, 1936.

The Gruen Watch Company—then perhaps the most prestigious watch company in the Untied States—bankrolled the effort to the tune of about $70,000, and the resulting aircraft had a performance equal to or greater than its more famous contemporary, the Hughes H-1 racer. In an interview with Miller, the author was told that the Time Flies was slightly faster than the Hughes racer, had a much better rate of climb and a slightly greater range.

Both aircraft used sleek plywood wings. The all-metal semi-monocoque fuselage of the Hughes aircraft was much more sophisticated than the steel tube fuselage of the Time Flies. Miller said that he planned from the start that there the production version of the Time Flies, would be all metal.

Miller created an exceptionally clean aircraft, forgoing the classic Gee Bee tear drop for a sleek streamlined fuselage, constructed of Summerill chrome-moly tubing, and faired to a perfectly circular section by wooden formers. It was covered with Haskelite plywood for a strong, smooth surface. Instead of a conventional enclosed cockpit, he used a modified automobile hydraulic jack to elevate the seat and windscreen for takeoff and landing. In flight, the windscreen retracted flush, and Hawks visibility was limited to tear-drop shaped side windows.

Miller, who was a courtly, courteous, pleasant man in all situations, had rapport with Hawks, who was bright, intelligent and had a good sense of humor. After all the difficulties of the past, most of the team that produced the Gee Bees still worked in harmony. Hawks (like many pilots) had previously had bad experience with carbon monoxide fumes while flying, so at his suggestion, Miller designed air intakes well out on the cantilever wings to funnel fresh air to the cockpit.
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A Pratt & Whitney R-1830 engine, rated at 1,150 takeoff horsepower was mated to a three blade Hamilton Standard constant speed propeller. Miller stressed the aircraft to handle engines of up to 2,000 horsepower.

The undercarriage resembled a conventional fixed gear Gee Bee’s in terms of its construction and shock absorption, but it was designed to retract inward to nestle in the fuselage. The usually reliable retraction mechanism, powered by a Crosley automobile starter, had an Achilles heel, as will be seen.

On October 18th, 1936 (four months and six days after work began)
Frank Hawks flew the beautiful Time Flies for the first time. After taking off from the Springfield, Massachusetts factory (the same former dance hall where the Gee Bees were built) Hawks flew to Rentschler Field in Hartford, Connecticut, where both Pratt & Whitney and Hamilton Standard technicians were available for the brief but attenuated test program.

During the fourth test flight on January 6, 1937, Hawks pulled off his long fur gauntlets, a present from his wife, and put them in a whole in the instrument panel where the Sperry autopilot was due to be installed. When he extended the gear, the threaded gear mechanism grabbed the gauntlets, chewed them up—and jammed the gear half-way down. Hawks landed, and the gear did not collapse, but damage was done to the propeller tips and gear fairing.

Time Flies was quickly repaired, but Hawks was running out of time and money. Instead of attempting something that really would have gathered attention, such as an attempt to best the records Hughes had set, Hawks made a series of short flights. The most important of these was a record setting trip from East Hartford to Miami in four hours and fifty-five minutes. On the return flight, he ran into headwinds and elected to terminate at Newark, New Jersey, where his ultra-hard landing smashed the landing gear and broke the main wing spar. Hawks had many crashes in the past; he had one fatal one coming in the future.

He tried to salvage something from his efforts and sold the plane to Tri-American Aviation, which had primarily South American interests. Headed by Edward Connerton and Leigh Wade, a test pilot in France in World War I and pilot of the Douglas World Cruiser Boston, Tri-American wanted to convert the aircraft into a fast two-seat fighter/attack plane for South American air forces.

Wade, Connerton and Miller formed the Miller Aircraft Corporation in 1938 to convert the damaged Time Flies. The modification was initially called the HM-2, and then the MAC-1. Changes were kept to a minimum, with a fuel tank removed to allow two seats and the retractable canopy replaced by a conventional sliding canopy positioned well aft on the fuselage. Dual controls were fitted and the wings were modified to accept a single .50 caliber machinegun on each side. A flexible gun was installed for the back seater. (Only dummy guns were ever fitted.) The paint job was changed to a military blue fuselage with orange wings and horizontal stabilizer, and a 900 horsepower Twin Wasp engine was installed.

Leigh Wade made the first flight of the MAC-1 on August 23, 1937—ironically the same day that Hawks was killed in the crash of the weird-looking Gwinn Air Car. Hawks had followed the conversion of the Time Flies with interest, and spoke to Miller about it on the day of its first flight—and his last.

The MAC-1 was entered in the 1938 Thompson, and Wade flew the airplane despite the fact that there had been little time for testing, and he had no idea of what the fuel consumption would be. He flew a conservative race to insure his finishing, and did so in fourth place at 248.42 mph. When he touched down, the engine quit from lack of fuel, so he had eyeballed the race quite accurately.

Earl Ortman ( who had finished second behind Roscoe Turner in the Thompson, flying the Marcoux Bromberg Special) continued the test program when Wade had to go to South America on business. The first test was over a measured twenty-five mile course near Rentschler Field, and Ortman averaged an amazing 369 mph.

The next test was to measure time to climb, and Ortman achieved a blistering initial climb rate of 6,000 feet per minute. (The Air Corp’s current first line fighter, the Seversky P-35, had a top speed of about 285 mph and an initial climb rate of about 2,000 feet per minute.

During the climb tests, however, the center of gravity moved back as fuel was burned, and in a 425 mph dive back to altitude, Ortman felt the stick jerk out of his hand in a series of oscillations of increasing amplitude. He hit the canopy quick release and was hurled out of the airplane just as it began to break up in the air, the tail separating. He landed safely by parachute, and that was the end of the Time Flies/MAC-1.

Miller went on to a profitable career designing many smaller aircraft, but he always regretted that the HM-1 was not given a chance to show its full potential as a production, all-metal aircraft.