<Begin Segment 11>

TI: Now, how long did you work at Convair?

HM: Let's see, worked there about three and a half years.

TI: Okay.

HM: And we went through this evolution where they went from a full commercial airplane production process, we had about 22,000 people working there. And couple of things happened. One, we got hooked on with Howard Hughes' aircraft requirements because Hughes, at that time, controlled TWA through the Hughes Tool Company. And he was the primary procurement agent for TWA for airplanes because Hughes considered himself a good pilot, which he was. Secondly, he considered himself a good engineer, which might not have been the case, but nonetheless he felt that way. And he was dictating to Convair because Convair was the third company relative to commercial transports at that point. Boeing was first with the 707 prototype, and then Douglas came out with their equipment, DC-8 equipment. And then it became Convair. So they were the tail end of this process. And they were living off the fat, off the 340, 440 airplanes because they were selling those things like hot dogs, and they were up in the thousand regime for the 440 airplane. So they thought, well, they could fend off the competition for a while by making a more superior airplane than Boeing or Douglas. And the reason why they hired us was because we had some previous experience at Boeing. And I was on B-52 program for a while, and then the 707 program before I got hired by Convair. And --

TI: I'm sorry. This was when you were a student. This was a student, or when --

HM: Yeah. This was when, my last year at U of W.

TI: Okay. Got it.

HM: And then I was working at, on the second shift at Boeing. And we were in the, the B-52 program for increasing range. And then we got switched over to the 707. And that was the production airplane, 707 program. So when Convair hired us they knew we had that background. And they knew I had wind tunnel experience. So they says, "Well, this is a nice fit for this guy." So we were assigned -- I went from the military aircraft level, the F-102, and then the 106. And they had some funny problems with the 106 because it carried a bunch of missiles inside the missile bay, inside the airplane. And the, and the missile bay would open up and shut very quickly. It's pneumaticall-controlled. And in fact, bing-bing-bing, like that. And it would be open and close. And they would shove out the missiles during this time process. So everything was very high-speed regime. Well, when you get into transonic region, air flow doesn't behave like it normally is supposed to behave. And they used to open up the door, get the missile out, and close the door. And then the missile would try to come back right on the airplane. And it used to bang up on the bottom of the airplane. And we had one fatal accident because of that. The plane went out of control, and he dove in.

Anyway, they, we were working on the B-58 Hustler airplane. And that was the airplane that used to come apart. They used to go supersonic, and all of a sudden, whoof, the whole thing just disappeared. So we, we were really busy trying to figure out what's happening in these airplanes and delta wings, high-performance over the Mach II-type vehicles. So we had our hands full.

And then, then they started saying, "Well, we're going to have to get with the commercial airplane stuff," and we were being dictated by Howard Hughes. And he would change his mind about every other week. In fact, he used to come to the wind tunnel, and he says, "Oh, I don't like that configuration. You got to do this, you got to do that." And so he was God for Convair because he was going to buy 120 airplanes. And so we got to a point where we said, "Well, this guy can't make up his mind." So we started making the different parts of the wind tunnel model in modules, so the fuselage is one module, and the front end was another module, and whenever he sees it, "You don't have enough passenger space. You've got five abreast seating. You're going to have make it longer," all we did was chunk the front end. And we had a plug in the, in-between. And so it was a new model. And once you painted it up and you smoothed it out, you couldn't tell where the joints were.

TI: And you did this just because you knew Howard Hughes was going to keep changing...

HM: Yeah, because...

TI: ...the configuration.

HM: He kept on changing his mind. He couldn't figure out where the market was.

TI: Now, was that an unusual way of building these models, in a modular form? I would think that would be, to try different configurations, that made a lot of sense to make it modular also.

HM: Well, in air force designs, you usually optimize that airplane for given configurations. So it's, you're making variations like wing depth variations, maybe camber variations on the wings, stuff like that. But you don't change the fuselage length at liberty like he was doing. And that, that's what we were compelled to do. And everything is on a rush program. So we're running tests at San Diego, and we're running tests at the Co-op (JPL) Wind Tunnel in Pasadena. And then we're gonna bringing it to Langley, my old, the old haunts of the CIA, and bringing it to Cleveland for propulsion tests and things of this nature. So the wind tunnel groups are very busy. And once you get on one of these test programs, working a hundred hours a week is nothing. That's expected of you.

TI: Now, how did you like this? You were young, and --

HM: Well, it was a challenge. Once you got into a wind tunnel program it was a challenge. If you got on with the, the test engineer that knew what he was doing it was even more fun because everything came together. If you got on a crew that was kind of flaky -- and I did get on one because they said, "All you guys that are available, you guys go up to Pasadena and support that dynamic model." And here was the, the Convair 880, a version they finally ended up with, and we were doing dynamic test functions. And the airplane behaved dynamically just like a regular airplane. The bending modes for the wings, these were all modeled after the real airplane from the construction details that we were designing. And so you'd fly this thing inside the wind tunnel at Mach .91. And we, we were in the control room at that time and watching this airplane being flown by the test conductor. And all of a sudden there's nothing on the screen, just disappeared. [Laughs] And it ended, alarms sounded that says that there's something on the screen of the, where they take all the big particles out of the wind tunnel system because it's a continuous flow system. And we were running it .91 Mach. And the thing is going like crazy in there. And we lost the whole model. It was a million-and-a-half dollar model.

TI: It just broke up and --

HM: Well, it went into a pitch-roll condition, and then it went down the tunnel. And it was, you're, these things are built-up just like a model airplane. They've got ribs in it and spars in it, and you've got the ribs all sectioned in the proper place. In fact, during one of the tests that we ran before that, we put kerosene in there to simulate the fuel inside the wing. But fortunately it didn't fail at that point, but on another test when we were at maximum mach number and maximum angle of attack, that's when it failed. But the whole thing went down the tunnel. All that work that they spent, maybe a year creating, was down in like...

TI: Now, so you were...

HM: ...two seconds.

TI: ...there for three and a half years.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.