For his book Stars and Commanders, Dave Duntz conducted years of research, including with Ted Smith’s unpublished memoir. The memoir was published as part of Duntz’s book, and is presented here in installments. You can purchase Duntz’s book at www.starsandcommanders.com.
The development of the 560A and 680 series had been a big breakthrough in the industry. Aero Design, once started with the 520 production in 1952, had continued to move forward with breakthrough after breakthrough. The latest was the 680 series that, by the middle of 1957, had taken the marketplace by storm. By this time a reputation had been established world-wide. The 680 was being delivered under its own power to most every country in the world: to Canada, to South America, to Australia and New Zealand, to Germany, to France, to South Asia, to the United States government, and to large responsible industries with the United States. The airplane was beginning to be known as a prestige airplane. A capable airplane. A safe and honest airplane. A true performer.
By the end of 1956, Beech, Piper and Cessna had brought into the marketplace competitive aircraft. Beech came with the Model B-50 that had been given the order by the military in the competition at Fort Bragg in December of 1951 because, although the Aero Commander had won the competition, it was not given the contract because the Commander was not in production. Cessna had come out with the Model 310, a smaller twin than the Commander; and Piper had the even smaller twin, the Apache. The concept of the business aircraft was being broadened and it behooved us to continue with our R&D work. It has always been a very strong feeling of mine that to be successful in any enterprise and to stay successful in the enterprise, that a continuing R&D program was very necessary.
Our next step to upgrade the 680 was to increase its load carrying ability with the same horsepower. We set up a project at our R&D facility to accomplish this by increasing the wing area. Basically, this was done by adding to the wing tips outboard of the ailerons. The wing planform was increased in span by six feet—three feet per side—which gave us an increase in wing area of eleven square feet. The aspect ratio of the wing was increased from 8.3 to 9.45. Since the airfoil of the wing was a 12% section and the taper ratio was .33, I felt that maintaining both of these ratios with the longer space could easily result in a premature and abrupt stall at the wing tips. This was because the new tip section would have a very short chord and would be extremely thin, initiating heavy airflow separation at high angles of attack.
To circumvent this potentially poor characteristic, we used a 12% section where the new wing tip joined the outboard end of the standard wing, but from this station outboard, we made the new tip conform to a 15% section thickness and kept the .33 taper ratio. By doing the change this way, as flight tests showed, we actually improved the stall characteristics of the wing and gained seven miles per hour in speed.
We designated the new model the 680E. F.A.A. flight tests were conducted and approval obtained for an increase of 500 pounds in gross weight making the new gross weight 7,500 pounds. This gave a useful load that made it practically impossible to overload the airplane. Allowing for a good complement of avionics, which were heavy in those days, and full fuel, six passengers with baggage could be carried without overloading the aircraft. We extended the wings of the 560A the same way designating it the 560E. The 560E and 680E designations stood for ‘extended wing’. This change made the series all the more attractive in the marketplace. It could outperform in every respect competitive aircraft and in addition it had the largest true useful load.
The Norman R&D division continued to carry on with the normal improvements and niceties asked for by the sales division. By this time the sales division had expanded greatly and Carl Wootten had brought in additional sales people, a public relations man, and had programmed his advertising through a local advertising firm known as Tom Gordon and Associates. With Carl’s guidance some very good advertisements were developed together with nice brochures describing the aircraft.
International sales were developing rapidly through the efforts of Tom Sim whom Carl had obtained from an export group in Washington, D.C. Tom was extremely knowledgeable about the export market throughout the world, had many contacts, and in a short while had an excellent start in setting up an international distribution chain.
Gene Charles had come to Aero Design the latter part of 1952 as service manager. He was formerly with Ryan Aircraft in San Diego in the service department. He set up a solid service organization through the distribution network. He also established additional authorized factory service depots for the Aero Commander.
Everything was building upward and by mid-1957 things at Aero Design were very bright. Fate suddenly changed the picture! It was summer of 1957 and I was on a few days vacation at Lake Tenkiller, a favorite vacation spot located about 200 miles northeast of Oklahoma City. While enjoying the warmth of the beautiful clear sunshine and mountain air this Sunday morning, August 25, 1957, I received a phone call from our controller, Gene Burke, advising that the entire plant at Bethany had burned to the ground. The cause was unknown at the time. It was suspected that an explosion had taken place in the early hours of Sunday the 25th and the fire quickly spread through the entire plant destroying most everything within—airplanes, work in process, inventory, tooling, loft data and some engineering data, but the main engineering room was not burned although it did receive considerable water damage. Shocking news!
We immediately gathered ourselves together at Lake Tenkiller and headed for Bethany. Upon arriving, about 3:00 P.M. in the afternoon, smoke was still coming from different parts of the plant and the whole building was a twisted mass of wreckage. Tears were plentiful. Before our eyes lay the smoldering remains of what just a few hours before had been a living, active, highly motivated aircraft manufacturing plant. It seemed like heaven and earth had suddenly collapsed!
Fortunately, we as a Company, had several months earlier purchased 44 acres of land just south across the street from the end of the runway at Tulakes Airport and were about six months advanced in building a new and modern plant. We had been well covered with insurance at the now burned plant, and with those monies we could accelerate the completion of this new plant which would give us about three times the space of the old.
Quick action was necessary. New tooling had to be built, although some of the old that was not completely destroyed could be rebuilt and realigned. I called some of my friends at Douglas to see if they could help us by loaning some of their top loft and tooling people. Yes, they could and would cooperate in any way possible to help.
With this turn of events our spirits were again lifted and all of us pitched in to help rebuild that which had suddenly been taken away in a cruel and unbelievable manner.
Here again, faith, perseverance, and the will to conquer won out, and we were building Aero Commanders again in the new facility by Christmas Day 1957, just a bare four months after the ruinous fire. It is truly amazing how quickly man can react to hurdle what seems at the moment to be impossible, and how far faith can reach if one believes in those powers of strength and spirit that God gave to each of us at birth. How differently each of us accept those challenges that are quite often placed in our hands.
Just before the fire the R&D division had undertaken another advanced development of the Aero Commander. I had believed that the next big step for the progress of the business aircraft would be the ability to pressurize the cabin. We had some preliminary work on our test bed “Ole 88” by sealing the cabin areas including windows and strengthening the bulkheads at each end of the cabin. With this work done we pressurized the cabin up to 3 psi differential pressure and found that the cabin would withstand this pressure without any undue expansion of the structure or deformation of the detail structural components of the structure. This was encouraging, but at that period of time the F.A.A. had no regulation on a pressurized cabin for small aircraft. Together we sat down and wrote up a specification with some help from Washington for a pressurization certification requirement in the category of the Aero Commander.
Again, Aero Design was setting the pattern and pioneering in a field where not even mention was made in the regulation for such as a pressurized aircraft in our category.
Prototype testing used a Stratos Compressor and boot strap cooling compressor both of Stratos design. Similar units had been used in commercial, as well as military aircraft, so the units were well proven. Power to the units was obtained through the use of large capacity hydraulic pumps on each engine. Intercoolers were installed and the air to the cabin could be either heated or cooled for winter and summer. It was possible by switching to the cooling position on the panel that a 65 degree F. cabin temperature could be maintained when operating in warm or hot climates such as 80 degree – 100 degree outside temperatures. Standard Airesearch valves for airflow control. A similar valve set at the maximum relief pressure was used as the safety valve. The first valve took care of maintaining the pressurization rate of climb or descent as dictated by the controller and the second took care of dumping if the system malfunctioned and wanted to over pressurize.
The system weight was heavy—about 375 pounds—but it did do a marvelously smooth job of pressurizing the cabin. Smooth as silk at any altitude. No uncomfortable bumps were ever experienced. This same system was used on all pressurized Aero Commanders up through the first series of the Turbo Commander, but in later years it was changed to a bleed air system taken from the Airesearch TP331 engines.
The Aero Commander pressurized version was tested to maximum operating pressures including a 1.5 safety factor and the pressure vessel was cycled at the Oklahoma University power plant section just a half mile from our R&D facility. Between the F.A.A. and ourselves, we agreed upon a cycle program which would cover 4500 cycles or about the equivalent of 9000 hours flight time. All tests had been completed by the end of December 1957. F.A.A. flight tests were started on January 6, 1958 and completed on January 10, 1958.
During the F.A.A. certification program, the F.A.A. had worked with us constantly in order to complete certification of the aircraft so it could be presented at the Distributors’ meeting to be held on January 10 and 11, 1958, but this showing was marred by an accident to the aircraft that occurred the night before the meeting.
Clay Pape and I had flown with the F.A.A. during the entire certification program and everything had been approved except for the night lighting over the instrument panel which had been changed over previous ones. The new system was a series of small red electric bulbs hidden beneath the glare shield. When turned on at night the entire instrument panel was bathed in a comfortable glow of red flood light.
Another innovation was that all radio equipment was the new Wilcox avionics gear known as the Canary System meaning small and compact. All of this equipment was installed in the baggage compartment but its volume took less than half the space of the baggage compartment. The Canary System was the first equipment to be packaged in boxes that were one quarter to one half the size of other equipment at the time. Here another company, well known in the industry for furnishing excellent quality ATR packaged equipment to the airlines, as well as ground equipment to the F.A.A. –pioneering a new concept in the avionics areas—a concept that was far advanced over others and was of excellent quality – the transmitter had a full 25 watts of power and was capable of transmitting and receiving at an altitude of 10,000 feet over 100’s of miles.
The interior of the aircraft had a specially built lavatory and wash basin and a small bar; the airplane was customized in every way—the name chosen for the aircraft was a result of an in-house competition among the employees and the name finally chosen was ALTI-CRUISER, meaning an aircraft that would cruise at high altitudes.
The distributors had been made aware that a new model would be announced and shown at the Distributors’ meeting and a visit to the Norman facility would be made on Saturday, January 11.
Since we had completed all of the F.A.A. program by late evening of the 10th, the F.A.A. wanted to return home to Forth Worth especially since it was Friday. Before leaving, they advised Clay Pape and myself that, if we would make a flight later in the evening when it was dark, we could check the night lighting. If we were satisfied, they would be too. We were to give them a call after the flight and approval of the airplane would be given so that announcement could be made to the distributors the following day.
The night of January 10 was cold and very black except for the few lights around our facility and the runway lights on the landing strip.
Clay and I taxied the airplane out for takeoff with the main tanks showing 80 gallons and the outboard tanks indicating full. We took off, climbed to between 75 and 100 feet and suddenly we lost the right engine and Clay remarked that we had lost the right engine and I replied, “I see we have,” and before I had completed my remark—in fractions of seconds—the left engine quit and now we were in trouble. The airplane had decelerated rapidly; Clay nosed the airplane down, but our speed had dropped to below minimum control speed with one engine out. With the sudden realization that we had experienced a fuel starvation to both engines, I wanted very much to switch over to the auxiliary tanks, but realizing that we were now below VMC and had I switched to auxiliaries and both engines did not restart simultaneously, we could easily have been very suddenly whipped over on our back with no altitude left to recover. We both kept our calm and glided straight ahead not knowing what might be in our path in the farm field straight ahead. I have never seen such a dark, black night. No cars on the highway to give us an indication of depth perception; no houses close by that might give us a feel for our height – nothing! Clay kept the airplane in a shallow glide with just enough airspeed to remain airborne. Then, suddenly, we impacted on the belly and, since the field was very rough, we and the airplane were on our own come what may. When we did come to rest, the airplane had become almost a complete washout; the cabin was a shambles—the beautiful interior was now a mess of torn wood, leather and fabrics. The cabin door was jammed from fuselage distortion as was the emergency exit—both our seats were distorted and our only means of exit was by kicking the pilots side window out. Both of us crawled out of the aircraft through this small opening surrounded with sharp edges of plexiglass causing us to receive a great number of lacerations around our faces, hands and legs. I remember crawling out the opening very fast—I know it was only seconds—as we could smell gasoline fumes and we were both afraid the airplane might explode or catch on fire. In a few minutes a man in a pickup truck drove by and took us both to the Norman hospital. Upon examination, we were both in shock. Clay also received a serious back injury along with less minor ones and I had hit my forehead on the aft edge of the glare shield and had broken my nose along with inuring my forehead and the area of my face across the eyes. We were taken home late that night, but Clay entered the hospital in Oklahoma City and was in traction for weeks to straighten out his back and for many days was in great pain.
By the next day my whole face had turned a dark purple and it was difficult for me to walk.
Early the next morning of the 11th, the boys had gone over to the crash site, picked up the remains of the aircraft and quickly pieced it together as best they could. The dealer meeting was held at Norman as scheduled about 2:00 P.M. in the afternoon. I was able to be driven to Norman with my injuries although in great pain and barely able to walk. Nevertheless, we kept our promise to show a new product and there it was in shambles. The F.A.A. regardless of the incident that had occurred the evening before, came up from Fort Worth and presented me with the type certificate and this, in itself, was cause for some joy. All of the distributors were elated that they now had a pressurized Commander to sell. The very first in the industry!
We drove over to the crash site to see just what we had missed hitting on our way down to the landing. I shuddered some when I saw in daylight how close—so very close—we had come to becoming fatalities. For one, there was a large oak tree with a trunk about three feet in diameter that we just slid past with about two feet to spare. There was a tractor right on our nose, about twenty feet ahead of where we had come to a stop, and other miscellaneous pieces of machinery such as hay bailers, wagons, and boulders. All that by the grace of God we missed while sliding along the ground on the belly of the aircraft. The cause of the fuel starvation to both engines almost simultaneously was because the boys in the final rush of getting the airplane ready for the certification tests had neglected to calibrate the fuel gauge for the center tank system and, although the indicator read 80 gallons, the tanks were in reality almost empty. Just enough fuel remaining for taxi out and a takeoff to reach 75-100 feet altitude. How fortunate we were that we had not lost the engines during one of the certification flights when the airplane would have been at full gross weight. But then, in looking back, if the engines had failed during daylight, Clay might have had a better chance to recover. But no one knows. It was an experience never to be forgotten and we were both very, very lucky to be alive. The Old Man upstairs had his hand on our shoulders again saying: It is not your time to go!
The distributors were thrilled anyway with the new pressurized Aero Commander and they placed many orders before leaving for home.
A little later in 1958 we introduced the straight Model 500 Aero Commander designed as a lower cost unit and to be more competitive with other twins such as the Cessna 310. The airplane was powered with the Lycoming 0-540 engine of 250 H.P. per side, a vinyl interior was installed, the gross weight was 6000 pounds and the cruise speed was just over 200 M.P.H. at 10,000 feet. The airplane was designed more or less as a work horse type machine—air taxi and charter. The 500 airplane was priced at $62,500 with moderate avionic equipment and was readily accepted by the distributor organization.
