North American Aviation XB-70A-1-NA Valkyrie 62-0001. (U.S. Air Force)
4 February 1969: The North American Aviation XB-70A-1-NA Valkyrie, 62-0001, made its very last flight from Edwards Air Force Base, California, to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. NASA Research Test Pilot Fitzhugh L. Fulton, Jr., Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Air Force (Retired), and Lieutenant Colonel Emil Sturmthal, U.S. Air Force, were the flight crew for this final flight.
On arrival at Wright-Patterson, Fulton closed out the log book and handed it over to the curator of the National Museum of the United States Air Force.
The Mach 3+ prototype strategic bomber and high-speed, high-altitude research airplane made its first flight 21 September 1964. It completed 83 flights for a total of 160 hours, 16 minutes of flight time.
Lieutenant Colonel Emil Sturmthal, USAF and Fitzhugh Fulton, NASA, with the North American Aviation XB-70A-1-NA 62-0001 at Edwards AFB, California. (Chris Walmsley/Rockwell International)
62-0001 was the first of three prototype Mach 3+ strategic bombers. (The third prototype, XB-70B 62-0208, was not completed.) The Valkyrie utilized the most advanced technology available. Materials and manufacturing techniques had to be developed specifically to build this airplane. It is a large delta wing airplane with a forward canard and two vertical fins. The outer 20 feet (6.096 meters) of each wing could be lowered to a 25° or 65° angle for high speed flight. Although this did provide additional directional stability, it actually helped increase the compression lift, which supported up to 35% of the airplane’s weight in flight.
The XB-70A is 185 feet, 10 inches (56.642 meters) long with a wingspan of 105 feet (32.004 meters) and overall height of 30 feet, 9 inches (9.373 meters). The delta wing had 0° angle of incidence and 0° dihedral. (The second XB-70A had 5° dihedral.) The wing has 3.0° negative twist. At 25% chord, the wing has 58.0° sweepback. Total wing area is 6,297 square feet (585 square meters). The Valkyrie has a empty weight of 231,215 pounds (104,877 kilograms), and maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) of 521,056 pounds (236,347 kilograms).
It is powered by six General Electric YJ93-GE-3 turbojet engines. The J93 is an afterburning single-shaft axial-flow turbojet with an 11-stage compressor section and two-stage turbine. It has a Normal Power rating of 17,700 pounds of thrust (78.73 kilonewtons), 19,900 pounds (88.52 kilonewtons), Military, and 28,000 pounds (124.55 kilonewtons), with afterburner, Maximum. (All ratings are continuous, at 6,825 r.p.m.) The YJ93-GE-3 is 236.3 inches (6.002 meters) long, 54.15 inches (1.375 meters) in diameter, and weighs 5,220 pounds (2,368 kilograms).
The maximum speed achieved was Mach 3.1 (1,787 knots/2,056 miles per hour, or 3,309 kilometers per hour) at 73,000 feet (22,250 meters). Its mission maximum speed is 1,721 knots (1,980 miles per hour/3,187 kilometers per hour) at 79,050 feet (29,094 meters). The XB-70A has a rate of climb of 30,380 feet per minute (154 meters per second). The service ceiling is 77,350 feet (23,576 meters).
The Valkyrie has a maximum fuel capacity of 41,688 gallons (157,806 liters) JP-5 or JP-6, carried in 11 tanks throughout the fuselage and wings. It also carries 42.4 gallons (161 liters) of engine oil. The maximum range is 3,726 nautical miles (4,287 statute miles/6,901 kilometers).
The second Valkyrie, XB-70A-2-NA 62-0207, was destroyed when it crashed after a mid-air collision with a Lockheed F-104N Starfighter flown by NASA Chief Research Test Pilot Joseph A. Walker, 8 June 1966. Both Walker and the B-70’s co-pilot, Major Carl S. Cross, U.S. Air Force, were killed.
XB-70A Valkyrie 62-0001 is in the collection of the National Museum of the United States Air Force.
North American Aviation XB-70A-1-NA Valkyrie 62-0001 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. (U.S. Air Force)North American Aviation XB-70A-1-NA Valkyrie 62-0001 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. This photograph shows the twelve elevons that act as elevators, flaps and ailerons, the swiveling action of the vertical fins, open drag chute doors and the variable exhaust outlets. (U.S. Air Force).
4 February 1902: Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Brigadier General, United States Air Force, Medal of Honor, was born at Detroit, Michigan. He was the son of Swedish immigrant Charles August Lindbergh (born Karl Månsson), an attorney, and Evangeline Lodge Land Lindbergh, a high school chemistry teacher. Lindbergh attended Redondo Beach High School, Redondo Beach, California, 1917–1918.
Lindbergh, age 11, with his dog, Dingo. (The Denver Post)
In 1920–1922 Lindbergh was enrolled as an engineering student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He shared an apartment with his mother who was teaching at the nearby Emerson School. A friend from the university showed Lindbergh a brochure from a flight school. Mrs. Lindbergh is reported to have told the friend, “If Charles goes to flying school, I will hold you responsible.” Soon after, Lindbergh left the university and entered a flying school in Nebraska. In 1927, the University of Wisconsin bestowed the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) on him.
Certainly one of the world’s best known pilots, Lindbergh began flight training at the age of 20. He was an Aviation Cadet, 19 March 1924–16 March 1925, and trained at the United States Army flight schools at Brooks and Kelly Fields, in Texas. One of his flight instructors was Lieutenant Russell Lowell Maughan. He graduated at the top of his class and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Officers Reserve Corps, U.S. Air Service, with date of rank of 14 March 1925.
Second Lieutenant Charles A. Lindbergh, Air Service, United States Army, circa 1925. (San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives)
Lindbergh was promoted to First Lieutenant, Air Corps, 7 December 1925, and to Captain, 13 July 1926. He flew as an Air Mail pilot and gained valuable flight experience.
Lindbergh was the chief pilot of Robertson Aircraft Corporation at Lambert Field, St. Louis, Missouri. The company was contracted to fly the mail to Chicago, with intermediate stops at Springfield and Peoria, Illinois, using several modified de Havilland DH-4 biplanes. On two occasions, 16 September and 3 November 1926, Lindbergh had to bail out of his mail plane at night.
Air Mail Pilot Charles A. Lindbergh, circa 1927. (NASM)
He resigned from Robertson Aircraft and formed a group to finance and build the Spirit of St. Louis.
On 20 May 1927, Lindbergh departed New York in his custom-built Ryan NYP monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis, and 33 hours, 30 minutes later, he landed at Paris, France, becoming the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. For this accomplishment he won the Orteig Prize of $25,000 (about $400,600 in 2022 dollars).
Charles A. Lindbergh with the Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis at Roosevelt Field, New York, 20 May 1927. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
When he returned to the United States, Lindbergh was presented the Distinguished Flying Cross by President Coolidge. On 14 December 1927, by Act of Congress, Lindbergh was awarded the Medal of Honor:
“For displaying heroic courage and skill as a navigator, at the risk of his life, by his nonstop flight in his airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, from New York City to Paris, France, 20–21 May 1927, by which Capt. Lindbergh not only achieved the greatest individual triumph of any American citizen but demonstrated that travel across the ocean by aircraft was possible.”
Charles Augustus Lindbergh’s Medal of Honor at the Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. (Robert Lawton)
Captain Lindbergh was promoted to the rank of Colonel, Officers Reserve Corps, U.S. Army Air Corps, 18 July 1927. In the 1930s, he had various assignments, including evaluating new aircraft at Wright Field.
Two years after his transatlantic flight, Lindbergh married Miss Anne Spencer Morrow, daughter of the United States Ambassador to Mexico, 27 May 1929, at Englewood, New Jersey. They would have six children.
Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh with their Lockheed Model 8 Sirius, NR211, at Grand Central Airport, Glendale, California, shortly before their departure for New York, 20 April 1930. (HistoryNet)
In 1930–1931, the Lindberghs flew a Lockheed Model 8 Sirius named Tingmissartoq from the United States to China, traveling through Canada, Alaska, Siberia, and Japan. Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote about the journey in North to the Orient (Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1935). The Sirius was equipped with floats for a part of the trip. In 1933 they flew the Model 8 to explore air routes in Europe, Africa and South America. NR211 is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum.
Charles Lindbergh testifies at “The Trial of the Century.” The defendant, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, is at the lower right with his back toward the camera. (Library of Congress/New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection 3c09416)
Their first son, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., was kidnapped from the family’s home, 1 March 1932. A ransom of $50,000 was paid (equivalent to $1,015,526 today), however the boy’s body was found 12 March. At “The Trial of the Century,” Bruno Richard Hauptman was convicted of the crime. He was later executed.
Left to Right: Albert Kisk, Harry Guggenheim, Dr. Goddard, Charles A. Lindbergh, Nils Lindquist and Charles Mansur. (U.S. Air Force photograph.)
During the mid-1930s, Lindbergh was an active supporter of the rocketry experiments of Dr. Robert H. Goddard. He had other interests a well. With Nobel Prize winner Dr. Alexis Carrel, he invented the Perfusion Pump to allow oxygenated blood to be supplied to human organs. This eventually led to the “heart-lung machine” that made “open heart” surgery possible.
“Charles Lindbergh and Alexis Carrel with the glass heart,” Samuel Johnsonson Woolf, 1938. (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)Colonel Lindbergh in the cockpit of a Curtiss Wright P-36A Hawk, 38-102, circa 1938. This airplane was destroyed during the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 7 December 1941. (Niagara Aerospace Museum)
During World War II, Lindbergh served as a civilian adviser and flew the Chance Vought F4U-1 Corsair in combat missions with Marine fighter squadrons VMF-216 and VMF-222. He also flew the Lockheed P-38 Lightning with the Army Air Force 433rd Fighter Squadron, 475th Fighter Group.
Charles A. Lindbergh with a Chance Vought F4U-1 Corsair at Emirau Island in the Bismarck Archipelago, May 1944. (U.S. Navy)Charles A. Lindbergh in the cockpit of a Chance Vought F4U-1 Corsair, Green Islands, Solomon Sea, May 1944. (NASM)Another photograph showing Charles A. Lindbergh in the cockpit of a Chance Vought F4U-1 Corsair of VF-24, Roi-Namur, Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, circa 1944.
On 28 July 1944, Lindbergh was flying “Blue 3” with a flight of P-38s from the 433rd along the north coast of New Guinea. Over Elpaputih Bay, Blue Flight encountered enemy aircraft. Lindbergh shot down one of them. Various sources identify the aircraft as a Mitsubishi Ki-51 Type 99 “Sonia” flown by Captain Saburo Shimada.
He is starting down in a wing over—out of control. The nose goes down. The plane turns slightly as it picks up speed—down—down—down toward the sea. A fountain of spray—white foam on the water—waves circling outward as from a stone tossed in a pool—the waves merge into those of the sea—the foam disappears—the surface is at it was before.
—The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh, by Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Harcourt Brace Jovanovoch, Inc., New York, 1970, at page 889
Charles A. Lindbergh with a Lockheed P-38J Lightning, circa July 1944. (U.S. Air Force)
In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower reactivated his Army Air Corps commission and appointed him Brigadier General, United States Air Force.
Charles A. Lindbergh was the author of We (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1927), Of Flight and Life, (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1948), and The Spirit of St. Louis (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1953). This third book won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1954, and is very highly recommended by This Day in Aviation. The book was made into a motion picture in 1957, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jimmy Stewart as Lindbergh. (This film was a major influence on the author of TDiA.)
In 1972, while accompanying a television crew investigating a “lost tribe” in the Philippine Islands, Lindbergh and the group were stranded when their helicopter broke down. They were rescued by the 31st Aerospace rescue and Recovery Squadron, based at Clark Field.
Charles Lindbergh died on Maui, Hawaii, 26 August 1974. He was buried at the Palapala Ho’omau Church Cemetery, Kipahulu, Maui.
Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-63) lifts off from Launch Complex 39B, Kennedy Space Center, 05:22:04 UTC, 3 February 1995. (NASA)
3 February 1995: At 12:22:03.994 a.m., Eastern Standard Time, Space Shuttle Discovery (OV-103) lifted off from Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission, STS-63, was a rendezvous with the Russian space station, Mir.
Commander James Donald Wetherbee, United States Navy, on his second space flight, was the mission commander. Lieutenant Colonel Eileen Marie Collins, United States Air Force, on her first space flight, was Discovery’s pilot. This was the first time in the NASA Space Shuttle Program that a woman had been assigned as pilot of a space shuttle.
Also on board were Mission Specialists Bernard Anthony Harris, Jr., M.D.; Colin Michael Foale, Ph.D.; Janice Elaine Voss, Sc.D.; and Colonel Vladimir Georgiyevich Titov, Russian Air Force, of the Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities.
Flight crew of Space Shuttle Discovery, Mission STS-63. Seated, left to right: Janice Elaine Voss, Sc.D., Mission Specialist; Lieutenant Colonel Eileen Marie Collins, U.S. Air Force, Pilot; Commander James Donald Weatherbee, U.S. Navy, Mission Commander; Colonel Vladimir Georgiyevich Titov, Russian Air Force, Cosmonaut. Standing, Dr. Bernard Anthony Harris, Jr., M.D., Mission Spcialist; C. Michael Foale, Mission Spcialist. (NASA MSFC-9414225)
The primary purpose of the mission was to conduct a close approach and fly-around of Mir to demonstrate techniques prior to an actual docking, scheduled for a later flight. A number of scientific experiments and a space walk were carried out by the crew.
Space Station Mir imaged from Space Shuttle Discovery during Mission STS-63. Souz TM-20 is docked with the space station. (NASA)
Discovery landed at the Kennedy Space Shuttle Landing Facility at 11:50:19 UTC, 11 February, after completing 129 orbits. The total mission duration was 8 days, 6 hours, 28 minutes, 15 seconds.
Eileen Collins was born at Elmira, New York, 19 November 1956, a daughter of Irish immigrants to the United States of America. She graduated from high school in 1974 then attended Corning Community College, Corning, New York, where she earned an associate’s degree in Mathematics and Science, 1976. She went on to Syracuse University at Syracuse, New York, graduating in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in math and exonomics. In 1986 Collins earned a master of science degree in Operations Research from Stanford University, and three years later, received a second master’s degree in Space Systems Management from Webster University.
2nd Lieutenant Eileen M. Collins, USAF, with a Northrop T-38A Talon trainer at Vance AFB, September 1979. (U.S. Air Force)
Eileen Collins had expressed an interest in aviation and space flight from an early age. After graduating from Syracuse University, she was one of four women selected to attend U.S. Air Force pilot training at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma. She graduated in 1979, earning her pilot’s wings and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. She remained at Vance AFB as a pilot instructor, flying the Northrop T-38A Talon supersonic trainer.
Collins was next sent for pilot transition training in the Lockheed C-141 Starlifter, a four-engine transport. She served as a pilot at Travis Air Force Base, California.
From 1986–1989, Captain Collins was assigned as Assistant Professor in Mathematics at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Next, she became only the second woman to attend the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, graduating with Class 89B.
Major Eileen M. Collins, U.S. Air Force, with McDonnell F-4E-31-MC Phantom II 66-0289, at Edwards AFB, 1990. (U.S. Air Force)Eileen Collins (Irish America Magazine)
In 1990, Major Collins was accepted for the NASA astronaut program, and was selected as an astronaut in 1992.
Eileen Marie Collins was awarded the Harmon Trophy for her flight aboard Discovery (STS-63). In 1997, she flew as pilot for Atlantis (STS-84). She commanded Columbia (STS-93) in 1999, and Discovery (STS-114) in 2005.
Colonel Collins retired from the Air Force in January 2005, and from NASA in May 2006. With a remarkable record of four shuttle flights, she has logged 38 days, 8 hours, 10 minutes of space flight. During her career, she flew more than 30 aircraft types, and logged a total of 6,751 hours.
Colonel Eileen M. Collins, U.S. Air Force, NASA Astronaut. (Annie Liebovitz)
2–4 February 1982: Over a three-day period, several flight crews set a series of Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) payload-to-altitude world records at Podmoskovnoe. They flew an OKB Mil Design Bureau Mi-26 heavy lift helicopter.
On 3 February 1982, flown by Ге́рман Вита́льевич Алфёров (Herman Vitalievich Alferov) and L.A. Indeev, the Mi-26 with an all-up weight of 56,768.8 kilograms (125,153.8 pounds) flew to a height of 2,000 meters (6,562 feet).¹ Later, they flew to a height of 4,100 meters (13,451 feet) with a payload of 25,000 kilograms (55,115.6 pounds).²
The Mil Mi-26 (NATO code name: Halo) first flew on 25 October 1977. It is a twin-engine heavy-lift helicopter, normally operated by a flight crew of five, and can carry up to 90 passengers.
The Mi-26 is 40.025 meters (131 feet, 3¾ inches) long, with all rotors turning, and has a height of 8.145 meters (26 feet, 8¾ inches). The eight-bladed main rotor has a diameter of 32.00 meters (105 feet) and turns clockwise, as seen from above. (The advancing blade is on the left.) A five-bladed tail rotor is mounted on a pylon, to the right side of the aircraft, in a tractor configuration. It turns clockwise, as seen from the helicopter’s left.
The helicopter has an empty weight of 28,200 kilograms (62,170 pounds), gross weight of 49,600 kilograms (109,350 pounds) and maximum weight of 56,000 kilograms (123,450 pounds). The fuel capacity is 12,000 liters (3,200 gallons).
The Mi-26 is powered by two Lotarev D-136 turboshaft engines which are rated at 8,500 kW (11,299 shaft horsepower), each. It’s cruise speed is 255 kilometers per hour (158 miles per hour) and the maximum speed is 296 kilometers per hour (183 miles per hour). Range is 620 kilometers (385 miles). The service ceiling is 4,500 meters (14,765 feet).
320 Mil Mi-26 helicopters have been built.
Г. В. Алфёров
Herman Vitalievich Alferov (Ге́рман Вита́льевич Алфёров) was born at Moscow, U.S.S.R., 11 April 1934. He learned to fly at the Moscow Flying Club at the age of 16. He was a flight instructor at the Russian National Aeroclub Chkalov, the oldest flying club in Russia, from 1952 to 1954. He graduated from the DOSAAF flight/technical school at Saransk in 1954.
Alferov was a test pilot at OKB Mil Design Bureau from 1954 until 1982. He made the first flights of many Mil helicopters, including the Mi-1 KX light helicopter in 1957, the first Soviet production turboshaft-powered helicopter, the heavy-lift Mi-6 (he was co-pilot), the twin-turboshaft Mi-2, Mi-10K flying crane, and the Mi-24 “Hind” attack helicopter (co-pilot). He was the lead test pilot for the Mi-24 at the Arsenyev aviation plant at Aresenev, Primorski Krai, in the Russian Far East from 1970, and for the Mi-26 beginning in 1978.
Herman Vitalievich Alferov died at Moscow, Russia, 9 January 2012, at the age of 77 years. During his aviation career, he had been awarded the Order of the October Revolution, Order of the Red Banner of Labor (two awards), Order of the Red Star (two awards), Order of the Badge of Honor, and was named an Honored Test Pilot of the Soviet Union. He had participated in setting five FAI world records for helicopters.
3 February 1959: In the late 1950s, “rock and roll” music was becoming increasingly popular in America. Buddy Holly (Charles Hardin Holley) was among the most famous rock and roll singers.
While on a concert tour, Holly, formerly of the band The Crickets, chartered a small airplane from Dwyer Flying Service to fly himself and two other performers to Fargo, North Dakota, for the following night’s event.
After the performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, ended, Holly, Ritchie Valens (Richard Steven Valenzuela) and “The Big Bopper,” (Jiles Perry Richardson, Jr.) were driven to the nearby Mason City Municipal Airport (MCW), arriving at 12:40 a.m., Central Standard Time (0640 UTC). They were met by their assigned pilot, Roger Arthur Peterson, and boarded the chartered airplane. They took off at 12:55 a.m. CST (0655 UTC).
Richard Steven Valenzuela. (Unattributed)
During the previous eight hours, Roger Peterson had telephoned the Air Traffic Communications Service three times for the weather forecast along his planned route. He was informed that weather was VFR, with ceilings of 4,200 feet (1,280 meters) or higher and visibility 10 miles (16 kilometers) or more.
ATCS did NOT inform Peterson of a “Flash Advisory” of a 100-mile-wide (160 kilometers) band of snow moving into the area at 25 knots (13 meters per second). Moderate to heavy icing conditions were present along with winds of 30 to 50 knots (15 to 26 feet per second).
“The Big Bopper,” Jiles Perry Richardson, Jr. (Unattributed)
While taxiing to the runway, the pilot once again radioed ATCS for the weather. It was now reported as: ceiling 3,000 feet (914 meters), sky obscured, visibility 6 miles (10 kilometers) in light snow, and wind gusting 20 to 30 knots (10 to 15 meters per second).
After a normal takeoff, the airplane climbed to approximately 800 feet (244 meters) and made a left 180° turn. It passed the airport heading northwest.
The charter service’s owner, Hubert Dwyer, watched the departure from the airport’s tower. He was able to see the airplane’s navigation lights until it was about five miles (8 kilometers) away, then it slowly descended out of sight.
When Peterson activated his flight plan by radio after taking off, as was expected, Dwyer asked the ATCS to try to contact him. No contact was established. The airplane and its passengers never arrived at the destination.
After sunrise, Dwyer began an air search for the missing airplane. At 09:35 a.m., he located the crashed airplane in a farm field approximately 5 miles northwest of the airport. The airplane was destroyed and all four occupants were dead. There was about 4 inches (10 centimeters) of snow on the ground.
Roger Arthur Peterson
The pilot, Roger A. Peterson, was 21 years old and had been issued a commercial pilot’s certificate with an airplane–single-engine land rating, in April 1958. He was also a certified flight instructor. He had flown 711 flight hours during the nearly five years he had been flying. He had worked for Dwyer for a year.
Peterson had acquired 52 hours of instrument flight training and had passed the written test for the rating, but had failed an instrument flight check the previous year. He had 128 hours in the airplane type, but none of his instrument flight training had been in this aircraft.
Peterson was born at Alta, Iowa, 24 May 1937. He was the first of four children of Arthur Erland Peterson, a farmer, and Pearl I. Kraemer Peterson. He attended Fairview Consolidated School and graduated in 1954. Peterson married Miss DeAnn Lenz, a former classmate, at the Saint Paul Lutheran Church in Alta, 14 September 1958.
Roger Arthur Peterson is buried at the Buena Vista Memorial Cemetery, Storm Lake, Iowa.
N3794N was well-equipped for instrument flight. The attitude indicator, a Sperry Gyroscope Company, Inc., F-3 Attitude Gyro, however, displayed pitch attitude in a way that was different than the indicators used in the airplanes in which Peterson had taken instrument flight instruction.
This contemporary magazine advertisement depicts the Sperry F-3 Attitude Gyro. (Vintage Ad Service)
The Civil Aeronautics Board (predecessor of the Federal Aviation Administration) investigated the accident. There was no indication of an engine malfunction or of structural failure of the aircraft.
Investigators concluded that as Peterson flew away from the airport he entered an area of total darkness, unable to see anything which would give him a visual cue of the airplane’s flight attitude. The unfamiliar attitude indicator may have confused him. He quickly became spatially disoriented and lost control of the Bonanza.
N3794N impacted the ground in a 90° right bank with a nose down pitch angle, on a heading of 315°. The right wing broke off and parts of the airplane were scattered as far as 540 feet (165 meters). The three passengers were thrown from the wreckage.
The airspeed indicator needle was stuck between 165 and 170 knots (190–196 miles per hour/306–315 kilometers per hour) and the rate of climb indicator was stuck showing a 3,000 foot-per-minute (15 meters per second) rate of descent. The tachometer was stuck at 2,200 r.p.m.
This 1947 Beechcraft Model 35 Bonanza, serial number D-1089, N3851N, is the same type aircraft in which Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper were killed, 3 February 1959. (Unattributed)
The airplane was a 1947 Beechcraft 35 Bonanza, civil registration N3794N, serial number D-1019. It was a single-engine, four-place, all-metal light airplane with retractable landing gear. The Model 35 had the distinctive V-tail which combined the functions of a conventional vertical fin and rudder, and horizontal tail plane and elevators.
N3794N was completed at Wichita, Kansas, 17 October 1947 and it had accumulated 2,154 flight hours over the previous twelve years. The airplane’s engine had been overhauled 40 hours before the accident.
The Model 35 was 25 feet, 2 inches (7.671 meters) long with a wingspan of 32 feet, 10 inches (10.008 meters) and height of 6 feet, 7 inches (2.007 meters). It had an empty weight of 1,458 pounds (661 kilograms) and gross weight of 2,550 pounds (1,157 kilograms).
N3794N was powered by an air-cooled, normally-aspirated, 471.24-cubic-inch-displacement (7.72 liter) Continental Motors, Inc., E185-8 horizontally-opposed 6-cylinder engine with a compression ratio of 7:1. This was a direct-drive engine which turned a two-bladed, electrically-controlled, Beechcraft R-203-100 variable-pitch propeller with a diameter of 7 feet, 4 inches (2.235 meters), constructed of laminated birch. The engine had a maximum continuous power rating of 185 horsepower at 2,300 r.p.m., at Sea Level, and 205 horsepower at 2,600 r.p.m. (five minute limit) for takeoff. It required 80/87-octane aviation gasoline and had an expected overhaul interval of 1,500 hours. The E-185-8 had a dry weight of 344 pounds (156 kilograms).
The “V-tail Bonanza” had a maximum speed of 184 miles per hour (296 kilometers per hour) at Sea Level, and a cruise speed of 175 miles per hour ( 282 kilometers per hour)at 10,000 feet (3,048 meters). Its service ceiling was 18,000 feet (5,486 meters).
With full fuel, 40 gallons (151.4 liters), the airplane had a range of 750 miles (1,207 kilometers).¹
The Beechcraft Model 35 Bonanza was in production from 1947 to 1982. More than 17,000 Model 35s and the similar Model 36 were built.
The Civil Aeronautics Board concluded:
Probable Cause
The Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the pilot’s unwise decision to embark on a flight which would necessitate flying solely by instruments when he was not properly certificated or qualified to do so. Contributing factors were serious deficiencies in the weather briefing, and the pilot’s unfamiliarity with the instrument which determines the attitude of the aircraft.¹
Wreck of Beechcraft Model 35 Bonanza N3794N, 3 February 1959.
