(The Concorde visits DFW Airport – courtesy Frontiers of Flight Museum)
Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) turns 50 in January 2024 and the Stuck at the Airport team has been doing a little digging into the airport’s history.
We’ll be back with more finds, but we wanted to share this short video we found presented by the former director of the DFW Records Department. The video shows some treasures in the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport archives, including the pre-computer drafting tools used to design the airport and the dinosaur bones found onsite.
The airport traces its history back to 1923, when aviation pioneer Eddie Martin founded a flying school and Martin Aviation, one of the nation’s oldest aviation firms.
To celebrate the one-century mark, the John Wayne Airport Arts Program has created an exhibition showcasing the history of flight in Orange County from the airfield’s inception to the present-day airport.
Included are images and information from the 1950s, when the airfield played host to drag racers and souped-up custom cars.
The exhibition will be on view at John Wayne Airport through January 2024, pre-security on the upper Departure Level in the walkway Gallery between Terminals B and C.
The Stuck at the Airport road trip team visited Oregon recently to check on the status of a World War II-era B-17 Flying Fortress that served for years as a roadside attraction along the highway in Milwaukie, OR, not far from Portland.
The non-profit B-17 Alliance is restoring the B-17 in Hangar “C” at Oregon’s historic McNary Field/Salem Municipal Airport and we were delighted to get a tour.
You can learn more about the project, and the history of this airplane on the B-17 Alliance Foundation’s site and in the piece we put together for The Points Guy site. But here’s a short version of the Gas Station Bomber story.
Milwaukie, Oregon gas station owner Art Lacey purchased a decommissioned B-17 bomber, one of the iconic four-engine “Flying Fortresses” used by the U.S. Army Air Force in World War II, in 1947 and used the “Lacy Lady” to turn his service station into a roadside attraction.
Into the late 1950s, motorists could climb up into the airplane for a look-around while their automobiles got filled up and serviced and then have a meal at the adjacent Bomber Restaurant.
The gas station closed in 1991 and in 2014 the B-17 Alliance moved the plane to a hangar at Salem Municipal Airport for restoration.
The group estimates that in addition to thousands of hours of volunteer time, it will take more than $6 million to get the airplane airworthy by, perhaps, 2037.
Their sister, Katharine Wright, was an essential part of the team. She ran the brothers’ bicycle shop when they were off doing gliding tests in Kitty Hawk. And she was essential when it came to taking care of the Wright Brothers’ business and social matters.
And, without Charles E. Taylor, the Wright Brothers’ planes would have never gotten off the ground.
Taylor, a self-taught machinist, worked as a repair person in the bicycle shop. And it was Taylor who Orville and Wilbur turned to when they needed a wind tunnel to help them with improvements for the 1902 glider.
It was also Taylor who designed and built the first successful airplane engine for the Wright Brother’s first pioneering powered flight in 1903. And it was Taylor who improved and fixed the engines for many years after.
Thanks to this story in the Metropolitan Airport News, we learned all about Charles E. Taylor. And about a short film that highlights his mostly forgotten role in aviation history and in the Wright Brothers’ story.
See the film, by Joshua Lang and Natalie Wong, below. Be sure to watch for the rare footage of Taylor describing how he created parts from scratch.
(Charlie Taylor at the Wright Company factory in 1911. Courtesy Wright State University Archives)
(R101 during a test flight over Westminster, London in 1929. Credit: Alamy)
We’re just past the anniversary of the May 6, 1937 crash of the Hindenburg. The zeppelin – or rigid airship – famously met its demise in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36 people; 13 passengers, 22 crewmembers, and one worker on the ground.
Gwynne’s book is about the R101, a 777-foot-long zeppelin that crashed in 1930.
At that time it was the largest, most technologically sophisticated, and most expensive aircraft ever to fly. And it was designed to be better than any of the airships Germany had constructed.
For a zeppelin, (or blimp), it was quite swanky. R101 had two floors of fifty heated sleeping berths, bathrooms, cooking, and dining facilities, and a smoking room.
In October 1930, the maiden voyage of the steel-framed, linen-draped, hydrogen-filled airship was supposed to take fifty-four passengers from England to India and back – a 10,000-mile journey.
But as Gwynne thrillingly and meticulously documents in this book, the building of R101 and the entire journey were doomed by bad decisions, inflated egos, faulty technology, and bad luck.
On October 5, not long after leaving England, the British airship R 101 carrying 54 people crashed on a hill in Beauvais, France. 8 people escaped, but 2 of those people died later from their injuries bringing the total death count to 48.
Meet the author of His Majesty’s Airship
S.W. Gwynne, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and a New York Times bestselling author, is currently on a book tour in support of His Majesty’s Airship.
The Stuck at the Airport book club is going to see Gwynne at Town Hall in Seattle on May 15. He’s also making stops in Hudson, OH (May 10), Corte Madera, CA (May 16) and other cities.
