The Nortthwest Airlines ticket counter at Felts Field, Spokane, Washington in 1936.
A.G. Leonard Morgan, one of the great aviators of all time, died March 11, 2005, age eighty-two. Len Morgan is remembered as a delightful columnist and author, and as a Braniff Airline pilot of enormous experience. He flew every type of aircraft his company operated, from the DC-3 to the Boeing 747, as a captain in them all. He wrote more than thirty books on aviation subjects and hundreds of columns and articles for Flying magazine in the United States. Born in Indiana in 1923, Morgan volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941 and, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, transferred to the U.S. Army Air Forces where he flew C-47s in Egypt, Africa and the Middle East.
Captain Morgan: “The C-47 groaned, it protested, it rattled, it leaked oil, it ran hot, it ran cold, it ran rough, it staggered along on hot days and scared you half to death. Its wings flexed and twisted in a horrifying manner, it sank back to earth with a great sigh of relief—but it flew and it flew and it flew. It took us and ten thousand crews around the globe to where we had to go and brought us home again, honest, faithful, and magnificent machine that it was.
“The war ended and four frustrating years drifted past while I looked for airline employment. When, at long last, a job with a major trunk line opened up it was, happily, with an outfit operating a good number of DC-3s.
“Compared with military flying, the airline life was almost too good to be true. Fifteen minutes before departure you got aboard a nice clean airplane and took your place in a nice clean cockpit. The tanks were fuelled, the windshield wiped clean and the logbook carried no long lists of uncorrected gripes. The radios and other cockpit equipment were all in good working order. A truck outside pumped the ship full of refrigerated air. Half a dozen men bustled about underneath, doing all the chores left to a co-pilot in the Army. Twenty-one well-dressed civilians filled the seats and, promptly on schedule, you fired up and sped this happy load away to another splendid airfield equipped with concrete runways, adequate night lighting, and navigational facilities that worked all of the time.
“The gross load was limited to 25,200 pounds, which was hardly half a load. During flight you had but to press a button three times and a sweet young thing appeared in your working quarters with a round of really good, really hot coffee. On layovers you slept in air-conditioned hotels and, upon completion of the trip, you simply walked off the plane and went home. This was flying the way it was meant to be!
“Within a few months we junior fellows had grown accustomed to this white collar way of flying, accepted it as no more than our due and were grousing as loudly as the older heads about lousy schedules and the failure of the management to add new trips fast enough. But it was mostly talk for we all recognized our luck in being among the handful of ex-service airmen able to continue flying. It was, all in all, a most pleasant way to earn a living. It was, in fact, downright fun and most of us would have taken the job had it only paid off in meals and a place to sleep.
“When employed at the task for which it was originally designed, that of hauling passengers and mail in scheduled airline service, the DC-3 gave an excellent account of itself. It was a pleasure to ride and a pleasure to fly. It was the perfect training ship for pilots interested in airline careers, forgiving of mistakes, demanding enough to keep you on your toes. Almost every jet crew flying in the Free World today got its first heavy airplane experience in the DC-3.
A dinner plate from an airline DC-3 in the 1930s.
“From the lower levels in which we worked the view of the earth beneath was generally excellent. This means something when you fly the same routes year after year and is one reason, I suspect, why pilots retain a favourable impression of their DC-3 days. At 5,000 feet you can see where you are going and appreciate the relationship of your machine to the terrain it covers. A favorite trip took us to Chicago with seven stops enroute. For eight hours the Midwest unrolled before us, slowly enough for sightseeing, rapidly enough to prevent boredom. We took off at dawn and climbed out across empty streets. Dropping down at Oklahoma City an hour later we saw the earliest risers back down from their driveways and scurry off to work. Yellow school buses began to speed along the red roads, pausing at farms while tiny dots got aboard. Wichita’s streets were always jammed with cars, most heading toward the city. Topeka and Kansas City were relatively quiet when seen from above, with downtown parking lots filled to capacity and little traffic moving except near suburban shopping centers. Plodding northeastward in the midday hours, we saw little change in the activity below. Men worked, women shopped, children were in school, their buses waiting in neat rows behind their country classrooms. Farmers made geometric designs in the black soil or sped along dirt roads in pickup trucks leaving plumes of dust.
“We ate our lunch, a box of sandwiches with a small salad and Dixie cup of milk, threw the leftovers out of the window and rang for fresh coffee. As we lifted for the eighth time and laid the nose on Chicago, the school buses were already beginning to scatter to the farms, stopping now and then while tiny dots ran off. The turnpikes leading from the giant city ahead now carried their heaviest flow in the outbound lanes. Long commuter trains snaked westward, four miles apart.
“Flying VFR [visual flight rules] most of the time, we were free to drop down and check the progress on a new dam and guess at the shape of the lake it would form, watch the reapers swim across the golden land of Kansas, admire the skill of a Mississippi pilot edging his tow into a lock, or simply enjoy the grandeur of the American Midwest. Farm lads looked up and envied us; we looked down and remembered. It was, as I say, a most pleasant way to earn a living.
A view of the pioneering Douglas DC-1 airliner.
A sampling of airline luggage labels from the era of the DC-3.
A decorative thimble commemorating the Douglas DC-3 airliner.
“Most of the time, at least. There were times when you cursed the job and imagined yourself safe behind a desk in some solid ground work. On hot summer days you pitched along by the hour and made the passengers sick when a pressurized cabin would have put you on top of the turbulence and in cooler air. You bucked headwinds that reduced groundspeed to eighty miles an hour. You ran along the edges of line squalls at night, waiting for lightning flashes to illuminate cloud bases. You emerged from rain showers soaked to the skin for the cockpit leaked water like a sieve. You got caught in thunderstorms and fought to keep the airspeed within forty miles of a safe figure and the ship more or less right side up. You watched it fall from under you, even with the engines howling at climb power. You sweated out crosswinds on icy runways. You hated your seniors with their pressurization, radar, fancy navigation gear, tricycle wheels and reversing props. The DC-3 took second place to no other airplane in being able to give you a hairy ride.
“We tend to remember the pleasant and minimize the unpleasant in our memories of those activities we basically enjoy. So it is that I’ve almost forgotten the leaky windshield of a DC-3. Instead, I remember, and quite clearly, how nice it was to fly across the countryside in the early evening and watch the lighted towns drift slowly toward us and drop beneath the wings.
“Twenty-one was an ideal number of people to carry on an airplane. Cabin atmosphere in a DC-3 was informal, relaxed, and conducive to friendly across-the-aisle chats. There was time to take in the view, and a view to take in. There was time to enjoy the meal, read your paper, or be lulled into a nap by the hypnotic drone of the engines. The names of the crew appeared on the cockpit door, an indication of the more personalized nature of air travel then. After lunch an announcement form with the blank spaces pencilled in would be handed back along the seats. ‘Welcome aboard Flight 24. We are cruising at 6,000 feet. Our groundspeed is 172 miles an hour. Our estimated time of arrival at St Louis is 2:47 p.m. Please tell your stewardess, Miss Adams, if there is anything we can do to make your trip more comfortable.’ – Captain Bob Ford
“Up front the atmosphere was just as relaxed with collars loosened, feet propped up and little talk in the headsets. The countryside unrolled like a huge map, the familiar checkpoints taking shape and disappearing in slow but steady sequence.
“In comparison, the cabin of today’s airliner resembles the Holland Tunnel with seats. Two, three, or four harried girls work frantically to dish up food for a hundred people in fifty minutes. There is no time to meet the man across the aisle or have a second cup of coffee. The earth beneath looks like a dirty grey blanket. Your crew works behind a locked door now, their headsets filled with endless chatter between planes and ground controllers. Your pilots are concerned with a score of problems unknown twenty years ago. There is nothing relaxed about their work now. But this is the Air Age we yearned for and these are some of the changes it has brought. Who among us, passenger or pilot, would return to the ways of yesterday?”
The famed American World War I fighter ace Captain Eddie Rickenbacker (October 8, 1890-July 27, 1973) was a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Fascinated by most things mechanical, he was a largely self-taught engineer who worked in a Pennsylvania Railroad machine shop prior to becoming a racing driver, running in the Indianapolis 500 four times. His best and only finish was in the 1914 event in which he came tenth. He was probably the first Edward to be nicknamed “Fast Eddie.”
When the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, Eddie Rickenbacker joined the U.S. Army and, due mainly to his mechanical and engineering capabilities and experience, was offered a position as an engineering officer in a flying training unit at Issoudun in France, where he learned to fly. He earned a place with the renowned 94th (Hat-in-the-Ring) Aero Squadron which frequently engaged Manfred von Richthofen’s “Flying Circus.” Captain Rickenbacker downed twenty-six enemy aircraft by the war’s end—a record for American pilots that stood until World War Two. He had flown more than 300 combat hours: more than any other American pilot in that first great air war.
From 1927 until 1945, Eddie Rickenbacker owned and operated the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and made many important improvements, including banking the curves for better, safer cornering. Contacts he had made during WWI led to the business opportunity of his lifetime when he merged Eastern Air Transport with Florida Airways to create Eastern Air Lines. His stewardship of the airline brought enormous growth and opportunity in the business. He collaborated with some of aviation’s greatest pioneers, including Donald Douglas, to help in the development of their products. He frequently travelled for business on Eastern which, by early 1941, had acquired several DC-3s.
He was aboard Eastern’s DC-3 Flight 21, from Washington DC to Atlanta, on the stormy night of February 26th when the flight crew contacted their company office in Atlanta shortly before midnight to say that they had just passed the Stone Mountain reporting point and were descending towards Atlanta airport. They then informed the Atlanta control tower that they were two miles southeast of the airport at an altitude of 1,800 feet. They received clearance to land from Atlanta control at 11:44 p.m. There was no further transmission from the Eastern plane.
Perc Westmore and his wife;
Mr and Mrs Dean Jagger;
Grace Moore.
Looking out of his window, Rickenbacker saw some lights of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary through the rain. At that moment he felt the left wing drop as the plane entered a turn—and then it hit something. The left wing came up. Knowing that it was safer to be in the back of a plane in an emergency, he jumped from his seat and rushed down the aisle towards the rear. The plane caught a wing in the tall trees which tore it from the fuselage. Rickenbacker thought of some fellow WWI fighter pilots who, when shot down and facing certain death, had determined to inhale fire to shorten their final agony. He decided he would do the same if the airliner caught fire after the crash. Luckily, the pilots had had the presence to cut the electrical system before the last impact.
The DC-3 had come down in a pine grove near Morrow, Georgia, cartwheeled, and came to rest upside down. The wreck was found at 6:30 the next morning. The front third of the fuselage was crushed. Both pilots had been killed instantly. Of the twenty-five persons on the flight, eight—including Eastern’s President Rickenbacker who was the most seriously injured—survived the crash. He lay trapped in the wreckage, soaked in fuel and suffering a broken pelvis and hip socket, a broken knee, broken ribs, head and eye injuries. Despite his own terrible condition, he encouraged the survivors to find help and tried to console them and those who lay dying. He heard one of the passengers suggesting that they build a fire to ward off the cold and yelled out to warn them of the danger posed by leaked gasoline from the ruptured fuel tanks.
Eastern Air Lines stewards in the late 1930s;
After many months in hospital and more than a year recovering, Rickenbacker regained his full eyesight and mobility.
Another incident in the history of the DC-3 occurred on the night of February 9, 1937. A United Airlines plane had begun the two-hour flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco at 7 p.m. and at 8:44 the crew could see the lights of the bay area ahead. The weather was good. The highly experienced pilot, Captain Alexander Thompson, was flying the new aircraft, his co-pilot was Joe Decesaro and the flight hostess was Ruth Kimmel. They were carrying eight passengers.
A TWA publicity photo.
A DC-3 of Silver City Airways boarding passengers in the Libyan desert during 1958.
The logbook of TWA DC-3 pilot Captain Frank D. Buehl.
Witnesses on the ground at San Francisco’s Mills Field saw the plane cross the field at a height of about 700 feet. It turned out over the bay and continued banking to line up for landing on the east-west runway. It was seen to approach the concrete strip, wheels down, and properly aligned with the runway. They watched as it suddenly and inexplicably fell into a 45 degree dive and crashed behind a large dike separating the field from the bay.
The next day a giant derrick lifted the wreck from where it lay. It was on its back and the fuselage had been torn open. The tail was crushed. The bodies of the passengers and crew were still strapped in their seats. All appeared to have drowned.
This incident took place long before the days of “black box” voice and data recorders and there seemed to be no clues to the cause. Five weeks later, the crash investigators had reached the point of declaring it to be pilot error when something occurred to change their minds.
Another DC-3—this one belonging to American Airlines—was about to take off from Newark Airport in New Jersey. The pilot was running through the preflight procedure, checking the engines and testing the controls for free and full movement. He found they were jammed and was unable to move the control column. Then he spotted the cause. His radio microphone had fallen from its hook and had become stuck in the V-shaped well between the moveable control column and the cockpit wall. He removed the mike and stowed it. Now his control column worked as it should. He took off and completed the flight normally. He reported the incident and all airlines operating the DC-3 were then warned of the possibility of this bizarre event.
The aviation writer for the New York Herald Tribune heard about the American Airlines incident and made the mental connection between it and the unresolved San Francisco crash of the preceding February. United Airlines investigators re-examined the cockpit of their wrecked airliner and found the bent, crushed microphone jammed in the control well, as had happened to its counterpart in the American Airlines DC-3 at Newark. The engineers at Douglas learned from the tragedy and designed and installed a leather boot to cover the well of the control column.
By the 1930s, airliners were able to provide faster, cleaner, and a less crowded service than the trains of the day. However, flight safety was still a concern for many travellers and potential travellers, and the world media made much of aeroplane crashes. In a campaign to entice more people into the air, the airlines stressed comfort, speed, reliability, quiet, and safety in the promotion of their service. Air travel was an exclusive luxury and travellers dressed for the occasion. Since late in the 1920s, airlines, especially in Europe, had given romantic and inspiring names to their aircraft and the route services they flew. Air Union, a French airline, called its Paris-London service Golden Ray, and Silver Wing was the name given by Imperial Airways to its London-Paris service—an important and heavily-travelled air corridor.
In the Art Deco era of the 1930s, the people developing promotional materials to bring air travel to the world rushed to show current and future passengers the technological wonders of the newest, most comfortable and streamlined aircraft. Planes like the Douglas DC-2 were photogenic and stylish.
Convenience was another factor to be promoted in a time when new airports and airline facilities were being developed globally, rapidly, and with great enthusiasm. New radio communications systems and a beacon network were being designed, making airline travel at night and in poor weather a reality. Significant improvements in aircraft instrumentation, airfield lighting, and in air traffic control procedures and capability, enhanced the experience as well.
With the advent of the DC-2 and later the DC-3, the travelling public chose to fly on the larger, faster, quieter and more comfortable Douglas airliners, if possible, especially on high-traffic routes such as Chicago-New York. This finally caused United Airlines, America’s biggest carrier, with a fleet of Boeing 247s, to accept the inevitable. By the time America entered the Second World War, United was operating a fleet of fifty-seven DC-3s and had relegated its 247s to less-travelled feeder routes.
In general, however, the innovative practices of United Airlines boss, Pat Patterson, kept his company at the forefront in the competition with rivals American, TWA, Eastern, and Pan American. He used such incentives as discounted fares, two-for-one tickets allowing wives to accompany their husbands on business trips for free, new Sky Lounges—a kind of first class service on the New York-Chicago run for a $2 surcharge—and the first in-flight kitchen, bringing airline food to a new and higher standard.
The experiences of the war in the 1940s taught the airlines and the aircraft makers some important lessons about air transport for the postwar years. The pioneering four-engine Douglas C-54 evolved into the commercial DC-6—an updated model competing with the highly popular four-engine Lockheed Constellation. At the war’s end, most of the airlines scrambled to buy and refit C-54s into the DC-6 configuration. Douglas raced to deliver the first of its line of new, pressurized DC-6s. The DC-6 led to the last and largest of the line of sophisticated piston-engined airliners, the Douglas DC-7—among the first airliners capable of the New York-London trans-Atlantic crossing. The DC-7 came about when American Airlines asked Douglas for a stretched, longer-ranging version of the DC-6. American began service with the Wright Turbo-Compound-powered DC-7 in November 1953. Douglas then developed the ultimate version, the DC-7C (Seven Seas) with more powerful engines, more fuel capacity for greater range, and a fuselage extended by an additional ten feet for more capacity. A very refined aircraft, 338 DC-7s were profitably produced. The number would have been higher had it not been for the major airlines’ entry into the jet age in 1958.
A DC-3 jigsaw puzzle of the 1940s
A Captain Candy dispenser.
An American Airlines dinner knife;
A menu from Aviation Terrace restaurant at La Guardia Field, New York, 1942;
Enthusiastic passengers about to board this American Airlines DC-3 Flagship.
The control tower at Croydon Airport, London in the 1930s;
Gare de L’Aeroport at Bourges, France, 1930s;
The waiting room at Montreal’s Dorval Airport circa 1939.
