Part Two In A Series

By ANN Correspondent Tom Griffith

As a member of the press, I get to do things that many people do not get to do.  Most involve getting into airshows and museums without paying for it (or having my company pay for it).  Other times, I get to go "behind the ropes" at air museums and airshows and climb into and onto aircraft.  Regular visitors have to keep their distance from, or keep their hands off of, rare, priceless aircraft and other such artifacts.  I've climbed into such classic craft as the F4U Corsair, P-63 Kingcobra, B-17 Flying Fortress, PB4Y-2 Privateer and TWO B-25 Mitchells, to name a few of my favorite aircraft. 

There is another aspect to the aviation scene:  the everyday people who come to airshows and museums, and to a certain extent, the men and women who fly or are otherwise associated with such aircraft.  At the Tulsa, OK stop of the 2003 National Air Tour (NAT) perhaps a thousand people showed up to witness a little piece of history that the NAT represents.  As I write this article, the Tour is just beyond the midway point of the tour.  No doubt, people all over these United States are turning out to see the aircraft and the people that make up the NAT.  The differences are mostly those of accent (I discovered that people in Oklahoma sound quite different from we Texans to the south) and maybe how much clothing they had to wear to the airport. 

This past Sunday, the weather in Tulsa  was glorious.  It was perhaps in the high 70s to low 80s during the three or so hours that the NAT planes were at the airport.  The sun was shining bright and there were only occasional high clouds.  This was not an "airshow" in the true sense of the word.  There was almost nothing for sale to eat, there were no Thunderbirds or Blue Angels to perform and the only souvenirs for sale were a NAT 2003 teeshirt and related items.  There were no WWII warbirds performing reenactments of WWII action.  There were no Pitts or Extras performing amazing aerobatics.   I had made contact with Suzanne Fedoruk, my contact person with the tour - she called me on my cell phone just as I arrived at the Tulsa Air and Space Museum area on foot from the Tulsa terminal.  She had left my name with the guys at the gate who were keeping the eager crowd out of the hangar and ramp area, because some of the Tour planes were still taxiing up and refueling was taking place.   He walked with me for a ways, till Suzanne appeared. 

I naturally had my ANN shirt on and my ANN Press Pass was hanging from my neck. She presented me with a press packet and my official Air Tour Press Pass.  I was set for the day!  She also told me which plane I was scheduled to ride in that afternoon.  I was going to ride in the Stinson Trimotor!  Be still my heart! This very plane was on the cover of -Air and Space magazine for September.  I had this issue in the canvas bag that held everything for my trip.  I had used the article "The Magical History Tour" by Mary Collins, to help develop my first article on the Air Tour, and had drooled at the cover shot.  This rare plane is gorgeous, and it was going to be MINE for a few hours of the tour (well, I'd get to ride in it if I behaved!).  I called my wife, Louise, and told her what plane I was going to ride in and she shared my excitement.

The planes in the NAT had flown into the Tulsa International Airport just about the same time that my commercial flight landed -through my window on the right side of the Southwest Boeing 737 that had brought me to Tulsa, I saw a gaggle of biplanes coming in to land.  They were using one of the shorter runways at TUL.  The Tour planes had arrived in small groups and nearly all were on the ramp when I finally got to the display area, with one noted exception: a Stinson Trimotor arrived probably an hour later, bringing up the rear all by itself.  It had experienced magneto problems in Wichita, Kansas - the mags got wet from a rain storm and had to be attacked with blow dryers to dry them off.  OH NO!  Thank God, the blow dryers worked, and the dark blue Stinson finally arrived, much to my enjoyment and relief.  The pilot made a perfect landing and when my 35 mm film comes back from processing, I should have a number of great shots (keep your fingers crossed!) of this rare bird coming in for my date with destiny.  The plane taxied onto the ramp area and was directed to its parking place on the back row.

When time came for the tour to continue on to Ft. Worth, TX (my home) which was the next stop in the 4,000 mile tour, the classic aircraft (along with four modern support planes) took off in small groups of three to maybe six or seven ships.  They did not form up and fly by or anything like that.  It wasn't in the schedule and no one expected it.

None-the-less, the people who showed up were greatly pleased with this collection.  I get to go to air museums and airshows a number of times a year.  I've been to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and their Garber Facility before it was closed to the public.   To say that I was "pleased" would be an understatement.  I was in awe!  To think that not only one or two or even ten, but about 25 classic flying aircraft were all I this one place at this one time.  AND, they all flew there and would be flying out - just the way the Air Tours of the 1920s and 1930s had done.

The people that I encountered once the crowd was allowed to come into the ramp area were from all walks of life.  There were families with teenagers down to newborn babies.  There were a number of people who probably were around when the original Tours happened.  There were a number of seasoned citizens in wheelchairs.  They all came to see the Golden Age aircraft and their pilots.

I spoke with some of the people in the crowd.  I had my ANN Press Pass and the NAT Press Pass dangling around my neck, and I could have "interviewed" some of them as a correspondent is supposed to (what do I know, I'm a pharmacist!).  Instead, I mostly just watched and listened.  By every aircraft, there were men (I say "men" because we think that we know EVERYTHING about everything mechanical and we explain  such esoteric things as NACA cowling, radial vs. inline engines, fabric covering, bungee cord, ailerons and all that stuff) pointing out details of the aircraft to their wives, kids, friends, etc.  Forget that maybe their stories were all wrong - who cares - I saw families and friends having a good time on beautiful morning in the middle of America.

I had my longest conversation with a crowd member as I sat down to have a little snack and cool off in the shade of a hangar next to the display area.  A gentleman who I first estimated to be sixty-something came over and sat down by me.  We greeted each other, but we did not exchange names - it wasn't necessary, nor was it important.  He looked like a "Pete," so I'll call him that. Pete told me that he had been an aircraft "mechanic" for many years, and in fact, he'd taught A&P classes in a vocational college for 27 years "back in Stillwater (OK).  He then told me that he was already flying when WWII started.  I was floored (forget that I was already sitting down) - he had to be eighty or so, but he didn't look that old!

He said that when WWII started, he naturally joined the US Army Air Forces as a pilot trainee and went to flight school in Dallas, TX.  He said that after accumulating a "couple hundred" hours in basic trainers, he was ready to advance to the AT-6 Texan and the military did what it is famous for:  the USAAF decided that they had enough pilots but didn't have enough parachute riggers, so he was sent to parachute school!  He told me that his graduation exercise was to make a parachute jump over Lakehurst, NJ.  I said, "you mean, where the Hindenberg disaster happened?" and Pete said, "yes, but it was a few years later, but I did see the site of the disaster?" - or words to that effect.  I said that I knew that it was before WWII, but neither of us could remember the year (it was 1937).

He told me that after the War was over, he and a couple of buddies bought an AT-6 Texan and a Stearman from the US government when it began selling off aircraft for bargain-basement prices after the War.  They intended getting rich, using the Stearman as a crop-duster and the Texan as a banner-towing aircraft.  He remembered towing a certain banner over Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1952.  He said that the banner said something like "Re-elect McCarthy to the U. S. Senate."  I told him that I knew who Joe McCarthy was - and, I added that he had another "brush with history."  He said that he felt that he had to apologize for perhaps helping to re-elect the notorious senator, who is infamous for hearings in the US Senate that tended to paint everyone and anyone who didn't agree with him as a Communist, OR for being a great American lawmaker who protected the US from Communism in the early 50s.  Regardless, they were not successful - Pete told me that they had a 600 foot nylon rope attached to the banner and it had to be stretched out down the runway in front of the aircraft, and that this limited the size of the banner that they could tow.  A competitor had a smaller plane, but had a hook on the plane that could be used to snag the towline after their aircraft took off, flew a circuit and came back.  He said that they had a loop attached to the banner's tow-rope and that they therefore could tow a much bigger banner because they had airspeed to do so. 

He then began working as an A&P again and it developed into his teaching this important skill many people in a vocational school.  He said that he lost his last airplane in one of those famous Oklahoma wind storms, over 20 years ago.  He said that it was a Stinson Gullwing.  He said that he was in the process of fixing it up to sell when the storm ripped it from its tiedown and delivered it in pieces to parts unknown.  He said that all that was left at the airport were the tiedown ropes with the metal anchors that had formerly been part of the aircraft's wings and airframe still attached.

He saw the man that he was supposed to meet underneath the nose of the FAAs beautiful Douglas DC-3 (the biggest plane on the Tour) that was a couple hundred feet from us.  He jumped up (literally) and briskly walked off to meet his friend.  In a minute they disappeared among the crowd.  I was left with thoughts of Pete and his tales as I finished my snack and drink.

I talked to several of the Tour pilots.  I was waiting to talk to Addison Pemberton and Larry Howard, the pilots of NC-485W, a breath-taking Stearman 4DM Senior Speedmail, when a small group of people came up to them and introduced themselves as members of the "Stearman family."  They had previously talked to the pilots and as a special treat for a member of the family who founded the Stearman company, one of the women was allowed to climb into the rear cockpit of the big biplane.  Larry and Addison helped her with the two foot-steps that delivered her to the rather small opening for the open cockpit.  They told her to not grab onto the windscreen, but to hold onto the edge of the cowling and then swing herself up into the hole and step onto the seat, before sitting down.  She did it with skillful aplomb - a Stearman was in a Stearman!  I left them to talk about their stories and made my way over to a line of biplanes that was parked in the front row.

FMI: www.nationalairtour.org