When We Were Young With Our Corvettes - Chapter #32
Santa Catalina Island and the “Goose” – Chapter 32
The haze had lifted early with the promise of a beautiful, sunny Saturday when I picked Jennifer up at her apartment in Seal Beach. We then headed the Vette up Pacific Coast highway (101A) to the Los Alamitos Circle and took Lakewood Boulevard north past the Municipal Golf Course and turned left on Wardlow Road into the airport.
The Long Beach Municipal Airport, originally named Daugherty Field, was built in 1926 with its single Art Deco designed terminal looking in 1963 much as it did then. That’s not surprising given the degree of control the City of Long Beach always exerted over expansion of military uses of the field and commercial aviation flights. Hence, construction of the Naval Air Station in nearby Los Alamitos and rapid growth of LAX.
It was from this airport that Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan departed in 1938 on a transcontinental flight to Brooklyn, New York, where he was denied permission to fly to Ireland. Then “by mistake” he flew there anyway when his flight-plan showed a return to Long Beach. He claimed it was due to a “navigation error”, caused by heavy cloud cover and low-light conditions resulting in a misread compass. He was a highly skilled pilot and aircraft mechanic so nobody believed him, but he never changed his story. His pilot’s certificate was suspended for fourteen days. He and his plane arrived in New York on a steamship the day the revocation expired, followed by a ticker-tape parade larger than that given Lindbergh in 1927.
We talked about this trip for months. It came up every time we were at the beach in Belmont Shore and saw the low flying seaplanes directly overhead on their way over and back from Catalina Island. A day-trip to see the sights in Avalon and a rented car to explore the island was finally going to happen.
We parked and locked the Vette, entered the terminal building with its original marble floor and walked to the counter serving Catalina Channel Airlines (one counter served all commercial flights). They offered seven flights daily, with seating for nine with a passenger riding in the co-pilots seat. We had reserved the first flight of the day, 8 a.m.; back on the last flight leaving Avalon at 6 p.m. Six dollars each way. We got our tickets and headed for gate 2. And there she sat a few feet away; a Grumman
Model G-21, named the “Goose”. We were about to have the experience of a lifetime.
The Grumman Goose was a high-winged monoplane supporting two 450 hp Pratt & Whitney nine cylinder, air-cooled radial engines and the under-wing stabilizing floats. It had a cursing speed of 190 mph, a ceiling of 21,000 feet and a range of 650 miles. The deep fuselage served as a hull and was equipped with hand-cranked retractable landing gear. Because they could go just about anywhere, their popularity quickly broadened and when the last of the 345 ever made came off the line in 1945, their reputation for reliability and versatility was well established. One typically thinks of them as a “hold-over” from WWII, having seen service in the United States Army and Navy and in Britain’s Royal Air Force and Canada’s RCAF. But in reality, these light, amphibious aircraft were first built in 1937 at Bethpage, New York, for millionaires to use as flying yachts and transportation to their offices in Manhattan.
The six of us making this trip filed out onto the tarmac and were greeted at the cabin door by the “water pilot”, hatless and in civilian cloths. Jennifer asked if she could fly up front and with a quick head-to-toe glance, he obliged. I sat directly behind her as the other passengers took their seats and the pilot pulled the door shut and climbed forward to buckle himself in. The engines started with a roar, one after the other, and the plane began to taxi. The pilot with head-set on leaned around facing back and gave us the safety instructions, “Life Jackets above the windows, etc”.The throttles, which were hinged from above the windshield in a cluster allowing him to grip both with one hand, were moved full forward. We raced down the runway and up we climbed for our fifteen minute flight to Avalon.
The haze had lifted early with the promise of a beautiful, sunny Saturday when I picked Jennifer up at her apartment in Seal Beach. We then headed the Vette up Pacific Coast highway (101A) to the Los Alamitos Circle and took Lakewood Boulevard north past the Municipal Golf Course and turned left on Wardlow Road into the airport.
The Long Beach Municipal Airport, originally named Daugherty Field, was built in 1926 with its single Art Deco designed terminal looking in 1963 much as it did then. That’s not surprising given the degree of control the City of Long Beach always exerted over expansion of military uses of the field and commercial aviation flights. Hence, construction of the Naval Air Station in nearby Los Alamitos and rapid growth of LAX.
It was from this airport that Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan departed in 1938 on a transcontinental flight to Brooklyn, New York, where he was denied permission to fly to Ireland. Then “by mistake” he flew there anyway when his flight-plan showed a return to Long Beach. He claimed it was due to a “navigation error”, caused by heavy cloud cover and low-light conditions resulting in a misread compass. He was a highly skilled pilot and aircraft mechanic so nobody believed him, but he never changed his story. His pilot’s certificate was suspended for fourteen days. He and his plane arrived in New York on a steamship the day the revocation expired, followed by a ticker-tape parade larger than that given Lindbergh in 1927.
We talked about this trip for months. It came up every time we were at the beach in Belmont Shore and saw the low flying seaplanes directly overhead on their way over and back from Catalina Island. A day-trip to see the sights in Avalon and a rented car to explore the island was finally going to happen.
We parked and locked the Vette, entered the terminal building with its original marble floor and walked to the counter serving Catalina Channel Airlines (one counter served all commercial flights). They offered seven flights daily, with seating for nine with a passenger riding in the co-pilots seat. We had reserved the first flight of the day, 8 a.m.; back on the last flight leaving Avalon at 6 p.m. Six dollars each way. We got our tickets and headed for gate 2. And there she sat a few feet away; a Grumman
Model G-21, named the “Goose”. We were about to have the experience of a lifetime.
The Grumman Goose was a high-winged monoplane supporting two 450 hp Pratt & Whitney nine cylinder, air-cooled radial engines and the under-wing stabilizing floats. It had a cursing speed of 190 mph, a ceiling of 21,000 feet and a range of 650 miles. The deep fuselage served as a hull and was equipped with hand-cranked retractable landing gear. Because they could go just about anywhere, their popularity quickly broadened and when the last of the 345 ever made came off the line in 1945, their reputation for reliability and versatility was well established. One typically thinks of them as a “hold-over” from WWII, having seen service in the United States Army and Navy and in Britain’s Royal Air Force and Canada’s RCAF. But in reality, these light, amphibious aircraft were first built in 1937 at Bethpage, New York, for millionaires to use as flying yachts and transportation to their offices in Manhattan.
The six of us making this trip filed out onto the tarmac and were greeted at the cabin door by the “water pilot”, hatless and in civilian cloths. Jennifer asked if she could fly up front and with a quick head-to-toe glance, he obliged. I sat directly behind her as the other passengers took their seats and the pilot pulled the door shut and climbed forward to buckle himself in. The engines started with a roar, one after the other, and the plane began to taxi. The pilot with head-set on leaned around facing back and gave us the safety instructions, “Life Jackets above the windows, etc”.The throttles, which were hinged from above the windshield in a cluster allowing him to grip both with one hand, were moved full forward. We raced down the runway and up we climbed for our fifteen minute flight to Avalon.
READ THE BOOK
Comment