Aviation History: May 2000 Letters

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Aviation History

Goodyear Duck Facts

Regarding the query in the “Letters” department of your January 2000 issue, the Goodyear GA-2 Duck was built by the Goodyear Aircraft Corporation at Akron, Ohio. The prototype, known as the GA-1, first took to the air in September 1944.

The aircraft’s construction included an all-metal, fabric-covered wing and an all-metal, single-step hull, powered by a Franklin 113-hp single pusher engine. In all, 20 demonstration aircraft were built. About 15 were GA-2s, powered by Franklin GA-4-145-A3 engines, while the remainder were GA-2Bs that had more powerful Franklin GA-4-165-B3 flat, six-piston engines. The plane had a wingspan of 36 feet, was 26 feet in length and had a maximum speed of 125 mph.

After the test program was completed and the aircraft evaluated, it was determined that the costs would be too high to market the Duck to private pilots, so the project was dropped.

Ronald C. Billman
Millersburg, Pa.

Editor’s Note: We received two other responses to David Brainerd’s query. Don Trunick of Escondido, Calif., also identified the Duck and wrote: “I got my single-engine seaplane rating in 1949 in this aircraft at Vail Field, near Los Angeles. The aircraft was on loan as a test plane to W.D. “Hank” Coffin’s flying service. It had the Franklin 145-hp engine and was equipped with crosswind landing gear.” And Nicholas H. Hauprich of Green, Ohio, wrote: “As it happens, I was a design engineer with Goodyear Aircraft Corporation during the war and for quite some time afterward. I was on one of the design teams for the FG-1D and F2G Corsairs and after the war on the Goodyear amphibians. Later I became project engineer on the GA-22A ‘Drake,’ the last of the type. Some years ago I wrote a history of the Goodyear amphibians for the American Aviation Historical Society. If anyone would like to obtain a copy of that article, which costs $10, please address requests to me at P.O. Box 232, Green, Ohio 44232-0232.”

A Link With the Past

In reference to your “Letters” column in the September 1999 issue, I am also familiar with Bennett Field in Binghamton, N.Y.

When I was 9 years old, in 1929, my grandfather took my brother and me to see a huge plane that had landed in Binghamton. I have a photograph of my younger brother and me taken in front of the Ford TriMotor, wing No. NC 9642. We were allowed to go aboard and sit in its wicker seats. The field is now covered with Interstate Highway 81.

At this time, boys of my age were busy trying to whittle out copies of Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, and I had been bitten by the aviation bug, as were my grandfather and uncle. The year before we had visited an airshow in Endicott, held at the old Endicott Airport, located between old State Route 17 and the railroad tracks, across from the golf course clubhouse. The field consisted of a red barn hangar and a grass runway, running alongside the railroad.

The key attraction at the field was a flight of three Army planes, which I believe were brand-new Curtiss 1B or C Hawks. To cap off the day, my grandfather and I took our first ride in a Jenny-type, open-cockpit biplane.

From Lindbergh’s flight in 1927, through World War II, most young men’s dream was to become a pilot. One young man in our area, whose grandfather owned a company that made pipe organs, built a functional model large enough to sit in. It sat atop an air chest taken from an organ and it could climb, dive, turn and bank in response to the stick and rudder. He installed a coin slot to activate the mechanism and planned to make several of them to be used as moneymakers at carnivals and fairs. He had placed it on display in the showroom of the local Ford dealer, the Newing Motor Company, where my uncle and I went to see it. The owner showed me how to use the controls before I inserted my coin–probably a dime.

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