Once it is airworthy—volunteers project a first flight by July 2023, in time for EAA AirVenture at Oshkosh—the classic business air transport will be used to promote the history of women in aviation as a flying exhibit for the Vintage Flying Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

According to Bill Goebel, the museum’s volunteer crew chief for the restoration project, the Beech Super 18, N13JC, was the last airplane Cochran flew. “She was in her mid-60s at the time when she owned the airplane [1969-1971], and stopped flying it because she was unable to renew her FAA medical certificate due to illness. Aircraft logbooks indicate her last flight was on April 4, 1971,” he says.  

However, Cochran’s ownership of the radial-powered twin is only part of its storied past. 

After losing her certificate, Cochran sold the 1954 E18S-9700 model to Anthony Productions—the copyright holder for The Merv Griffin Show and Dance Fever.

“Merv actually flew the hell out of it,” Goebel says. “He basically used it instead of driving the [Hwy.] 405.” 

Thanks to the detailed logbooks of Griffin’s corporate pilot, the names of the rich and famous, who traveled with him around the Los Angeles area and on junkets to Las Vegas and Palm Springs, were fastidiously documented. According to the flight logs, the list of celebrity passengers included: Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Leslie Uggams, Gene Hackman, Wayne Rogers, Dinah Shore, Arthur Murray, Dick Carson, Jan Michael Vincent, Marty Allen, Pamela Mason, Doug McClure, and others.

“[And] Dar Robinson, a big stuntman from the era, jumped out of it over Caesars Palace in Vegas,” Goebel says.

It is this history of transporting Hollywood actors and actresses that inspired the twin Beech’s new moniker: the Hollywood Bomber.

“While Jackie is part of the story, she is not the whole story,” says Goebel, an FAA-certified airframe and powerplant (A&P) mechanic with inspection authorization (IA), and an FAA-designated engineering representative—vintage (VDER).

“[The Beech Super 18] is an absolute reflection of corporate aviation in the ’60s and ’70s. It’s really neat, the connection with Hollywood….A lot of famous people flew in this thing—and that’s what you did in the ’60s and ’70s and these were the kinds of corporate aircraft [used], and that’s the story and it’s a great story to tell.”

To note: Goebel acknowledges the Beech Super 18 is not and was never a “bomber,” but he thought it was a catchy misnomer for the project, and the Vintage Flying Museum (VFM) agreed.

Bringing the Aircraft Back to Life

The Beech Super 18 came to the museum in 2019 after serving as a maintenance trainer for Tarrant County College. The aircraft sat outside for most of its 30-year lifetime at the college, exposed to often-harsh North Texas weather conditions.

After learning that Cochran owned and flew it, the college then started “restoring” it, says Goebel, who served on and chaired the aviation advisory committee at the college for several years. “They started basically disassembling it; unfortunately, they didn’t get a lot put back together.”  

“It’s one of the larger projects we’ve taken on,” admits Bill Gorin, A&P, IA, and the volunteer director of operations at VFM. “You’re taking an airplane that’s been asleep for 40 years, basically, and trying to wake it up and get it flying again.”

Because of its extended time outside in the elements, every steel screw was rusted and is being replaced, he says. “We’re having to change a lot of nuts and a lot of screws.” The airplane’s belly skin was also replaced, owing to corrosion that was likely caused by an onboard potty.

While the Pratt & Whitney R-985 engines are mid time, they remain a question mark for the project. “We’ve inspected the engines, but there’s still a lot of unknowns with them,” Gorin says. 

According to Goebel, the plan is to track the engines’ performance with oil analysis and monitoring, eventually overhauling both engines using a rotable in order to keep the aircraft available.

Of course, if a large-enough donation comes in, Gorin says they will overhaul the engines much sooner. “It’s about $50K per engine, plus the cost of the accessory overhauls. We would love to find someone to donate that, as well as upgrading the old generators to modern Jasco alternators.”

The museum has established a GoFundMe account for monetary donations. The current fundraising goal is listed at $103,000.

Before it goes airborne, the Hollywood Bomber will have new, updated avionics and be completely rewired. Some upgrades are also planned, including adding external oil filters on the engines. “There’s a pre-oil system out there that’s available for it, to pre-oil the engines before you start them, so that way you’re not starting the engines on dry bearings,” Gorin says.

A new paint job and restoring the interior, including new upholstery, will likely be the final touches for the project—most likely after it’s airworthy.

“The biggest challenge is just trying to get all the parts,” Gorin says. “If people want to donate money, or parts, or services, we’re a nonprofit, it’s all a tax write-off for anybody who’s interested.”

The project has already received several donations. These include: an S-Tec autopilot from Genesys; fabrics for the interior from Duncan Aviation; clocks from Davtron; fuel cells and installation from Southwest Airframe and Tank Services; and a spar X-ray from Apex Inspections.

Volunteer Labor Fuels the Project

Goebel, who is documenting the restoration project on his YouTube channel, HangaRatz, says without the support of volunteers, the restoration project would be at a standstill. “Everything is pro bono as far as labor goes. It’s all just community helping this aircraft get back [in the air],” he says.

Some of the volunteers have never worked on an airplane before, and Goebel says that’s OK. As the A&P of record, he is teaching and coaching the volunteers through the entire process.

For example, “The instrument panel was hand-crafted by volunteers who have never built one. No computers. No CAD. No high-speed routers. Drills, punches, and files. And it’s a gold-plated example of their capabilities and efforts,” Goebel says.

One of those volunteers is Abigail Kennedy-Dominguez. The high school senior started helping with the project before the COVID-19 pandemic slowed its progress. Early-on, she says she learned some of the basic skills and techniques to help maintain the airplane. Now that she’s older, she’s been able to participate in more hands-on activities, including helping to cut and file the new instrument panel, sealing and patching holes in the fuel bay, fitting patches for antenna holes in the belly, and taking apart old seats so they can be reupholstered.

“I believe that it’s important to maintain a woman’s touch on this plane,” Kennedy-Dominguez says. “Jackie Cochran created a legacy for all women in aviation by introducing the idea that women were just as capable as men when it comes to flying (and all things). I think it would be disrespectful for us to ignore that legacy by restoring the plane with a group solely made of men. A woman made that plane glorious, and women should be involved in returning it to glory again.”

Katrina Lorenzen and her husband, Joey, are also helping with the project. When they’re not working on the Hollywood Bomber, they’re building a Van’s Aircraft RV-7A at their home. From transcribing the Beech Super 18’s logbooks to drilling out old rivets, removing the mounting stations and helping final fit and rivet filler plates to patch the old holes, she’s integrally involved with the project.

“This plane has a rich history and the more stories we uncover, the more driven and connected we feel to the project. We are all committed to getting her in the air and off to share with everyone we can,” Lorenzen says.

A Female-Centric Vision

Lorenzen and Kennedy Dominguez’s contributions to the Hollywood Bomber project align well with the museum’s vision of using the flying exhibit to celebrate women in aviation, past, present, and future.

“It’s all about showcasing aviation opportunities for women,” Goebel says.

Gorin agrees. “Ideally, what we’d love to see is that airplane flown and maintained by women. I would love to see it go to shows with a couple of women flying it and women maintaining it. That would be better for the next generation than the current generation.”

Believed to be one of only a few women in the U.S. to found and direct a flying museum, Charlyn “Chuckie” Hospers, couldn’t agree more with the vision for the Beech Super 18, and she’s already creating educational curricula and displays to accompany it. For example, a traveling exhibit of display boards the museum designed and built—available through the Texas Trail Lakes Region—salutes women’s contributions to aviation and World War II. “Two of the panels are on Jackie Cochran, and we have panels with Rosie the Riveter…and we have Wally Funk [and others],” she says.

Forming a Flying Museum

Hospers and her husband, William “Doc” Hospers, purchased the museum’s 9-acre site and two hangars—one a B-29 World War II-era hangar—located at Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (KFTW) in Texas in 1988. “We actually started with a B-17 Flying Fortress that we had for 31 years,” she says. The couple were co-founders of the B-17 Co-op, which to this day supports owners of the famed World War II bombers.

Hospers recalls her first introduction to the B-17 that would ultimately become the museum’s first aircraft. “It turned out when my husband came home with the B-17 Flying Fortress, he didn’t tell me at first,” she says. “He flew it in and had me meet everybody out at the airport. And he took me by my hand and led me underneath the wing of the aircraft, and he said, ‘What do you think of this?’ And I said, ‘What is it?’ And he said, ‘It’s ours.’ That’s how it started. He had taken a big stick and painted my name on the side of the nose of the B-17. He knew what he was doing.”

Hospers says she got on the “bandwagon,” learned to fly, got her taildragger endorsement and her multiengine rating. “We had it [the B-17] for 31 years, and we flew it to airshows and it was all volunteers that maintained it and kept it flying,” she says. Following Doc’s death in 2010, she sold the B-17 named Chuckie. Today, the vintage bomber is owned and operated by the Erickson Aircraft Collection in Madras, Oregon.

A former FAA runway safety expert, Hospers says “it’s amazing” how far the museum has come since it was incorporated as a nonprofit in 1990. Today, several other aviation-related nonprofits call the museum home, including the CAF Invader Squadron, PGM Aviation, Greatest Generation Aircraft, and the Fort Worth chapter of the American Rosie The Riveter Association.

“We have almost 30 aircraft on display now [about 50 percent airworthy], and some very rare and valuable,” Hospers says.

The famed flying B-29 Superfortress FIFI and B-24 Liberator Diamond Lil called VFM home for seven years before moving in 2021 to the Commemorative Air Force’s new headquarters at Dallas Executive Airport (KRBD). And, the space they left has already been filled. “We actually have a waiting list for aircraft,” Hospers says.

Hospers, Gorin, and Goebel and their team of volunteers are working diligently to get the Hollywood Bomber back in the air. Gorin, who is a pilot, says one day he’d like to fly right seat in the aircraft—after he gets a couple more ratings. “[But] I’d rather stand back and watch the ladies fly it, that would be more rewarding to me.”

Specifications: Beechcraft Super 18 E18S-9700

The post Restoring a Beech Super 18 to Former Glory appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was, according to many military and aviation observers, a necessity for a new era of national defense.

“The very heart and key to our national defense is a top-notch, professional air force, sitting constantly on the alert in the ready room,” publisher William Ziff wrote in the September 1947 issue of FLYING. “It must be backed by an industry geared to an instant emergency. At its stride must be the biggest possible air transport system, capable at once of moving men and materials with the greatest efficiency and speed.”

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the service, here are five things you should know about the U.S. Air Force:

1. The success of American air power during World War II led to the formation of the Department of the Air Force.

In the summer of 1941 and with the threat of war emerging, the Army Air Corps reformed into the Army Air Forces (AAF) as a response for a growing military aviation mission. Following its successes in World War II, however, the U.S. military was faced with once again restructuring. On September 18, 1947, the National Security Act of 1947, signed months prior by President Harry Truman, went into effect creating the Department of the Air Force, as well as the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency. 

On this date, Army Air Forces’ (AAF) personnel aircraft were transferred to the new service: the United States Air Force.

“In its expansion during World War II, the AAF became the world’s most powerful air force,” ramping up to a peak of nearly 2.4 million personnel and 80,000 aircraft by 1944, according to Air Force historians. Following the war, the creation of an independent Air Force was “virtually inevitable,” service historians said, noting that stringent postwar budgets reset new service goals to a fraction of wartime levels, to 400,000 personnel and 8,000 aircraft.

• READ MORE: 80 Years Later, the Legacy of the Flying Tigers Endures

2. An Air Force pilot changed everything we know about flight.

One pilot who made the transition to the Air Force—Capt. Charles “Chuck” Yeager—ended up changing everything.

On October 14, 1947, Yeager altered what was known about the possibilities of flight when he piloted the first supersonic flight, breaking the sound barrier at Mach 1.06 while flying the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics experimental bullet-shaped Bell X-1, Glamorous Glennis, at an altitude of 45,000 feet.

Not making the transition, however, were Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). During World War II, more than 1,000 female civilian WASP aviators ferried and served as flight instructors for more than 70 types of military aircraft among U.S. air bases, freeing up combat pilots for the war. In late 1944, the organization was disbanded.

• READ MORE: Good FLYING Reads: ‘101 Chuck Yeager-isms’

Up until the mid-1970s, opportunities remained very limited for women in the U.S. Air Force, as well as the other services. While women gained the ability to serve in the Air Force in 1948, ROTC and military academies, such as the U.S. Air Force Academy, weren’t options. In 1976, a new law allowing women access to the U.S. Service Academies went into effect and the Air Force Academy opened its doors to women cadets. It would later graduate 157 women in its first female class in 1980. At the same time, the Air Force also opened up flight training for women through a test program.

• READ MORE: When Women Earned Their Wings: the USAF’s First Crop of Female Pilots

3. One of the earliest USAF missions was to deliver post-war humanitarian aid.

When the cold shadow of World War II fell upon civilians in eastern Germany in the summer of 1948, the Air Force launched “Operation Vittles,” a nearly year-long effort to deliver food and supplies into Soviet-controlled areas.

During the Berlin Airlift, Air Force pilot Lt. Gail Halvorsen noticed crowds of hungry children gathered near a military airfield. He shared what candy he had in his pockets, and vowed to return with more. Halvorsen made good on the promise and earned the nickname “Candy Bomber,” by dropping the children sweets attached to parachutes out of his Douglas C-54 and wiggling his wings to say hello to the children awaiting below. By the end of the Berlin Airlift, “Operation Little Vittles,” spearheaded by Halvorsen, dropped more than 23 tons of candy.

• READ MORE: The Goodness of Colonel Halvorsen, the Candy Bomber

4. The Air Force’s history is filled with iconic fighters.

The Air Force’s fleet includes some of the most iconic aircraft ever built, including the AAF- inherited North American P-51 Mustang that flew as a fighter and fighter-bomber in both World War II and the Korean War. The aircraft was sleek, low-drag, and featured a streamlined wing that gave it a maximum speed of nearly 390 mph (339 knots) and a combat range of about 750 miles (652 nm).

• READ MORE: P-51 Mustangs Helped Win the Air During World War II

During the Korean War, North American’s F-86 Sabre offered Air Force fighter pilots a boost of speed and improved handling. Powered by a General Electric J47-GE-1 engine, the fighter set a world speed record of 671 mph in 1948, according to the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

By the 1950s, the service was focused on innovation. The 1950’s era Century Series of fighters represented rapid development and, sometimes failure, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“The original Century Series produced at least 10 new designs that included the first supersonic fighter, the first tactical aircraft to carry nuclear weapons, and the first aircraft designed to truly integrate radar and weapons systems into the design concept,” the CSIS said in a 2019 report. “Despite this innovation, timelines to field new designs were rapid: prototypes sometimes flew within five years of development start, and over 5,000 aircraft were produced in one decade.”

By the early 1960s, the Air Force adopted a variant of the U.S. Navy’s McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II multi-role fighter capable of bombing missions with twice the armament load of a World War II-era B-17. In 1979 and little more than three decades into being a stand-alone service, the Air Force began operating the Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter capable of speeds of 1,500 mph (Mach 2 at altitude) with a range of more than 2,000 miles ferry range (1,740 nm).

• READ MORE: Oshkosh Marks USAF Anniversary With C-17

5. Formation of an independent Air Force spurred a massive fleet of bombers.

“Independence was extremely important [and] gave them both the increased budget authority they need to establish the massive fleets of bomber aircraft they thought were necessary,” Michael Hankins, curator of U.S. Air Force History at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., told FLYING. “This is strengthened even more when [President Dwight] Eisenhower comes into office and essentially makes the Air Force the core component of his strategies of deterrence and massive retaliation.”

During World War II, U.S. bombers gained fame for their performance. The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was capable of carrying up to 13 machine guns. “While it lacked the range and bomb load of its contemporary B-24 Liberator, the B-17 became the more famous of the two due to the many tales of B-17s bringing their crews back home despite heavy damage,” the Air Mobility Command Musuem at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, notes. 

• READ MORE: B-29 Superfortress Pulled the Trigger on World War II in the Pacific

The Boeing B-29 Superfortresses transitioned from World War II bomber to other functions during Korea, such as in-flight refueling, anti-submarine patrols, and search and rescue. 

But perhaps it’s the B-52 Stratofortress—the Air Force’s oldest jet-powered bomber—that really embodies the Air Force’s duration and legacy. The bomber first entered service in the Air Force in April 1952. Re-engining, which began last year, means that the more than 70 B-52 aircraft remaining in the fleet could still be flying when they turn 100 years old, sharing the skies with the forthcoming B-21 Raider.

• READ MORE: B-52 Engine Replacement Could Keep the Bomber Flying Past its 100th Birthday

“Air Force trailblazer General Hap Arnold wrote, ‘We must think in terms of tomorrow,’” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown Jr. said during a recent event celebrating the anniversary in Washington, D.C. “For 75 years that’s exactly what our Airmen have been doing. By envisioning tomorrow, they have found new ways to make the impossible…possible.”

The post U.S. Air Force Marks 75 Years: 5 Things To Know appeared first on FLYING Magazine.