Flying Cars

by Andrew Glass

  Typical road, 1920.

  Ford introduced its flying flivver with a publicity photo of Will Rogers, comedian and commentator. Rogers never actually flew the plane.

  In 1926, the Ford Motor Company introduced the Sky Flivver, a single-seat airplane. Weighing just 350 pounds and measuring a mere 22 feet across, it was called a pocket airplane because of its small size. Ford intended to mass-produce a plane that could be sold for the price of a Model T.

  But only four Sky Flivvers were built. Ford sadly shut down production after his friend Harry Brooks, a pilot, died while doing a promotional tour in one of the prototypes. Ford remained certain, however, that his flying flivver was an important step toward a flying car for the average Joe. “Mark my words,” he said, “a combination airplane and motorcar is coming. You may smile, but it will come.”

  On February 21, 1928, Harry Brooks crashed into the ocean off Melbourne, Florida.

  7

  Waldo Waterman’s Arrowbile

  In 1930, working in the corner of an abandoned aircraft company hangar in Los Angeles, an aeronautical engineer named Waldo Waterman (1894–1976) built America’s first tailless monoplane, called a flying wing. This was the same Waldo who, back in 1911, overheard Glenn Curtiss say, “Now if we could just take the wings off and drive this down the road, we’d really have something!” Waldo’s low-wing airplane taxied on three wheels, a steerable nose wheel in front and two wheels in back. Its pusher propeller was positioned where one expected the tail to be. It was so peculiar-looking that people often asked, “What is it?” Thus it became known around the Los Angeles airport as “Waterman’s Whatsit.” Unfortunately, the otherwise ingenious Whatsit proved too unbalanced for any but the most skilled pilot to operate.

  In 1933, Eugene L. Vidal, director of the Bureau of Air Commerce under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, announced the Vidal Safety Airplane Competition (1933–36) to design and build a small plane that would be as comfortable and easy to operate as a car. Waterman believed that with just a little tweaking, his Whatsit would qualify. He redesigned and converted his swept-wing (low-wing) prototype to one with overhead wings for improved balance and an unobstructed, therefore safer, view. He improved the maneuverability of the tricycle landing gear and simplified the interior, and in May 1935 he presented the rehabilitated Whatsit to the Bureau of Air Commerce with a new name, the Waterman Arrowplane.

  Waterman’s Whatsit.

  The Arrowplane, which was the only proposal submitted by a solo inventor among the thirty “easy airplane” entries, received the first prize to be awarded. It was acknowledged to be a paragon of stability and simplicity for the novice pilot because it was nearly impossible to stall. A plane stalls when it loses lift by flying too slowly or by pulling incorrectly out of a dive or a turn. For an inexperienced pilot, stalling may lead to a dangerous downward corkscrew called a spin.

  Waterman’s Arrowplane was completely successful in all but one of the contest’s primary criteria: it did not have a selling price lower than $700. Indeed, with a price tag approaching $3,000, the Arrowplane wasn’t even close. But none of the other entries—including the second award winner, Stearman-Hammond Company’s corrugated metal Y-1 Machine, described by one critic as looking like “a flying tool shed”—met the affordability stipulation either.

  Even though the Arrowplane was beyond the reach of the contest’s hypothetical “everypilot,” its acclaimed engineering success allowed Waterman to pursue his true dream: an airplane that could be driven down the street. Then (just as Curtiss before him had said) he’d really have something! He formed the Waterman Airplane Corporation of Santa Monica, California, with the financial backing of Transcontinental and Western Air and the Studebaker Corporation. He got to work devising detachable wings and a transmission capable of transferring power from the propeller, for flying, to the wheels, for driving. By 1937, his unbalanced little Whatsit, which had been transformed to a stable, easy-to-fly Arrowplane, had been transformed again, this time into a futuristic three-wheel flying car called the Waterman Arrowbile.

  The Arrowbile was powered by a Studebaker automobile engine and equipped with a standard automobile battery and starter. It had various automobile incidentals, such as knobs from the Studebaker dashboard. It also sported an airspeed indicator, an altimeter (which displayed the altitude while flying), and an expensive magnetic compass, all on the dashboard. Waterman economized by using readily available Willys Jeep headlights, a small car steering wheel, and a Ford radiator grille. The only flight control was a wheel yoke (a double handle, somewhat like a steering wheel in form, suspended from the cabin ceiling in front of the pilot). This controlled the rudder and the ailerons. Moving the wheel yoke forward or back made the plane go up or down; turning the wheel yoke made the plane turn left or right, like a car. For driving, a gas pedal, foot brake, and parking brake were located on the floorboard. Once its quick-release detachable wings were removed, the Arrowbile cruised smoothly at up to 70 miles per hour on the road, looking like a nifty wingless Whatsit. Because the Arrowbile had three wheels and one headlight, it was classified and licensed as a motorcycle. However, it was the first truly functional flying car.

  The Waterman Arrowbile drives out from under its resdesigned flight component. The original design required each wing to be removed separately.

  The Arrowbile on the road.

  Waldo prepares to go for a spin.

  Intended for the novice pilot, the Arrowbile proved every bit as reliable in flight as the award-winning Arrowplane. It flew at a nearly spin-proof 120 miles per hour and was almost impossible to stall. Three wheels, lighter and less expensive to build than four, were considered adequate for driving under ordinary conditions. Indeed, three-wheel cars were not unheard of; the Goliath was manufactured and sold in Germany during the belt-tightening years of the 1930s, and several with characteristically playful names such as the Frisky, Family Three, and Scootacar have been produced since.

  Unfortunately, the few drivers who could afford an expensive, fashionable ride during the Great Depression wanted the heavy chrome and rich leather of a luxury car, not a three-wheel wingless Whatsit, no matter how sleek it was. In addition, Waterman’s Arrowbile was criticized for its poor road handling and its lightweight construction, which raised fears that even a minor road accident might render it unsafe to fly. Only five Arrowbiles were ever constructed. But what sidelined the Arrowbile was not its futuristic appearance or its possible engineering flaws. In 1938, Waterman’s chief supporter, Harris M. Hanshue, the retired president of the airline that became TWA, died and, with him, the company’s enthusiasm for the Arrowbile.

  By this time, military preparation for yet another European war was putting a halt to civilian aircraft development. In addition, Waterman was incapacitated for nearly a year by a ruptured appendix. When he recovered his health, he developed one of the nation’s largest civilian training programs to train aviators. He then became the chief engineer at Consolidated Vultee, an aircraft company. At Consolidated, later renamed Convair, he collaborated with other engineers, including his old friend Bill Stout, to create prototypes to meet the much-predicted postwar demand by returning pilots for small family-sized planes of their own. Waterman and his new colleagues became convinced that the most practical personal plane would be a flying car.

  The first fully functional flying car, airborne!

  8

  Harold Pitcairn’s Autogyro

  In 1919, Spanish inventor Juan de la Cierva (1895–1936) believed he’d invented an inherently safe aircraft. By 1923, he’d successfully demonstrated that his revolutionary machine could fly safely even at low speeds. Individually hinged overhead rotor blades generated lift, and the craft was propelled forward by a nose propeller like that on a conventional airplane. The unpowered overhead rotors were mounted on a mast and were set in motion by winding a rope around the mast and pulling it to start the rotors spinning. The rotors were kept spinning by the aircraft moving forward through the air.
Stubby wings with ailerons also helped with lift and provided flight control in the air. De la Cierva named his invention the autogyro, which means “turns by itself.” The Spanish trade name for it was Autogiro.

  In 1929, de la Cierva went into business with Harold Pitcairn (1897–1960), an American aeronautical pioneer. Three years earlier, Pitcairn had designed a rugged airplane, the Mailwing, for the postal service. Pilots liked it because it was safe, easy to fly, fast, and reliable. De la Cierva and Pitcairn began their partnership by devising a way to make the Autogiro’s rotors self-starting. They were able to accomplish this by directing the flow of air from the conventional front propeller toward the tail flaps, which in turn redirected the air to the overhead rotors to start them spinning. Once the Autogiro was airborne, the same front propeller pulled the craft forward. Only a short runway was required for takeoff. Pitcairn boasted that their Autogiro could fly 100 miles per hour in all sorts of weather and land in a 30-foot area. He also claimed that it had the potential to be easily converted to a roadable vehicle with a powered tail wheel.

  Juan de la Cierva with his C-3 Autogiro, completed in June 1921.

  Although their self-starting Autogiro still looked like the sort of contraption Leonardo might have drawn back in 1490, Pitcairn and de la Cierva were awarded the 1930 Collier Trophy for the greatest achievement in aviation. One government official proclaimed, “Inventor Cierva and impresario Pitcairn offer the most promising flying machine in the thirty-year history of aviation.”

  President Herbert Hoover reserved for himself the honor of presenting the trophy so that he could get a gander at this revolutionary flying machine. A dramatic landing by the pilot James G. Ray on the White House lawn in 1931 made for exciting newsreel footage, creating an autogyro craze.

  A Pitcairn Autogiro flying over New York City, fall 1930.

  In 1931, James G. Ray landed an Autogiro on the South Lawn of the White House, demonstrating its unique flying capabilities.

  The celebrity pilot Amelia Earhart (1897–1937?), the first woman to cross the Atlantic in a plane, visited Pitcairn Aviation field in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, and became the first woman to solo in an autogyro. When she set a new altitude record, the public’s enthusiasm for the innovative aircraft soared. The response inspired Pitcairn to arrange for a spectacular promotional event: the first transcontinental autogyro flight. The event was sponsored by the Beech-Nut Chewing Gum Company, and the aircraft was piloted by the photogenic Earhart.

  The publicity stunt would surely have been a notable triumph for Pitcairn’s Autogiro, and might even have changed the course of aviation history, had it not been for Johnny Miller, a professional pilot. Miller, who had learned to fly at the Curtiss School of Flight in Mineola, New York, was the first person to place an order for an Autogiro. And as the first private Autogiro owner, he felt that he—not a glamorous celebrity pilot—should make the first coast-to-coast flight.

  Amelia Earhart poses with the Beech-Nut Company’s Autogiro.

  On May 14, 1931, after five short practice hops, Miller headed west in his brand-new Autogiro, which he had named Missing Link. Equipped with a compass and a road map, he used rivers and roads as landmarks. He made a side trip to the site of the Omaha Air Races, where he flew fourteen demonstration flights. Missing Link normally needed refueling every three hours, but strong headwinds made it burn so much fuel that Miller was forced to stop and install extra fuel tanks on the front seat. On May 28, he landed at North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego, California. The first transcontinental Autogiro trip had taken 43.8 hours in the air and was accomplished without mechanical incident.

  With much fanfare, Earhart took off from Newark Airport on May 29 with a mechanic on board. She was in no particular hurry, making as many as ten publicity stops a day. When she arrived in Oakland, California, on June 6, she discovered to her surprise—and to the considerable disappointment of her sponsors—that Miller had finished his coast-to-coast Autogiro trip the day before she left.

  She immediately headed back, hoping to salvage the situation by setting the west-to-east transcontinental Autogiro speed record. But her trip home did not go smoothly, and on June 11 she crashed during takeoff in Abilene, Texas, damaging the rotors and hitting two cars. She returned home by train, claiming she’d been hit by a twister. On a later tour, while attempting to land at the Michigan State Fair in Detroit, she looped over, destroying the rotors of her Autogiro before a horrified crowd of onlookers. She privately admitted that she didn’t think much of the machine. Publicly, however, she predicted in an article for Cosmopolitan magazine, “Your next garage may house an Autogiro,” and claimed that the day was fast approaching when country houses would have wind cones flying from their roofs to guide guests to the front yard landing area.

  A poster announcing a promotional appearance. Earhart distributed Beech-Nut gum to the crowds at each stop on her transcontinental tour.

  The Beech-Nut Autogiro, nose down, after Amelia Earhart crashed on takeoff in Abilene, Texas, June 11, 1931.

  By 1932, Autogiro engineers had innovated “direct control,” enabling the pilot to control the direction of flight by tilting the individual rotors. This advance eliminated the need for stubby wings, moving the Autogiro a step closer to roadability. In 1934, Pitcairn’s team developed vertical-jump takeoff, whereby a burst of high-speed spin from the rotors powered a straight pop up into the air, after which the propeller moved the aircraft forward. For roadability, they added a separate motor to power the rear wheel (as in Tampier’s Avion-Automobile), although the vehicle’s top speed was an unimpressive 25 miles per hour. Nonetheless, the Development Section of the U.S. Bureau of Air Commerce commissioned a simplified and enhanced version of the small-cabin C-30 Autogiro, with its reconfigured rotors and jump-start. Such a promising marriage of motorcar and autogyro led to imaginative depictions in popular magazines of a fantasized and gussied-up Autogiro as the sleek commuter/family Girocar, perfect for every suburban garage because it didn’t need a runway to take off.

  A roadable Autogiro.

  The Pitcairn company came up with the handsome AC-35 Autogiro, a drivable personal aircraft that was first flown on March 26, 1936. It was constructed of metal and fabric wrapped around a steel tube framework. The rotors folded neatly back for driving, and the entire machine fit easily into an average-size garage. For driving, the propeller was disengaged and power was transferred to the rear wheel. The company claimed that the AC-35 was so easy to fly that licensed pilots would need no special rotary-wing training.

  On October 6, 1936, to demonstrate this new marvel, James G. Ray once again flew an Autogiro to Washington, D.C., landed in a downtown park, and then drove through city traffic to the entrance of the Department of Commerce, where he accepted an award for “an aircraft of greater utility.”

  But despite the public acclaim, autogyros didn’t catch on. The principal reason was that helicopters were catching up. Igor Sikorsky (1889–1972) is credited with inventing the first helicopter to feature a modern helicopter design. By 1936, German helicopters, capable of flying at 75 miles per hour, with a range of up to 150 miles, were being demonstrated at Nazi rallies by the celebrity test pilot Hanna Reitsch. They rose slowly and dramatically and hovered above stadiums. While the helicopter’s speed and range were not impressive compared with those of an airplane—or those of an autogyro, which could also jump into the air—a helicopter could hold a stationary position in the air and even fly backwards. The Pitcairn Autogiro flew nearly as fast as an airplane, could take off vertically, and could even fly at low speeds . . . but it couldn’t hover.

  LEFT: The redesigned roadable AC-35 arrives in Washington, D.C., and is converted for driving by company vice president James G. Ray.

  BELOW: Ray drove his Autogiro to the Department of Commerce, where he received his award.

  The 1941 Autogiro at the apex of its jump.

  American military experts saw the helicopter’s potential advantage for airlifts and ai
r reconnaissance and shifted funding away from the autogyro—while still taking advantage of technology and patents developed for the autogyro to catch up with German helicopter technology. Additionally, most people didn’t understand how the autogyro worked and so didn’t trust it, which could be another reason that it fell from favor. The loss of military funding meant that the autogyro (and its evolution toward a Girocar in every garage) would be moved to a technological back burner, where for many years it was pursued only by an enthusiastic few. Seventy years after his transcontinental flight, Johnny Miller, who was still flying at ninety-eight years of age, claimed that the Autogiro was the safest aircraft in history and the only inherently safe airplane.

  Back in December 1936, Juan de la Cierva, who had continued to fund autogyro development on his own and might have successfully championed autogyros as safer than either airplanes or helicopters, died in the crash of a conventional airplane. Had the forty-one-year-old inventor been in an autogyro when the engine failed, he’d likely have floated safely to earth, overhead rotors twirling gently.

  The roadable AC-35 was presented to the Smithsonian in 1950. Harold Pitcairn died mysteriously of a gunshot wound in 1960. In 1966, the Pitcairn family won a settlement of more than $33 million in a legal battle to establish that Harold Pitcairn’s patents had substantially contributed to the success of the helicopter.