It all started when I read a Peter Garrison column in Flying. Rather than his usually more esoteric technical topic, he had written a nostalgic article about “Young Walter” (May 2009) which rang a few bells for me, too.
GAC spent a lot of money luring cold Northerners to the sunshine of Florida.
His daughter-in-law had come across a scrapbook that one Walter Kilbowicz had lovingly collected about the earlier days of aviation, as Garrison put it, “… when aviation was still the stuff of a young man’s dreams.” There were pictures and stories of Jimmy Doolittle, the Gee Bee racer, Roscoe Turner, other aviation celebrities, various disasters, and events.
One newspaper clipping Walter had saved about “Harold Neff, airmail pilot, was found with a broken leg and arm beside the wreckage of his plane in a swamp near Jackson, Mich.”… tickled my memory and then startled me. Some years ago, I had known an airline pilot named Harold Neff! He was already fabled at that time, and perhaps this bit of information on his earlier life would fill in some gaps about a man I’d admired.
Back in the 1960s, I worked for the largest land sales company in the world. It was called GAC (an amalgam of Gulf-American Corporation and the General Acceptance Company) and it had developed a string of properties in Florida. To solidify (and often upgrade) the sales made in a scheme involving a free dinner followed by a promotional pitch, they would fly their customers from the North down to visit their subdivisions. They had bought their own charter airline to service this bit of marketing, called Modern Air.
When Modern Air wasn’t flying people down to see Cape Coral or River Ranch for “three glorious days and two fabulous nights” it flew holiday resort tours from Miami, charters in and out of Berlin, and military passengers all over the globe in its fleet of ex-American Airlines Convair CV-990As, the largest passenger jets in the air before the 747. And… their chief pilot was Harold Neff.
As a result of deadheading back from delivering soldiers to some of the more exotic locales, I understood that Neff accumulated a stack of arcane speed records, typically for routes like Manila to Anchorage, or Rome to Tampa.
Modern Air flew Convair 990s to Florida with prospective real estate buyers on board.
After their three glorious days in Florida, the customers would emplane at the Fort Myers airport, which was adjacent to Cape Coral, for the trip home. The airplane was always completely filled. Every seat was taken, and we, the company staff, sat together on the banquette seat stretched across the fuselage at the rear of the cabin. Almost every passenger had purchased a souvenir bag of citrus fruit to take back to the frozen cold of Cleveland, Ohio, or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and tucked it under his or her seat.
The engines were started, the aircraft taxied out and the tail of the airplane swung over the fence. Fort Myers had had its runway extended just long enough to accommodate the Convairs, but we were obviously at gross, and Chief Pilot Harold Neff was going to use every inch available. The engines spooled up to full power with the brakes held, the airframe rumbled and shook, and then the brakes were released. He was doing a short field take-off! We rolled and rolled and rolled, and then, seemingly at the last possible moment, he rotated.
I can still see the hundreds of oranges and grapefruit and tangelos and limes and lemons and tangerines rolling down the aisles toward us in the back, and all the arms flailing from the seats to grab them, unsuccessfully. I often wonder how much the center of gravity had moved to the rear of the plane at that moment.
Harold Neff also flew Lyndon Johnson, and even landed one of the Convairs at Williams Field at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica, on a trans-polar circumnavigation commemorating Admiral Byrd’s 40th South Pole anniversary flight. The 1997 FAA Pilot Registry still had him qualified on 14 different multi-engined transports, including Airbuses, the Boeing 747, and the B-25!
But eventually Modern Air went out of business, and as I recall, one of the lovely Convair 990s was just abandoned at O’Hare airport, where it sat on the grass between runways for years.
Harold Neff – the pioneering airline pilot, not the airmail pilot.
If Peter Garrison had not read Walter’s scrapbook and written an article in Flying, then my mental scrapbook, with Harold Neff’s exploits, would probably have stayed closed, too.
However… and here is the “rest of the story”… when I started to research this tale I tracked down that original newspaper clipping about Harold Neff, the airmail pilot, in the Schenectady Gazette of September 23, 1933. The full article stated that Harold Neff, airmail pilot, had crashed in Michigan and stayed with his mail for 63 hours. And… after having been rescued, he had died from his injuries and exposure in the hospital.
Aha! There were two Harold Neffs, one a pioneering airmail pilot, and the other a pioneering airline pilot!
I communicated this to Pat Luebke at Air Facts, who commented that she could see how I got confused, as Harold Neff isn’t exactly a common name. Au contraire, I replied, as in my research, I had also found a third Harold Neff, this one a former Air Force Colonel, and a fourth Harold Neff, a general aviation pilot.
Apparently, Harold Neff is a very popular name for pilots, and I know of at least four.
- Will the real Harold Neff please stand up? - August 2, 2013
That’s an interesting story. I encourage you to write more like it.
The article states that the 990 was the largest airliner prior to the 747. The 707 and DC-8 were both larger.
Unless Modern Air had modified the 990 with some fairly large auxiliary fuel tanks, I seriously doubt some of the international routes mentioned. One reason the airplane was a sales failure, and only lasted 7 years in American’s fleet, was it’s inability to meet Convair’s advertised range figures. It ended up on medium range routes, until American took delivery of their 727-200’s.
You may be right, because I remember through the fog of a half-century (and it was the sixties…), but Modern Air did run military logistics on a variety of curious routes, and Harold did deadhead furiously back in a big empty aircraft. I did the sales pitch at the “free” dinners, and we were told to tell the customers that the Convairs were the largest aircraft in the skies at the time. I may, as Humphrey Bogart says in Casablanca, I may have been misinformed.
But Harold Heff was there, and they did charter to Antarctica, and we did take customers to Florida to see the properties. And boy, did they buy souvenir citrus. It was mucho fun.
In 1968, I flew several times on military charters out of McGuire AFB. On the firsts trip, we did a stop in Argentia New Foundland on the way to Keflavik Iceland. Apparently, the crew took on a bit too much fuel and we had to sit at the end of the taxiway and burn it off. The Modernair CV990 was full of servicemen and after about 35 minutes the plane proceeded to the active runway where we sat a while longer. Since that runway started at the water and ended at the water on the far end. There must have been a lot of calculating going on in the front office. All of a sudden, the engines spooled up and the brakes were held and the 990 shook. We then seemed to catapult down the runway and I would estimate that we used up every inch and probably about 15 or 20 foot of water. Given the rising terrain in the area, it made for a very dramatic departure.
In 1968, I flew several times on military charters out of McGuire AFB. On the first trip, we did a stop in Argentia New Foundland on the way to Keflavik Iceland. Apparently, the crew took on a bit too much fuel and we had to sit at the end of the taxiway and burn it off. The Modernair CV990 was full of servicemen and after about 35 minutes the plane proceeded to the active runway where we sat a while longer. Since that runway started at the water and ended at the water on the far end. There must have been a lot of calculating going on in the front office. All of a sudden, the engines spooled up and the brakes were held and the 990 shook. We then seemed to catapult down the runway and I would estimate that we used up every inch and probably about 15 or 20 foot of water. Given the rising terrain in the area, it made for a very dramatic departure.
He’s my dad. I rarely get to see him. He’s living in Florida and doing well.
I am so delighted to hear that! He won’t remember me – I was just another Florida land salesman at the time – but I do remember him.