Fred Darragh
8 min read

All in the Air Facts family

After reading Dr. Stephen Gray’s article about his trans-Pacific flight in a Beech Duchess, I had one of those old deja vu all over again feelings. In the first years that I worked for Air Facts, starting in 1958, we reported on a number of long distance flights. Some were flown by Air Facts contributors who then wrote about their flights in our magazine.

First I want to tell you a war story about long ago and far away. I will elaborate on the people after I tell you the story.

Fred Darragh

Fred Darragh visited over 150 countries on his around-the-world flight in 1962.

Two friends, Marion Hart and Fred Darragh, were flying around the world, in opposite directions. Marion was in her Bonanza; Fred was in his Cessna 310. They were not making their long flights to set records or to garner publicity. It was simply a great adventure for both of them.

Marion and Fred didn’t know each other until they wound up in the same hotel in India after a long day of flying. They met in the bar for a drink and once they established that they had something in common–both were card-carrying liberals and neither needed to prove anything–they started talking about people they might know.

It turned out that I was their only mutual friend in the world. As people would do at that time, in the 1960s, they decided to send me a post card. The card was obviously written after some drinks and when I got a mysterious card from India, I couldn’t figure out who had sent it or much of what it said.

I didn’t know the source of the post card until they got back home and one of them asked if I got the card they had sent. It would be a keepsake today but for the fact that I didn’t keep it because I didn’t know what it was.

Marion Hart flew her Bonanzas all over the world on a more or less continuous basis after she learned to fly when in her 50s. Aviation was one big adventure for her and she was no stranger to adventure. Before flying she had sailed a boat around the world. She was also one of the first, if not the first, women to graduate from MIT.

Much of Marion’s curious nature was inherited from her father, Isaac Rice, who was practicing law in the late 1800s when he became interested in transportation. He came to head up the Electric Boat Company which built World War One submarines for the U. S. Navy and later became the parent company of General Dynamics, which today builds Gulfstreams among other things.

Marion flew solo across the Atlantic many times, wrote countless articles in Air Facts, and was once awarded the Harmon Trophy. She wrote books, too.

Small of stature and slightly eccentric, many thought she would someday make headlines by disappearing in her Bonanza. She might have liked that better than Going West from a nursing home in 1990 at the age of 99. Wikipedia identifies her as a sportswoman and author and I suppose she would approve of that.

Fred Darragh was from Little Rock, where I knew him, and flew transports in World War Two. He set an unofficial record then, in the China-Burma-India theater of operations. He got a C-47 (DC-3) to a record altitude (flying the Hump) at a record weight with a record number of souls on board. There is no documentation of this and I don’t recall the exact numbers.

Fred used general aviation airplanes extensively in his business and personal travel but I don’t think he did the round-the-world trip again.

Peter Gluckmann

Peter Gluckmann, the flying watchmaker, disappeared on a trans-Pacific flight.

Peter Gluckmann, a San Francisco watchmaker, was an Air Facts author with ambitious record-setting goals. To start, he set around-the-world speed records in both directions, flying a Meyers 200 (which later became the Aero Commander 200). The speed of his record was not blistering because it measured distance against total elapsed time (as opposed to flying time) and he was not content to stop there.

The big record that Peter wanted to tackle was a non-stop distance record set the previous year, in 1959, by the legendary Max Conrad in a 250 Comanche, from Casablanca to Los Angeles, 7,668 miles. (We were using statute miles in those days.)

Peter knew that his Meyers probably couldn’t be fitted with enough tankage to attempt such a flight so he started trying to buy a special Bonanza J35 from Beech, N35U. Pat Boling, a United captain, had used this Bonanza in 1958 to beat a 1949 Bonanza record flight from Honolulu to Teterboro.

Boling’s flight was sponsored by Beech. The company helped get the fuel tankage up to 400 gallons through the addition of humongous (60 gallons each) wingtip tanks plus fuselage fuel. The price of the fuel for the flight was said (by Beech) to be $139.30.

The takeoff weight was 4,850 pounds against 2,900 pounds for the standard airplane and the plan was to fly non-stop from Manila to Wichita. He broke the record but landed short, in Pendleton, Oregon, with 11 gallons of fuel remaining, after 45 hours of flying. They had devised a way to add oil during the flight.

Boling was at the outer limit of human endurance when he landed. The trip was not made easier by airframe and induction icing over the Pacific along with some other issues. At one point he thought he was going to have to ditch, but that didn’t happen.

The Beech folks felt strongly that Boling’s flight was almost too much for both the human and the airplane so when Peter approached them about buying the airplane, they turned him down.

Beech was in the business of selling airplanes, though, and as Peter persisted, they finally relented and sold him the airplane though they would in no way sponsor or support the flight. When Peter bought N35U, I know it still had the big tip tanks and presume the fuselage tankage and other modifications were still in place.

Here I must pause for a disclaimer. I have a pretty good memory but all this happened over 52 years ago and most of the rest of the story is from memory. I can’t find much documentation of anything but this is how I remember it and I think it is substantially correct. Let us hear from you if you have heard anything different on the subject.

Peter knew that to fly farther he had to have still more fuel so he added 200 more gallons, to be carried in the fuselage. I have no idea where he found the room to put it but his fuel load at takeoff was a total of 600 gallons.

That would put the takeoff weight at about 6,050 pounds plus whatever the additional tankage weighed. That is a lot to ask of a 250 horsepower engine and Peter had told us he would be installing a JATO (jet assisted takeoff) bottle to the airplane for the launch. I assume that he did that.

The original plan was to start from Manila but the actual 1960 record attempt started in Tokyo, to fly as far as possible into the United States, hopefully to the East Coast. That would have broken all previous records by a substantial margin.

The takeoff was successful, though some observers reported that it took a while, and he started across the Pacific, never to be heard from again. There were a lot of rumors about radio transmissions but none could be verified. Peter just vanished, a small airplane in a big ocean.

There was no lack of speculation, though. It didn’t take much imagination to know that the airplane would have been a bear to fly and the lack of communication after takeoff suggests either a sudden loss of control or a catastrophic failure. A loss of control could certainly have been caused by an encounter with anything more than light turbulence. The stalling speed would have been about 90 knots and with the 250 horses all pulling, the indicated airspeed wouldn’t have been a big margin above that. At the high weight, a structural failure also had to be considered.

Peter was a methodical person and I am sure he had the airplane loaded to a flyable center of gravity. A Bonanza, though, close to the aft cg limit and flying at more than twice its normal operating weight, wouldn’t be easy to handle. Couple that with the big tip tanks and I doubt that the Tactair autopilot would have been very effective.

Some dismissed the attempt as “mission impossible.” That might be true but Peter thought it was possible and had thoroughly investigated every facet of the flight. The naysayers were right and he was wrong. The existing records stood.

The Voyager flight in 1986, by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager that went all the way around the world without refueling was a remarkable achievement. It was in an airplane that was especially designed for that one flight and was a different project than those long solo flights in certified single-engine airplanes.

For my money, I hope all those decades-old records will last forever. I also hope that pilots will continue to use general aviation piston airplanes to fly all over the world. That old adventuresome spirit is just one of the things that make pilots and flying special.

If you have curiosity about the details of planning and flying a long distance flight, read Charles Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St. Louis.” The book is a wonderful treat for anyone interested in such flights.

Richard Collins
18 replies
  1. Jim Densmore
    Jim Densmore says:

    Hey Dick, if you can find it, another great flying adventure read is Lowell Thomas Jr.’s “A Flight to Adventure”. For their honeymoon (!) he and his wife bought a ’53 180 and shipped it to Paris in 1955. They flew all around Africa with it. The narrative fueled my imagination for weeks. Now I’m on the prowl for a copy of Eight Three Charlie – Jerrie Mock’s book.

  2. Jorge Herrera
    Jorge Herrera says:

    Beautiful story, I learned to fly about 25, I did some crop dusting. I had two accidents, in the first one I got burned 78%
    Thanks for the story, the love of flying is very strong in my heart.

  3. Tom Hope
    Tom Hope says:

    When I was flying small Cessnas in the 1980s, I always purchased the Aviation magazines of the times. Flying was always on top of the monthly stack when I as dragging them home. Great times, and some forgotten memories. This is another great article that I am glad to be able to put in my memory for future use. I have my sights set on returning to flying and getting re-certified/ taking all of the coursework. I just have to find the $$$…sigh. Thanks!

    • Wayne
      Wayne says:

      Tom,

      I recently got back in the air after a 20 year break. It was not that expensive. Had to have a medical and work with an instructor for 3 months (15 or so hrs) to get my bi-annual (20-yr) review. You do not need to retake the written or a check ride.

      Now I am a partner in a Cherokee 180 and could not be happier.

      Don’t wait any longer!!

  4. Phil Smith
    Phil Smith says:

    I enjoy reading about the long flights too. There is a story I read about on the Cessna 150 Club website about someone that flew a 150 from East Coast USA to Gabarone, Botswana, took him something like 109 hours, fun to read about, great story. Makes one realize that our everyday planes are capable of a lot.

  5. gregg reynolds
    gregg reynolds says:

    I believe Peter Gluckman, flying watchmaker of San Francisco, also once flew his Luscombe from the old San Mateo, CA, airport to Germany in the late ’40s or early 50’s. Tried to find an old newspaper article detailing that incredible (vastly overloaded airplane)journey which was reprinted (I think) in a Luscombe Association newsleter, but no luck.

    • Fritz Adam
      Fritz Adam says:

      In 1953 Peter Luckman (Glückmann was his real name,) a Jewish watch maker from San Francisco, showed up in Goose Bay in a little 85 HP Luscombe. I talked to him and he told me he was going to fly to Europe.

      I took some pictures of him and his plane. He carried an extra fuel tank and an inflatable life-boat next to him in the plane.

      You can see the pictures I took in “picturetrail” in album 12 at: http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/185626

      Peter not only flew to Europe, he flew back as well. He could net get a “clearance” for his flight, so after he was ready to go, he just got permission to make a local flight and then just headed East!

      I had asked him if he had any “instrument flying” training, since he was bound to run into weather along the route. He said no, he had taught himself. :-)

  6. Dr. Kenneth Nolde
    Dr. Kenneth Nolde says:

    Many years ago I was a B-52 navigator and flew a number of Chrome Dome 24+ hour flights. My longest flight was 29 hours and 40 minutes. At least in the 52 we could move about, sleep (after a fashion), and eat, I cannot imagine sitting in GA aircraft for that long and longer. In the following years I transitioned to RF-4 Phantoms and a two hour flight was the norm. However, with air refueling, in SEA I flew a number of 4+ hour recce missions, and ferry flights could reach 10 or 11 hours and it was a tougher ride than a B-52–the F4 crew comfort facilities were sparse to say the very least. Think about it, exposure suit, G-suits, survival vest, and floation devices and you need to go–well it was a struggle. Notwithstanding, I tip my hat to the past, they sure were a tough bunch!

  7. Robert Gould
    Robert Gould says:

    I remember as a child in the 50s and early 60s many aviators traveling around the world. There was also a couple that did the trip in a T-Bonanza (written in AOPA). These were adventures – no GPS. I am glad to see Air Facts again, as my mom wrote many articles about our flying adventures to Alaska and the Bahamas (the old “Bahama Treasure Hunts).

  8. Ian
    Ian says:

    Great article…as soon as I saw the title I was reminded of Peter Gluckman’s attempt and of course he is the main feature of your story. Read about him in a freebie mag I picked up in LAX about 20 years ago and as I cross the Pacific on a regular basis ( but in much more comfort) often look out at the vastness of it and think of him and the many aviators it has swallowed without trace.

    Concur with Jim D re Lowell’s book – what a great adventure.

  9. Bob T
    Bob T says:

    Actress Susan Oliver flew a Meyers/Aero Commander 200 across the Atlantic back in the 60’s. She wrote a very interesting book about the flight called, Odyssey. No records but it was quite an accomplishment and her love for flying comes across in the book.

  10. Arne Opheim
    Arne Opheim says:

    What a nice story! Those where the days. I think we have lost some of it today with the ability to zoom in on almost every corner of the world and study the streets via Google street view.

    My Beech Travelair is from 1968 and when I fly it I often find myself thinking about how proud the owner must have been the day he picked her up in Whichita.

    Thanks for the article.

  11. Ian
    Ian says:

    Saw another photo of Gluckmann taken in June 1956 by his ’47 Cessna190 ‘City of San Francisco’ departing on a flight of “18,000 miles to Europe,Africa and South America”… Quite a guy.

  12. Neil
    Neil says:

    Hi there. Was just reading an interesting account of the early years of Kai Tak International airport in Hong Kong by ret’d Cathay Pacific pilot, Charles ‘Chic’ Eather, where he describes Peter Gluckmann arriving from Tokyo in a Beechcraft Bonanza sometime in April, 1960. Eather doesn’t state whether Gluckmann was on his world record attempt but it was interesting to read a first hand account of Gluckmann’s endeavours.

  13. John Lawson
    John Lawson says:

    Just to add a little to Peter Gluckmann’s record attempt in N35U. Peter Landed at Kai Tak on 9th April 1960 after a flight time of 12 hrs and 45 mins, a distance of 1,700 miles. The last record I have was of a test flight from Kai Tak on 14th April 1960.

    Regards, John

  14. Andy Bryant
    Andy Bryant says:

    Just came into possession of the original commendation scroll from San Francisco mayor for Peter Gluckmann’s 1953 return trip to London ( in his 90 horsepower plane( , along with two aerial pictures of him( I guess ) in a Beechcraft Bonaza and a Beechcraft Super18 over a US city ( assume part of SFO, but I’m in the UK so can’t be certain ! )

    Pretty impressive

  15. John Mooney
    John Mooney says:

    Do you know of any books by Max Conrad concerning any of his flights and how he operated the engines to achieve such long flights?

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