Eastern Air Lines

Eastern Air Lines emerged in 1934 as the surviv­ing entity following Black-McKellar. The pre­decessor company, Eastern Air Transport, was owned by the holding company, North American Aviation, which in turn was controlled by Gen­eral Motors as of 1933. Eddie Rickenbacker (see Figure 15-1), World War I hero and fighter ace, was hired by General Motors as a consultant and then was made general manager of Eastern Air

FIGURE 15-1 Eddie Rickenbacker.

Transport in 1934. Eastern Air Transport was successor to the original line, Pitcairn Aviation, and it later absorbed the Luddington Line and New York Airways before becoming Eastern Air Lines. When General Motors tired of the airline business in 1938, Rickenbacker purchased the company and steadily increased its business and its mileage.

In 1937, Eastern Air Lines had routes from New York to Miami and to Atlanta and points south and west, New Orleans, Houston, and San Antonio, all through Washington, D. C. It also flew the Chicago to Miami route through India­napolis, Nashville, and Atlanta.

TWA

TWA was the designation taken by the airline combined at the behest of Walter Folger Brown. A combination of the former Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT) and Western Air Express, it flew the middle transcontinental route from New York to Los Angeles under the name Transcontinental and Western Air. After Black-McKellar, the air­line simply added “Inc.” after its name in order to comply with the prohibition of Postmaster Gen­eral Farley that precluded those airlines which had participated in the Brown meetings from bid­ding on the new airmail contracts in 1934.

TWA had been a part of North American Aviation in the early 1930s, and General Motors controlled the holding company. After Brown – McKellar, General Motors sold its interests to John D. Hertz and Lehman Brothers, who then had effective control of TWA.

Jack Frye, at the age of 26, was TWA’s operational vice president in 1930. He had founded Standard Air Lines in the 1920s, after stints at flight instructing and stunt flying, and went with the company when it was purchased by Western Air Express. With the merger of Western and TAT, he suddenly found himself in charge of operations of a transcontinental airline. TWA, and most other airlines, relied heavily on the trimotors in the early 1930s. With the 1931 crash of the Fokker Trimotor in which Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne was killed, government-mandated inspections of that plane’s wooden wing structure became cost-prohibitive, not to mention the fact that the flying public thereafter was not keen on stepping aboard that airplane. Frye needed new equipment.

In 1932, Frye had heard the buzz in the avia­tion community of a new prototype in the works at Boeing, the model 247. (See Figure 15-2.) This airplane was to be a giant leap forward with its low mono-wing, and two engines instead of three that were mounted into the wings in nacelles (taking

advantage of NACA research) that greatly reduced drag. The 247 used stressed all-metal skin, retract­able landing gear (a first), insulated cabin walls, hot water heating, and double ventilation systems. This airplane would fly from one coast to the other in only 19’/2 hours, 12 hours less than with the trimotors. Fueling stops were reduced from 14 to 6. Frye decided that TWA had to have these airplanes.

When he inquired, he was advised that United Airlines (the sister company to the Boe­ing manufacturing arm) had already placed an order for 60 of the new planes, an order that it would take all of two years to fill, thus pre­cluding any deliveries to other airlines. The 247 became operational in June 1933.

In the fall of 1932, Frye wrote to a number of aircraft manufacturers setting out airplane perfor­mance specifications for new equipment that TWA would be interested in purchasing. Although the specifications included that the airplane have three engines, the engineers at a small company located in California, known as Douglas Aircraft, believed that the performance specifications could be met with a twin engine design, including the require­ment for a 10,000 foot minimum service ceiling on one engine (necessary to clear the Rockies).

A prototype was fielded in July 1933, the DC-1 (see Figure 15-3), the designation for the Douglas Commercial Number 1. If this had been poker, the DC-1 would have called the В-247 and raised it. The DC-1 engine mountings and cowling were similar to the 247, incorporating the design developed by NACA, but the land­ing gear of the DC-1 folded up into the engine nacelles. The engines, Wright Cyclones, had been engineered to produce 710 horsepower due to 87-octane gasoline having become commer­cially available during the period of the plane’s construction. Although the constant speed propel­ler was still a few years off, the DC-1 did have a 2-speed propeller that could be set either for takeoff or for cruise (a first). Additional firsts included an automatic pilot and efficient wing flaps. Flight tests showed that Frye’s perfor­mance specifications had been met. Only one DC-1 was built and that one was purchased by TWA. It was placed in limited service in 1933.

When Postmaster General Farley sent his notice dated February 9, 1934, canceling all air­mail contracts effective February 19, 1934, Frye decided to make his own statement. With Eddie Rickenbacker of Eastern Air Transport as co-pilot, on February 18, 1934, Frye took off from Los

Angeles in the DC-1 loaded with airmail and flew it to Newark, with fueling stops in Kansas City and Columbus, in 13 hours and 4 minutes, setting the transcontinental speed record at the time.

The DC-2, with 14 seats, was brought to production in 1934, and 193 were built. The next year, in 1935, Douglas came out with the DC-3 (see Figure 15-4) (21 seats) with 900-horsepower

FIGURE 15-4 DC-3—The plane that changed the world.

Wright Cyclones (DC-ЗА with 1,200-horsepower P&W engines), and Douglas would, before it was all over, build 455 of them for commercial use and 10,174 for the military. By 1936, the DC-3 had reduced the transcontinental flying time to about 17 hours. The airplane was awarded the Collier Trophy in 1936 and became known as “the plane that changed the world.” And, indeed, it was used all over the world—in World War II in Burma, this airplane, which at normal configu­ration seated 21 passengers, set a load record of 72 refugees safely delivered, and 6 more stow­aways were discovered on landing.

By late 1938, pressurized airplanes were on the drawing boards. Boeing designed a com­mercial transport, the 307 (see Figure 15-5), I scheduled for delivery in 1939. It was based on < the basic B-17 design with four 900-horsepower I Wright R-1820 Cyclone engines. This airplane

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% had a service ceiling of 26,200 feet and was I the first commercial liner pressurized for high – | altitude flight. The airplane came to be known as I the “Stratoliner.” Jack Frye decided that TWA had to have them too, so he placed an order

with Boeing for five of the new planes. But his board of directors, chaired by John D. Hertz of Lehman Brothers, did not agree. In December 1938, TWA’s board voted to cancel Frye’s order to Boeing for the B-307.

Jack Frye knew that this dispute represented an essential disagreement concerning his and the board’s vision for the future of TWA. He also knew that this disagreement would likely mean his being removed if control of the company remained in the hands of the present directors. Jack Frye was acquainted with Howard Hughes (see Figure 15-6), the eccentric multimillionaire and aviation pioneer in his own right, who was then living in Los Angeles and involved in the movie-making business. Hughes had an abid­ing interest in aviation and had even worked for American Airlines, under an assumed name, as a co-pilot in 1932, flying between Los Angeles and Chicago. He listened to Frye, sided with his logic in the B-307 dispute with the board of directors, and agreed to buy the company. He began secretly buying up TWA stock. By April, it was public knowledge that Hughes was becoming a substantial stockholder in the airline, so much so that the significant interests repre­sented by Lehman and Hertz decided to pull out of the company, the second time Lehman had

FIGURE 15-6 Howard Hughes, the eccentric multimillionaire and aviation pioneer.

departed the field. Control was effectively passed to Howard Hughes, the Boeing order for the 307 was reinstated, and the future of TWA remained firmly in the grip of Jack Frye, now with Howard Hughes. On July 8, 1940, the 307 was placed into service on the New York to Los Angeles route, reducing the transcontinental flying time to 14l/2 hours.

Hughes was a singular individual and unique in all known respects. He was born wealthy, son of the founder of the Hughes Tool Company of Houston, Texas. As soon as he could, he left Houston, began traveling the world, and wound up in Hollywood. He entered the film business and, in the process of directing his first film, Hell’s Angels, a story of British pilots in World War I, he became fascinated with aviation and learned to fly.

Even as a young man, Hughes was obses­sive, wanting to be the best, to know the most, and never to fail. With absolutely no concerns about money, he began the design and build­ing of an airplane racer, the H-1, with which he would set a world’s speed record of 352 miles per hour in 1935. He set a transcontinental speed record of 7 hours and 27 minutes with the H-l in January 1936. He flew practically every com­mercial airplane in production over the next sev­eral years, gaining experience in long-distance navigation and planning, as well as execution at the controls, until he launched his most ambitious attempt yet: a round the world flight in the Lock­heed Electra.

The record in 1938 stood from Wiley Post’s solo circumnavigation in 1933 at 7 days and 18 hours. Hughes’ route took him from New York to Paris in less than half the time it took Lind­bergh, then across Europe into Russia and Siberia to Alaska. From Fairbanks he refueled in Min­neapolis and returned to Floyd Bennett Field in New York triumphant in three and a half days, halving Post’s record.

Hughes had some prior acquaintance with TWA; in fact, one of its vice presidents had been a stunt pilot for Hughes’ movie, Hell’s

Angels. Hughes was also more pilot than busi­nessman. As Jack Frye would later remark, “One thing about Hughes, he did have an understand­ing about the airplane.” He fully understood the advantage of having an airplane that could top most of the weather, so he agreed with Frye’s position on the Boeing 307.