This fascinating, silent 16mm movie comes from the estate of William Hawley Bowlus (May 8, 1896 - August 27, 1967) or someone who was close to him. Bowlus was a designer, engineer and builder of aircraft (especially gliders) and recreational vehicles in the 1930s and '40s. Shown in this film is the plywood XCG-16a experimental military glider, which was ordered by the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1943 based on designs made by Bowlus in 1942. The glider was supposed to be able to fly at 200 miles per hour and carry a 4300 lb. howitzer and full gun crew, or a full squad of twenty soldiers.
The test flights shown were in July of 1944. They likely took place in Orlando, Florida although it's possible they were filmed at either Rosamand or the Oxnard Flight Strip, later known as Oxnard Air Force Base and later Camarillo Airport. As you can see, the XCG-16 represented a radical departure from single fuselage designs and incorporated a twin boom, flying wing type design. The glider front wing opened like jaws with the bottom swinging down as a ramp resting on the ground. The glider could carry 42 troops or two howitzers. It had retractable landing gear, a wingspan of 91.8 feet, and weighed in at 9,500 pounds empty.
Roughly 8 months before this film was made the prototype aircraft was involved in a serious accident that killed several passengers including Richard Dupont the special assistant to General "Hap" Arnold. The cause of the accident was simple: weighted bags that had been placed on the aircraft to act as ballast shifted in flight, causing the airplane to go into a flat spin.
The tests shown here likely represented a last ditch effort to save the Cargo Glider program. Apparently during the stint in Florida over 30 hours of flight time were put on the aircraft, and 50 successful landings were made. Pilots involved included the famed Northrop test pilot Johnny Meyers and Paul E. Tuntland. However while it showed some promise, the aircraft's lack of emergency exits, lack of good lateral visibility for the co-pilot, poor loading ramps, and other deficiencies made it a tough sell to the Air Force. Time was also against the glider, as there was little interest in new models after June, 1944, and while Bowlus believed that there would be a post-war role for gliders as cargo aircraft, it never developed. After the USAAF terminated the contract, no production models of the aircraft were made and the plane shown here likely ended up as toothpicks.
(To read more on this aircraft visit www.indianamilitary.org/Freema...)
Today Hawley Bowlus is most widely known for his key role in the design of Airstream travel trailers, which followed his prior famed work as the Superintendent of Construction on Charles Lindbergh's aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis.
Bowlus was an expert at soaring flight and at building gliders, established numerous records, trained many of America's earliest glider pilots, and gave gliding lessons to both Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. In 1930 he and Lindbergh glided at various locations in California. Most notably Point Loma in San Diego California where Bowlus conducted many of his flights and tests.
Charles Lindbergh established a regional distance record for gliders by flying in a Bowlus sailplane from Mount Soledad in La Jolla to Del Mar, making use of the lift at the Torrey Pines Gliderport. Anne Morrow Lindbergh also flew in a Bowlus sailplane from Mount Soledad and became the first woman in the United States to receive a "first class" glider license (Maxine Dunlap had preceded her in becoming the first woman in the United States to receive a glider license of any kind (a "third class" glider license). Bowlus was also the first American to break Orville Wright's 1911 soaring duration record in an American designed and built sailplane. Bowlus was inducted into the Soaring Hall of Fame in 1954.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit www.PeriscopeFilm.com
10 июл 2017
