Guy Norris: April 2006 Archives

It's dark at 4.45am as I drive  through the side gate of the former Douglas Aircraft final assembly complex at Long Beach, California.

This would be the graveyard shift had I been working here, but now - in late April 2006 - that phrase carries with it all the hackneyed double meaning of a cheap horror movie.

I am here to witness a bit of history, and a sad moment at that. This morning, like a state execution before dawn, we are gathering to witness the roll out of the very last Boeing 717. The little T-tail jet is already sitting on the cold ramp outside Building 80 when I arrive.



Its shiny domed fuselage reflecting the lurid blue and red neon of the iconic "Fly DC Jets" sign on the roof top overhead, this aircraft is truly the last of the line. Out of this building, and the adjacent Building 84, have rolled out since 1958 a staggering 556 DC-8s, 976 DC-9s and C-9s, 446 DC-10/KC-10s, 1,191 MD-80s, 115 MD-90s, 200 MD-11s and another 155 717s.

Workers young and not so young, on shift and off, emerge like ghosts from the pre-dawn blackness into the lurid pool of light thrown by portable spotlights over the jet. Gradually they cluster around the nose, group photographs being snapped amid a low murmur of conversation. Then it is time. A tow truck rumbles into life, and its lights come on as the driver moves it gingerly through the crowd. "Whoa...isn't that the cleanest looking tow truck you've ever seen?" exclaims someone. The tow bar is hooked on and a voice barks uncomfortably through a bullhorn "everyone back behind the plane!"

In an almost trance-like state everyone obeys and the last of the line slowly begins its journey. The crowd of around 200 shuffles behind as the 717 is manoeuvred to the edge of the public road - Lakewood Blvd - which bisects this historic site. The road must be closed for a few minutes while the operation takes place, as it has done almost ceremoniously pre-dawn virtually without a break week in, week out for the past 48 years.

California Highway Patrol officers on motorbikes briefly set up a whirl of "whoop-whoop" sirens and brilliant lights to stop the traffic. The first hint of daylight is meanwhile creeping into the eastern sky as the 717 is trundled across the street. Someone says "where's the noise?" But no-one is in the mood for cheering. Following that distinctive T-tail, everyone feels they are in a funeral cortege rather than a celebratory parade.

Not surprising, really  given the inevitable end of an era, and with it the  disappearance of so many jobs. Suddenly it is over. We watch the 717s tail vanish behind a blast fence as it is towed to the delivery ramp in readiness for testing and handover. No doubt the planned double delivery ceremony of the final two aircraft in May will be more about the celebration of the Douglas legacy, but right now the mood is one of grim resignation.



But it is inside the cavernous, echoing, almost desolate interior of the once bustling Building 80 that the reality truly hits home. Here, where I once inspected rows of MD-80s, 90s and even 717s amidst the deafening tattoo of rivet guns, there is now empty silence. The long trench in the concrete along one wall of the building, dug to house the moving production line equipment, lies in mute testimony to the many brave innovations that were tried as the Long Beach line fought for its life.

Now, sadly for so many in Southern California, the fight is essentially over. Across the runway, for the time being at least, Boeing continues to build the mighty C-17. But for how long? As it stands, we shall be repeating the C-17 equivalent of the 717's dawn salute in just two short years. That will truly be the end of not just major aircraft assembly at Long Beach, but throughout the whole of California - a thought once unthinkable in the cradle of the aerospace business.  Maybe its time for one of California's last significantly viable industries to do something about it - a Hollywood blockbuster about "The Long Beach Blues and the death of Douglas."

I'm climbing up through 33,000ft (10,000m) over the bleached dry Mojave Desert as I write this. From my window on the port side of my United 757 I can see several kilometres to the north, the white expanse of Edwards AFB and its dry lakebed. It doesn't take too much imagination to think that, 50 years ago, the rarefied air up here was once home to a very special man, the test pilot Scott Crossfield, who died in an aircraft accident on 20 April.

I couldn't pretend to have known Crossfield in any way, but I met him several times and I think I can tell you something about this exceptional pilot and why he will be so deeply missed.

Crossfield was almost an institution at the Society of Experimental Test Pilots annual meetings in Los Angeles. Virtually every year it seemed this wiry, energetic, silver haired pilot would be surrounded by a knot of admirers - young and old, all keen to hear "war stories" and pick up any nugget they could from the master. Crossfield was, after all, the first man to fly faster than both twice the speed of sound (20 Nov 1953) and three times the speed of sound (15 Nov 1960).

But he was much more than the pioneering pilot who had punched through the sound barrier in the Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket and the North American X-15. He was also an expert aeronautical engineer, aerodynamicist and designer who had helped perfect the X-15 as well as the subsequent Apollo command and service modules and Saturn V second stage. In short, he was a true all rounder and "the test pilot's test pilot."

For all his sky high achievements, however, Crossfield was also a humble man who egotistically kept his feet firmly on the ground. To the test pilots gathered at the SETP his talks were direct, full of solid information and, it has to be said, peppered with enough wit to make him the proverbial George Burns of aerospace.

Here are a couple of examples of classic Crossfield quotes, taken from various notes I took at SETP talks over the past few years when he was connected with a 'Century of Flight' project involving the building and testing of a replica Wright Brothers 1902 glider.
He liked to disarm his audience from the get go. One year it was "while I have been around for a long time, I want to suppress the rumour that I flew chase on the Wrights.....I flew low cover." The year before it was "I did not fly low cover over Custer!"

He showed video of the Wright Flyer project, in which he flew the highly unstable glider which was towed through a pasture behind a pick-up truck at over 50mph (80km/h). At one point Crossfield, piloting it in the prone position, hit the ground with such violence the (then) 80-year old was tossed out like a rag doll. Seasoned test pilots of all ages groaned in shared distress as the video was played, and Crossfield commented: "...and this shows the Wrights were also the first to have an operational ejection seat".  
 
And his verdict on the Wright's design? "We discovered they had an indifference, rather than an ignorance of stability. One of the crew said it flies like a Kleenex - that's not in the pilot's lexicon but boy, it describes it very well!"

His partner on the project was the champion aerobatic pilot Patti Wagstaff....itself a situation of such rich humour that Crossfield found impossible to ignore. "Patti said she liked new aircraft and old pilots, so I suggested we run away together. She declined saying she was thinking more 'classic' than 'antique.'

Thank you, and God's speed Mr Crossfield.