Sharing our Links to the Past
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Firman C. Gray Taped Interview March 28, 1981 By: Frances and Wally Gray with Grandma and Grandpa Gray in Fallbrook, Calif. Frances: Well you know that when Matthew called and wanted to hear from you about your life we thought it would be better if we went clear back to Nova Scotia when you were little so they could hear about this. You know, Matthew as a baby made a trip to Nova Scotia so he just doesn't remember. Tell us about what you first remember about your home. Early Memories Firman: The things I remember are about a half a dozen. I was about four years old I suppose, when I left there, so I imagine any recollection I have was between three-and-a -half and four-and -a -half years old. I remember my father had a lobster factory and I distinctly remember going down to the factory and a nice man down there used to give me a great big lobster to bring home. Then I staggered home with it. Frances: Almost as big as you were, huh? Firman: I suppose it must have weighed at least a pound and I brought it to the steps of the house and my mother would give me a hammer and I'd sit out on the steps and crack and eat it. Now, that's all I remember about that part. I can remember going for a ride with my dad. We used to have a steam tug in relation to the cannery and I remember going for a trip on that. And then one day I remember being out on a lake. I don't know where the lake was in relation to Sambro. But we were out in a rowboat and the only person I remember being there was my father and he had a fancy new straw hat on. It blew out into the water and we picked it up. That's all I remember about that. And there was another time I remember being out on a rowboat with my brother and a friend of his. They had a sack with a cat in it. They rowed out and drowned it over the side. Even in those days I didn't think that was a very good idea. But that was the limit of what happened on that. Frances: You are a lot nearer to cats now, aren't you? Firman: I think that's a poor way of getting rid of a cat. I can faintly remember driving from Sambro to Halifax and passing a bunch of strawberry beds where they raised cranberries, but that's the limit of that. That is practically all my recollection of Sambro. Frances: Where were you in relation to the family? Were you the youngest? Firman: No, I had three older brothers and two older sisters. I was the sixth in line. Frances: And there were how many? Firman: We eventually ended up with seven in the family. Frances: And who was the youngest? Firman: Helen was the youngest. Then after we moved from Sambro to Halifax, I remember when Helen was born. So this pretty well established the time I was in Sambro. Frances. Right. And then you moved to Halifax when he sold the factory? The Move to Halifax Firman: I don't remember anything about that, but I suppose that when we moved to Halifax that is actually when they sold the cannery. Incidentally, this cannery was a new project that was, as near as I know, the first lobster cannery/factory in existence. It was started by my father and at least one of his brothers. But they sold it out and we moved to Halifax up on Rovey Street. It was near the Citadel and I remember the used to fire a gun up on the Citadel at 12 o'clock and one of my recollections of Halifax was my father taking me downtown with the horse and buggy and he parked the horse and went away to go shopping, leaving me in the buggy. About that time, why something scared the horse and the horse took off down the street at a mad gallup with me cheering him on . I don't remember just how they stopped it, but there was quite a gang gathered around and my father came up and he was all flustered . I remember at the time I couldn't understand what all the excitement was about. I thought it was wonderful! And that's what I remember about it. Frances: You survived it, without a scratch? Firman. Oh yes. I had a hilarious time!. I don't have too many recollections of Halifax. I can remember when Helen was born and she was five years younger than me so this dates how old I was . At about this time I can remember seeing parades down on the Commons. Frances: That's like a square, isn't it? Firman: Well, actually it's a great big bare spot out in the a parade ground and all that kind of thing. With roads dissecting. I can remember one Christmas . We had quite a large house . On Christmas morning I went into the dining room unintentionally, and here was this great big huge Christmas tree all filled with candy and all alight. First time I ever saw a Christmas tree and I was so astounded. I just beat it out of there and never did tell anybody about it. Then, of course, when they brought me in, it was supposed to be a big surprise for me. I had already previewed it. I started school in Halifax and I don't remember too much about that. I think I went for about a month or something like that before we got ready to come out to Vancouver. My mother and father must have had quite a job. There were seven kids by that time. They had lunches packed and everything to go on the trip to Vancouver. We went on a train. We had a Pullman car. We used to eat our lunch in the car. I can remember one time that somebody spilled the sugar all over our lunch, so our chicken and everything was all sweet, but that didn't seem to discourage us very much. There was a colored porter in our car. He and I became great friends. We used to sit by the hour, look out the window and gab. I thought he was the greatest man in the world. (As near as I know it took us a week to get to Vancouver). When we got to Vancouver we went to stay at my Aunt Lissie which was my father's oldest sister [Elizabeth Gray, b. 1838]. The only recollection I have of that was Aunt Lissie's husband down in the basement chopping branches for firewood with an ax. To this day I still chop branches the same way as I saw him chop branches. Eventually my father bought a grocery store and we moved out to Fairview. For a while we lived over the grocery store. I can remember my oldest brother working in the grocery store [Owen]. I can also remember one day sitting out back chopping something with a hatchet. The corner of the hatchet came down an put a great big gash in my knee. I've still got the marks to this day. Frances: Is that your bad knee? Firman: No. This was my other knee. Also at that time it was right near the lumber yards and they used to haul the lumber out by the horses. They had stables there. I went around to the stables. I started school there at that particular time. Frances: I bet a lot of interesting things happened while you were in that stable watching those men. Firman: Well, of course, the stables were associated with the lumber yard. Each lumber yard had a stable with maybe 25 horses or so. There was a stable man who used to take care of and we used to go out with the teams when they were hauling lumber around out to different building places. I had a chum who had a father who had a team. He used to haul us around. One time I can remember being out with him and the bakery truck passed and spilled out several loaves of bread which us kids grabbed. By that time we were so hungry we could eat anything and I can remember how good this bread tasted. At this particular time we went down to the ferry at Vancouver's waterfront. We went across the ferry to North Vancouver which is down the other side to deliver whatever load of lumber he had. My eldest brother Owen worked for my father in the grocery store. When my father eventually sold the grocery store he went into the wholesale produce business as a salesman and my next brother [Clem] became a post painter. He was very very clever in writing. He was really artistic in the way he could write script and letters. My third brother (Herbert) went to work for my cousin who had a plumbing shop (Anderson). He became a plumber and had his own business. He is the only brother that I have living today. He is still in Vancouver. We heard from him at Christmas. He must be at least ten years older than me or more. Frances: He's the one that has written to us and the kids will remember because they used to send money. Firman: You've heard from Herb and Dot. They're still in Vancouver. Frances: So what did you do as you grew up in Vancouver? Firman: Of course I went to school in Vancouver and eventually graduated into high school but by that time I'd had enough of it. I went to work in the drug store and while I wasn't exactly educated to be a druggist, I acquired the knack of filling prescriptions in the absence of the druggist. I haven't to this day found anybody that had any ill effects. Then the war came along about that time and I was able to help out on a dairy. There was a dairy near where I lived The dairy man quit and the only person left was the udder washer and he wasn't very ambitious. The boss stuck me in there. I never had pastuerized a batch of milk in my life, but I did a good job in the first one and I took over full operation of the dairy till they managed to find somebody to take it over. I guess I was around 17. About that time the boss gave me a job delivering milk. I had my own horse and cart. I used to start out at night and delivered milk all night long. l'd go down through the city and back across the bridge and I'd get home by 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning, make my count and go to sleep until the next night. That was quite an experience for me. I quite enjoyed that. I had a real nice horse and we used to get along real good. Joining the Military About that time (1918), my chum who was Len Moody, and I heard about some outfit that had come to town called the Royal Flying Corps. We hadn't the faintest idea about what the heck they did, but the war was on at this time and we went down and the first thing we knew, we found we had enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps. This was all news to us, but it was all right because one thing or another didn't make a particular difference at that time. They eventually loaded us on a passenger train and took us to Toronto, Canada and went into a recruit depot there and gave us uniforms. Eventually I was assigned to the 80th CTS which means Canadian Training Squadron. Each squadron consisted of three flights and we had six to seven or a dozen airplanes in each squadron. His First Driving Experience At the time we were assigned to a little field there and I can remember one day we were out on some jaunt (I don 't know what the nature of it was) but they ran into a Ford T-Truck (one of the first jobs that was put out). It got smashed up and it had to be moved. They asked who could drive a truck. Of course, me being the smart aleck I was, I said, "Sure, I could!" So I got in the truck and drove it off the road so we could get by. Now this was the first time I had ever set in an automobile or truck. The first time I had ever driven anything so this is how I passed my driver's license. That was in 1918 so from then on I was stuck. Becomes Air Mechanic Later on in in the year they moved us all to Fort Worth, Texas for thewinter because you couldn't fly in Ontario (because of the poor weather). Flying weather in Texas was pretty good. There was a field (Camp Everton) just outside of Fort Worth that they had built for us. At this field there was about six squadrons and we were one of them. I was assigned to Flight C. In each flight we had one or two flying instructors and 15 or 20 mechanics and one officer was in charge. When I enlisted I was Third Class Air Mechanic. I eventually got to a Second AM and before we returned to Ontario I became a First AM. The only feature I liked about this was that a Third AM got $1.10 a day. A Second AM got $1.20 a day and when I became a First AM I got $1.30 a day. By that time I was in big money! Incident One: Spinning the Prop I was quite a strong buck by that time. I was very, very active. I liked airplanes I liked to work on them. I was very efficient in everything I did on them. One of the things that I became a little overly efficient in was cranking the propellers. I found that I could stand up to a propeller with one hand, spin it over in getting it ready to start. After you'd spin the prop, then you would stand up on your toes and reach up with your hands and grab it and give it a big swing. For all intents and purposes the engine would start. Well, this one day I had swung the prop in the usual manner and got up on my tip toes and reached up to get the propeller. About that time the engine took off at full speed. Well, I was standing there on my tip toes and with the prop brushing my knees in my overalls and I just managed to teeter back out of the way. No harm done except that one of the mechanics that was on the wing tip fainted and we had to pack him off the field. Narrowly Escaping Death You understand that we had six airplanes more or less and we were equippe with a couple of flying officers who instructed the flying cadets. Cadets were a different breed of people from us. We were just mechanics. The cadets were learning to fly, and they would eventually become officers. They were the ones that the flying officers had to teach. I had no desire whatsoever to be a pilot, but I was crazy about flying and at every opportunity I could get I would go up for a ride with th instructor. Our work consisted of repairing these smashed up wrecks that the cadets had caused. The first time any of them would solo they would stand a plane up on the snows or break a landing gear and our job was to put all new parts on it and get it back into flying shape. At this particular time ( I could just look over an airplane with my eyes and put the thing together to get it back into the air) I got it all in real good shape and was getting it all ready. We had to test fly it and I was pretty sure I could get a ride in it because the guy that was going to test it was a friend of mine and he would take me for a ride. I got the airplane all ready and all warmed up and the officer came along ready to fly it and about that time an old English corporal came along-he was a character-andsince he outranked me he came along and he said that he was going to go for a ride. I couldn't argue with him, so I went about my business and so he stayed and he and this officer climbed aboard this airplane and took off. About a half an hour later we heard that they had crashed and burned and both of them were killed. The Famous Crash During our time in Fort Worth we used to go to Dallas for a weekend. We were a bunch of Canadians in a foreign country. They used to show us a good time. We got used to their lingo, how they talked. We heard people telling us about the kind of weather they were having back up in Canada and it was real nice down in Fort Worth. We had never been used to that kind of stuff. Frances: (Sound of cuckoo clock.). Now that we've got the clock which is part of Wally's history, let's go back to Texas. You spent the winter in Texas? Firman: We spent the winter in Texas and in the spring we headed back to Canada and we were stationed at Camp Gordon in Ontario, outside of Toronto more or less 50 or 60 miles. At this particular camp we had good hangers and a big flying field. You understand that flying fields in those days were just leveled off fields. We didn't have any runways. We set up flying operations there. We had a pretty good time there. We had good quarters and this is the place where I discovered a favorite afternoon meal consisting of bread and big lumps of cheese and marmalade. And this is where I acquired my taste for marmalade, cheese and bread. This was one thing I really liked in meals. While we were there we had what we used to call early morning flying which consisted of a group sleeping at the hanger and before daylight, getting the airplanes out and getting them all gassed up, warmed up, etc. ready for the troops to come down to start their training at the daylight hours. Well I used to like this real good because it got us away from the rest of the gang and we used to sleep in the hanger and we'd get up in the morning and we could hustle the airplanes out get them all warmed up and pretty near always you could check in and get a flight on the first plane because the first officer that would come down would decide to test the air to see how flying conditions were. We could always persuade them to have them take you along. This particular morning in June 1918 I had slept in the hanger all night so that I could get up early and get the planes ready for the day. After I got up and got this plane ready I asked Lt. Broderick, the pilot, if I could go flying with him. He said sure and I piled in and we took off. It was before the troops had come down from the barracks, just early daylighta. We went up and did a couple of loops and a stall or so. About that time he threw it over into a spin and I would say we were maybe 3,000 feet altitude and after we did a couple of turns he turned it and he discovered it wasn't pulling out of the spin. The only thing to do was to turn and go into a spin in the opposite direction. I don't remember how we communicated . We both realized that we weren't going to get out of this. The field was right next to a river and this river was down in the gully and heavily wooded on each side. I could look down and I could see the hole in the trees right where we were going to hit. We realized that we weren't going to come out of this. I got interested then in looking up towards the barracks and you could see the men all marching down in a full column coming down the road to the hanger. Every time we'd turn around we'd see them again and I remember seeing them two or three times and then I got interested in looking down at this hole that we were going to fall in and I can't remember being scared. I had no particular sensation of caring one way or the other. I have a hazy remembrance of going through the trees and the next thing I remembered was waking up sitting down, buried up to my knees in mud in a sitting up position. I was just one big mass of red i front of me. About this time. Lt. Broderick. said, "Is your leg broken?" I said, "No I don't think it is." About that time I reached down and grabbed my leg by my hand and I said, "Oh, yes, mybroken above the knee. Well, I suppose that I had been unconscious for a time but I didn't lik where I was and I didn't have any pain, so I took this broken leg of mine with the trousers and threw it over the cockpit (we were right at ground level) and then I climbed out after it and stood up. After I got standing up I wished I had stayed where I was because I got kind of tired. The lieutenant was standing along side of me. He wasn't hurt at all. He had an injured knee but wasn't hurt any great amount. Frances: What made it so that you weren't killed? We had landed between the airport and the river right in the middle of these trees and it was swampy ground. This airplane was buried about eight feet in the mud and I was right down in it. That was one reason that the airplane didn't burn. If it had burned we couldn't have escaped. My friend wanted to smoke and I had to tell him three times not to smoke because I was completely saturated with gasoline and everything else was. About this time we could hear airplanes overhead looking for us. Then you could hear people coming through the woods. They scattered out in a big long line. They had seen us fall but hadn't been able to locate us They had to cut the airplane away to get at me. An amusing part was that the little medical guy with the ambulance got in there with a stretcher and he proceeded to start dabbing my face. It made me kind of mad. I said, "Never mind my face." But I guess I must have been a mess. They cut struts from the airplane and put splints on my leg and got me on the stretcher and carried me out in the ambulance and took me to the field hospital. They proceeded to sew up my face. I don't know how many stitches there were. asked the nurse. She said she didn't know but after 50 they had lost track. They stopped counting after 50 stitches. My face was completely smashed in and my nose was absolutely flat. I had pushed the wind shield completely up and off the airplane. I can understand why this guy was dabbing at me. Well, anyway, I didn't like it. They put me to bed in the hospital in camp and I still had the same splints on that they had put on outside because they didn't have too many facilities there. I can remember that night one of the nurses coming in and wanted to know if I wanted a drink of milk. I said yes so she brought me a glass of milk . She said that it was warm milk and she had put some whiskey in it. Then I wouldn't drink it. I had never drunk anything like that. The Hospital The next morning they loaded me in the ambulance and took me down to the railroad station which was about five miles away and loaded me in the baggage car and took me to Toronto. At the Toronto station a man was there to pick me up and take me to Toronto General Hospital. They put me to bed. The next day they took me into the operating room and proceeded to set my leg. During this operation it was the first time I had had any pain at all. When they had put the splints on my leg, eventually they 4-inch-wide adhesive tape and they had that wrapped around the thigh of my leg. When they took this off that was the first pain I experienced. Frances: Why didn't you feel it? Firman: When I looked down there I was just one big numb. I had no pain at all. I never did later on. It was a couple of weeks before I started hurting. Then they set my leg, then they put a big cast on my leg. They put me to bed with my leg hoisted up in the air. This was the first time I about passed out because the doctor told me I was going to have to be in there for about 90 days. I was young buck used to being outside running around and I couldn't see how I could possibly stay in bed for 90 days. But anyway, I couldn't eat and I couldn't sleep. All I could do was to lay there. I was just numb. They eventually worked it out. This hospital floor that I was on consisted of all returned soldiers and military people. Every body would pile in and have a good time and people used to come in. One time some do-gooders came in with ice cream and cake but it didn't do me any good because I couldn't eat. They had plugs in my nose. They had splints in my nose and bandages all over it. Eventually things kind of wore down. Come along to the 29th of September which was my birthday, my sister Lillian had sent me a set of silk pink pajamas. On my birthday I had a red-headed nurse. She says, "Well, you better put your pajamas on for yourbirthday." I wouldn't do that. "Oh, no, you have to have your pajamas on!" Nothing doing. Well, she went out for a minute and came back with two more nurses and they put the pajamas on me. Frances: If you couldn't eat, what did they do. Just use a straw, or what? Firman: I didn't eat. Didn't do anything for two weeks. In those days i you couldn't eat, why to hell with you. You just starved. At the end of 90 days they came in and looked at me and said, "O.K. You can get up." They brought a wheel chair in for me to get up. Well I wasn't going to get out of that bed for anything. I wouldn't even set a foot outside of the bed. Eventually the nurses who were not very two or three of them finally came and forced me out of bed into the wheel chair and rolled me out. I was in a private room with threThey rolled me out into the hall and down into the great big ward. Everybody, of course, had visited me and they all knew me. I was absolutel dumbfounded. Eventually I got called back into my own little ward. After awhile I became adventuring. I teamed up with a one-legged guy. He used to shove me around. I used to hold his crutch. He could hop a long on one foot and push me and we used to go all around everywhere. One dathey organized a race. Another guy had a wheelchair, a two-legged guy, and he was supposed to be the speedy guy but he couldn't beat my guy with the one leg. We went tearing down this main ward and came to the door into this hallway just past my room and my one-legged guy ran out of speed and let go of me and I just went sailing through there and just as I got in front of my own ward there was my doctor who was a colonel and two or three other guys. I grabbed the wheel of my chair and tipped over and went sailing out on the floor at the foot of my doctor. Boy, I just about passed out. I lay there on the floor. He looked down at me and says, "Are you hurt?" I says no, not hurt. He says, "Well, put him to bed." So they put me back in the bed and after awhile he came to look at me and he kept me in bed then for three or four days before they would let me get up again. Pretty soon I graduated from my wheel chair and got up on a pair of crutches. This was a kind of a revelation. The only thing about in the wheel chair, was that there was one time before I got on the crutches, a friend of mine decided he wanted to go to town. We took off down on the elevator and out through the grounds and until we were half way to town before they caught up with us. So that's when they brought me back and gav me my crutches. I used to walk around on crutches. I used to be able to go all over the hospital. About this time they sent me out to a convalescoutskirts of Toronto. This home was run by a nurse. They had all the casualties there which consisted of quite a lot of flying cadets who had had accidents. Of course I was the only commoner there, just a mechanic, and I was the riff raff, you might say. I wasn't taking anything from anybody. I was sent up to an annex that they had. It was O.K. with me because all the men were up there. We used to go to town from up there. We didn't have anything to do. Just bumming around all the time and we had a pretty good time. It was November 1918, the first deal that they thought they had an armistice. On the day of the armistice I was downtown in Toronto when they announced this. There was a big hullabaloo down there and we really had a time down there that day. Eventually, from there I was discharged and sent back to Seattle. My folks had moved to Seattle by this time so my destination was actually Vancouver and I arrived back in Seattle where my folks were living. By this time I had graduated to a cane and could hobble around quite well. First Aircraft Job I went to Boeing Company and got a job. They were finishing up on a contract. The war was over by this time. I worked for them for about three or four months. It wasn't very long before I was laid off there. Then I heard about this chance to go back to Vancouver and go to school and learn architectural work and engineering on my own and on airplanes so I tookthat. So I went back up to Vancouver I went up to school there for about a year or so. In the meantime my folks had come back up to Vancouver. We all lived together there. I didn't get very far on the schooling because the instructor I had knew less about airplanes than I did. I knew four times more about airplanes than he did, so what could he teach me? Being smarty pants he could teach me nothing. So I didn't get anywhere. The Move to California-Courtship and Marriage The folks and I decided about this time that we were going to come to California. We got all prepared and came down and got a boat and went to Seattle (my mother and father and myself). In Seattle we got on board the good ship Queen and headed to California. After we were out the first day I got acquainted with a gal that was running around there. Only trouble was that she was taken with a red-headed man and couldn't see me for dust. But fortunately we went into San Francisco and we lost him and he departed, so she was on her own and I was on my own so between San Francisco and Los Angeles we kind of made up to each other and I eventually got her address and phone number and we landed in Los Angeles. I went my way and she went her way but it wasn't very long before I looked her up. She lived in Santa Monica and I lived in Los Angeles. I used to commute by getting on the cars and going into Santa Monica. She worked in L.A. and eventually for some reason or other we became fond of each other. I eventually moved into Santa Monica and went to work for Douglas Company. Before I was working for the Douglas Co. I had worked in L.A. in a woodworking shop doing whatever I could find but I was never satisfieI always wanted to get back into airplanes if I could. Frances: How big was Douglas then? Douglas Aircraft Job Firman: This is when they were on Wilshire Blvd. They had maybe four or five hundred men working for them. This is when they were working on navy pontoons to start with and then they built the five ships that flew around the world. The world cruisers that flew around the world. After they finished building those, of course, then, the job petered out and I got laid off. I was scurrying around to find various jobs. Helen was working in L.A. and her father was working for the city of Santa Monica. He became ill and eventually died and Helen went to Washington for the funeral. On her return we were married on Christmas Day 1923 and went to live on 15th St. which was Helen's home. Movie Studio Job-Then Lockheed Then I used to scout around the movie studios and worked in several of the studios and did a couple of carpenter jobs and so forth. About this time against the wishes of Helen and everybody else I decided I was going to get back into aviation so I went over to Burbank and got a job with Lockheed for sixty cents an hour. They put me in the woodworking department. I didn't know a thing about making patterns but my boss was a pattern and before too long I was the best pattern maker in the outfit. Frances: What's a pattern maker? Firman: Making prototypes. Eventually I got out back to start working on airplanes and eventually worked into the service department. Before too long I was head man in the service department. This is when we started getting interested in all the different flyers in the country. At that particular time one of the big events of aviation was the Bendix race which went from Los Angeles to the East. Every year they'd have this. It was a non-stop deal and mainly the other airplanes that could compete to go non-stop and take enough gas for a non-stop flight were Lockheed Vegas. So, consequently, we did about five Vegas in there every year and with five different pilots to get their airplanes loaded with tanks and to get them all tuned up and one wouldn't tell the other what they were doing and we used to have a regular rat race. Of course I was right in the middle of it because everyone wanted me to work on their airplane. Nobody wanted to tell anyone else what they were doing. I can remember one particular time that a pilot by the name of Shonhair brought some red fluid in to put into his gasoline. He wouldn't tell anybody what this was and he would measure it very carefully and he wouldn't let any of the other pilots have it. It was supposed to give more power. We were kind of skeptical. We used to get some of it and put it in our cars. The only thing we found it did was burn the valves up. But anyway, this was the first time that anybody ever heard of Ethyl. And this is what he was putting in his gas to give him more power. We had a lot of different pilots in there. I can't recall all the names: Some of these guys were fantastic. You understand that in each of these airplanes they would remove all of the seats out of the cabin and would absolutely load the cabin with gas tanks that we made especially to the point that the airplane would just barely fly. This is what they had to do to get back there. Sometimes we had enough space that we'd put a mechanic in to pump the gas from the tanks to the main tank or to pour the gas from a tank into some kind of a receptacle. A lot of different kinds of funny ideas. It's a wonder one or more of us wasn't killed. I can only remember one particular instance when one of our boys was on the one flight and never did ever make it. Retractable Landing Gears Wiley Post had his airplane in there. He had a lot of fantastic ideas. He wanted to drop his wheels off and land on a skid one particular time. We fixed his landing gears so they would drop off all right and fixed skids so he could land. To do this we had to go up to Edwards Air Force which was the great big wilds out in the country. There was nothing then but a wild lake and he flew up and dropped his landing gear and he landed all right on his skid and that was fine and dandy. But this had nothing compared to the deal when they decided, why don't we retract the landing gear on an airplane? So one of our fancy young engineers drew up all the specifications and they buil a wing with retractable landing gears. We fitted this wing on one of our airplanes. It was controlled by a bunch of cables. There was kind of a little windlass that used to pull the landing gear up and lower it down and you never saw such a contraption in all your life! Every time you'd do all the wires you would get all tangled up. Well my hard luck was that I inherited it and eventually I was the only guy that could fix it so that it would work. Eventually we got it so that we could wind it up and wind it down so it would work pretty good. At about this time the army came along and decided they wanted that airplane with the retractable landing gear on it. You understand that this is the first retractable landing gear in the country. Nobody ever heard of it. Everybody knew that we were crazy. But anyway they sent out Captain (I don't recall his name-he later bgeneral) to fly this thing, to take delivery of this airplane. Well, he decided that he wanted to come to San Diego to visit some friend down in the Naval Station in San Diego and the only way that they would let him do that was if they took someone along with them to keep possession of the airplane because as yet they hadn't signed up for it. I had to go because I was the only guy that could operate the landing gear anyway. We took off from Burbank and all the way over to L.A. and all around ththe landing gear and raised it. Half a dozen airplanes were around taking pictures of it. We eventually arrived at San Diego and he proceeded to get all lined up to land. About this time I kicked him in the butt a couple of times and told him to lower his landing gear so he lowered his landing gear and we made a nice landing. He went and visited his friends and left me with the airplane. By this time all the notoriety amongst the rest of them . Popular Mechanics was there with an interviewer and a photographer. They took pictures of me and I ended up by having pictures in Popular Mechanics. I hung on to Popular Mechanics for years but eventually somebody took it away from me and I don 't have it anymore. But they had quite a writeup.(See note on this at end of article). Helen: He loaned it to somebody and never got it back. Firman: After he took delivery on this particular model which he eventually cracked up somewhere in the East, the next time we made a retracting development we did it hydraulically with hydraulic cylinders and it worked pretty good. In fact that was the basis of all retractable landing gears later on. Gray-Oviatt Business About this time Lockheed was getting on the rocks. This was in the very depths of the depression. It got down to the point that there were only two people left working in Lockheed, Tod Oviatt and myself. And eventually we got laid off. For something better to do we went over to Van Nuys airport and opened a repair station over there. We got an approval from the Department of Commerce and everything was fine. In fact all the Lockheed airplanes in the country started coming into us for repairs and we did a thriving trade. In the meantime Lockheed had recovered to some extent and new management had come in and bought the companthe present company they have now. Back to Lockheed We were still going great guns at Van Nuys, but we started cutting in on their trade and eventually they came over and enticed me to come back and go to work for them. They gave me a job as foreman of final assembly to come back to work, which I did. This is the time that Amelia Earhart brought her airplane in that she eventually went flying with when she was lost. This is when we started building the new line of Lockheed airplanes. (End of Interview)
NOTE TO RETRACTABLE LANDING GEAR: An excerpt from Revolution in the Sky by Richard Sanders Allen shed further light on this incident: "This time the plane had still another innovation. Lockheed engineers-the team of Jimmy Gerschler, Dick Palmer, Dick Von Hake-had worked out some ideas for a fully retractable landing gear. This wasn't a drawing-up of the wheels into a protruding bubble, like those of the much-publicized Boeing Monomail, but involved completely enclosing them in the surface of a slick, clean lower wing. "The new gear was first tried in September 1930, using a rebuilt Sirius demonstrator. The ship was mounted high on horses in the shop to undergo test after test. The original grear was entirely mechanical, with a system of cables and pulleys cranked by hand. In the hot tin hangar a rigger in the forward cockpit cranked and sweated, while down below Von Hake and his men carefully watched again and again as the big Airwheels tucked themselves into the wing. Finally it was approved for flight, and tested by Marshall (Babe) Headle. "Colonel Lindbergh was interested in having this gear installed on his Sirius, but ended up with alterations to accommodate floats in preparation for his North Pacific survey flight of 1931. The plane with retractable landing grear was carefully wrung out all during the winter, and tested by several top flyers. The company gave it a new "star" name to match its other models, calling it the Altair. "Van Breese, the famous California aircraft designer and test pilot, was connected with Detroit-Lockheed during this period, and flew the Altair often. There was talk of his herding it around the world with John Henry Mears instead of the second Vega which the theater man had ordered. Breese and Mears sent the ship rocketing across valley and mountains to set a new Oakland-Burbank record of 92 minutes in March 1931. "Soon afterward the Army and Captain [Ira C.] Eaker [a career officer from Texas who "had handled the stick of just about everything the Army had managed to juggle into the sky] took over the Altair for some more long-distance testing. Firman Gray of Lockheed's final assembly occupied the rear cockpit on Eaker's first hop in the low-wing speedster. Letting down at San Diego, Gray thought about the retractable landing gear-which Eaker hadn't. There was no communication between cockpitsdown in his seat, stretched out a long leg and kicked the Captain in the got the Army flyer to wind down the wheels." (Also included in our copy of this book are two photo-copied pages from the Popular Mechanics magazine showing three photos of Firman, one with the gear and the caption, "Army's Newest Low-Wing Plane with its Wide Tread for Safety in Landing; Note the Retractable Landing Gear; the Wheels Can Be Raised or Lowered in Only Fifteen Seconds.") |
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