On each of the flights, the refueling crew was made up of James C. The final try came on October 5, but was again cut short by engine problems after only 20 hours and 53 minutes. The third flight started on October 1, and lasted for 66 hours until the 300 hp Wright J6-9 engine started acting up and forced the crew to land. The next try came on September 25, but on the following day, a section of fabric tore from the wing after 29 hours and the flight was again scrubbed. The first was on September 21, but the attempt was abandoned after only ten hours in the air. The few references I found on the record attempt neglect to mention where it was flown, but these photos show that at least some of the project was based at Glendale's Grand Central Air Terminal.įour times the crew took off to attempt to set the record. Their record was quickly eclipsed, and so they set out to recapture it, starting in September 1930, using the Pride. "Pete" Reinhart had together set an endurance record of 246 hours, 43 minutes and 22 seconds in July 1929 flying a Buhl named Angeleno. Rather than try to set the record for unrefueled flight, they intended to go for an absolute endurance record, and utilize in-flight refueling. The Pride of Hollywood team had a bit of a different approach to their endurance flight. The plane went on to fly cargo in Mexico, and quietly disappears from history. They made it to the 43 hour mark, but then had to land due to lack of fuel: some mis-calculations had led to much higher-than-expected fuel consumption, and Rocheville's 90-hour goal was just too lofty, of course, the fact that Al Ebrite had re-engined it with a larger motor might have had something to do with it. On the first try, the plane was damaged during takeoff, but after some quick repairs, the record attempt got underway. Serial 100 was sold to Al Ebrite Aero, a charter operator, who sponsored an endurance record attempt with it in 1929, flown by Johnny Guggliemetti and Lee Schoenhair. Albatross built two of these, the first was NX-6227 (serial 100) and the second was the Pride.īuilding on what he'd learned with the Z-12 project, Rocheville was hoping that the B-1 design would be capable of up to a 90-hour endurance. Their lead designer, the colorful Charlie Rocheville (who was passionate, maybe even obsessed, about designing aircraft capable of very long endurance flights) left to start his own company with brother Henry, but seems to have not severed ties completely (again, records from that era are murky), because we see him again involved with Albatross building a plane, the B or B-1, that is very similar to the old Z-12, but a single-engine aircraft rather than a trimotor. After operating for a couple of years (resulting in the single Z-12 trimotor and several production Z-6 airliners) they experienced a bit of a management shakeup in 1928, changed their name to American Albatross and moved to Long Beach. In researching the Pride, it didn't help that the history of Zenith Aircraft, which started in 1927 in Santa Ana, was fairly convoluted. Old registration records list NR-331E as an "Albatross B", with serial number 101, and other references note it as a "Albatross B-1" and "Zenith Z-5 Albatross". Ground has "American Eagle" written on the back of his cover. In which a crewman is standing.during the flight, one of theĬrew would stand in the hatch and catch the hose lowered from The guy on the left appears to be Reinhart. The over-wing aerial refueling manifold and the cockpit position make the two aircraft look similar, but the Pride had a much longer fuselage and a completely different tail (not to mention the different registration number), so clearly these are not the same aircraft. I could find only one photo of the Meteor ( here), taken after it had crashed. The Meteor had been modified at one point and was intended to be used in a flight endurance record attempt. I was initially led down a rabbit trail by several sources that list the Pride of Hollywood as one of the names carried by the Mason Greater Meteor, a plane built by students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and a plane which has a very convoluted and confusing history.
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