Discord at the 1944 Chicago Conference and the Formation of ICAO

Adolf Berle, FDR's aviation advisor

Early in the Second World War, the Allied powers were already giving consideration to the commercial importance of aviation in a postwar world. In 1941, Secretary of State Cordell Hull placed a brilliant diplomat and lawyer under him, Adolf Augustus Berle, in charge of aviation affairs. Berle soon became President Franklin D. Roosevelt's primary advisor on commercial aviation affairs. Berle saw the postwar potential for aviation threatened by two factors- on one hand were what he thought were outdated imperial notions espoused by the British and on the other hand were ruthless commercial interests typified by Juan Trippe, the chairman of Pan American Airways. Given his legal background, Berle sought to construct a legal framework to govern aviation commerce worldwide and keep powerful political interests and business interests in check. By 1943, Berle had Roosevelt's approval to forge ahead with an international conference to be held before war's end to start laying down the ground rules for postwar commercial aviation. His concepts were for what today would be called "open skies". By the 1943 Quebec Conference, Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt had on their agenda the discussion of postwar aviation policy in addition to the primary discussion of war strategy. At their meeting, Roosevelt established that open skies would be the United States position on postwar commercial aviation and the wheels were set in motion for an international aviation conference to be held the following year in Chicago. 

British aviation interests were forwarded by Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook. During the war as Minister of Aircraft Production he was instrumental in streamlining and increasing the efficiency of British aircraft production to meet wartime needs. Britain saw aviation as the key to retaining its Empire with far flung bases in its many dependencies and Commonwealth nations that would rival the American network of bases. However, many in the British government saw that despite wartime production demands, the American aviation industry still managed to design and build civilian aircraft as well as hold the technological lead in bomber designs that would undoubtedly influence postwar airliner designs. Combined with the already legendary ruthlessness of Juan Trippe at Pan American Airways, the development of postwar British aviation policy became one of protectionism- safeguard the economic livelihood of the British aircraft industry, maintain the British Empire and use British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) as the primary means of maintaining the aviation links of Britain's far flung empire. 

With the Americans and the British certain to dominate the upcoming 1944 Chicago Conference, a third party emerged that would have great influence as well, and that was the Canadians. During the Second World War, Canada was of strategic importance in that it sat astride not just the North Atlantic sea lanes to support the war effort in Europe, but it also had key landing fields that formed the western terminus of the North Atlantic air routes to Europe. As long as aircraft were unable to cross the Atlantic non-stop, Canada was a necessity in the any postwar discussion. Led by the chairman of Trans-Canada Airlines (TCA, which later became Air Canada), Herbert Symington, the Canadians not only presciently saw the North Atlantic air routes as lucrative in the postwar period, but they also saw themselves as conciliators between the American and British viewpoints. Lacking Britain's extensive aviation industry and far flung empire, in general the Canadians tended to lean towards the United States' position of open skies. In the run up to the 1944 Chicago Conference, Canadian diplomats were already playing the part of honest broker between the Americans and the British. 

Given the time, it's obvious the Axis powers weren't invited. The Soviets were invited but early on they made it clear they were dead set against any internationalization of commercial aviation. As far as Josef Stalin was concerned, any air traffic within their vast nation would be their sole domain only and would only connect with other airlines at specific points. 

With the formation of the United Nations in October 1945, the Americans formally invited all the signatories to the UN charter to the Chicago Conference in November to discuss postwar aviation policy. Initially the Soviet Union agreed to send a delegation but backed out of the conference the day before it opened. The only nation not present in Chicago besides the Soviet Union was Saudi Arabia. 

Lord Swinton, head of the UK delegation

Adolf Berle led the American delegation at Chicago and Herbert Symington led the Canadian delegation. Curiously, Lord Beaverbrook didn't attend and instead sent one of his deputies, Philip Cunlife-Lister, the First Lord of Swinton, as head of the British delegation. He had just been appointed as the new Minister of Aviation though his prior experience in aviation paled in comparison to his superior, Lord Beaverbrook. Unfortunately for the British, they didn't place the priority on the Chicago Conference that the Americans and Canadians did. Even some of the British delegation present failed to attend any of the sessions where more specific discussions took place. 

At the opening of the conference, Berle outlined the five freedoms of the air: 

1. Freedom to fly over a nation (today we'd call this overflight rights).

2. Freedom to land in a nation but without picking up passengers or freight (today we'd call this a technical stop).

3. Freedom to fly passengers and freight from the home nation to another nation.

4. Freedom to fly passengers and freight from another nation back to the home nation. 

5. Freedom to fly passengers or freight of a another nation between any two intermediate points (today we refer this as Fifth Freedom rights or cabotage, a contentious issue in commercial aviation).

The first two freedoms weren't too contentious and for obvious reasons- there was no economic benefit or harm to the involved parties. But invoking its protectionist stand, Swinton pushed for a system of quotas in relation to the third and fourth freedoms to prevent what he thought would be postwar flood of American airlines starting services to British cities. France, Australia, and New Zealand supported Swinton's quota system where service frequencies and the number of passengers would be tightly controlled to prevent domination by the Americans. Key to the quota system was "escalation" which was supported by the British aircraft industry- as they were able to recover from wartime production and shift to production of airliners to rival American designs, the quotas would be gradually relaxed as the British (and any of their supporters) got onto a more competitive footing. 

The American delegation led by Adolf Berle wouldn't have any of it. It was clearly apparent to the attendees that Adolf Berle and Lord Swinton had a genuine dislike of each other and it was up to Herbert Symington and the Canadians to try to bridge the divide. The Canadians proposed a less stringent system that tried to take into account both American and British positions. It was at this point with both the Americans and British unwilling to give ground that a series of errors in communication would harm British interests. Lord Swinton contacted Lord Beaverbrook for further instructions but he was unavailable. When Beaverbrook called back, Swinton blew him off due to the hour with the classic quote "Max, go to hell, it's three o'clock in the morning here!" Beaverbrook then sent a telegram stating "You may abandon escalation." To the relief of the attendees, the British announced their concession to go with the Canadian proposal on regulating the third and fourth freedoms. After their announcement, a second telegram from Beaverbrook arrived "Before 'abandon', insert 'not'", but it was too late as Swinton told Beaverbrook "A British delegation does not go back on its word."

With agreement now on the third and fourth freedoms (which today we know as bilateral air agreements), the conference moved on to the hot button topic, that of Fifth Freedom rights. Again, the British refused to budge from their protectionist position and Prime Minister Churchill himself made it known that Fifth Freedom rights were unacceptable. President Roosevelt himself tried to convince Churchill to yield, saying "It has been a cardinal point in American policy throughout that the ultimate judge should be the passenger and shipper."Churchill pushed for an adjournment of the Chicago Conference to a later date, but Roosevelt insisted that it would continue until an agreement was reached. Herbert Symington, leading the Canadian delegation, supported the Americans and they also insisted that the conference would continue until an agreement was reached. Soon the Latin American nations joined the American resolution. The crucial swing came when the Dutch, keenly aware the British restrictions threatened KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, joined the Americans along with other European nations. Only New Zealand, France, and Australia supported the British. Churchill still refused to budge and Roosevelt continued his own intervention with Churchill, even to the point of assuring him that American airliner designs would be as readily available to British airlines as they would be with American operators. One of the American delegates, Ralph Damon, who was president of American Airlines (and later would be a long time head of TWA) even went as far to offer the British fifty Douglas DC-4s if they would at least compromise. 

The ICAO flag

The Dutch delegation with the support of the Canadians put forth a compromise in which the first two freedoms were explicitly recognized (something that was already the case anyway), the third and fourth freedoms would be subject to individual review between the involved nations, and the fifth freedom was essentially tabled for later discussion. While Adolf Berle was bitter at the failure of his dream of open skies, he did get his legal framework. At the conclusion of the conference, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) was set up under the aegis of the United Nations as a means for nations to exchange and maintain aviation regulations. The headquarters would be in Montreal-this was a compromise from the Canadians once again, with Britain and France wanting ICAO based in Europe and the Americans wanting ICAO based in the United States. The first president of ICAO was an respected American aeronautical engineer, Edward Warner, who would serve at the head of ICAO until his retirement in 1957. Today the ICAO has the Edward Warner Award given to for meritorious accomplishment in civil aviation. 

ICAO is the true legacy of the 1944 Chicago Conference. It created a mechanism for not just the exchange of regulations and safety advances in aviation but also a means for the standardization of the protocols and procedures in civil aviation worldwide. The Freedoms of the Air continue to be a contentious issue with open skies agreements coming only after considerable struggle amongst the signatory nations. Most remarkable has been the transformation of the United States from being an advocate for open skies to being protectionist of the domestic airline market with not just restrictions on cabotage but also foreign investment in US airlines. 

Source: Empires of the Sky: The Politics, Contests, and Cartels of the World Airlines by Anthony Sampson. Random House, 1984, pp 62-71. Photos: Wikipedia.

The Industry Cooperation in the Lockheed Electra Investigation.

The outboard nacelle- the Achilles heel of the Lockheed Electra

In my previous blog entry, I had discussed how subcontracting was a way of building goodwill between aerospace competitors, the example from I talked about was in reference to the Space Shuttle program. However, even aside from financial incentives, there have been times in aviation history that corporate rivals have cooperated beyond that of a joint venture and one unheralded example of such cooperation was the extensive investigation into the loss of two Lockheed L-188 Electras shortly after the type went into service. The first loss was on 29 September 1959 when Braniff International Airways Flight 542 went down near Buffalo, Texas, on a flight from Houston Hobby Airport to Dallas Love Field. The second loss was on 17 March 1960 when Northwest Airlines Flight 710 went down near Tell City, Indiana, on a flight from Chicago Midway to Miami. 

The cooperation of Lockheed's competitors began after the Braniff crash. A Dallas warehouse was used to reassemble the wreckage as part of the investigation. Using a chicken wire frame, pieces were added in a gigantic jigsaw puzzle from October into November. In January 1960, the investigators with the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) were no closer to determining the cause of the loss of Braniff 542 and invited representatives from Eastern Airlines and American Airlines, both operators of large Electra fleets, along with NASA to join the investigation. The following month Lockheed invited engineers from Boeing, Convair, and Douglas to review what had been done so far in the investigation. But the loss of the second Electra when Northwest 710 went down shook the airline and aviation industry as aircraft like the Electra were the leading edge of the jet turbine age that would revolutionize air travel. There was near unanimous sentiment in American aviation that the cause of the loss of two Electras in passenger service had to be found and rectified for the good of the entire industry. 

NASA immediately put its resources at Lockheed's disposal (the decision to ground versus speed restrict the Electra will be subject of a future post for this blog). Allison, the maker of the Electra's engines, initiated its own flight test program with its own company Electra. Boeing and Douglas made their resources also available to Lockheed- with both companies fielding their own advanced jetliner designs for the day, helping Lockheed determine the cause of the Electra crashes was vital to confidence in both the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8. With Lockheed engineering staff getting pulled from various projects to the Electra investigation, Boeing's chief Bill Allen dispatched his own engineers and his best aerodynamicists from Seattle to assist Lockheed in Burbank. The investigation and any fix needed had a name- Lockheed Electra Achievement Program, or LEAP. To everyone involved, it became Operation LEAP. 

Part of Operation LEAP was the use of a specially instrumented Electra that was flown by Lockheed and government test pilots over the Sierra Nevada range looking for mountain wave turbulence that would shake the test aircraft as no airliner had ever before been punished in-flight. Lockheed had actually pioneering the methods for testing inflight loads on structures back in 1949 that became the industry standard in flight testing. Sixty nine flights into the rough air offered a clue- the load instruments noted that the outboard nacelles were taking a rougher beating than expected. Flutter of some sort became the suspect cause- every aircraft has some degree of flutter, the air moving over various parts and imposing loads can cause them to vibrate and if unchecked, those vibrations increase in amplitude until structures fail. Aircraft structures are designed in part to dampen these oscillations. 

With flutter as the suspect, Douglas had sent over to Lockheed a vane exciter that was basically an actuated vane mounted on the wingtip that could move quickly to induce flutter in the wings. Even in smooth air, the vane exciters could really dole out some punishment to the wing structure. Douglas had used the device in the DC-8 flight test program and put them at Lockheed's disposal. The devices in combination with the rough air flight testing showed the outboard engine nacelles were the source of the flutter and a review of the wreckage from the Braniff and Northwest crashes showed that the outboard nacelle structure in combination with the wing structure allowed an obscure type of flutter called "whirl mode"- in short, gyroscopic movements of the propeller caused oscillations in the nacelle which were then transferred to the wing which caused the wing to fail. 

Though commercial rivals, Boeing and Douglas were only keenly aware that Lockheed was well respected in the business and its engineering and design methods were top notch. Much of how Lockheed went about the design and testing of the Electra wasn't all that dissimilar to how Boeing and Douglas went about the design and testing of their jetliners. If there was something Lockheed had missed, then it was something that left their designs  and the processes used open to question as well. 

On 12 May 1960, Lockheed chairman Robert Gross announced the cause of the loss of Braniff 542 and Northwest 710 as unstable whirl mode. Think about the technology of that day as this was well before computer modeling was available. Now think about the time frame- Braniff 542 went down at the end of September 1959. Northwest 710 went down in the middle of March 1960. And by the middle of May 1960 the cause had been identified. It's one of the great herculean efforts of American aviation that an obscure flutter mode was found to be the cause in just seven months. That amazing time frame wouldn't have been possible if Lockheed didn't have the cooperation of its commercial rivals as well as NASA, Allison, and the airline operators of the Electra. 

Source: The Electra Story: Aviation's Greatest Mystery (Bantam Air & Space Series No. 9) by Robert Serling. Bantam Publishing, 1962, 1991. Illustration: Flight Simulator X screenshot.

Rockwell Builds the Shuttle by Farming Out the Work

The Grumman Shuttle Orbiter design

On 26 July 1972, NASA announced that Rockwell International had been selected as the prime contractor for the Space Shuttle (specifically the Shuttle Orbiter) after an intense competition with Lockheed, Grumman, and McDonnell Douglas. Each contractor proposal also had to detail management of the complex program as well as its technical aspects and the lengthy proposals then went to a specially convened selection board at NASA which evaluated each submission. The top two proposals belonged to Rockwell and Grumman and showcased the effect that a good management proposal could have in winning the competition. From a technical standpoint, NASA scored the Grumman proposal the best, with Rockwell's orbiter design coming in second. Rockwell's submission, however, impressed the NASA selection board with its management system. With the cost overruns on several military programs like the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy on everyone's mind, Rockwell's management proposal stressed cost controls for what was to be the biggest aviation contract in years. With a technical design not much more inferior that the Grumman design, Rockwell was awarded the contract. 

In the industry slump as Vietnam was winding down, the Orbiter contract was a very big prize for any firm that could clinch the award. At the time of the selection, Rockwell had 6,200 employees in their Space Division and with the award, plans were in place to hire as many as 16,000 by 1975. Priority would given to anyone who had worked on the Apollo program. Despite the buoyant mood at Rockwell, things were considerably more glum at the losing contenders, Grumman, Lockheed, and McDonnell Douglas. Grumman had been a mainstay of the US space program from its early days, best known for its work on the Apollo Lunar Module. Company officials made plans for Grumman to be out of the space business by December 1972 along with the attendant layoffs. 

McDonnell Douglas (via McDonnell) had built the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft and was in the midst of winding down its work as the prime contractor for Skylab. The company was also suffering from a downturn in the world commercial aviation market that was affecting most greatly its Douglas DC-9 program. 11,000 layoffs were planned at McDonnell Douglas by 1973.

While Lockheed didn't have as prominent a role in the US manned spaceflight program in the 1960s as McDonnell Douglas or Grumman, their expertise in high speed flight as well as thermal protection systems was unparalleled in the industry at the time. 

Rockwell, however, recognized two realities that came with winning the Shuttle Orbiter contract. The first one was the limitations of its in-house expertise. Quite simply, Rockwell would need other aerospace companies for their skills and expertise to bring the Orbiter to fruition. The second reality was a bit more prosaic but nonetheless vital. Keep in mind that in the early 1970s there was an atmosphere of budget austerity and NASA was no less exempt from financial realities than any other government agency at the time. Subcontracting work on the Orbiter to other companies in effect would spread the footprint of the endeavor across the districts of multiple Congressional representatives who would be routinely voting on NASA's budgetary allocations for the Space Shuttle program. Subcontracts were a common way as well in the industry of building goodwill- by farming out work to competitors and keeping them active and in business, today's winner might one day become tomorrow's loser on a another program and could hope for subcontract work from a rival. 

Rockwell planned to subcontract at least 53% of the work on the Shuttle Orbiter and this had NASA's blessing as a means of preserving the American industrial base for spaceflight. Just weeks after winning the contract as the prime, Rockwell was already conducting seminars across the nation for potential subcontractors. By March 1973 Rockwell began selecting subcontractors for the program with NASA's approval. Grumman would work on the delta wing, McDonnell Douglas got the OMS (Orbital Maneuvering System), Fairchild Republic got the vertical fin, and the Convair Division of General Dynamics got the mid-fuselage/payload bay. Rockwell would be responsible for the nose and crew compartment as well as the aft fuselage that would house the three Rocketdyne SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine) packages. Lockheed would get the External Tank while Thiokol got the contract for the SRB (Solid Rocket Booster). 

By the summer of 1975, 34,000 workers across 47 states and a broad host of companies across the American aerospace industry were working on the Space Shuttle program. The peak would be in 1977 with 47,000 workers. The post-Vietnam slump, the Space Shuttle program was very much the crown jewel of the US aviation industry. 

Source: Development of the Space Shuttle 1972-1981: History of the Space Shuttle, Volume Two by T.A. Heppenheimer. Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002. Illustration: Aerospace Projects Review

Saving Lockheed for Christmas and Beyond: Carl Squier

Carl Squier

I had written this article a year ago for Christmas but I think it's worth reposting given this is Christmas Eve. There are a lot of folks in aviation little known to history but whose actions footnotes of the time set the stage for larger events in history. Carl Squier is one such individual- the 13th licensed pilot in the United States, in 1917 he became an Army pilot and flew in France in the first World War and became a long time friend of American ace Eddie Rickenbacker.

In 1928 he became the VP of the Eastman Flying Boat company after a career barnstorming after he returned from the Western Front. That year Eastman was bought by the Detroit Aircraft Company and they sent him to California to manage a struggling subsidiary they had just also acquired, Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank. While running Lockheed for the parent company, he found himself a home in aviation and became a patron of the employees at the Burbank plant.

With the stock market crash and the Great Depression, Detroit Aircraft went bankrupt and it dragged Lockheed into the red. No one was sure if Lockheed would survive. A few days before Christmas, he sent the employees home early from the Burbank plant and at the exit, handed each demoralized employee a ten dollar bill (a hearty sum in those days) and wished them a Merry Christmas. All one-hundred ten employees of Lockheed Aircraft went home that evening with ten dollars, all from Carl Squier's own savings which he emptied for his employees. The following January he mortgaged his own car and home to make payroll for the employees. When Lockheed finally succumbed to bankruptcy a few months later, Lockheed only had three employees- his secretary, an accountant, and a stock clerk who doubled as the night watchman for the Burbank hangar of the company.

Squier so believed the Lockheed name was too good to pass into history and the people he came to lead too good to abandon, he convinced an investor, Robert Gross, Gross' brother Courtlandt, three other men, and what he had left of his own savings to purchase Lockheed's remaining assets. Gross wanted to run an aircraft company of his own and in 1932 the group purchased what was left of Lockheed for $40,000. In the bankruptcy courtroom that day sitting in the back was none other than Allan Lockheed himself, who on his way out told Gross "I hope you know what you're doing". With a shoestring staff led by a young engineer they recruited, Hal Hibbard, Lockheed came back to life with its Lockheed Model 10 Electra.

Hal Hibbard and Robert Gross would go on to build Lockheed into one of the giants of American aviation, but it all started with the passion, generosity, and salesmanship of Carl Squier. It was said that if it wasn't for Carl Squier, there wouldn't be a Lockheed. He retired in 1956 as the VP of sales and flew west in 1967.

Source: The Electra Story: Aviation's Greatest Mystery (Bantam Air & Space Series No. 9) by Robert Serling. Bantam Publishing, 1962, 1991.

The Coming Kamikaze Threat in World War II We Never Faced

The USS Callaghan, the last Allied ship sunk by kamikazes.

As the American fleet began to become proficient at meeting the kamikaze threat during the Second World War, night time was usually a period when sailors got a respite from the waves of suicide attackers- the vast majority of kamikaze attacks that took place were during the daylight hours. At night the fleet could repair damage from the day's attacks, sailors could get some rest, and ammunition and supplies for the next day's battles could be stocked. By the time of the invasion of Okinawa in April 1945, the Japanese were already in full swing preparing the Home Islands for the anticipated Allied invasion. Operation Olympic was the code name for the invasion of the southernmost of the Home Islands, Kyushu, and it was scheduled for November 1945. The size of the invasion fleet would dwarf not only what was used at Okinawa, but it would also dwarf the Allied landings at Normandy on D-Day in 1944. Approximately just over 2,700 ships and landing craft participated at Normandy; the invasion of Kyushu would have required over 4,000 ships. In twelve days, over 300,000 American troops came ashore at Normandy; on the beaches of Kyushu during Operation Olympic, it was planned that the same number of American troops would storm ashore in just the first *three* days. Therefore in Japanese defense planning for the defense of Kyushu, called "Ketsu-Go", kamikazes were a key part of disrupting the Pacific Fleet Amphibious Force/Task Force 51. Little known to most, though, is that the planned kamikaze threat would have been of a level of ferocity and technique not widely faced by the US Navy in the Pacific War. 

Through most of the war, the kamikaze threat consisted of primarily front-line aircraft. However, the submarine blockade of Japan made getting strategic materials like the ores used in metal increasingly difficult. Bauxite, for example, is an ore that is the main source of aluminum and the Japanese aircraft industry's main source for bauxite were open pit mines near Singapore. As early as 1943 thoughts began to shift towards the use of wood in new aircraft designs and the Germans had even provided the Japanese with plans for the De Havilland Mosquito, the Royal Air Force's "Wooden Wonder". Mosquito components that had been captured were even shipped to Japan aboard the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-29, but it was sunk in July 1944 near Japan. While the Japanese were aware of wood's natural radar defeating properties, any consideration at this point in using wood in aircraft designs was more a practical matter with the ore shortages; any benefits against Allied radars was seen rather remarkably as a secondary and less important benefit. 

Yokosuka K4Y1, probably the type that sank the Callaghan.

By the time the Battle of Okinawa was winding down, "Ketsu-Go" was in full swing on Kyushu and a key part of the defense was the use of massed kamikaze attacks. But the state of Japanese aircraft industry was in disarray with the B-29 attacks and the ongoing ore shortages. In July 1945 to meet the required numbers of kamikaze aircraft, all of the training units were converted to kamikaze units which added thousands of experienced pilots but over 5,000 antiquated biplane trainers made of wood and fabric. But again, at this point in the war, no one in Japan had realized that an elderly biplane trainer was a lot harder to spot on radar- plans at that point were to offset the slow performance of the biplane aircraft by shifting the kamikaze attacks to the night time, the traditional sanctuary period for the American fleet. However, somewhere in the Japanese command structure connected all the dots- on the night of 28 July 1945, the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Callaghan was on radar picket duty off the coast of Okinawa. In a time before the advent of airborne early warning aircraft, radar picket destroyers patrolled the edges of the fleet to search for inbound kamikazes. On this night, an elderly biplane floatplane, most likely a Yokosuka K4Y1 trainer, was warded off on its first pass, but it came around undetected for a second pass and struck the destroyer, sinking it with the loss of 47 sailors. The following night, another elderly biplane struck another radar picket, the USS Cassin Young- though not sunk, 22 sailors were killed and the ship had to withdraw from action for repairs. A third destroyer, the USS Prichett, was aiding the stricken Callaghan, was very nearly sunk by another elderly biplane on a kamikaze mission.

Yokosuka K5Y biplane trainer.

The destroyers had difficulty on downing the attackers for three reasons- it was night, not the usual time kamikazes attacked, secondly, the wood and fabric biplanes were difficult to spot and track on radar, and lastly the wood and fabric construction threw off the proximity fuses of the anti-aircraft guns- the proximity fuse's sensor that triggered the detonation of the round was optimized for metal aircraft; against the old wood and fabric biplanes, the proximity fuzes detonated the round too late, or in some cases, not at all. The action that night against those three radar picket destroyers changed thinking on the role of the 5,000+ elderly biplane aircraft that were going to be used as kamikazes for "Ketsu-Go". Here was an unexpected weapon that could counter the American technological advantages in radar and proximity-fuzed shells fired by anti-aircraft guns. American intelligence analysts had seen the massive change in the air forces of Japan in the summer of 1945 and were well aware of Japanese interests in wood, but it hadn't occurred to the Navy that this was a possibly game-changing combination that would have threatened initial phases of Operation Olympic. It was assumed that fuel shortages would keep most Japanese aircraft grounded and this misconception was reinforced by the increasing lack of air action against the B-29 raids and that US warships even managed to get close enough to the Home Islands to shell coastal targets without getting attacked. In fact, the Japanese had stockpiled fuel just for the use of the kamikazes in "Ketsu-Go". 

Tachikawa Ki-17 trainer aircraft.

At Okinawa, only one of the US Navy's carrier air wings was trained and equipped for night combat, that being Night Air Group 90 embarked aboard the USS Enterprise. By November 1945, only one additional night air group would be available for Operation Olympic, giving only 50 aircraft to defend the invasion fleet at night against well over 5,000 night kamikazes that would have been difficult to spot on radar, using the mountainous terrain of Kyushu to mask their approaches to the invasion fleet, and be of a construction that would probably render a large portion of the proximity-fuzed shells ineffective. 

It is perhaps a blessing that the Japanese surrender following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place. The kamikaze plans for "Ketsu-Go" alone would have well resulted in significant casualties on the shores of Kyushu, but instead history is left with the USS Callaghan as the last Allied ship to be sunk by kamikazes- and that night on 28 July was a small preview of the storm facing the US fleet in the waters of the Home Islands.

Source: Hell to Pay- Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 by D.M. Giangreco. Naval Institute Press, 2009, p125-137. Photos: Wikipedia.

The Indian Night Air Mail Service

The Indian Night Air Mail Service network.

In the late 1940s the rail and road infrastructure of India was already inadequate for the task of linking the newly-independent nation. While the sub-continent had a fairly dense rail network as a legacy of its time under the British crown, its reliability was sketchy at best and with the growing demands of the Indian commercial sector for better mail service, on 30 January 1949 the government inaugurated the Indian Night Air Mail Service- the world's first overnight air mail service- keeping in mind, that FedEx as Federal Express launched its overnight package delivery service in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1973. Since space was a premium at daytime flights, it was decided that air mail would move at night and this had the added advantage of making overnight delivery possible in what may very well be also the world's first example if not one of the earliest examples of a hub-and-spoke operation. Under this system, the four main cities of India also happened to form each of the four corners of a diamond- New Delhi to the north, Bombay to the west, Calcutta to the east, and Madras to the south. Connecting these cities was a central location at the city of Nagpur in central India. 

The system was quite simple- letters postmarked for overnight air mail were delivered to each of the corners of the NAM system in the evening and loaded on aircraft. These aircraft, all then flew in the first part of the night to the central processing and sort facility at the Nagpur Airport. Mail would be offloaded and sorted to waiting aircraft that would return to their origin airports in the second half of the night. The following morning, the mail would be delivered- a speed and convenience not only unheard of an India's business environment of the day, but probably in just about any business center worldwide in 1949! For an aircraft like the Douglas DC-3 that was ubiquitous in those days, each leg would take about four hours, making overnight delivery possible. To facilitate the sort process, any aircraft leaving any of the cities already had the mail sorted and stowed aboard in batches, minimizing the ground sort and loading time at Nagpur. 

Indian Airlines Douglas DC-4s were popular on the NAM.

To operate the NAM, the Indian government took bids from the domestic airlines of the day. First off the block to run the NAM was Indian Overseas Airlines which flew the inaugural services on the night of 30-31 January 1949. Even though Indian Overseas was based in Nagpur, it probably got the rights to operate the NAM with an unrealistically low bid and it quickly found it couldn't keep up the pace required. The dominant domestic airline, Indian National Airways, was called in to take over the NAM from Indian Overseas for most of that year until Himilayan Airways took over operation of the NAM on 15 October 1949. Two years later Deccan Airways moved its base from Hyderabad to Nagpur as part of its bid to run the NAM and did so for two years. In 1953 when the Air Corporations Act was passed which nationalized the Indian airline industry, Deccan would be one of eight airlines (including prior NAM operators Himilayan Airways and Indian National Airways) that were amalgamated into the new domestic airline, Indian Airlines. By default, the NAM which at the time was in the hands of Deccan Airways, went over to Indian Airlines which would pretty much operated the NAM for the rest of its history. 

Indian Airlines postcard featuring the Vickers Viscount.

By 1958 passengers were also carried on the NAM- the "red eye" flights of the day. With the DC-3s being too small for both the mail loads and passengers, Indian Airlines used Douglas DC-4s on the routes from Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta. For the New Delhi route, two aircraft were used on each flight- a Vickers Viscount would carry the passengers and a DC-3 (sometimes a DC-4 based on need) carried just the mail. With the Delhi passengers flying on the faster Viscount, they got to Nagpur earlier and had a few hours layover before boarding their connecting flights to Bombay, Madras, or Calcutta. The terminal in Nagpur boasted facilities for passengers to freshen up and get a snack and even watch a movie while waiting for their connecting flights. The ground operation in Nagpur was honed down to precision, being accomplished only 90 minutes' time. An average night would see 11,000 lbs of mail, 9,000 lbs of freight, and up to 200 passengers pass through Nagpur. As some of the ground handling personnel at Nagpur were illiterate, colored labels were used to identify each destination. To facilitate the collection of the overnight air mail in each of the four destination cities, mobile post offices in specially marked vans were set up at specific locations in each city. Each van would receive mail until 8:30pm when it would then deliver the mail to the airport for the flights to Nagpur. On some nights in the 1960s, there would be as many as 10 flights headed to Nagpur over the course of the night.

The Indian Night Air Mail Service ran continuously until 1973 (ironically when Federal Express launched its overnight package delivery service). The low postal rates provided by the Indian government were cited as not being enough to warrant continuation of this historic service. Various attempts were made up into the 1980s to restart the NAM, but were never profitable enough to last long. 

Sources/Photos: Airlines of Asia Since 1920 by R.E.G. Davies. Palawdr Press, 1997, p29-32. "Nagpur Junction: Speeding India's Night Air Mail" by Patricia Stroud. Flight, 12 September 1958.

The Mach 3 Phantom

In the 1960s the development of high-performance reconnaissance cameras offered greater resolution, but at a price- many of these systems were large and heavy and the current high-altitude spyplane of the time, the first generation variants of the Lockheed U-2, were unable to carry them. One of the premier recon optical systems developed at this time was the General Dynamics HIAC-1- a long range, oblique camera with a focal length of 66 inches that allowed stand-off reconnaissance from high altitudes. The first examples of HIAC-1 were heavy- the prototype camera system weighed over 3,500 lbs, much more than any other camera system in use at the time (excepting the very big Boston Camera carried by the B-36 and C-97 in the 1950s that weighed 3 tons and had a focal length of 240 inches). The only aircraft in the USAF inventory that could carry the HIAC-1 was the RB-57F, a modification of the Martin B-57 Canberra. In 1962 General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas, had the contract to maintain the RB-57D fleet which suffered from wing spar fatigue. Since General Dynamics had acquired quite a bit of experience in working on the long-span RB-57Ds, they were asked by the Air Force for an evolved version of the D that could fly higher, carry a heavier load (like the HIAC-1) and not have the same wing spar problems that plagued the RB-57D. The RB-57F was the result- with a longer wing, more powerful TF33 turbofan engines and auxillary J60 turbojets, it was what the USAF needed until the later generation of U-2 spyplanes entered service. In fact, two RB-57Fs are still used today by NASA. 

USAF RF-4C with the large G-139 pod.

Over the course of the RB-57F's operational career, Israel had made repeated requests of obtaining the RB-57F and the HIAC-1 for its own reconnaissance needs, but the requests were always denied by the US State Department and the Defense Department on the grounds that the technology used in the RB-57F would upset the strategic balance in the Middle East. However, a compromise was reached- by 1971 the HIAC-1 had been steadily improved and lightened to the point that it weighed just under 1,500 lbs and that a pod-mounted HIAC-1 carried by the McDonnell Douglas F-4E Phantom, already in the Israeli inventory, would be permissible. Also developed by General Dynamics, the pod-mounted HIAC-1 was designated G-139 and underwent an intensive flight test program with a USAF RF-4C aircraft and the first G-139 pods were delivered to Israel in October 1971. The Israelis found the G-139/HIAC-1 system useful as it allowed the Phantoms to get imagery of Egyptian defenses along the Suez Canal without having to enter the SAM umbrella. But there was a significant issue, the pod was still a heavy store and it generated a significant amount of drag- it limited the Phantoms to a maximum speed of Mach 1.5 and a maximum altitude just under 50,000 feet, not to mention the challenge of handling a G-139-laden F-4E at high altitude. As a result, the special projects division of General Dynamics began work in January 1972 on ways to improve the F-4E's performance to offset the burden of carrying the pod. 

Overview of the modifications to make the Phantom Mach 3-capable.

The first improvements came with getting the most out of the Phantom's J79 engines. Engineers found that the Phantom's intakes were limiting the performance possible from the J79. A new inlet was designed that was not only larger than the standard F-4 inlet, but it featured a new shape that better managed the airflow to the engines with series of new variable-geometry ramps. The standard Phantom inlet did have a variable geometry ramp, but it was much simpler than the General Dynamics design which also featured a large bypass door downstream from the inlet to help manage the internal shockwaves that helped slow the air down before it reached the engines. A series of vortex generators down the inlet also helped improve engine performance. The second improvement was based on 1950s research done by NASA's predecessor agency, NACA, called pre-compressor cooling (PCC). PCC was a form of water injection but used the water to cool in the inlet air before it reached the engines. By reducing the inlet air temperature, it increased the mass of the air akin to taking off on a cold day- engine air flow and thereby thrust would be increased. At high altitudes, PCC would boost engine performance starting at Mach 1.4 as the inlet air started to heat up due to friction. 

General Electric, the manufacturer of the J79, was less than enthused about General Dynamics' work on PCC, but did provide some consultations. Work had already been done with PCC on another of General Dynamics' products, the Convair F-106 Delta Dart, but it never was incorporated into the design. In addition, the USAF's Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tennessee had tested PCC in engine test cells with both the J57 and J75 engines. One J75 engine was run at maximum afterburner for 40 hours with PCC! It had also been looked at by Vought for the aborted F8U-3 Crusader III design (though never flown) and McDonnell had used a rudimentary PCC system in 1962 to break several world speed records with the pre-production F-4 Phantom. Based on all this body of work, General Dynamics refined the PCC system so that the water droplets were very fine at 10 microns to cool the air without having any pooling of water in the engine. Two large water tanks were installed on external blisters along the sides of the F-4E, each blister with three tanks. Each blister could carry 2,500 lbs of demineralized water- since the interior of the Phantom was pretty packed as it was, scabbing these blisters on the fuselage eased the modification and engineering process. 

GD wind tunnel model of the RF-4X.

General Dynamics' modifications led to this version of the Phantom being unofficially designated the F-4X- at this point still carrying the large G-139/HIAC-1 pod underneath on the centerline station. With Israeli funding supplementing internal corporate, work on the F-4X continued through 1972 and refinements to the PCC system and inlets led to a calculated increase in the J79 thrust at high altitude well over 150 percent! On 12 April 1973 the company formally submitted the F-4X proposal to the USAF. Additional funding for more work then came from the USAF which was using the podded HIAC-1 system for stand-off reconnaissance in Korea and were encountering the same issues the Israelis were having in using standard Phantoms with the large camera pod. The following year the design was further refined, but with the Israelis having continued misgivings about using the HIAC-1 in a pod, the design leap was made to incorporate the HIAC-1 into F-4X's nose- with the latest HIAC-1 versions getting even lighter than the 1,500 lb version used in the G-139 pod, integrating the camera into the nose improved performance by eliminating the drag-inducing pod. Designated RF-4X, this version of the Phantom was now capable of cruising at Mach 2.4 at high altitude with burst capability to Mach 3.2. This level of performance now began to alarm the US State Department- up to this point Mach 3+ aircraft were the sole purview of the United States and Soviet Union and in some diplomatic circles there were concerns about the Israelis integrating nuclear weapons delivery with the RF-4X. To allay the State Department's concerns, General Dynamics removed the AN/APQ-120 radar from the nose which would now only house the HIAC-1 and its associated environmental control systems. Permission to sell the RF-4X to the Israelis was approved and on November 1974 an Israeli F-4E was flown to General Dynamics in Fort Worth for a mock up study. For five months engineers used the F-4E as the basis of a full-scale mock-up created with cardboard and tape- both the Mach 3 intakes and the PCC water tanks were mocked up on the Phantom on one side as well as the modified nose housing for the HIAC-1 camera. 

Israeli F-4E with the PCC and intake mock-up on one side.

By 1975 several factors were now working against the RF-4X, the biggest of which was time. The Israeli Air Force wanted the system as soon as possible but it was clear that the integration of the camera, intakes and PCC system was going to take more time than originally estimated. With the McDonnell Douglas F-15 winding up its flight test program and soon to become operational in the following year to replace the Phantom in USAF service, it was politically unpalatable to keep funding the RF-4X which offered a level of performance that exceeded that of the Eagle in some flight regimes. The USAF insisted upon further studies of the PCC system despite the fact that there were already nearly 20 years of data on pre-compressor cooling, some of which done by the USAF itself. Compounded with the engineering delays, Israel and the RF-4X proponents in the USAF lost interest and it was quietly canceled later that year.

Despite the cancellation of the RF-4X, General Dynamics did continue work on just the nose-mounted HIAC-1 component of the design for Israel. Three F-4E Phantoms were modified as F-4E(S) aircraft and delivered to the Israeli Air Force from late 1975 to early 1976. It turned out that the Israelis were unable to fund the RF-4X in its entirety and were only able to afford the HIAC-1 component. As a result, the three F-4E(S) aircraft had standard J79 engines. In IDF service the HIAC-1 was code-named "Shablul", the Hebrew word for "snail". The first operational flights began in 1976 with the aircraft capable of flying at 60,000 feet at Mach 1.9. The pilot and systems officer wore full pressure suits from the David Clark Company which also made the pressure suits used by USAF U-2 and SR-71 crews as well as Space Shuttle crews. Many of the missions flown still remain classified but it is known that Iraq was a frequent target through the 1980s. One of the aircraft is now on public display at the Israeli Air Force Museum. 

Source/Photos: Israeli Phantoms- The 'Kurnass' in IDF/AF Service 1989 Until Today by Andreas Klein and Shlomo Aloni. Double Ugly Books/AirDOC, 2009, p44-70.

The Birth of Indian Commercial Aviation and Its Father

The pre-war network of Tata Air Lines.

Rather curiously amongst Britain's possessions in the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s, commercial aviation remained neglected in India in comparison to what was taking place elsewhere in the Empire. Some of this was due to perceived stereotypes of the day that the vast majority of India was made up of illiterate peasants and that the British government through New Delhi conducted business with select members of the Indian aristocracy. Some of this was also due to the perception that India already had an extensive rail network that made airlines superfluous. And for many in the main British overseas airline of the day, Imperial Airways, the priority interest in the region was the development of a route connecting the United Kingdom with Australia with India being more of a refueling stop along the way. Whatever the misconceptions and prejudices of the day, development of commercial aviation in India prior to the Second World War became the purview of the country's growing merchant class who saw commercial aviation not just as a tool for business, but also as a business opportunity in a modernizing nation. Foremost amongst these individuals was J.R.D. Tata, the youthful head of the Tata Sons conglomerate which by the 1930s was already the largest business enterprise in India with holdings in manufacturing, textile mills, iron works, and even hydroelectric plants. J.R.D. Tata was so enamored with aviation that he himself learned to fly, earning the first pilot's license to be given to an Indian. 

Unlike Europe, the New Delhi government expected any airline established to be self-funded without any subsidy or assistance. This proved to be significant barrier for any sort of entry into the market, but given that Tata Sons Limited was the largest business in India, funding would be no issue at the start. In July 1932 J.R.D. Tata established an aviation department in the company as private enterprise and on 15 October 1932 launched services connecting Karachi (Imperial Airways' main gateway to India at the time) to the southern city of Madras via Ahmedabad, Bombay and Bellary with a very modest fleet of two De Havilland Puss Moths which could carry two passengers plus the pilot. Tata himself flew the inaugural flight. It was quite an investment for Tata Sons Limited- the New Delhi government didn't just refuse to provide any subsidies, any investment in landing fields and navigational aids was non-existent as well. However, Tata's early success resulted in a ten-year air mail contract that did help offset the investment costs. Over the next several years Tata embarked on route expansions within India along with progressively larger aircraft like the De Havilland Dragon. By 1938 Tata Air Lines served every major city in southern India with connections to Karachi, New Delhi, and Colombo.

Disembarking from a Tata Air Lines DC-3.

During the Second World War, Tata Air Lines proved vital to supporting the war effort and with more contracts in hand, aircraft as large as the Douglas DC-2 were acquired along with further investment in the airport facilities at each of the cities it served, all under J.R.D. Tata's guiding hand. By the end of the war in 1945 not only had Tata expanded services to include every major Indian city, but had earned a position of prominence and reputation that would enhance India's aviation status in the world. The experience of running a scheduled airline to meet the exacting demands of the Allied war effort gave not just Tata valuable experience, but a whole host of other Indian carriers as well, the most prominent of which after Tata Air Lines was Indian National Airlines. By the time of India's independence in 1947 with the subsequent formation of Pakistan, Burma and Sri Lanka, Tata Air Lines found itself not just India's largest domestic airline, but also India's primary international airline as well. Tata Air Lines was on sound financial ground with surplus Douglas DC-3s now filling its fleet needs. On 29 July 1946 J.R.D. Tata took his airline public, raising a significant amount of capital for modernization of the airline's fleet. As part of the airline becoming a publicly-traded corporation, the name was changed to Air India with Tata himself at the helm. One of his first acts as head of the new Air India was an agreement with Howard Hughes' TWA whereby Air India acted as TWA's agent in India in exchange for technical assistance and training and an interchange link to the United States via TWA's own route network. In April of that year, Air India received its first postwar aircraft, the Vickers Viking. Given Air India's status as India's premier airline, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru asked Tata for Air India to be the nation's "chosen instrument" for international expansion (the fact that Tata had already ordered Lockheed Constellations undoubtedly helped). In March 1948 Air India was organized as a joint corporation split between J.R.D. Tata and the Indian government and the first two Lockheed Constellations were delivered to what was now branded as Air India International. On 8 June of that year, "Rajput Princess" and "Malabar Princess" would inaugurate Air India International's first Constellation services to London. 

Air India's early fleet were former Tata Air Lines DC-3s.

Significantly behind the new Air India International were a motley group of domestic carriers, of which the most prominent was Indian National Airways. The other seven airlines were of varying fiscal health and some even were still operating pre-war aircraft. Seeking rationalization in the airline industry of the nation, the Air Corporations Act of 1953 was passed which, in essence, nationalized the airline industry of India. J.R.D. Tata's Air India International obviously shoed-in for the all international services and the remaining seven airlines were merged into one entity named Indian Airlines which would have responsibility for all domestic services- the model being that of BOAC and BEA in the Great Britain. The nationalization of Air India International took place in June 1953 and it was allowed to keep two domestic trunk routes, Bombay-Calcutta and Bombay-New Delhi, in a complex pool agreement with Indian Airlines. The infusion of government capital allowed Air India to order not just Lockheed Super Constellations, but also the new De Havilland Comet as well in order to compete on a more even footing with BOAC's Comet services to the region. Ultimately the Comet order was canceled following the Comet tragedies that struck BOAC, but Air India's Super Constellations stretched its network throughout Asia to Africa and even to Moscow and the rest of Europe. By this time Air India had the clout to join the pooling agreement that BOAC and QANTAS had on the London-Sydney route. Beginning in December 1959, revenues between London and Sydney were split with BOAC getting 51%, QANTAS getting 28% and Air India getting 21%. But the most important aspect of the agreement was Air India getting Fifth Freedom rights from London- in the early 1960s this allowed Air India to launch Boeing 707 services to New York JFK via London Heathrow. 

For over forty years J.R.D. Tata remained at the helm of Air India from its first incarnation as a private company in his business conglomerate to its rise as an international carrier operating Boeing 747s across the globe (South America excepted). He would retire from Air India in 1980 and in 1982 at the age of 82 he re-enacted his inaugural Tata Air Lines flight from Madras to Karachi in a restored De Havilland Leopard Moth- and he did it solo. 

J.R.D. Tata

As an interesting footnote to the story, a few years before J.R.D. Tata retired, he gave a speech to a conference of Pacific area travel agents in New Delhi. After his customary review of the trends in the airline industry, he offered up a few predictions for the future of the airline industry that today are remarkably accurate:

-He anticipated the need for jetliners bigger than the 747, specifically pointing out opportunities for a 750-seat twin-deck jetliner.

-He accurately had predicted the pace of long-term growth in passenger numbers.

-He praised Sir Freddie Laker and his ideas on low-cost fares to stimulate more passenger traffic and was convinced that such budget fares were the wave of the future for the industry.

-He bemoaned the lack of foresight by the Indian government in investing in its aviation infrastructure, predicting that lack of capacity would be the biggest threat to the airline growth in India in the future.

-He questioned the economics of the Concorde and felt that supersonic flight would have little bearing on the future of jetliner development. 

Source: Airlines of Asia Since 1920 by R.E.G. Davies. Palawdr Press, 1997, p6-59.

The Cessna 310 as a U-2 Trainer

The Cessna U-3A "Blue Canoe"

In 1957 the United States Air Force selected the Cessna 310 twin as its new utility transport for light cargo, liaison, and administrative missions to replace the Beech C-45 which was a military adaptation of the stalwart Beech 18 transport. Eighty were ordered and originally designated L-27 (in 1962 the rationalization of military aircraft designations led it to be redesignated the U-3). That first group of 80 aircraft were delivered within the year thanks to Cessna's already high production output to meet the civilian market. Another 80 were ordered later that same year and in 1960 came the final contract for another 35, this time of the swept fin version of the 310. The older version with the straight vertical fin became the L-27A, later U-3A, and that last group of aircraft were designated the L-27B, later the U-3B. The distinctive blue and white colors used by the USAF on the aircraft led to its nickname, "Blue Canoe" and even though the US Army and the US Navy ordered the aircraft and used their own service specific color schemes, personnel still referred to the aircraft as the "Blue Canoe". But one of the most unique uses of the U-3 was also its most little-known and in the smallest of numbers by the military- that of a trainer for the early U-2 program!

At the time, Lockheed U-2 pilot training was the responsibility of the 100th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona. The first-generation U-2 spyplanes didn't have a two seat trainer version in use at the time, which made every pilot's first flight in the U-2 a solo flight- and even back then, the U-2 had the unenviable reputation as one of the most difficult aircraft to land properly. The 100th SRW had already been using a souped vehicle, the "Mobile", which back then was a Ford El Camino modified with a big-block engine which would sprint down the runway alongside the landing U-2 to assist the pilot with altitude information as the U-2's long span wings meant that the only way to land was to land in a full-stall. The Mobile called out altitude down in single foot increments until the aircraft was only a foot above the runway at which point speed was bled off to stall the aircraft into a touchdown. Needless to say, it was a completely counter-intuitive way to land an aircraft and was just one of many idiosyncrasies of the "Dragon Lady". But an aircraft was needed that could help train novice U-2 pilots to the point before the Mobile took over assisting with the landing. The 100th SRW evaluated different types of aircraft and quite surprisingly, found the Cessna U-3 ideal for the role. It was inexpensive, available, dual control, and it had a yoke which the U-2 also had as well. With most U-2 pilots coming from the fighter community, many hadn't used a yoke since basic flight training. The instructors at the 100th SRW specifically selected the straight-fin U-3A as the later swept-fin version was more unstable at the low approach speeds needed to train novice Dragon Lady pilots. 

An early generation U-2 from the U-3 chase plane

The U-3 had a turn rate, descent profile and pattern airspeed very close to that of the U-2; given that airspeed management was critical in the U-2 given its very narrow handling envelope, the "Blue Canoe" could be used as both a training aid and chase aircraft for a U-2 on approach. On training missions out of Davis-Monthan AFB, the pair in formation was known as the U-2 and "Me-Too". The U-3 would intercept the approaching U-2 at 15,000 to 18,000 feet at 160-180 KIAS and stay on the spyplane's right wing through the descent and traffic pattern until the landing was handed over to the Mobile. In addition, the sightlines from the student's seat in the U-3 were similar to that of the Dragon Lady and it was used as a pre-solo trainer. In preparing U-2 pilots for their first flight in the spyplane, the U-3 was known as the "Dragon Lady Pattern". The instructor would manage the flaps and throttles on the simulated approach to mimic the flying characteristics of the U-2 while the student in the left seat concentrated on the approach. Because the U-2 was stalled one foot above the runway in order to land, the student was required to level off and float the Cessna U-3 one foot starting over the numbers and to maintain that one foot altitude the entire length of the 12,500 foot runway at Davis-Monthan. If the student completed this exercise several times to the satisfaction of the instructor, the U-3 would then land and taxi to a waiting U-2 where the student would climb in for their first solo flight with the U-3 flying chase. For the first solo flight, the wing pogo gears were locked into place. 

Note the pogo landing gear still in place as seen from the U-3A.

The instructor in the U-3 then took off and waited at 15,000 feet for the student in the U-2. Once they had rendezvoused, the instructor by radio then walked the student through various approach-to-stall exercises as well as manually trimming the aircraft for landing by pumping fuel amongst the wing tanks to even the aircraft out. With a 100+ foot wingspan and a wet wing, it was critical that the fuel be evenly distributed through the wing tanks before landing. If the student had done this satisfactorily, it was time to shoot some approaches in what was called the "Dragon Lady Checkout". With the U-3 flying as "Me-Too", the student completed three traffic patterns with touch and gos with the Mobile participating in the final touch down. Completion of this exercise meant the newly minted U-2 pilot could proceed with advanced training. Only two Cessna U-3As were assigned to the 100th SRW at the time and the pace of training meant that no more aircraft than that were needed and only three instructors were checked out to train and fly chase in the U-3. The U-3As also flew chase in emergency situations to assist pilots in getting the U-2 back to the base and often flew chase for pilots returning from long-duration missions who were at their most vulnerable due to exhaustion. 

Source/Photos: Cessna Warbirds- A Detailed & Personal History of Cessna's Involvement in the Armed Forces by Walt Shiel. Jones Publishing, 1995, p127-132. Additional photos from the USAF Museum.

The Complexities of Aiding the Free French Air Force in World War II

Free French Air Force pilot wings with the Cross of Lorraine

With war clouds in Europe looming on the horizon, the British were first to send a mission to the United States in 1938 to determine if their aircraft needs could be met by the Americans since British industry was still barely getting spooled up on a war footing. Encouraged by the British, the French also sent a mission in the same year that resulted in the order of 100 Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters (P-36 being the US Army Air Corps equivalent). In the following year further contracts were finalized for more aircraft which also included the first orders by any nation, including the United States, for the Douglas DB-7 light bomber which would later enter US service as the A-20 Havoc. With the outbreak of war on 1 September 1939, deliveries temporarily ceased according to the terms of the US Neutrality Acts, but an amendment was quickly put in place that allowed British as well as the French to "carry" their own war materiel on their own ships. Following the fall of France and the signing of the French-German armistice in June 1940, the outstanding contracts with the United States were transferred to the British. The unoccupied portion of France became Vichy France with Marshall Petain as its leader. As part of the armistice agreement with the Axis, a German-Italian commission was put in charge of the activities of the Vichy Air Force that were full of restrictions and disbandment of French units as the Axis powers feared continued defections of French pilots to the Allies. French units in North Africa, however, were not under the jurisdiction of the German-Italian commission and continued to operate their US-built aircraft and it was these forces loyal to the Vichy regime that briefly resisted the Allied landings during Operation Torch. 

British Blenheims were some of the first aircraft given to the Free French.

A nucleus of French forces under General Charles De Gaulle (made up mostly of those evacuated from Dunkirk and other defections from the Vichy regime) tried to get Allied support as the "Free French", but this proved to be complex given that the legal French government at the time was Marshall Petain's Vichy regime which signed the armistice following the fall of France. And if that wasn't hard enough determining how to support a group fighting what was recognized as the legal government of France, the Roosevelt Administration even had recognized the Vichy regime as the legitimate French government! De Gaulle's efforts weren't helped any when despite a promise to Roosevelt to not seize the Vichy-controlled islands of St-Pierre and Miquelon off the Canadian coast, he did anyway. But on a perhaps moral level, aid would have to be provided to the Free French forces. Initially aircraft for the new Free French Air Force were diverted from British deliveries with the approval of the Roosevelt administration. In 1941 the Free French formed the French National Committee with General De Gaulle as its head to represent French interests independent of the Vichy regime. 

The Cross of Lorraine was used in addition to the French roundel.

With the coming of the landings in North Africa during Operation Torch, the Roosevelt Administration tried to develop an alternative to De Gaulle as he was seen as too difficult to work with for the war in Europe. Secret contacts had been made with dissidents within the Vichy government and General Henri Giraud was seen as an altnerative to De Gaulle- General Giraud had been captured by the Germans during the fall of France and sent to a prison camp, from which he had escaped back to Vichy France. This dissident element in the Vichy regime were promised large infusions of American aid if they could get the Vichy forces in North Africa to not contest the Torch landings, the idea that this group would then be put under Giraud's command as an alternative to De Gaulle. It would have worked as there were many French personnel who were loyal to Giraud and considered De Gaulle a traitor for having escaped to Britain before the fall of France. On the day of the landings on 7/8 November 1942 the Allies found themselves juggling three French factions- De Gaulle's Free French forces, Giraud and the dissidents in Vichy France, and Marshall Petain's defense minister, Admiral Francois Darlan, who was in North Africa at the time of the invasion and lobbied to halt Vichy resistance to the Allied landings. In exchange, Darlan would be made head of the new French government. This ended up enraging De Gaulle. Vichy resistance did end and Darlan ordered the French fleet at Toulon scuttled to prevent their takeover by the Germans. Darlan would later by assassinated in December 1942 and replaced by General Giraud, but by this point De Gaulle managed to emerge as the uncontested leader of the Free French following a 1943 agreement between Giraud and De Gaulle to unify their forces with Giraud as commander in chief and De Gaulle as the political head of the Free French. 

French B-26 units had their Cross of Lorraine on the nose in blue.

On 3 July 1943 De Gaulle's Free French Air Force was formally merged with Giraud's forces in North Africa with the set up of a joint commission with both US and British representatives in addition to the Free French to determine the aircraft needs of the Free French Air Force. By this point most aircraft used by the Free French could be identified with the use of the Cross of Lorraine in addition to the French roundels. Perhaps symbolically, the Escadrille Lafayette would be the first Free French unit to be re-equipped with American aircraft, Curtiss P-40 Warhawks diverted from USAAF stocks that were North Africa already. Over the next several months more aircraft arrived direct from US factories, from Bell P-39 Airacobras, Lockheed F-4/F-5 Lightnings for reconnaissance duties, to Douglas A-24 Dauntless dive bombers and C-47 transports. French trainees were sent to to the United States for flight training and completed their operational training with French units in North Africa prior to the liberation of France. The French Navy also received American aircraft to include Consolidated PBY Catalinas, Lockheed PV-1 Venturas and Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers, but rather than operated under De Gaulle's command like the Free French Air Force, the French naval air arm units were placed under US Navy command. 

French Lend-Lease deliveries would continue for most of the war but were cut off prematurely in April 1945 by order of President Harry Truman before war's end due to a diplomatic dispute started when French units chose to obey orders from General De Gaulle instead of the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower. De Gaulle had agreed earlier to Eisenhower's overall command and those deliveries outstanding were never released due to the German surrender on 7 May 1945. These issues would continue to simmer between De Gaulle and the United States in the post-war period that would complicate matters in French Indochina and ultimately result in France's withdrawal from NATO in 1967. 

Source: Air Arsenal North America- Aircraft for the Allies 1938-1945 Purchases and Lend-Lease by Phil Butler and Dan Hagedorn. Midland Publishing, 2004, p17, 105-114.