Wee Bee

What is/was it, or what was it called, and where can information be found
about it?
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Roger that.

I've only seen it mentioned a couple of times. Saw a picture of it
once.

The deal was, someone looked at how much it cost to deliver a
paratrooper and said they could come up with an AIRPLANE that could do
better than that... and they did. But it's roll-out came after D-Day
and there was a lot of pressure to kill the program, but three
examples with different aft sections survived the war... and were then
crushed & smelted.

It was just a simple little one-seater that could be shipped
disassembled. Bubble canopy. Fixed trike gear. I could ran on mogas
and could deliver 300 pounds anywhere within 200 miles (calm air
assumed). 'Rudder' pedals were tied to the nose-wheel !! It came in
three ddifferent models. One had a V-tail the others were
conventional but the differences had to do with something else --
range, load or armament. No gauges to speak of. The 'pathfinder' was
meant to be a series of Piper Cubs and the thing was meant to land
virtually anywhere with 'one flip or less' Meaning a nose-over was
acceptable (and the only thing the pilots were trained for).

The official story is that it was never flown except by pilots but the
'real' story is that at least three "Army sergeants" meaning they
weren't recruits, with no prior aviation experience managed to fly
them using only the instruction manual for their 'flight training.'
And every time I mention it I get a ration of **** so to hell with
them. I'll bet you dollars to donuts Leeon Davis knew what I was
talking about :-)

And if that sounds kooky, it doesn't even BEGIN to come close to some
of the wacky ideas that were proposed AND tested, such as using
pigeons as 'emergency navigators,' affixing a one-ounce THERMITE
charge to a BAT and a bunch of other equally strange stuff. My dad
happened to know quite a bit about this program because he helped
fabricate an A-40 engine mount for one of the three after it suffered
a prop-strike.

-Bob

wrote in message
...

What is/was it, or what was it called, and where can information be found
about it?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Roger that.

I've only seen it mentioned a couple of times. Saw a picture of it
once.

The deal was, someone looked at how much it cost to deliver a
paratrooper and said they could come up with an AIRPLANE that could do
better than that... and they did.

Interesting. I don't doubt the existence of something like that, for an
instant. If all you had to do was steer it down the runway, and then sorta
land it, with a flip being considered acceptable, that would make it easy
for a non aviator to steer around in the air.

The mental picture I keep getting, is a whole flock of them buzzing away
towards an objective, at night, (for stealth like many paratrooper landings
of the time did) and how many would crash into another. I wonder if they
put bumpers on them? g
--
Jim in NC

On Sun, 28 Dec 2008 11:18:05 -0800 (PST), Monk
wrote:

I don't know. I thought of this conecpt, flying prone, before about
twenty plus years ago while in High school. Then I came across this
bird.

Flying prone is one thing, though I don't see the attraction... it's
been done more than once (not counting all the hang gliders), but the
Wee Bee is so marginal that flying prone is the only option.

-Dana
--
......they want you to send your money to the Lord,
but they give you their address.....

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

Sorry for the top post, but I couldn't decide what the trim...

Seeing Fred Weick's name mentioned, I think I can make a fair guess about
the concept: oodles of dihedral, ailerons and rudder both controlled with
the yoke, widely spaced main undercarriage with a generous travel, and
plenty of weight on the nose wheel.

I will bet there was plenty of visual similarity to the subsequent Ercoupe
as well.

Peter


wrote in message
...

Any plans out there for this build?
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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

The mental picture I keep getting, is a whole flock of them buzzing away
towards an objective, at night, (for stealth like many paratrooper landings
of the time did) and how many would crash into another. *I wonder if they
put bumpers on them? g
-----------------------------------------------------

I donno Jim. Maybe the one with the different tail came with a built-
in parachute.

The Thing was, despite all the hype about paratroops, while the
POTENTIAL was there, given Crete (for the other side) D-day and
'Market Garden,' on the basis of cost vs effectivess most 'airborne'
troops ended up perform normal infantry roles, which raised the
question: Should we train ALL infantry to jump from airplanes? Or,
do we even need the capability? Because based on... Market Time?
Market Garden? (Can't remember ****) Someone in the British
Parliament said we could have saved everyone a lot of time, trouble
and MONEY if they'd simply landed their gliders inside the POW camps,
because that's were x-percent of the troops ended up anyway. And
American congressmen weren't far behind, pointing out how many
THOUSANDS of C-47's we had assigned to give someone a ride they never
took, and when they DID take the ride (Sicily, Normandy) they often
ended up at the wrong place anyway.

If you broke it down into numbers of airplanes and the amount of
training, its seems we could have gotten the same bang for our buck by
simply stuffing volunteers into a little mass-produced airplane,
wishing them well and crossing your fingers.

-Bob

In rec.aviation.piloting wrote:

The mental picture I keep getting, is a whole flock of them buzzing away
towards an objective, at night, (for stealth like many paratrooper landings
of the time did) and how many would crash into another. Â*I wonder if they
put bumpers on them? g
-----------------------------------------------------

I donno Jim. Maybe the one with the different tail came with a built-
in parachute.

The Thing was, despite all the hype about paratroops, while the
POTENTIAL was there, given Crete (for the other side) D-day and
'Market Garden,' on the basis of cost vs effectivess most 'airborne'
troops ended up perform normal infantry roles, which raised the
question: Should we train ALL infantry to jump from airplanes? Or,
do we even need the capability? Because based on... Market Time?
Market Garden? (Can't remember ****) Someone in the British
Parliament said we could have saved everyone a lot of time, trouble
and MONEY if they'd simply landed their gliders inside the POW camps,
because that's were x-percent of the troops ended up anyway. And
American congressmen weren't far behind, pointing out how many
THOUSANDS of C-47's we had assigned to give someone a ride they never
took, and when they DID take the ride (Sicily, Normandy) they often
ended up at the wrong place anyway.

If you broke it down into numbers of airplanes and the amount of
training, its seems we could have gotten the same bang for our buck by
simply stuffing volunteers into a little mass-produced airplane,
wishing them well and crossing your fingers.

-Bob

Almost all the mass airborn assaults by everyone that has tried it
were pretty much a disater.


--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

wrote

V: The Thing was, despite all the hype about paratroops, while the
POTENTIAL was there, given Crete (for the other side) D-day and
'Market Garden,' on the basis of cost vs effectivess most 'airborne'
troops ended up perform normal infantry roles, which raised the
question: Should we train ALL infantry to jump from airplanes?

Jim: Usually, you think of paratroopers as an advance wing of the attack,
or to put men over the top of resistance, or unless there was no way to get
troops in, otherwise.

V: If you broke it down into numbers of airplanes and the amount of
training, its seems we could have gotten the same bang for our buck by
simply stuffing volunteers into a little mass-produced airplane,
wishing them well and crossing your fingers.

Jim: Interesting concept, at the very least. I think there are times that
such a use could have been made, but the stealth of such a landing would be
pretty minimal, I would suppose.
--
Jim in NC

On Dec 28, 6:23*pm, "Morgans" wrote:

Jim: *Interesting concept, at the very least. *I think there are times that
such a use could have been made, but the stealth of such a landing would be
pretty minimal, I would suppose.
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Roger that.

What was the 'stick' for a DC-3? I read somewhere that the push for
the C-46 -- even the name 'Commando' -- was driven by the fact you
needed a whole damn air force of DC-3's to put a credible number of
troops on the ground AND in the correct positions. C-46, the stick
was about twice that of a C-47... but at about 4x the cost, thanks to
tooling amortization of the latter by pre-war civilian demand. So
when they DID get the required amount of lift... it was stolen! The
C-46 went to air-supply the China theater because the DC-3 couldn't
make it over the Hump with a credible cargo on-board.

The DC-3 was just what the air lines wanted; cheap to build,
economical to operate, and with a load capacity that was a close match
for the markets & routes of that era. But turn it into a weapon of
war and you find you needed so damn many of them that ANY idea of a
'stealthy' insertion was little more than a bad joke. Indeed, good
pre-event intel virtually pin-pointed the drop zone... as it did for D-
Day... if the German CinC hadn't been a total Fruit Loop, consulting
his astrologer fer crysakkes!

-Bob

Monk wrote:
On Dec 28, 8:59 am, Dana M. Hague wrote:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:52:51 -0800 (PST), Monk
wrote:

On Dec 25, 1:54 pm, Monk wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-TE7MOuo7c
Monk
Any plans out there for this build?
Why would you want to?

I don't know. I thought of this conecpt, flying prone, before about
twenty plus years ago while in High school. Then I came across this
bird.

Monk

There was a young aviator who looked to have a promising career in
aviation ahead of him that had the same idea. His incarnation of the
WeeBee had a bigger engine and had him strapped to the bottom of the
fuselage rather than the top. There was a web site that detailed his
vision and its fortune, but I can't find it at the moment. A friend of
his hosted it as I recall (BlueSkyGirl?)

Charles