With those round dips in the wings, it was obvious that Custer, one of aviation’s great ‘what if’ stories, had to be involved. The innovative wing design was his idea, and he alone had pursued it doggedly since the 1940s. He died in 1985, his decades of labor unrewarded.
Willard Custer experienced severe disappointments and made his share of mistakes in thirty years. Consequently, he did not achieve all that he set out to do. But he did achieve something, and it was significant. A master mechanic, he took his homegrown idea and turned it into four full-size aircraft that implemented a radically different approach to flight. Those aircraft were real, and they proved his theories. And in the end, Willard was proud and honored to be known as the man who had created them. They remain his trophies.
Following is a review of each of those aircraft and, in blue, where it is today.
The Bumblebee- FAA Registration Number N30090
Willard explained: A bumblebee doesn’t look like a bird. It’s fat and round with tiny wings that look too small to lift it. Nothing aerodynamic. But it flies.
Nicknamed the Bumblebee,
this aircraft was built in 1941-1942 to specifications provided by Dr. Louis Crook, the Dean of the Department of Aeronautical Engineering at The Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Its purpose was to see if a full-size airplane with channel wings could fly, and if so, to discover its flying characteristics.
Materials (spruce frame and mahogany plywood) and twin Lycoming engines were funded by Briggs Manufacturing Company in Detroit. The body, channels, and propellers were fashioned entirely by hand in Willard’s backyard shop. Weighing over 1700 pounds, this aircraft was flown over 100 hours in tests at the airfield in Beltsville, Maryland where General Gilmore eventually saw it and recommended its innovations for wind tunnel testing at Wright Field during World War II. Largely because of these tests, Willard was issued several patents necessary to continue development.
Retired from service in November 1943, the plane was dismantled. In 1961, it was donated to the Smithsonian Institution where it was reassembled and placed in long-term storage at the Garber Facility in Suitland, Maryland (pictured above).
Today, the CCW-1 is still in good shape. Pictures of it suspended from the ceiling can be found on the Internet. The curator’s intent is to move it to climate-controlled storage at the Udvar Hazy campus of the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum adjacent to Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia. However, there is currently no estimated timeframe for that move. Even if moved, it would not likely be on public display as there are too many relics for the display space.
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Built in Pittsburgh in 1948 with funds provided by Jack Heinz (of Heinz ketchup fame) and other financiers there, the CCW-2 was a stripped-down Taylor Cub fuselage integrating Willard’s handmade channels and propellers (yes, the propellers were handmade, too). Based on recommended changes by the engineer from Wright Field (Don Young), it was lighter than the CCW-1 (less than 1,000 pounds) and had shallower channels.
Like the CCW-1, it was intended solely for experimentation. Flying it was like flying with the top down and windows open! Fun! Flown through 1950 and 1951, the aircraft gained notoriety in December 1951 when it rose vertically from the ground while tethered to a windsock pole in a public demonstration.
In 1952, it was the subject of a NACA wind tunnel study, and then it was retired. It was sold for $5,000 in 1954 to an unnamed buyer, and its fate thereafter remains a mystery.
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57-Charlie
easily qualifies as the workhorse of Willard’s effort. Unlike its predecessors, the CCW-5 was developed as a commercially viable application of channel wings. It was built in Oxnard, California by Baumann Aircraft Company on a contract funded by Jack Heinz of Pittsburgh, and utilized a Baumann Brigadier fuselage integrating channel wings. It was the first all-metal (and fiberglass) Channel Wing aircraft, seating the pilot and four passengers, targeting the commercial executive audience. Completed in 1953, it was Willard’s prototype for ensuing FAA Type Certification efforts.
The most-photographed Channel Wing, this aircraft was featured in dozens of demonstrations to military and civilian audiences from California to Virginia, and from Mexico as far north as (quite possibly) Montreal, Canada.
The prototype gained instant notoriety when it hovered
at eleven miles per hour over the runway in a public demonstration in Oxnard on August 24, 1954. In 1967, its total airtime was stated to be 241 hours and six minutes.
Willard canceled its FAA registration in September 1970, reporting that it was destroyed,
i.e., dismantled,
and had not flown at all the preceding year.
Today, a 1/40 scale desktop model of the CCW-5 prototype, donated by Willard, is on display at the Udvar Hazy campus of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. It is on the lower level in a glass case housing models of many other aircraft. The photograph of that model in the case (see left) is courtesy of Wendy (Custer) Carter.
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Christened July 4, 1964 on Custer Channel Wing Day,
this aircraft was built in the Custer Channel Wing Corporation’s hangar at the Hagerstown Municipal Airport. It represents the apex of Willard’s achievements. In most respects a copy of the CCW-5 prototype with some improvements, it demonstrated nearly all the performance characteristics of the prototype.
Devore Aviation used it as the upgraded basis for FAA Type Certification in the mid-1960s. In pursuit of that goal, it was removed from service throughout 1969 to raise the horizontal stabilizers higher on the tail, and was subsequently re-introduced to the public early in 1970.
FAA records show that by July 6, 1970, it had flown a total of 83 hours, and twenty of those hours had been since its modification. The effort to certify it finally ceased when the money ran out.
The aircraft was subsequently flown to Enid, Oklahoma with the Custer Channel Wing Corporation’s relocation. There it was involved in one demonstration for the military, but no contract materialized. Out of money and out of ideas, the corporation relegated the aircraft to storage where it languished without the needed maintenance.
About 1975, Bob Whitehead, the president of Willard’s new corporation, took possession of the aircraft, and flew the crippled airplane to central Pennsylvania where it was stored in a dentist’s outbuilding.
In 1988, it was sold to the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania, where it remains today on display (see left). Says the museum: Today the CCW-5 is void of its beautiful base white over polished aluminum with insignia red and navy blue stripes...The Museum maintains the CCW-5 on ‘as received’ outdoor display due to space limitations. We hope to begin full restoration in the not-too-distant future.
