Wee Bee

VeeDee

I'm assuming ur post was not a pre April First one?

Were these birds in hanger at 'north base' (the hanger for the secret
birds)? Any name? Any data on Internet or in Lockheed or USAF
archives?

From ur description might well be a very good homebuilt????

I spent several weeks at Edwards on service test of T-28 and was able
to wander all around the Main Base. Interesting birds on ramp, in
hangers and in open storage (junk yard).

Sat in X-1 and it was a plumbers nightmare. Pipes and valves all over
cockpit.

Big John
USAF (Ret)
************************************************** ********

On Sun, 28 Dec 2008 10:51:30 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:


Any plans out there for this build?
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Yea Godz! Get serious! You had to be a Super Pilot just to get that
sonofabitch off the ground and a Super-Super pilot to get it back down
again, Whereas, that thing from... forgetful now... up in the top end
of the Other Valley... LOCKHEED fer crysakes. That thing from
Lockheed actually Worked! Oh my how it did. Three young draftees,
Zero flight time, NEVER been in an aeroplane, all three taking that
big step forward when you said it's liable to kill you but if it don't
it could win the war for us -- and all three of them silly-assed kids
taking the Big Step.

And it Worked! Start going slow to learn how to keep it straight and
it kept going and went right up into the air and after their first
landing you couldn't KEEP those kids from flying it, it was so easy to
do and so much fun. And of course, they took them away and parked
them over behind the mock-ups in the locked hanger where they were the
only things made out of metal... Seriously... mock-ups were all WOOD
and the only guy who knew they were there was the Boss Carpenter and
the Major in charge of the program. But we'd already landed and
everyone's Dire Predictions had proved false and so they did what
bureaucracies always do -- THEY CRUSHED THEM. Wouldn't even let us
salvage the engines, which were Lycoming O-145's on two of them and a
Continental A-40 on the other. Crushed them. Fred Weick actually
cried when he heard. Because the thing would NOT spin and as it
neared the ground, at anything less than terminal velocity, it would
very politely flatten out and if you remembered to reduce the power,
it would sit itself down on its tricycle landing gear and probably
blow a tire, because you were probably doingabout ninety.

American brains... and American politics.

You could put 300 pounds in that little sucker and it flew just fine.
No parachutes of course, just One soldier (volunteered) and the
biggest problem was getting them to Come Back!! because once they
learned how to turn, they'd stay up there until the fuel warning
buzzer went off. THEN they would come back, sometimes downwind, and
put it down literally ANYWHERE.... taxiways, SIDEWALK (for crysakes!
Why? Because he thought he could [and did] and all the 'real' runways
were busy, he said, as part of his apology.)

Air-Mobile. 1944. And IT REALLY WORKED. Ask John Thrope about it.
And some of the other REAL engineers. Tough, TOUGH little bird up
there on the north end of the runway, borrowing hangar space from
Lockheed, flying on weekends because it was classified 'SECRET'. But
once you were past the MP's you could do any damn thing you wanted and
there was nobody to stop you because General on down, if they didn't
have a 'yellow pass' "I'm afraid I can't allow that, sir." Because
the MP's never knew when it was a drill or for real, and they turned
away some of the highest of the high.

And here we are today, SIXTY-FIVE years later and they're still
treating it like a big f**king SECRET.

-R.S.Hoover

I understood it was flown at the Burbank airport. I believe they were
stored across the street. (That's the only area that matches the
description of 'mock-up'.) Back then, the whole area was under the
camouflage that covered most of the plants during WWII and it wasn't
uncommon to see traffic stopped whilst a P-38 was towed across the
road for one thing or another. As for skunk works. As projects go,
this one was a couple of guys working in shed at one of the shops
where they Lockheed cranked out 'shapes,' stringers and the like. It
was NOT an aircraft assembly plant but a 'plant' that made parts for
the other plants. There were several buildings there, as I recall,
some of which used to be assembly plants but were turned into office
and shop space as the war progressed. I seem to remember long lines
of people... maybe it was a cafeteria or something like that :-)

-Bob