Some Events That Led Me to Primary Flight Training, Part 1

I have been fascinated with airplanes about as long as I can remember. My Dad's older sister's husband, Uncle Eldo flew Curtiss JN-4 "Jennys" in World War I. I was nearly nine years old at the time of the December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor attack by Japan which started World War II for the United States. In the course of the war and after, I built just  about every major aircraft model of the Allies as well as German and Japanese military aircraft. I also built many American light aircraft civilian models of the time such as the Stinson Gull-Wing SR-10 Reliant-a favorite, the Piper J3C Cub and the Rearwin Speedster.

 

I wish to thank Dan Gray for the use of his amazing RC aircraft models to illustrate this article; these have been used in motion pictures for special effects, hence his Aviation F/X (effects) business.

 

Vintage  flying models in the '40s were made from balsa sheet/stringer and tissue paper kits built by overlaying waxed paper on the plans pinned to a board and constructing the wings, fuselage and tail surfaces stringer by stringer cutting and pinning them in place for gluing. Fuselage bulkheads were preprinted on balsa or basswood sheet to cut out and notch for the longerons. The wing ribs were similarly cut along the printed lines, notched and glued up with balsa stringers to form each wing.The quick-setting volatile Testors glue in tubes had an acetone-smelling base, and at the time we had little idea the fumes could be really dangerous. The tubes simply warned 'avoid fumes, use in a well-ventilated place'. It was impossible not to get the glue on your fingers, which often served as a makeshift vise to hold the just-glued parts.

 

We would fly these aircraft models using a supplied long special rubber band hooked from a reinforced tail former inside the fuselage to the rear of the prop hub shaft which always had a hook to receive the rubber band. The prop hub had a metal low friction tube and end plate for easy spinning of the propeller. I would sometimes add a drop of 3 in One Oil for lubrication. We would wind them up by turning the prop by hand backward to twist the rubber band tightly and store energy for the hand-launched free-flight, hence the name 'rubber band flyers'. Adjustments could be made with shims to get the wing angle of incidence just right. Everything was to scale except the propellers were often longer and landing gear were typically longer with bigger wheels to get prop clearance and easier landings without nose-overs in the field. Some models were built only as display models with true-scale props and landing gear. I must say the detail of some of the kit plans suggested they were taken from original aircraft blueprints and these could teach you quite a bit about the actual aircraft construction.

 

I recall the particular difficulty getting the wing/nacelles interface just right in a solid wood German Messerschmitt Bf-110, a twin engine night fighter. The degree of pre-shaping in solid wood display kits varied by manufacturer. All required at least a fair amount of sanding before painting. Kits were made by Cleveland, Comet, Megow's,  StromBecker and Paul Guillow, among the better quality ones. Comet had a line of small 'dime kits' which cost just ten cents.  A quarter would buy many of these kits, which just about every boy built while girls were playing house or with dolls. A 50 or 65 cent kit with silkspan rather than tissue paper was really extravagant! The covering was shrunk with a fine mist spray and then doped after drying, much like fabric-covered full size aircraft. I didn't know a single girl who ever built a model airplane kit back then,. It was a boy thing and labor-intensive, but I never complained as the result was a beautiful airplane that flew. Little did I fully realize at the time I was picking up the aerodynamics of flight and learning what made planes fly either well or poorly. Some was trial and error, and what worked was repeated with the next build. Aeronautical subtleties such as wing washout for stall progression control and phugoid suppression or elimination would come much later.

 

Old timers reading this may recall in 1944 on the back panel of every General Mills Wheaties cereal cardboard box in full color (even camouflage) was a 'Jack Armstrong' complete printed aircraft model which we would cut out with a single edge razor blade and small scissors or Exacto knife. We fitted the tabs in the correct slots and glued them together. Dashed lines denoted fold lines and each junction had printed instructions whether to insert a tab above or below the corresponding slot. Glue areas were denoted by shading and print instructions. Tabs were snipped off after the glue dried. Remember, these three-dimensional scale models were cleverly designed for grade-school kids age 9 and up to successfully put together, and I was about 11 at the time. Each one required a penny glued just behind the nose cone to get the correct weight and balance. They made good gliders limited by the average nine inch or so wingspans. I would punch a small hole in the left wing leading edge center, tie a ten foot or so string on and fasten that to a stick to use them as so-called G-Line Flyers until I got dizzy from the counterclockwise turns. Flying them (and carnival rides) were early demonstrations of centrifugal force! I am right-handed and found I could turn and fly them counter-clockwise using the left wing tether easier than the other way around. We had dogfights when another kid would face me and fly his plane the same way and try to ram your plane head-on. This took careful pacing and deft arm and wrist maneuvers to control the planes. All this took place on the grass lawn of our homes and the planes were rarely totalled. And boy, did we eat a lot of Wheaties to get more new planes on the back of the package! I would help my mother at the grocery store to select the cereal by what new plane was on the back, so I wouldn't get duplicates. There were no supermarkets then.

 

The General Mills Company also sponsored at the time the Jack Armstrong (The All-American Boy) radio program. This was also the time before television of the Gangbusters radio program, I Love a Mystery and the Green Hornet. Do you remember the half-hour show "Mr. Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons"? We called him "Mr. Tracer, Keener Than Most Persons"! But, I digress.

 

The Wheaties box back panel military aircraft  were designed for General Mills by a very clever Englishman named Rigby.  Thousands of the model aircraft printout kits were given by General Mills to our wounded servicemen recuperating from wartime injuries to build and fly. The models flew so well that National Championship Contests were organized. Awards were presented for best maneuverability and longest flight. The contests were held indoors, usually in large gymnasiums, so that wind was not a factor influencing the flights.

 

I have been asked to list the original old kits from 1944: American Curtiss P-40 Warhawk,  Japanese Mitsubishi A6M "Zero", British Supermarine Spitfire V, German Focke Wulf Fw-190, American Grumman F6F Hellcat, Japanese Nakajima 01 Mk-1, British Fairey Fulmar, German Heinkel HE.113, Russian Yak I-26, American Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, American Bell P-39 Airacobra, Russian Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik, American- North American P-51 Mustang and the Japanese Aichi D3A "Val".  

 

In 1966 these kits were reintroduced by General Mills, so many adults younger than myself may remember them. Finally, in 1990 the kits without the cereal were produced and printed in America by The Handicapped Kids at Lutz School, Mt. Clemens, Michigan.  Fourteen of the models were made available, and I purchased two for nostalgia. They remain unbuilt-the American Grumman Hellcat F6F in dark blue and the German Focke-Wulf Fw-190 in desert camouflage. I found them at an aviation bookstore, The Nostalgic Aviator  in Glendale, California years ago for $2.50 each. (A box of cereal costs more than that now!) Some, the new P-40 and the new "Zero" were slightly modified in the 1990 editions 'with tapered airfoil wing' which was claimed to improve the authenticity, increase lift in flight and slow the model's descent. I have not tested the claims. Copyright to the 1990 new kits is held by TRU-Flite models, who was the actual seller. Presumably, the handicapped kids earn something out of the sales. Good luck in finding any of these kits.

 

During the war, even in far inland Minnesota we had air raid drills and at night blackout practice where only the neighborhood block-appointed air raid warden could be outside. I would peek around my mother's living room window curtain and watch neighbor Mr. Cheadle on our block walk around in his black rain coat carrying a small flashlight. He was the only one allowed outside during these exercizes, and was assigned because he was too old for military service.

 

We kids  learned quickly to identify the various military aircraft from black silhouette flash card practice just like the military used and would scan the skies every time we heard a plane overhead. Nowadays, kids outdoors are so habituated and blase' about aircraft  noise they never look up. I invariably still do, trying to identify every overhead aircraft I hear. Now, there's a several generations gap for you!

 

In early 1942 fifteen of the North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers that subsequently participated in the famous April, 1942 Doolittle bombing raid on Japan from the USS Hornet aircraft carrier (President Roosevelt's quixotic 'Shangri-La' explanation to the press) were all flown to Minneapolis' airport, called Wold-Chamberlain Field at the time, to be modified for the secret mission. My Mother's younger brother, my Uncle, who later that year at age 38 joined the US Navy, correctly guessed the bomber's mission. There was much speculation locally at the time when those Army Air Corps bombers flew into the field, and I lived not very far from the airfield. Their presence was no secret. The B-25s were modified in Shorty DePonti's big hangar at the then northwest corner of the field, as we were much later to learn. There was also a little-known aircraft Ice Research Base in Minneapolis at the time. That very high cavernous hangar of Shorty's was used for a time after WWII by the University of Minnesota for artificial lightning research. This is a good place to conclude Part 1 of this article. Thank you for reading. Please see and read Part 2.