Things that go bump in the night...

There is something a little magical about fall in Pittsburgh. While evening comes early, the days are often sunny and warm and dry - a welcome change from the heat and humidity of summer. Many trees hold on to their leaves well into October, but the less hardy varieties add a splash of color and the wonderful smell of fallen leaves to the air.  Its a great time to be outside.

Getting the final bits of yard work done - raking leaves, mowing the grass one last time, putting the grill and lawn chairs away - often keeps you outside well into dusk. The shadows and thinning foliage and clear skies change the familiar horizon into something just a little spooky; along with the inevitable wave of Halloween inspired TV shows and the assortment of UFO, Bigfoot and unsolved mystery shows running continuously on the cable channels its easy to imagine glowing eyes watching you from the shrubbery or a headless horseman riding across your backyard.

So it wasn't too surprising when on an October visit to my parents in Westmoreland county (two turnpike exits east of Pittsburgh) I saw neatly printed signs planted along the roadside announcing a UFO convention at the local community college. I grew up in the area and had heard all the stories about  big hairy creatures killing big mean farm dogs and how the army hauled something out of a Kecksburg field in the middle of the night, but usually I heard those stories from my Dad and his friends on all night fishing trips, when I figured their goal was to scare the crap out of us kids so we didn't go wandering around the woods in the dark.  In high school I had close friends who lived in Kecksburg that I spent a lot of time with, and while we discussed all the mysteries of life that are important to 17 year old boys, the subject of aliens never came up. As a teenager I drove the dark back roads of Kecksburg many times and can tell you its easy to imagine all sorts of things lurking in the shadows that 1960s sealed beam headlights couldn't penetrate, but I never saw anything big and hairy or thin and grey-skinned step out on the pavement.

But now we have the internet. I came home from my parents and typed "kecksburg ufo" into Google and spent a guilty evening reading alleged eyewitness accounts and conspiracy theories about something that happened in my own backyard.  I have grave doubts any extraterrestrials dropped into Kecksburg, but it seems likely that something happened there in December of 1965.

Here is what we're reasonably sure of. About 4:45 pm on December 9th, 1965 - a Thursday evening just before sunset - a fireball blazed across the sky over Detroit and appeared to to head south over Lake Erie. More sightings came in from Ohio, from Cleveland to Columbus, including reports of grass fires started by flaming bits of something falling to the ground. I emphasize appeared to because depending on the object's trajectory it may well have dropped straight into Lake Erie, and still been visible far to the south.  Natural meteors (rocks) can enter the atmosphere at a steep angle such as this.

If the fireball was actually a piece of space junk falling out of orbit (or a reentering spacecraft), it would have entered the atmosphere at a shallow angle, essentially following the earth's surface as it shed speed and eventually fell to the ground. If this was the case, the object would have been moving at 1000s of miles per hour in the general direction of Pittsburgh, passing over Cleveland and Akron on the way.

In Kecksburg - a tiny town (really just a few farms sharing a VFD)  about 40 miles east of Pittsburgh, some kids came inside to tell their Mom they had  seen a "burning star" fall into the nearby woods; Mom looked and thought she saw a bright light in the woods. About 6:30pm - probably after the supper dishes were cleared - Mom called the story into local radio station WHJB (talk radio shows were the social networks of 1965). The radio station notified the state police. It was a dry, warm night with a full moon and the word was out:  reporters, police, volunteer firemen and curiosity seekers descended on Kecksburg en masse.

And then it gets fuzzy. Those who got there early - including WHJB announcer John Murphy - claim to have seen a few PA state troopers walking around with flashlights and a bronze-colored, bell or acorn shaped metal object about 6 feet in diameter and 10 feet long half buried in the ground in a wooded lot.  Those who arrived a little later saw armed soldiers guarding the site and warning onlookers they would be shot if they tried to go into the woods.  Some witnesses reported there were men in hazmat suits with NASA logos walking around. Much later, after most of the civilians had left, the military types used a bulldozer (where did that come from?) to load the something on to a flatbed truck that drove off into the night. The official police report issued the next day was that nothing was found the night before.

Over the years more and more witnesses have come forward to tell their stories of that night. Members of the Kecksburg VFD have told about the massive military presence that rolled into town.  A former Air Force officer claimed to have guarded the truck during a brief stay at Lockbourne AFB near Columbus Ohio, allegedly on its way to Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton (it seems a little odd that the truck would stop an hour short of its final destination). A contractor claims to have delivered a load of bricks to a Wright Patterson hangar where he caught a glimpse of a bell shaped object.

Today there is precious little proof of anything, including whether the Army was ever there.  In 1965 cameras didn't fit in your pocket, and no photos seem to have been taken. Most of the details of the story came out in interviews done for a TV show in 1990, 25 years after the event; plenty of time for records to be lost and memories to fade and shift.

There may be no proof of a recovery because it never happened. There are lots of reserve and National Guard armories scattered around southwest PA, but they are primarily training centers for part-time soldiers; there aren't teams of men and equipment sitting there waiting to deploy on a moments notice. The nearest actual Army base that could have mounted a major deployment would have been in Letterkenny PA, 120 miles east of Kecksburg. Unless the military had advance warning (unlikely, unless whatever it was was one ours) it seems doubtful any of them could have assembled a detachment of men and equipment and got them to Kecksburg by late evening.

According to some websites there are documented reports - obtained under the Freedom of Information Act - indicating that the Air Force sent 3 men from the Oakdale PA radar station to recover whatever had fallen there. Oakdale is just south of the main Pittsburgh airport and about 50 miles west of Kecksburg; until 1969 the Air Force had an air defense radar there to guide fighter planes to Soviet bombers should the Cold War ever turn hot. You can find reports from the Oakdale site online suggesting that investigating stuff that may have fallen from the sky and answering queries from UFO buffs was a common and less than rewarding job for the unit. Oakdale was just an hour away from Kecksburg; that would have fit the time line. It seems likely that the 3 airmen from Oakdale (maybe they took a few extra men to help guard the site) were the only military there, and the stories of a large Army presence were exaggerated by time and imagination.

But did they find anything in those woods?  Or did an Air Force truck roll out of Kecksburg loaded with nothing more than the search lights and shovels and winches they brought with them? And if it was a piece of space junk, why all the secrecy?

Remember that in the early 1960s both the US and USSR were launching lots of stuff into space. Mixed in with the scientific probes and commercial communication satellites were spy satellites, military communication and navigation satellites and probably a few missile component tests. But aside from manned spacecraft, the only things meant to come back from space were film canisters and warheads. Moreover, the Soviets had been hinting they had an ICBM with fractional orbit capability that could lob a nuke around the south pole into the US, undetected by the north facing early warning radars - a development that would have seriously derailed the "mutually assured destruction" doctrine that was seen as the only thing preventing WWIII. Against that backdrop, anything that reentered the atmosphere and made it to the ground in one piece would have been extremely interesting to the military and men in black suits, and unlikely to ever be declassified; you'll have to make up your own mind about what happened in Kecksburg.

Obligatory scale modeling reference: Are you a military vehicle modeler who is tired of the SciFi modelers having all the fun lighting up their models with LEDs? How about building a deuce-and-a-half with a tarp covered load that glows and pulses blue light? Put it on a base with some trees and a Kecksburg road sign. I'd love to see that diorama! Imagine the fun of convincing the judges it does not belong in the Sci-Fi category. And if someone tells you the details are wrong, ask him exactly how he knows?

Don

Racing Ponies

Not too long ago I wrote the story of how the Ford Mustang came to be. In 1965 they were flying out of the showrooms as fast as Ford could build them. But the 60's were a time when change happened fast.  The basic formula for the Mustang was simple: take a small sedan and re-skin it with racy sheet metal, drop in a small block V8 and add bucket seats. Ford had leaked enough teasers to build interest in the Mustang before the car went on sale that the competition at GM and Chrysler already had their own "pony" cars in development when the Mustang went on sale.

Ford knew that while most Mustangs would be used to commute to work or bring home the groceries, the appeal of the car was its sportiness. Even before the Mustang was on sale Ford was preparing to give the Mustang a racing pedigree. Alan Mann Racing in England was already campaigning the Falcon in European rally races; in early 1964 they received one of the first Mustangs off the production line for testing purposes, followed shortly after by 6 more cars to prepare for racing. Holmann&Moody shipped an equal number of race-prepared 289s across the pond. The Mustangs - red coupes - were prepared for rally racing and placed 1st and 2nd in the Touring Class of the 1964 Tour de France (a series of French road races - not the bicycle race), beating the Jaguar MkIIs that had dominated the class for several years. Interestingly enough, Carroll Shelby was also there with his Cobra Daytonas, which lost this series to the Ferrari GTOs.

In the US Ford really wanted to beat rival Chevy's Corvette, but the only place the Corvette was being raced was in amateur Sports Car Club of America races - an organization that interpreted Sports Car to mean two seater and set the rules to allow only minimal modifications. But where there's a will there's a way:
Ford would go to Carroll Shelby - already building Ford powered Cobras and working on the factory GT40 race cars - to turn the Mustang into an SCCA legal race car.

Shelby was king of the loopholes: by setting himself up as a manufacturer, he could make all sorts of changes to the Mustang that Ford would never want their name or warranty attached to. To handle that pesky two-seat rule Shelby simply unbolted the back seat and installed a fiber-glass package shelf, which was the perfect place to fit the spare tire after Shelby installed a bigger gas tank that filled up the trunk.  The SCCA rules allowed modifications to either the suspension or the engine, but the Mustang really needed both in order to be competitive with the fuel-injection and independent-rear-suspension of the 'Vette. Shelby first upgraded the Mustang's suspension, transmission, and rear end, and bolted headers and a bigger carburetor to the stock engine to create the street GT350 and then further tweaked the stock Ford 289 to create the GT350R racing cars. With every spare ounce stripped from the GT350R, and the tiny 289 pushed to 350hp, the Shelby Mustang handily beat the plastic Chevys, winning 5 of the 6 regional SCCA championships, with Shelby team driver Jerry Titus winning the overall SCCA B Production championship in 1965.

The Camaro and Firebird would appear in showrooms in 1966 as 1967 models.  The first Plymouth Barracuda actually went on sale in 1964 a week before the Mustang, but its styling was so dated in comparison that no one paid it much attention; Chrysler gave the car a massive restyling that also appeared in the '67 model year. Both GM and Chrysler took the opportunity to design in lots of room under the hoods: all 3 cars had big-block options that would soon grow to include the biggest (7+ liter) engines available.

With all of these muscular little 4 seaters being built in Detroit, in 1966 the SCCA created a new racing series just for them: the Trans American Sedan Championship, or just TransAm as the series quickly came to be known. To entice manufacturers (and big name drivers) to participate, the SCCA established a point system to award a manufacturer's championship.  Now Ford had a another loophole to fill: obviously they wanted to compete with the GM and Chrysler cars in the new series, but Shelby had homologated the fastback Mustang as a two-seater, and TransAm demanded four seats. Rather than re-homologate the fastback cars the notch-back Mustang coupes were homologated  (and of course many of those cars promptly received the same Shelby parts and suspension modifications developed for the fastback GT350Rs). Shelby built a few dozen TransAm ready '66 and '67 Mustangs - a few for the "factory" Shelby team and the others sold through Ford to independent racing teams.

With factory and Shelby support, the Mustang took the Trans Am manufacturers championship in both '66 and '67. Interestingly enough, one of the Shelby team cars was sponsored by Grady Davis, a Gulf Oil VP with a taste for racing whose office was in downtown Pittsburgh.

Now that the competition had arrived, it was clear that the '67 Mustang would have to be something special just to keep up. And in my opinion, Ford nailed it: the '67 Mustangs were just enough bigger to fit a big-block engine, and as a result Ford cleaned up much of the "stubbiness" of the first generation that gave the first generation car a few unflattering angles. Based on the roaring success of the first few years, Ford cut a few less corners as well; there was a bit more chrome and trim available, without crossing the line into gaudiness. Under the hood, the top option for '67 was a 390 V8. Much like Ford's small-block, the big-block "FE" motor was not an especially high-performance design. In the "S-code" Mustangs, the 390 carried a 320 hp rating, although that was probably a little optimistic. The 390 was barely a match for the 327 Chevy small-block, let alone the 396 Chevy big-block that was available in the new Camaro. For the '68 model year Ford would up the ante with a hot-rod version of the 428 inch station wagon motor, using cylinder heads developed for Ford's 427 NASCAR engine to create "Cobra Jet" Mustangs that were on more or less equal footing with the best the competition had to offer (yes, there were a few big block GM and Chrysler engines available that could out-muscle a Cobra Jet, but their extra top-end power was largely overkill for the stoplight grand prix action most of these cars were limited to).

Still, sales of the '67 Mustang dropped about 20%, and dropped again for the '68 model. The Mustang would never regain the insane sales numbers of the first two years, but Ford had created a racing heritage for the car that would carry it through rough times ahead (when America fell out of love with fast cars during the oil embargoes of the 1970s).

But I'm getting ahead of myself - Ford racing would close out the '60s with a bang, or more accurately - a Boss. But this article has gone long enough; that's a story for another time...

Don

Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix

Just a quick note for old car buffs and modelers: the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix is kicking off next weekend - July 12th through the 21st (the racing and cars shows in Schenley Park are the last weekend - July 20th and 21st).  Check out the details here: http://www.pvgp.org/

The Ford Mustang has been chosen as Marque of the Year, and while the Schenley Park course is a little too tight for the big V8s, the Mustangs and other hairy chested cars will be racing the weekend before at the Pittsburgh International Race Complex (http://www.pittrace.com/)  - just north of the Beaver Falls exit of the Turnpike (map).

In addition to the racing, Saturday in Schenley (July 20th) is the day all the local car clubs organize car shows throughout the park; if you can't find something cool to look at there you just don't like cars... Both weekends are definitely worth a road trip - and make sure to clean out the memory card in your camera as there will be lots of cool stuff you just won't see at the local car cruise.

The Mustang Turns 50!?!

The first Ford Mustangs appeared just about the time I started to notice cars were cool, and even at 4 years old I knew the Mustang was a lot cooler than Dad's Galaxie or the Impalas and Furys that my uncles drove.  So it was with quite a shock that I happened across a web page showing an artist's conception of the all-new Mustang that will launch next spring to mark the pony car's 50th anniversary. Because if the Mustang is going to be 50, that means I'm going to be... well, you can do the math.

The roots of the Mustang go back to the early 1950s. Its hard to imagine, but in those post-war days Ford sold just 1 model of car. To be sure, it was available in different trim levels and body styles under various names (Mainline, Customline, Crestline, Crown Victoria, Fairlane, etc) but aside from the chrome, they were essentially the "same" car.

So when Ford introduced the two-seat Thunderbird in 1955, it was a big deal. While a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the Corvette, the Thunderbird was much more luxurious and well built (and less sporting) than Chevy's two-seater. The Thunderbird only made sense as a second car; it was first and foremost a car to be seen in. The automobile had become such an essential part of American life that families were beginning to consider a car for both Dad and Mom, and automakers were beginning to think in terms of a range of different models, each tailored in size, cost and features to a particular segment of the market.

Much like the early Corvette, the Thunderbird was a flop in the showroom.  The T-bird certainly appealed to young men thinking it was the perfect car to drive their girl friends off unchaperoned, but the middle-aged doctors, lawyers and bankers who could actually afford one (it cost nearly twice the price of a new full-size Ford) didn't have girlfriends - or if they did, they didn't want to be seen driving them around with the roof down!

At Ford, number-cruncher Robert McNamara studied the demographics and decided the Thunderbird should be a 4-seat monster capable of carrying multiple sets of golf clubs to the country club and sealed the two seater's fate. He then turned his attention to every day transportation, and decided Ford should build a small, efficient 5 passenger sedan; a first car for young families or a second car for slightly older Moms to haul the kids to football practice and piano lessons. That perfectly practical (and perfectly boring) little sedan was the Ford Falcon, introduced in 1959, a car that would anchor the small end of Ford's model range for the next decade (and its spiritual descendants, the Maverick, Fairmont and Tempo for two decades after that).

But what does all this have to do with the Mustang? Enter Lido "Lee" Iacocca. Iacocca grew up in Lehigh Pennsylvania, the son of Italian immigrants. Due to to a case of rheumatic fever as a child, he ended up 4F and spent the WWII years in college studying engineering. He joined Ford as an engineer in 1946, but quickly decided that sales and marketing were more to his liking. He was an ambitious man with his eye on a corner office type job, and as the cliche goes, he climbed quickly through the ranks; by 1957 he was McNamara's right hand man. Where McNamara understood logistics and manufacturing costs, Iacocca had worked with the salesmen at the dealerships and understood all the irrational reasons that people bought cars. Then came the fateful day in the fall of 1960 when JFK called to offer McNamara a job as Secretary of Defense. In the blink of an eye, 36 year old Lee Iacocca was vice-president of the Ford car and truck group.

The Falcon was actually selling in reasonable numbers, but it wasn't making Ford much money. The car was stealing sales away from the full-size Ford, and there were few high-markup options available for the salesmen to add on. With McNamara out of the way, Iacocca began changing the product line to offer cars people not only needed but wanted, and more importantly that would make profits for Ford.

Ford had invested many millions of dollars in the Falcon so Iacocca couldn't just scrap it, but he could add trim packages, bucket seats and bigger engines. But there was only so much you could do with the Falcon's bland shape. Iacocca did his own demographic studies and realized the oldest baby-boomers were just reaching driving age, and in a few more years would be buying cars of their own. College campuses were awash in MGs and bathtub Porsches and the like, brought home by servicemen cashing in on GI-Bill funded educations. At rival Chevrolet, the Corvette was slowly gaining a following and the Corvair Monza was being promoted as the "poor man's Porsche". If Ford wanted to stake a claim on youth buyers they needed a fun, sporty car at a price even high-school graduates could afford.

Iacocca assembled a team of executives known as the Fairlane Group, a sort of skunkworks team who met at the bar of the Fairlane Inn twice a month to discuss potential projects.  The first result was a tiny two-seater show car with lightweight construction and a mid-engine V4 borrowed from a Ford of Europe small car, called the Mustang I. While distinctly sporty, it lacked the broad appeal Iacocca was looking for: he realized that to avoid a repeat of the Thunderbird the new car had to seat 4 (although maybe 2 of those seats could be child-sized) and have enough trunk space to bring home a week's groceries.

Meeting the price target meant the new car would need to share Falcon mechanicals, but at least the styling had to hint at Ferrari. The final design came down to a contest among the various studios inside of Ford. Joe Oros lead the team in the Ford studio who brought in the winning design. Legend has it that it was the Mustang name that finally convinced Henry Ford II to take a chance on the car.

And, the rest, as they say, is history.  The Mustang was an instant best seller. People lined up to put down deposits.  In less than two years Ford had sold over 1 million Mustangs. Lido Iacocca was promoted to president of Ford. Except the story isn't nearly that simple (nothing at Ford is ever simple). The next 50 years would see the Mustang (and the world) go through a lot of changes, and if not for some amazing people and a lot of luck it might have gone the way of the original Thunderbird. But that's a story for another article, or maybe two.

Stay tuned!

TRICON 2013 - it's a wrap!

After a few weeks off to catch up on everyday life, I'm back. And yes, I know I've promised two build articles - they're coming.

I want to thank everyone who came to our model show. There were 250 models on the table (give or take a few) and the vendors seemed to be doing a brisk business. Car modelers made an especially strong showing, putting 85 models on the tables, pulling ahead of the armor and airplane camps for the first time in a while.

This firetruck was one of  my favorites; it took me back to my hometown circa 1970 and the parade that marked the start of the firemen's fair each summer. I can remember sitting on the curb watching the firetrucks from the neighboring towns roll by  and marveling at the fact that they came in colors besides the traditional red of my town (the purple trucks from Grapeville were a real treat).

The food service class at Beattie offered to sell food at the show as a class fund raiser, and even though "coffee and donuts" got lost in translation, they made up for that minor omission with burgers and hot dogs and sausages fresh off the grill, all at extremely reasonable prices that seemed to be well received.  The lounge space was also a bit of a SNAFU - we had arranged for a room at the school for just that purpose, but no one thought to put up a sign to let everyone know it was there. Next year we'll add "Sign Chairman" to the list of jobs.

Which of course brings us to next year's TRICON. We'll be back at Beattie, next spring, March 22nd 2014. Watch this space for details (car modelers can count on a best Ford Mustang special award to mark the 50th anniversary). And we'd love to hear what you think of the show (add a comment to this message or can send me email at threeriversipms@zoominternet.net).

Don

Thinking Pink

Therie is a natural tendency to think of American sports car racing as a west coast invention: if you’re racing cars that are at best “water resistant” it makes sense to do it in a sunny climate.  But going racing is more about disposable income than the weather.  Shortly after WWII the largest concentration of wealth in the US stretched from the financial centers of the north-east states through the manufacturing cities of the mid-west, a swath of geography dotted with storied racetracks from Limerock Connecticut to Elkhart Lake Wisconsin.

In Pittsburgh the steel industry created jobs for lots of engineers and technicians; the kind of guys who liked to go home and tinker in the garage.  Well paid steel workers bought lots of new cars - making Pittsburgh auto dealerships some of the biggest in the country - and supported a vast network of mechanics, parts suppliers, and machine shops. While there was no race track in Pittsburgh, the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) was holding races on make shift tracks - often laid out on the runways of small town airports (if you have photos or even memories of the races at Connellsville airport I would love to hear from you!). And just a few hours drive would put you at top-notch tracks like Mid-Ohio or Virginia International or Watkins Glen.

Conditions were perfect, and the spark that really got things rolling came (strangely enough) from the folks at Chevrolet. In 1954 the Corvette was a bit of a flop. Rushed into production after a show car caught the public's attention, the Corvette was powered by Chevy's hoary  "stovebolt" straight 6 backed up by a 2 speed automatic "Powerglide" transmission - hardware that failed to live up to the car's sporting intentions in a major way. Both Chrysler and Ford were selling sedans with new V8s that had seriously raised the bar for straightline performance, while Corvettes were sitting around in dealerships unsold. And then, at the urging of newly hired engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov, for the '55 model year Chevy installed their new 265 cubic inch small block V8 into the struggling Corvette, and the rest - as they say - is history. The V8 finally gave the Corvette the power to match its looks, and created the first sportscar that American's understood - the Corvette quickly became an automotive icon.

Just south of Pittsburgh was Yenko Chevrolet, where owner Frank Yenko was trying to prepare his son Don to take over the business. Don Yenko naturally drove a Corvette, and it didn't take much for him to get caught up in racing himself. But young Yenko proved to be more than a well-off good-time Charlie; he recognized that there was money to be made selling fast cars to speed hungry steel workers, and that the faster the car the more money there was to be made. Yenko would eventually become a "tuner" - modifying brand new Chevy's for high performance use and selling them in the Yenko showrooms.

But in 1959 Don Yenko was just another salesman with Corvettes to move. One day a youthful couple walked in looking to trade their '57 Corvette for one of the new fuel injected 'Vettes, which Chevy had just tweaked to a very healthy 290 hp. Mike and Donna Mae Mims left with a new '59, and an invitation from Don Yenko to attend a race he had entered in Akron. The Mims were living the "dual income - no kids" lifestyle 30 years before it would have a name, and it didn't take long for the racing bug to bite.  Mike and Donna joined the Steel Cities SCCA and began racing their 'Vette at the local tracks. Donna proved to be the better driver, and she actually won a race or two. The picture below (which can be found in lots of places on the internet, so I don't feel bad stealing a copy) shows her after a win at the Cumberland, Maryland airport track in 1961.

The kind of question only a modeler would ask: is the car in this picture white or... pink? Donna Mae painted most of her race cars bright pepto-bismol pink, but no one seems sure about this car. There are interviews with Donna that give conflicting reports (most of them from her later years - let me tell you your memory isn't as reliable as you think once you pass the 50 year mark). And if you look on the fender, you'll see the words "SQUIRREL CAGE", which was (and still is) the nickname of the Squirrel Hill Cafe, a Pittsburgh bar long favored by college students - I'm wondering if Donna was a regular there.

Donna was a "looker" - petite and blonde and hard to miss in her pink driving suit, and she took no prisoners on the race track. She quickly became a bit of a celebrity at local races. The SCCA club she and Mike had joined included members that would become racing legends in the next few years, including Don Yenko. Before long Donna was working as Yenko's executive secretary, tagging along on his racing trips, and meeting the people who would sponsor her racing. Sadly diving into racing did not help her marriage; she and Mike were divorced soon after - something she refused to talk about afterwards. In 1963 Donna bought a race-prepped 1959 Austin Healey Sprite and had it painted her trademark pink. By the end of the year she racked up enough points to become the first woman to win an SCCA national championship in the highly competitive H-production category.

A pink MG, TR3, and Stinger Corvair all followed, and while she had some success she never repeated a championship. She would be invited to drive in various races, including the Daytona Continental, in an assortment of cars including a Sunbeam Alpine and the weird Ferrari derived ASA. Maybe most famously, Donna was part of an all-woman team in the 1972 Cannonball Run; racing in a Cadillac stretch limo they went off the road in the middle of Texas when co-driver Peggy Niemcek nodded off - the car rolled, breaking Donna's collarbone and coating the inside of the car with green porta-potty fluid.

And then almost as suddenly as it started, the excitement of racing in the 60's ran headlong into the OPEC engineered oil shortages of the 70s.  As gas prices climbed and gas stations literally ran out of gas, miles-per-gallon became much more important than horsepower and general interest in racing waned. Donna Mae retired from racing and pretty much disappeared from the public eye - rumor has it that she spent some time in Maui. And when cheap gas came back in the 80s and sports cars became cool again, Donna was back in Pittsburgh, volunteering at vintage races and hanging out with local car clubs and driving her pink '79 Corvette.

Sadly, Donna died in 2009 at the age of 82. Even in death she made national news by requesting her body be seated in her '79 Corvette for visitation; the folks at the Beinhauer funeral home somehow pulled it off - their doorway was reportedly just 2 inches wider than the car.

Obligatory modeling reference: I've been working on a model of Donna's championship winning Bugeye Sprite for some time, using the hard-to-find Gunze kit. I'll do another post about the project in the future, but this article has gone way too long already. And if you're looking for an interesting racing subject for your next build, there are lots of photos of Donna's cars on the web - Think Pink!

Don

Madonna has Wrinkles!

The latest IPMS Journal - the National Convention issue - just arrived in my mailbox. 

If you haven't seen a copy of the Journal lately, it is probably a lot nicer than you remember. A few years ago a new team took over producing the magazine and brought in a new printer; its now a slick full-color publication (you can see some sample articles here).  The Nationals issue has pictures of every model that won a trophy at the show, and the photography is awfully good for an all volunteer effort. Above are a scan of the cover and just one of about 50 pages of show results.

This is awesome, except for one thing... all the models in the magazine appear to be perfect. Since I judged a few of these models and ogled many of the others, I know that while they are all very good models, only a very few had none of the tell-tale signs of being built by humans; almost every model there had something wrong visible if you put your eyeball about 3 inches away and looked long and hard enough.

Of course the reason they look perfect is pretty obvious: the tiny building and finishing errors that judges look for are pretty much invisible in a 2 inch x 2 inch photo.

While there isn't any conspiracy involved, this is a little like the fashion magazines that Photoshop pictures of celebrities and super-models to appear prison-camp thin - with glowing, blemish-free complexions - and so make young women think they have to be malnourished to be attractive. Modelers looking at just pictures in magazines may be telling themselves "I could never build that good", when in fact they already do. 

So by all means look at the model magazines for inspiration and ideas, just don't give yourself an inferiority complex!

P.S. I was going to put an un-retouched photo of Madonna here but I chickened out; if you want to see the inspiration for this post try typing "retouched celebrities" into your favorite search engine.

Don

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity...

When it comes to heros, I've always liked Halsey's famous quote:

“There are no great men. Just great challenges which ordinary men, out of necessity, are forced by circumstance to meet.” - Admiral William Halsey

If you read the citations of those receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor, you find that most were given (often posthumously) to someone just looking to keep their head down, who ended up between the proverbial rock and a hard place and chose to put the lives of their fellow soldiers ahead of their own. Read the story of Marine private Harold Agerholm and Navy corpsman Donald Ballard and you'll understand what I mean.

And then there are the men who take insane risks taking the fight to the enemy for no rational reason.

William Shomo grew up in western Pennsylvania, in the small city of Jeannette, about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh.  Unless you live nearby, Jeannette is just another high school football score scrolling across the Friday night news or an exit sign on Route 30; in the 1930s it was a bustling manufacturing town, churning out home goods for the region and turning steel into industrial machines.  Shomo graduated from Jeannette High School in 1936, went off to the Cincinnati Mortuary School for 3 years, came home to Jeannette with his embalmers license and went to work at the Miller Funeral Home.

In the summer of 1941 Shomo joined the Army Air Force. Since no one has ever written an in-depth biography of Shomo's life, we can only guess as to his reasons. At the time it was already obvious the U.S. would soon enter the European war, and with the draft cranking up Shomo may have figured that it was better to join on his own terms - before the massive call up that would come when the shooting started. Shomo was in the right place at the right time: the Air Force (still part of the Army) was undergoing a massive build up of men and aircraft; somehow Shomo became a pilot.

Shomo then disappears from the pages of history until late 1943 when he turns up in the Pacific, attached to the 82nd Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron in New Guinea  where he is flying photo-recon and ground attack missions. The 82nd is outfitted with already obsolete P-39s and P-40s: they fly low over well defended enemy locations, make a few strafing runs to distract the anti-aircraft gunners and then circle taking photos. While Shomo is technically a fighter pilot, the only time he sees a Japanese plane is while he is on the ground and they are trying to drop bombs on him, which is probably just as well as the planes he is flying are largely outclassed.

In December of 1944 Shomo's squadron receives F-6Ds - P-51s with a big hole cut in the side of the fuselage for the camera to look out.  Shomo gets an early Christmas present on December 24th, when he is put in command of the squadron and transfered to Mindoro island in the Philippines, just in time to help MacArthur keep his promise to return. On January 9th, as 175,000 men of the 6th Army come ashore at Lingayen Gulf, Shomo leads his first combat mission in the F-6; while photographing Japanese airbases on the main Philippine island of Luzon he catches a Japanese Val as it comes in for a landing and earns his first "kill" of the war.

Two days later things get a lot more exciting. Shomo and his wingman, Paul Lipscomb are on their way to photograph Japanese airbases again when they spot a gaggle of Japanese planes overhead - a "Betty" bomber escorted by 11 Ki-61 "Tonys" and 1 Ki-44 "Tojo" fighters.  Shomo doesn't hesitate; he channels his inner Tom Cruise and orders an attack.

There are many conflicting accounts of what happens next; the details that follow are based largely on Shomo's Medal of Honor Citation:

The Japanese pilots have likely never seen a Mustang before - from 2000 feet above the P-51s look a lot like two more Ki-61s joining the formation, and several Japanese pilots waggle their wings in greeting.  Taking fulll advantage of  their confusion, Shomo closes to rock-throwing distance and shoots down three Ki-61s in quick succession as he cuts through the formation, then fires on the Betty from below, sending it toward the ground on fire, still escorted by two Ki-61s. By this time a few of the Japanese pilots have figured out what is happening and try to counter-attack; Shomo shoots down a Tony in a head-on encounter and then exchanges fire with the Tojo until it disappears into the clouds.

Meanwhile the Betty has crashed, leaving two Tonys below; Shomo dives on them and shoots them down too - making 7 kills. The two remaining Tonys decide they have had enough and bug-out. The engagement lasts all of 6 minutes; somewhere around the halfway point Shomo has become an Ace.  While Shomo has been busy, Lipscomb has shot down 3 Tonys of his own.

It was the sort of story no one would have believed, except both pilots had really good cameras...

Within a few months, word of Shomo's daring do made it up through the ranks. Shomo was promoted and put up for the Medal of Honor, which he received in April. He would go on to a long Air Force career, including a stint as commander of the 54th Fighter Group, based at Pittsburgh International Airport. Shomo died in 1990, and is buried in St. Clair Cemetery in Greensburg.

Modeling Shomo's F-6 and Who Was Snooks?

My research into Shomo's career was driven by a very unexpected bit of luck last summer at the IPMS Nationals raffle: on the next-to-last ticket drawn I won Tamiya's latest 1/32 Mustang super-kit. I was very tempted to sell the kit to someone who could do it justice, but the kit had been donated by Hobby Link Japan, which meant it was a Japanese market kit with no shrink wrap to break...  I popped open that big box, scoped out the sprues and instructions and started to drool. On a whim I did a few internet searches for western Pennsylvania Mustang pilots and found Bill Shomo's amazing tale, and I knew there would be no rational thinking involved: I had to build the kit as Shomo's F-6.

A few more web searches turned up a few good pictures of Shomo's plane. Or rather, planes... Shomo's  plane on that fateful January day was a well worn F-6D-10, serial number 44-14841. A few months later, another pilot borrowed this plane for a mission and didn't return.  Meantime, Shomo was given a shiny new Mustang, dolled up with black-and-gold stripes and "The Flying Undertaker" on the nose; the perfect backdrop for picture taking when Shomo received his Medal of Honor. 

But the F-6 was the plane that was there. A few more web searches turned up a set of Kageroo decals with the right markings, including the 8 kill markings shown in the picture above. The F-6 had a big bezel on the port-side holding a dinner-plate sized window for the reconnaissance camera, but that seemed within my scratch building abilities.  And then I found a picture of the starboard side of Shomo's F-6 with the stylized yellow text reading "Snooks - 5th", which is not on the Kageroo decal sheet. What the heck?  Back to Google...

It turns out most of Shomo's planes had "Snooks" on the nose (at least the ones he kept long enough to paint). "Snooks" was the nickname of crew chief Ralph Winkle's wife. The photo of the plane accompanying the decals was taken before or just after Shomo and Winkle took possession of the plane, but there are a number of photos of the plane with the trademark name on the nose.  Even the flashy "Flying Undertaker" plane carried "Snooks - 6th" on the starboard side. By the way, a lot of internet pictures of Shomo's plane include Ralph Winkle, and some misidentify Ralph as Bill Shomo; in 1945 Ralph was stocky, well tanned, often shirtless and had a fairly bushy haircut, while Shomo was tall, skinny and surprisingly pale for someone lliving in the South Pacific.

My daughter the graphic designer turned photoshop loose on the picture and extracted the "Snooks - 5th" marking and scaled it to the right size for printing on decal paper;  four years of art school tuition finally paid off! Now all I have to do is build the model.  Stay tuned; I'll post pictures as the build progresses, but this article has gone from long to ridiculously long, so I'm signing off for now.

One last thing: if you haven't figured it out by now, I love Pittsburgh area history; if you have any details on William Shomo's life or career, I'd love to hear from you.

Bacon, Eggs and Styrene

One of the more popular places to have breakfast in Pittsburgh is Pamela's Diner.  Pamela's is known for its pancakes - thin and airy and more like a crepe than a traditional flapjack - but there are lots of other things to love on the menu.  In addition to the usual selection of eggs and bacon and sausage, the homefries are a real treat; they're made with just a bit of a cream sauce that you might think would make for a soggy mess but somehow makes all the wonderful fried potato flavors even more so.

There are 6 Pamela's in Pittsburgh; 5 of them in the trendier parts of town - and then there is Millvale.  If you're not familiar with Pittsburgh neighborhoods, Millvale is one of the many small towns lining the river valleys that a generation ago were home to the steel workers who worked in the neighboring mills and furnaces. Probably thanks to its narrow streets and tiny footprint, the big box stores never came to Millvale, allowing lots of small merchants to survive and remind us how good real main street stores and shopkeepers were in the good-old-days.

Located at 232 North Avenue, this Pamela's is in a building with a sign reading "Lincoln Pharmacy" on the outside, and inside you'll find about 1/2 the floor space actually is a pharmacy; the other half holds a classic lunch counter and a goodly number of small tables and booths.  Be forewarned  Pamela's doesn't take credit cards and can get pretty busy on weekends; get there early if you don't like to wait in line (they open at 8:00).

If you want a classic breakfast, I recommend the "Big Lincoln", which comes with your choice of eggs and breakfast meat, plus the wonderful pancakes and potatoes.  Of if you like spicy food the "Tex Mex Omelet" (which also comes with the wonderful potatoes but no pancakes) is a great change of pace from the more traditional breakfast fare.  Both of these were more than I could eat (and I can put away a lot).

If you go early Saturday morning, Jean-Marc Chatellier’s French Bakery  is just across the street - stop and pick up some pastries or croissants (maybe stop there before you get to Pamela's - they sell out fast on Saturday mornings).

But the reason this is the ultimate modelers breakfast is that right next to the bakery is Esther's Hobby Shop.  Esther's is a classic local hobby shop: the aisles are narrow and the products are piled high. Even though the store is clean, somehow the air smells old.  Although Esther's has a reputation as a model railroad shop, they have a fair selection of model kits (the latest releases are stacked up in the big store window - when was the last time you saw that?). They are well stocked with tools, paint and scratch-building basics, and the staff is helpful but won't joggle your elbow if you just want to browse.


Combined with a stop at Pamela's  I can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday morning. If you're a modeler anywhere close to Pittsburgh you definitely want to check it out.

One small step for (a) man

With Neil Armstrong's passing there are lots of people on the internet recalling where they were and what they were doing as they watched Neil come down the ladder and speak his immortal words.  Thanks to a near flawless landing by both men and machine there was no need to use the padding built into the schedule, allowing Neil to take his historic step onto the Moon just minutes before 11 pm on the east coast - prime TV watching time across the continental U.S.

In those pre-VCR days if you wanted to see something on TV, you had to be there in front of the TV when it happened. I was an 8 year old kid obsessed with the space program and  I know I was parked in front of the family Zenith, but after all these years I must admit I can't truly remember watching it; especially given all the times I've seen the footage re-run since then.  I vaguely remember my parents waking me up to go to bed, so I probably didn't stay awake to see Neil go back up the ladder.

I recently came across a recording of a History Channel rebroadcast of the moon walk on my DVR (from the 40th anniversary in 2009). I was amazed at how poor the images were: shadowy, low-resolution, snowy - and get this - black and white.   NASA contracted with Westinghouse (the Aerospace division in Baltimore) to develop something unheard of in 1964:  a small, light weight, low-power TV camera. Image quality was not exactly a priority: the camera gave 250 lines of resolution at a whopping 10 frames per second, but it used about as much power as a single Christmas light bulb.  All of the crisp images of Buzz and Neil you find on the internet (like the one above I stole from a NASA website) are photographs taken by old-fashion film cameras, that had to be returned to earth for processing before anyone got to see them.

What I do still remember from the space race were the models.  I have clear memories of sitting on my front porch one summer building Monogram's 1/48 LEM - trying to freehand brush paint the various black panels - and then having Dad show me the magic of masking tape. At some point the big 1/24 Gemini capsule - painted bright silver - took a place of honor on my bedroom dresser. And then one Christmas I opened a really big package: the 1/96th Saturn V that occupied my after-school hours for the rest of the winter and most of the spring.

I also remember - quite vividly - my cousin having a big 1/48 model of the Apollo CSM and LEM, a model my mom and dad could never find at the KMart or even the one hobby shop in driving distance of our small town.  My cousins had actually piled into the family station wagon in the summer of 1970 and driven the 1000 odd miles to Florida, just like Chevy Chase in that movie.  They had visited the just opened Disney World park and the Kennedy Space Center. Apparently the big Revell kit was right there in the KSC gift shop, which made it seem even more magical to my nine year old self.

When I got back into modeling in the 90s I saw a Revell Germany reissue of this kit for sale in a mail order catalog - only to discover the meaning of limited reissue.  I dropped more than enough hints to be sure I'd get one for my next birthday, but before I blew out the candles it was out of production.  And a few years ago I saw one in a battered box at a model show going for $100+, but I wasn't quite ready to pay collector prices for it, so it stayed just out of reach.

But when I saw someone carrying one out of the vendor room at the Orlando Nats (the box-art was new, but I knew what it was just by the size of the box) I knew it was time; I emailed my favorite styrene dealer and told him to get me Revell kit 5090, and I didn't even ask what it would cost (the street price is around $50). After 42 years I finally have one in the stash.

So was it worth the wait? If you're read the reviews, you know that its not a great kit.  The tooling was based on early prototype (Block 1) hardware that never flew, and accuracy took a back seat to play value (all the modules separate so you can simulate your own moon landing).  A quick look in the box reminds you how far the state of the art has come; the detail is soft and and the parts count seems a little low compared to the size of the kit. If you want a super accurate model in 1/48 scale, the new Dragon kits are the way to go.  But if you're just looking to relive a bit of 1969, get the Revell kit while its still in production - it might be another 20 years before Revell dusts off the molds again.

Don