Kelly (13 page)

There were big plans to publicize introduction of this new transport in service with TWA. Howard Hughes himself wanted to be at the controls of what would be a recordbreaking, cross-country flight carrying press and Hollywood celebrities. He earlier had established a reputation as a pilot. In fact, he was awarded the Collier Trophy for an around-the-world record flight in 1938. He flew his Model 14 at an average speed of 206 miles an hour over a 15,000-mile route in 3 days, 19 hours, and 9 minutes. We had not worked with him on that venture, although it was with a Lockheed airplane. He had the extra fuel tanks installed on his own.

Hughes would have to be checked out in the new airplane before attempting the cross-country flight, of course. So, before it was delivered to TWA, Milo Burcham, Dick Stanton as flight engineer, and I took Hughes and Jack Frye on a demonstration and indoctrination flight. Frye was just observing, but Hughes was to learn how the plane performed and how best to handle it.

Our normal procedure in checking out a new pilot in an airplane was to go through the maneuvers carefully, then have the student follow through on the controls from the copilot seat.

We had just taken off from Burbank and were only a few thousand feet over the foothills behind the plant when Hughes said to Milo: “Why don’t you show me how this thing stalls?”

So Milo lowered the flaps and gear, put on a moderate amount of power, pulled the airplane up, and stalled it. The Constellation had fine stall characteristics, not falling off, and recovering in genteel fashion.

Hughes turned to Milo and said, “Hell, that’s no way to stall. Let me do it.”

Milo turned the controls over to him. I was standing between them in the cockpit. Howard reached up, grabbed all
four throttles and applied takeoff power with the flaps full down. The airplane was so lightly loaded it would practically fly on the slip stream alone. Hughes then proceeded to pull back the control all the way, as far as it would go, to stall the airplane.

Never before nor since have I seen an airspeed indicator read zero in the air. But that’s the speed we reached—zero—with a big, four-engine airplane pointed 90 degrees to the horizon and almost no airflow over any of the surfaces except what the propellers were providing. Then the airplane fell forward enough to give us some momentum. Just inertia did it, not any aerodynamic control.

At that point, I was floating against the ceiling, yelling, “Up flaps! Up flaps!” I was afraid that we’d break the flaps, since we’d got into a very steep angle when we pitched down. Or that we’d break the tail off with very high flap loads.

Milo jerked the flaps up and got the airplane under control again with about 2,000 feet between us and the hills.

I was very much concerned with Howard’s idea of how to stall a big transport.

We continued on our flight to Palmdale Airport, where we were going to practice takeoffs and landings. That whole desert area was mostly open country in those days and an ideal place for test flying.

Once on the runway, Milo and Howard exchanged seats. On takeoff from Burbank, Milo had shown Howard what the critical speeds were; so Howard now took the plane off. But he had great difficulty in keeping it on a straight course. He used so much thrust and developed so much torque that the plane kept angling closer and closer to the control tower. We circled the field without incident and came in for an acceptable landing. Then Howard decided to make additional flights, and on the next takeoff he came even closer to the control tower, with an even greater angle of yaw. He was not correcting adequately with the rudder. He made several more takeoffs and landings, each worse than the last. He was not getting any better at all,
only worse. I was not only concerned for the safety of all aboard, but for the preservation of the airplane. It still belonged to us.

Jack Frye was sitting in the first row of passenger seats, and I went back to talk to him.

“Jack, this is getting damned dangerous,” I said. “What should I do?”

“Do what you think is right, Kelly,” he said. That was no great help; he didn’t want to be the one to cross Hughes.

I returned to the cockpit. What I thought was the right thing to do was to stop this. And on the sixth takeoff, which was atrocious, the most dangerous of them all, I waited until we were clear of the tower and at pattern altitude, before I said: “Milo, take this thing home.”

Hughes turned and looked at me as though I had stabbed him, then glanced at Milo.

I repeated, “Milo, take this thing home.” There was no question about who was running the airplane program. Milo got in the pilot’s seat, I took the copilot’s seat, and we flew home. Hughes was livid with rage. I had given him the ultimate insult for a pilot, indicating essentially that he couldn’t fly competently.

A small group was waiting for us at the factory to hear Hughes’s glowing report on his first flight as pilot of the Constellation. That’s not what they heard.

Robert Gross was furious with me. What did I mean, insulting our first—and best—customer? It was damned poor judgment, he said. Hibbard didn’t tell me so forcefully that I’d made a mistake, because he always considered another person’s feelings, but he definitely was unhappy and let me know it. Perhaps most angry of all was the company’s publicity manager, Bert Holloway. He had a press flight scheduled that would result in national attention, headlines in newspapers across the country and in the aviation press around the world. Because, of course, the plane would set a speed record. Would Hughes follow through as planned? By that time, I didn’t care what
anyone else said. I went home and poured some White Horse and soda.

It was a frigid reception I received next day at the plant. But when I explained what the situation had been, that in my judgment I did the only thing I could to keep Hughes from crashing the plane, and then Hughes later agreed to spend a couple of days learning how to fly the plane as our pilot would demonstrate, the atmosphere thawed.

We offered a bonus to our flight crew to check Hughes out in the plane over the next weekend. Rudy Thoren, our chief flight test engineer, took my place. I never flew with Hughes again; it was mutually agreeable.

The only other time we ever thought it necessary to pay our flight crew a bonus to check out a customer’s flight crew was in training a crew who would religiously release flight controls to bow toward Mecca at certain times of the day. It happened once on approach to landing!

On his next time in the airplane, Hughes changed his attitude considerably. He followed instructions carefully. He was the only pilot I ever knew, though, who could land one of our airplanes at cruising speed! He must have made 50 or 60 practice takeoffs and landings over that weekend. In fact, he was flying right up to takeoff time for the cross-country flight.

On the flight, as he was approaching Denver, Hughes encountered a big thunderstorm that had not been predicted. Instead of flying around or over it, and perhaps adding to the flight time, he plowed right through it. Unfortunately, the passengers had not been warned of turbulence and several not strapped in their seats were injured, though not seriously.

A record transcontinental crossing was set—Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in an elapsed time of 6 hours, 57 minutes, 51 seconds.

From then on, the “Connie,” as the plane soon came to be called, established records every time it first flew from point to point.

Except for the “penny-wise” policies of Hughes, TWA
would have had a monopoly on nonstop cross-country flight for some time, because no other airliner then in service could make the flight without stopping to refuel. But in winter, against maximum headwinds, the east-to-west flight especially would take longer than nine hours. A union rule required a change of crew after that period of time. Hughes would not double-crew the flights, although it would have paid off handsomely in competitive scheduling.

Hughes had exacted an agreement from Gross in signing the Constellation fleet purchase contract that Lockheed would not sell the airplane to any other airline until TWA had received 35 of them. Despite the fact that he thereby had prevented any other line from competing with him, he refused to take full advantage of the position if it meant double-crewing. The Constellation had no competition until Douglas brought out the DC-7 with the same turbo-compound engines.

The agreement with Hughes cost Lockheed dearly. It flawed our relations with American Airlines for years. It is interesting that AA doesn’t fly a Lockheed-produced aircraft to this day, having opted for the DC-10 over the L-1011. In the commercial airplane business, everyone knows what everyone else is doing—although the information may not have been offered directly. American asked us if we could produce a new passenger transport for them, with specifications basically those of the Constellation.

Gross, Hibbard, and I met with C. R. Smith, then head of the line, Bill Littlewood, vice president and chief engineer—and a good engineer—and a few other American officials at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. We had to say that we could not build an airplane with that kind of performance although it went against the grain for all of us. And American Airlines knew damned well we were building such a plane.

American went to Douglas for the DC-6 and was responsible in large part for pushing continuing development of that plane until the DC-7 was introduced and then the jet-powered DC-8. American’s decision in the ’50s to buy hundreds of
turboprop-powered Electras—it was named for the first Electra—from Lockheed effectively kept the company from being an early entrant in the jet transport field. The commanding lead that Lockheed had with the Constellation was lost.

Ironically, we may have explored the jet transport field too early. Before building the second Electra, we had invested $8 million in research and preliminary design of the Model L-199, a jet plane with four rear-mounted engines. Fuel consumption for the early engines was so high that it would require a huge airplane to fly across the ocean. Our design grew to 450,000 pounds for takeoff, and Gross decided that was just too big. Before turning thumbs down definitely, though, he retained a consulting firm for an opinion on the future of jet engines in commercial air transportation.

The report was discouraging because it forecast that operating time on the jet engine would never exceed 35 hours between overhauls. Now we think in terms of 10,000 hours.

Other orders for the Constellation followed TWA’s, and eventually the airplane flew for most of the major airlines of the world, including even American Overseas Airlines. Its identifying triple-tail and graceful lines were recognized at airports internationally.

In its long production lifetime, the design was continuously improved and extended in performance and modified for a series of specific missions. The Constellation, and then the Super Constellation, appeared in more than 20 successively advanced airline versions, cargo models, and a series of early warning, patrol, and other specialized service-types for both U.S. Air Force and Navy. Some of the commercial liners on long-range flights did have berths for sleeping passengers. The fuselage was stretched and the wings extended.

The last of the airliners, the Model 1649, still is remembered by air travelers for its luxurious interior. The planes had reclining seats with retractable footrests in standard cabin configurations. Had the turboprop engines for which this Super Constellation was designed been available, the series surely
would have had an even longer life. But it could not compete with the coming jets. The last commercial Constellation was produced in 1959.

There was a myth circulating for some years that Howard Hughes had designed the Lockheed Constellation. It was not discouraged by Howard, and certainly was not true. His specifications had consisted of half a page of notes on the size, range, and carrying capacity he wanted. It was not without some encouragement from us—I did not appreciate someone else’s taking credit for our work—that eventually both Hughes and Frye acknowledged the misconception in November of 1941. They offered to publish advertisements, but Robert Gross was satisfied that their letter stated: “… to correct an impression … prevalent in the aircraft industry … the Constellation … airplane was designed, engineered and built by Lockheed.”

Hughes used to keep at least one Constellation parked on our flight line—he had one of just about every type of plane stashed away somewhere; and he would phone his favorite flight test engineer at Lockheed, Jack Real (now head of Hughes Helicopters), in the early morning hours about once a month, wanting to come over, climb into the cockpit, run up the engines, and just sit there awhile. Real would join him.

The personal eccentricities that later were to become obsessions and make a tragedy of Hughes’ life had not yet manifested themselves—at least, not to us. Hughes and Real became good friends.

While Hughes and I never again flew together, I heard from him directly during the period when he was developing his wooden Flying Boat, now a tourist attraction alongside the
Queen Mary
at Long Beach harbor in California.

The project actually had been proposed by Henry Kaiser, who chose wooden construction because material was plentiful while aluminum was in critical supply for war production. Hughes embraced it enthusiastically; he had the plant and people available. He took to telephoning me—I remember specifically one 8:00 a.m. call on a Sunday, because it was unusual. Hughes generally telephoned only late at night or very early in
the morning. He said, “Kelly, we’re going to build a nacelle like this.… What do you think of it?” I made my comments, as I usually did, and after about two hours managed to escape and go about my own activities.

He did this on several occasions, on different subjects. Each time, I discovered, he then would call Gene Root, chief aerodynamicist at Douglas at that time, and say, “Gene, Kelly says.… What do you think?”

Then he would phone George Shairer at Boeing with “George, Kelly said … and Gene said … What do you think?” So he had a three-way consultation.