THE HAMMOND AIRPLANE—AND GORE VIDAL’S FATHER

THE FLIVVER Movement aspired to put America aloft in the 1930s, just as, two decades before, Ford’s Model T flivver had put America on the road. One of the contenders for flying flivver honors was the Stearman-Hammond Model Y. And one of this aircraft’s promoters was Eugene Luther Vidal, father of the occasionally outrageous but always erudite and entertaining Gore Vidal.

Aviation pioneers: Eugene Vidal, standing third from left; Amelia Earhart, sitting at left.

Gene Vidal was a decathlon competitor in the 1920 and 1924 Olympic games. He was one of the first U.S. Army Air Corps pilots and taught aeronautics at West Point.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Vidal helped in founding three airlines that evolved into Eastern, TWA and Northeast. Amelia Earhart was a friend and colleague in this; indeed, in East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart, author Susan Butler writes that Vidal and Earhart’s relationship was a romantic one.

In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Vidal director of the Bureau of Air Commerce, as part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Civil Aeronautics Administration, another of the FAA predecessors during the 1930s. Image by FlugKerl2.

The bureau challenged the aircraft industry to build a safe, practical and inexpensive aircraft, one that automobile drivers could readily learn to operate and afford to own.

The 1936 Hammond low-wing monoplane won the competition, along with the Waterman and Roadable Autogiro.

The Hammond Model Y monoplane at Langley Field, Virginia, 1936. Image from NASA predecessor, the U.S. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

Dean Hammond came up with the aircraft’s pusher engine and twin-boom layout. Lloyd Stearman (of Lockheed and Stearman fame) cooperated in its design and production.

This Hammond in 1938 carries the Civil Aeronautics Administration logo on its tail boom. Image from NASA predecessor, the U.S. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

The Hammond’s tricycle landing gear, novel at the time, offered easier ground maneuvering than that of a traditional tail-dragger. Its pusher propulsion aided balance and gave a superb view for its two occupants. An oddity of the Hammond’s was its fixed rudders; yaw was achieved solely through differential action of its wing’s ailerons and tail’s elevators.

The Hammond Special, a post-World-War-II development of the Model Y. Image from The Wichita 4: Cessna, Moellendick, Beech & Stearman.

Seating was side-by-side, with dual controls aiding flight training. It was claimed that a student pilot could solo after only two or three hours of instruction.

Alas, in the mid-1930s, the Hammond was priced at $3190 (about $55,000 in today’s dollar), considerably more than the era’s least expensive aircraft. The Bureau of Air Commerce was its principal buyer; 15 aircraft according to one source, 25 cited by another. Agents of the bureau traveled the country in Hammond demonstration tours as part of the Flivver Movement.

Gore Vidal wrote of his “Love of Flying” in The New York Review of Books, January 17, 1985. “…still on the sunny side of four years old,” he traveled in a Ford Tri-Motor operated by Transcontinental Air Transport. See http://wp.me/p2ETap-k6 for an idea of cross-country travel back then. See http://goo.gl/O8msaq for a bit of Vidal’s adventure in 1929, when his father was the assistant general manager of TAT. This online excerpt also gives background of a wonderful Pathé video.

“… I was delighted to be liberated from school. I wore short trousers and polo shirt, the standard costume of those obliged to pretend that they were children a half-century ago. What was up? I asked. My father said, You’ll see. Since we were now on the familiar road to Bolling Field, I knew that whatever was up, it was probably going to be us.”

Young Master Vidal, age 10, had the Flivver Movement’s Hammond to thank for what followed. To see what occurred, visit http://goo.gl/b3QsZC. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2014