Delgado flash

Air Classics, Mar 2002 by Mandrake, Charles

I am enclosing some details as a follow-up to your story on the Delgado Flash in the January issue. Two of the photographs, dated 1941, show the complicated retractable landing gear that was added around this time. The wheels moved backwards as the struts shortened up and then swung inboard, pulling clam shell covers with them. When closed, the covers protruded from the lower surface of the wing. Also note the revised cockpit cover and headrest fairing. Former students advised me that the Army Air Forces took over the school during World War Two for rebuilding engines and aircraft and that he Flash was indeed used in some way is a training aid.

The school had also done construcion work on a Wedell-Williams design intended for the 1934 London-to-Melbourne race. The plane was never finished and the rotund object in one of the photographs is the partially completed fuselage. Also, the unfinished wing against the hangar back wall was supposed to be for the Delgado Maid in a very ambitious program to set a world speed record at the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The plane was supposed to have droppable landing gear but the loss of the Maid put an end to that project.

The school apparently also did work on the last two Wedell-Williams closed-- course racers - the P&W-powered Race 45 and the Menasco-powered "second" Race 22 (NR64Y). Both of these aircraft were largely wooden-skinned.

Charles Mandrake

Box 955-321 Prospect

Ashtabula, OH

44005