Director's Notes
Cindy Macha

Loyal supporters – I hope you are all faring well during this restrictive time. I want you to know that I am thinking positive thoughts for all of us, and I know that we will soon be enjoying better times together. If you haven’t had a chance to view our private tours on our YouTube channel, it might be worth your while to have a look. Although circumstances have required us to postpone some of our celebrity lectures, we are continuing to prepare for the time in the near future when we can resume regular operations. This is necessitated, of course, by our inability to safely accommodate a large gathering of people during the health crisis. We do plan to open our doors in August by appointment only. A small cadre of devoted staff has been working diligently to prepare the museum to meet state and county guidelines for safe operation.  

Meanwhile, we are continuing those activities which are practicable under the circumstances, and as part of this activity, I would like to welcome Bill Baggelaar, our new restoration manager. Bill is a retired maintenance supervisor with substantial commercial airline experience.  

We also have a number of other preparatory activities continuing. To that end, if any of you have skills in managing archives, we could really use the help. Please email me at [email protected].

I offer my heartfelt thanks to all of our members, volunteers and patrons who are so important to us during this difficult time.
Editor's Notes
James Keniston

Welcome to our new-look and new-schedule newsletter, which subscribers will now be receiving once a month! We are working hard to utilize technologies to continue our mission during this challenging time in our shared history. Going forward you will find easy access to external content right from our newsletter through live links. This will include video presentations, additional articles and content online, and connections to our social media and donation pages. A simplified publishing process allows us to step up our newsletter output and we are grateful for funds that have made this possible. We have some exciting articles coming up for you this summer, including a look into wind-tunnel testing of the YF-23 and Fred Peterson's experience flying the P-51D Mustang in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Other subjects include Doak, the Link Trainer, and the C-124 Globemaster II in service. It's remarkable to witness the new skills that have been acquired to keep our show on the road. We are conscious of your missing physical presence and smiling faces at the museum. Through working in other areas, when we do return, we will be stronger than ever!
Looking Back on D-Day

On June 6th, 1944, 156,000 brave Allied troops landed on and behind the beaches of Normandy, France. Amongst American personnel this included many ethnic minorities. Recent statistics indicate that during World War II, one million African Americans gave service to their country. Along with 33,000 Japanese Americans, 20,000 Chinese Americans, 24,674 American Indians, 16,000 Filipino Americans and as many as 500,000 Hispanic Americans. Photo: Troops from the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion launch a balloon on Utah Beach (From the National Archive).
Celebrating Apollo
Glenn Gibson

The Exhibits Team continues to celebrate the Apollo Program with a newly completed renovation of our Grumman Lunar Module Display. The LM depicts a 35% scale model and is illustrating a landing profile 10ft high above the floor. In 1962 the LM was considered a clean sheet design, no one knew what it was going to take to land on the moon. It was handmade and custom built for every mission, extremely light weight and had to be 100% reliable. The first true Spaceship and one of our greatest engineering achievements. With a new Lunar Exploration Program only a few years away, this display is a great example of our rich aerospace history in space for all our visitors, young and old.  Photo: Cindy Macha
Wartime Tragedy at Lomita Flight Strip 
Cindy Macha

One of the tragic realities of war is that not all casualties are inflicted by the enemy. On November 12th of 1943, this reality was manifest. Two young officers were taking off from Lomita field, in a Vultee BT-13 military trainer aircraft, on a routine training flight. Witnesses saw the aircraft enter a stall-spin mishap, after gaining only a few hundred feet of altitude. The pilot momentarily regained control, only to stall again, before the aircraft could gain sufficient airspeed to maintain full authority of its control surfaces. Once again, it entered a stall-spin, with insufficient altitude to recover. It crashed into the ground, and burst into flames, killing both pilots – 2nd Lt. Charles C. Zwick and 2nd Lt. Frank H. Huelsbusch. These are the tragic consequences of wartime necessity for accelerated training, resulting in the loss of two fine young American lives.  Photo courtesy of Bruce Guberman.
North American Sabreliner & the F-86 Sabre  
Jack Trost

In the 1950s, the US Air Force issued a Request for Proposal under its Utility Trainer Experimental (UTX) program for a pilot-proficiency trainer and utility transport aircraft. North American Aviation’s (NAA) response was to utilize the swept-wing, including leading edge slats and tail configuration, of their highly successful Korean War F-86 fighter, and attach them to a passenger-carrying cylindrical fuselage incorporating two jet engines positioned at the wing root.
As a newly-graduated engineer at NAA, one of my first job assignments was to characterize the expected performance of this design. Wind tunnel tests were performed at the NAA low-speed tunnel and the transonic Southern California Cooperative Wind Tunnel in Pasadena. A photograph of the sting-mounted model is shown in the low-speed tunnel.

From these tests, I discovered two problems with the design. The aircraft was unstable at high angles-of-attack. That is to say, the forces on the model caused it to pitch up to higher angles as the airflow over the wings stalled. The other problem was the excessive drag at high-subsonic Mach numbers that would limit the maximum speed of the configuration.
In an attempt to solve the primary instability problem, I charted the flow field over the wing near the stall angle by sitting on the top of the opened panel of the tunnel test section using a long pole with a nylon tuft at the tip. I tried attaching flat-plate fences and vortex generators in selected places on the wing to change the stall characteristics. Applying wax to sharpen the leading edge of the inboard wing profile did not improve the situation. In frustration, I reported to the chief aerodynamicist that my tricks did not work. Around that timeframe, the French Caravelle jet airliner landed for the first time at LAX. Its twin engines were mounted on the side of the fuselage aft of the wing. Relocating the Sabreliner engines from the wing root to the sides of the aft fuselage solved the instability problem. Many years later, I read that the Sabreliner is the only business jet certified for aerobatics up to 3g.

Schlieren photographs revealed that the excessive drag at high-subsonic Mach numbers was caused by the onset of a normal shockwave at the forward top edge of the fuselage near the cockpit. Since the wind tunnel model was made of wood, we easily shaved this area down to lessen the sharp curvature. The result of this physical change reduced the drag and moved the corner of the drag Mach-number curve to 0.83 Mach number. This corresponds to a maximum speed of 478 knots at 40,000 feet which is the listed specification for the aircraft.

As a side-note several years later, my former neighbor, a tall USAF Colonel, commented about his experience while flying the T-39 Sabreliner: “I kept hitting my head on the ceiling of the cockpit. Why didn’t you design the cabin with more headroom?” My reply was: “Do you want more headroom or a higher cruise speed?”
On another side-note, also years later, while working for TRW and consulting to the USAF on the Ballistic Missile Program, I would periodically fly in one of the company’s three Sabreliners from LAX to Norton AFB in San Bernardino.

The Sabreliner prototype first flew in September 1958. The first example was delivered to the USAF in 1960 and it was the first of any business-type jet aircraft to be delivered in the United States. Production ended in 1981 with over 800 aircraft built. Late in the production program, the wing was redesigned to incorporate a supercritical airfoil to reduce wave drag at transonic speeds.

Photos, from top:
*F-86A Sabre in flight. (NAA Public Relations release)
*Wind tunnel model of the original Sabreliner design configuration with the author checking instrumentation for testing. (Author's collection)
*View of Sabreliner clearly showing swept-wing planform, engine placement and tail arrangement. (NAA Public Relations release)
In Case You Missed It...

In our special 'Archive Extra' , Bill Vas explores the earliest days of Northrop Aircraft, Inc, where Jack Northrop's first aviation engineering ventures were set against the looming backdrop of WWII. During this time American aircraft manufacturers were heavily invested in acquiring new business from purchasing delegations from overseas, who looked to the United States to provide much of their military hardware. Pictured is the very first N-3PB Patrol Bomber on the assembly line at Northrop's Hawthorne manufacturing plant in 1940. Twenty-four of these aircraft were purchased by the Norwegian government. Read the article here .
Peninsula Seniors Productions

Don't forget that many of our 3rd Saturday lectures are available to view online from the months when we were still able to gather. Of note is Marine Corps Lt. Col. Mark Bortnem, aka 'Snotty'. Back in February 'Snotty' came to speak to us about his astonishing career from humble beginnings through flying the F-18 on over 1500+ sorties, and serving as a squadron CO. In addition to his impressive service record, his gracious presence and support for the military's younger generations really made an impact on our audience.
In January we were joined again by the wonderful Christina Olds who delivered a delightful presentation about her Grandfather, Maj. Gen. Robert Olds. Her fascinating insight revealed a brave WWI pilot, commander of Air Corp's Ferrying Command during WW2, and staunch supporter of Billy Mitchell's ideas about the crucial role of air power in national defense.

We are forever indebted to Betty and Jarel Wheaton, who have dedicated hundreds, if not thousands, of hours painstakingly recording, editing and uploading these lectures to their YouTube site.
Become a Contributor

We know that many of you reading this are former members of Southern California's aerospace industry and may have some interesting stories and experiences from your careers. We ask you to consider sharing some of these stories with us, whether about a particular company's aircraft project/program or during the course of military service associated with one of the many aircraft types built in SoCal. An example is this month's story about the Sabreliner by Jack Trost. We look to preserve these stories before they are lost to time.
Our mission is to preserve the histories of the aircraft built here in Southern California, primarily airframes in earlier times, for the defense of our nation, experimental research air vehicles and commercial airliners. Lockheed (Burbank, Palmdale); Douglas/McDonnell Douglas (Santa Monica, El Segundo, Long Beach), Hughes (Culver City, El Segundo), North American Aviation/Rockwell/Boeing (LAX, Downey, Palmdale), Boeing (Long Beach), Northrop Grumman (Hawthorne, El Segundo, Palmdale), Vultee (Downey), Consolidated/Convair/General Dynamics (San Diego), TRW/Northrop Grumman (Redondo Beach), Robinson Helicopters (Torrance), these amongst all the larger companies.

We look to the future as well, as history continues to be written with new initiatives and opportunities for further space exploration. We'll help to polish up the words if you are not a professional writer. Or it may simply be an interesting photo(s) with a caption added to tell the story.

Please contact us directly via email:  [email protected], with your thoughts and comments.