Kelly

by Clarence L. Johnson

  When the time came for the Electra’s first flight, Gross hired Edmund T. “Eddie” Allen, probably the best and most experienced test pilot of commercial aircraft at that time. The Lockheed pilots had no twin-engine experience. Allen alone flew the plane for the first time on February 23, 1934.

  “Soaring gracefully into the air on its maiden flight, the sleek all-metal airliner flew easily, marking another great stride in commercial speed development of air transportation,” a local newspaper reported glowingly.

  The Electra was the fastest multiengine transport in the world at that time, the first able to cruise faster than 200 miles an hour. Allen averaged 221 miles per hour over a speed course shortly after first flight. Later, at 10,500 feet, the calibrated airspeed meter showed the Electra would cruise at 203 miles an hour. The plane became popular not only with airlines in the United States, but overseas as well.

  In Eddie Allen, I had an excellent teacher. After the first flight, I flew with him as flight test engineer through the entire initial flight test regime—dive tests, stalls, spins, everything. It was an excellent indoctrination to the art, skill, science, adventure—all that goes into flight testing. He taught me what it was all about, what was important, what to record. And he was unflappable.

  On one occasion we had to boost the Electra to its design dive speed, about 320 miles an hour, to prove that the airplane was free of flutter and control problems. We had the airplane loaded with lead bars to simulate the full gross weight. We took off from the old runway behind the factory in Burbank and climbed to about 12,000 feet. Then Eddie pointed the airplane down in a steep, screaming power-on dive.

  Establishing a foothold in the aviation industry. Kelly in his early role as a flight engineer.

  At 6,000 feet when I was expecting he would start to pull out, there was a horrendous bang, and everything was flying around the cockpit. I looked over at Eddie to see what he would do, if we were going to try to jump or not. He was holding the stick with one hand, pulling back on it to bring us out of the dive, and with the other brushing insulating material from his face.

  “Got something in my eye,” he said matter-of-factly.

  The windshield on the pilot’s side of the cockpit had blown in, pulling some insulation with it and covering Allen’s face. Obviously, we redesigned the windshield.

  After the initial test phase, consisting of perhaps a dozen flights, Allen checked out Marshall Headle and he took over as Lockheed test pilot for the Electra. I flew with him on this and other aircraft for a good many years. When I ended my career as flight test engineer I had accumulated 2,300 hours.

  I have a philosophy that those who design aircraft also should fly them—to keep a proper perspective. The engineer knows where the quarter-inch bolts may be marginal, what the flaps are likely to do or not do. I’ve shared the concern of the pilot. I figured I needed to have hell scared out of me once a year in order to keep a proper balance and viewpoint on designing new aircraft.

  Those early experiences doubtless were important in shaping my own method of operating. A lot of engineers don’t like pilots. Even more pilots don’t like engineers. All of the engineers’ requirements are not always met by the pilots. Engineers don’t always act on the pilots’ complaints. The problem essentially is one of communication.

  I decided early in my career that I would try to avoid this division by doing two things primarily. I would fly as much as possible with the pilots when we had an airplane that would hold two persons, and accompany them on dangerous tests, including first flights. I’ve been on nine. Then, when the relatively run-of-the-mill work came along and I might not be with them to observe first hand, my door would always be open to them. They could come and tell me what they thought should be done. I didn’t always follow through, but generally I found their suggestions were very, very helpful. With one exception, the pilots and I have had a fine relationship, with mutual respect, and, I think, affection.

  The Electra flight test program went smoothly—until one near-disaster threatened to bring it to a halt. At the conclusion of a strenuous series of tests required for U.S. government certification, and with a representative of the Civil Aeronautics Authority on board, test pilot Headle lowered the gear for landing—but only one wheel came down. The left-hand gear would not respond.

  We had just been awarded our “ticket” on the Electra, certification by the CAA, at Mines Field, now Los Angeles International Airport. Hibbard and I were driving back home in his big, red LaSalle cabriolet smoking cigars and celebrating the event.

  Neither Hibbard nor I smoked ordinarily, but this occasion seemed to call for the gesture, especially since the cigars had been presented to us in congratulation by the CAA group. We arrived in Burbank in time to witness the landing.

  Lockheed’s engineering department in the 1930s. Spare, close-knit, and solidly dedicated, the staff set the tone for the company’s—and “Skunk Works”—efforts in the decades to come.

  There was no radio communication with the plane, but the frantic waving of the group on the ground, and a check of his instruments, indicated the trouble. Jimmy Doolittle was among the observers. He volunteered to go up with a message. Gross and Hibbard dictated as Doolittle chalked on the side of his Orion’s black fuselage, “Try landing at United—good luck.” United now is Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport. It had a longer runway than the factory landing strip, and fire-fighting equipment. Having jettisoned the lead ingots used for full-weight tests, and all extra gasoline, Headle made a beautiful landing on the right wheel only. The only damage was to a wingtip that dragged on the ground. The problem turned out to be simple to find and inexpensive to fix. The landing gear shaft had sheared; it was replaced by one twice as large.

  But we didn’t know that immediately. And the fledgling aircraft company couldn’t afford that kind of delay in delivery—and payment. So everyone except the six of us in engineering and those in the shop required to work on that airplane was laid off, and the payroll for everyone was skipped for a few weeks—including my $83 per month. We had to get the airplane fixed and get it re-approved before it could be delivered.

  First delivery of the Electra was made to Northwest Airlines in July of 1934. And paychecks were issued again.

  In those early days, I was so devoted to my work and so eager to get on with it that I didn’t always consider others’ reactions. Hibbard had to take me out behind the barn, figuratively, for a talk several times. Once it was because I had not taken an extra flight mechanic along on an Electra test flight, and, instead, had moved the lead bars myself to shift weight in the airplane. They weighed only 55 pounds apiece, and I reloaded them with just one man, Dorsey Kammerer. He filed a complaint with the union. I had thought I was doing the right thing, saving time and money. But it had cut one man out of a job and his flight pay.

  “Kelly,” Hibbard explained, “you’ve got to learn to live in the world with all of these other people, and the sooner you learn that the better off you are going to be.”

  He was right. Hibbard taught me that it is much better to lead people, not to drive them. Drive yourself if you must. But not anybody else.

  And Kammerer and I became very good friends. He worked for me for many years as crew chief, and a good one, on our experimental airplanes.

  There was good camaraderie at the factory when I joined the force. Perhaps it was because there were so few of us, about 200 at the time of the Electra’s first flight. Robert Gross played piano at the company party afterward. I had my first drink of alcohol in a celebration of that event at Neil’s drugstore, a social center for us across from the factory. It was Snug Harbor bourbon. It tasted more like dregs from the bay, I thought.

  For recreation, we played softball during the noon lunch period. When the engineering department became big enough, we had two teams—the engineering group and the shop team. I played left outfield and loved to hit the ball. Hibbard did some pitching. We also played some touch football.

  They we
re a fine group, the men I went to work for at Lockheed—Chappellet, Hibbard, Robert Gross first and then his brother Courtlandt. I was fortunate to have begun my career in a company of gentlemen. Very knowledgeable they were, but also considerate and thoughtful. It was a good start. I learned a great deal from all of them over the years.

  5

  The Good-looking Young Paymaster

  PAYMASTER FOR LOCKHEED WAS a tall, good-looking young woman, who occupied an office right next to the other chief officers. Actually, her title was assistant treasurer, and the “front” offices at that time were on the first floor of a big, two-story, red-brick former ranch house. The engineers’ room was upstairs. The first time I saw her she was working on the accounting books. Her name, I discovered, was Althea Louise Young.

  She would walk through the offices and out into the factory on payday to distribute checks, so I didn’t need an introduction. She would have checks, that is, when there was enough money. I remember three times when there wasn’t. Everyone always was happy to see her coming!

  “Althea thinks you’re a snippy young kid,” the chief—and only—telephone operator, Vera Doane, told me one day. I had taken Vera dancing a few times, and she and Althea were good friends. There were only four women working at the plant then—Gross’s secretary, Rene Tallentyre; Alice Stevenson, secretary to Carl B. Squier—an executive with the earlier company and now vice president and sales manager; and Althea and Vera. Vera was the fourth hired because the other three all hated to handle the switchboard; she also was receptionist and secretary to Cyril Chappellet.

  Well, privately, I considered that Althea may have had a point. But I decided I couldn’t let criticism like that stand, so I asked her out.

  “Vera told me you were a brain,” she confessed. We had a steak dinner in nearby Glendale. It cost seventy-five cents each. And we went dutch. After all, she was making twice what I was; she had been there a year before I was hired.

  That evening went all right, so we repeated it. We began to go riding together, too, renting horses at least once or twice a week and riding up into the canyons in the foothills of the green Verdugo mountains above Burbank. And we both liked to dance; she was an excellent dancer.

  At golf, she was much better than me. One time, I took her up on an Electra test flight. She wanted to go, and while it wasn’t exactly condoned, the rules then weren’t so strict about who might fly on an experimental flight. There were no passenger seats. She had to sit on the bare structure of the fuselage, but she was thrilled.

  Althea was as active and alert mentally as she was physically in the sports she enjoyed. An extremely intelligent person. We found that we shared many interests and enthusiasms, had similar personal goals and ideals, and enjoyed each other’s company more and more. We had fun together.

  It wasn’t too long before I made more money than she, and we abandoned the “dutch-treat” dates. But I wanted to be able to support a wife when I married. I didn’t want her to work. Althea agreed. So it was about four years after our first date before we were married. Though we weren’t regular churchgoers, we picked one we liked on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles for the ceremony. We honeymooned at Yosemite in the beautiful Ahwahnee Hotel. The year was 1937.

  We lived for several years very happily in a fine old house rented in the foothills on Country Club Drive in Burbank. Althea quit work and took care of the house. She was a wonderfully helpful and cooperative wife.

  We continued to ride regularly every Sunday, rain or shine. After the stable went broke, we bought our horses and pastured them out west of town in rural Agoura for $3 a month per horse. Later, we rented pasturage out in Malibu Canyon and rode all around that seacoast area, back up into the hills—with the rattlesnakes—where we could look out over the beautiful valleys. Althea shared my love for the outdoors. We began to think about having a ranch of our own.

  The rains in winter regularly flooded the canyons in Southern California, and after one experience on Country Club Drive—when we had to leave our house and be helped by firemen to cross a raging torrent of water, leading our dog and carrying a few personal belongings, we agreed that we would rather live on high ground.

  Burbank is in the flatland of the San Fernando Valley. The hills bordering the south side of the valley offer a spectacular view of the several ranges of mountains beyond, snow-covered in the winter. Althea and I had ridden over enough country to know where we wanted to live.

  In 1940, we decided that we could afford to invest in a home of our own. We bought a lot on Oak View Drive high in the hills of Encino. It was a small community then of six or eight thousand people. Ours was to be the fourth house on the hill. We discovered that Clark Gable owned the property above us and a number of other theatrical people lived in the area including Alice Faye and her husband, Phil Harris. The mayor was Al Jolson.

  Our lot, literally, was in some places almost solid rock. And we wanted to build not only a house but a pool and tennis court. So, to minimize excavation in what amounted to a stone quarry, I built a scale model of the site and all construction about six feet by five feet and a foot-and-a-half tall. I put in the actual contour of the lot. Then I dug out two basements on two different levels. One would house water heater and furnace; the other, a washing machine with dryer and a wine cellar. The house itself was to be on four levels, with a 12-foot-high ceiling in the living room. Digging basements only where needed saved very expensive excavation in this rocky terrain.

  Building the model was a splendid idea because I was able to place the house exactly where I wanted it in relation to pool and tennis court.

  One error crept in, though. The contractor dug the deep end of the pool an extra 18 inches deep. Well, at that point I wasn’t going to change all the levels I had laid out for walks around the house and the front yard by filling in that dirt, so the pool bottom has to be the strongest in the neighborhood. It has an extra 18 inches of cement.

  That pool contractor also considerably over-estimated the capabilities of his unskilled laborers. Years later we discovered, and at considerable expense, that they had not understood the use of a plumbing union, which threads two pieces of pipe together. The workmen instead used tomato juice cans to join the pool drains. They then poured a wheelbarrow of cement in each of the drain connections. It took six or seven years before the ground around the pool began to sink. Then an air hammer knocking away the cement revealed the secret of the tomato cans. The pipe had to be replaced, of course.

  All that rock dug up for the two basements kept me in spare-time work for years. Though I contracted for construction of the house, pool, and tennis court, I built all the retaining walls around the property myself.

  As a new homeowner in Encino, I joined the Encino Chamber of Commerce. It seemed a responsible thing for a new resident to do. Later I was elected to the Board of Directors. It was an active group and usually drew 30 or 40 people regularly to its meetings—not bad for such a small community.

  Here I was to learn a lesson in how subversive groups work—not the Chamber, of course, but a group seeking to use it.

  The community very badly needed a building to house Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Women’s Club, and the activities of other worthy civic groups. I was a member of the committee to raise funds for such a building. We did, and bought several lots on Balboa Boulevard, just north of Ventura Boulevard, which runs along the foothills on the south side of the valley.

  There is such a building there now, the Encino Community Building.

  I proposed at the time that we of the community construct it ourselves, with enough members knowledgeable about contracting, architecture, and all the building trades. Donating time over weekends and odd hours, we could have undertaken the project without the need to raise additional money. Well, some of the people thought this was a fine idea but most did not because of the personal involvement required.

  The time was ripe for what followed. At one of our evening meetings, an offer was made of whatever funds
were needed if the building were to be known as the “World Peace Building.”

  “No,” I said. “This must be a community building, for all of the various groups that need it.”

  Quite a brouhaha ensued, with most members of the Chamber refusing to take a position. I suspected that in a center of the motion-picture industry, where many of the most prominent actors and actresses lived, the offer of funds might have been an attempt to influence the group. Communist infiltration, perhaps?

  Fortunately, I could call on Lockheed’s legal counsel, a wise and experienced man, Robert Proctor of Boston, later to become legal counsel to Gen. H. H. “Hap” Arnold, head of the Army Air Corps and father of the modern Air Force.

  “Bob, I think this has a peculiar odor to it,” I reported. “I can’t prove anything, but there is strong and very emotional talk about world peace.”

  “Well, you want to watch that, Kelly,” he responded. “Let me check out those people and see what the connections are.”

  Later he called and advised, “Kelly, be sure not to call those people Communists. Don’t put yourself in a position where you can be sued for everything you’ve got.”

  It was good advice. It so happened that the man who had made the financial proposal brought a court reporter to meetings to record everything I might say—that I might be sued for, presumably.

  It was interesting that during this period many of my neighbors would give me verbal support.

  “We’re with you.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  “Keep it up.”

  But they also told me: “I have a store down here.”

  “I have a lumber yard.”

  “I don’t dare to antagonize people here; it’s bad for business.”

  I was mad as hell, because they all agreed that there was something fishy about that offer of money. It wasn’t accepted, finally. Well, it all ended with me not being re-elected to the board of the Encino Chamber of Commerce.