On January 14, 1936, Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. made aviation history by flying a Northrop Gamma 2G from Los Angeles to New York, setting an FAI World Record for Speed Over a Recognized Course. Hughes logged 9 hours, 26 minutes, and 10 seconds for the journey at an average of 417.0km per hour, or 259.1 miles per hour. This was an incredible performance at altitudes between 15,000 and 18,000 feet; Hughes employed supplemental oxygen in this high-altitude flight.
Jack Northrop designed the Northrop Gamma initially as a long-range cargo and mail carrier for Transcontinental and Western Air, Inc. After this latter company decided against fulfilling the contract, several aircraft became available to other buyers. One of them was number 11, which Jackie Cochran purchased and had this latter aircraft specially modified for long-distance racing. The Gamma’s powerplant was removed and replaced with a powerful liquid-cooled supercharged V-12 Wright Aeronautical Division Conqueror SGV1570F4 engine.
After a very promising start, the Gamma developed some problems, not least engine supercharger failures that caused forced landings, and structural damage from an accident at night. Extensive repair and alteration were carried out, not least replacing the Gamma’s original inline-6 engine with a Pratt & Whitney radial, and deleting the rear cockpit. Cochran’s ambition to compete in the MacRobertson London-to-Australia air race was foiled by these events, but she did fly the Gamma in the 1935 Bendix Trophy Race.
Fascinated by the Gamma, Hughes bargained with Cochran for several weeks until he rented the aircraft with the option to buy the Gamma. Hughes also modified the Gamma, changing the engine to a Wright Cyclone SGR-1820-G5 and adding extra fuel tanks. The aircraft never appeared once to be inspected and licensed by the Department of Commerce in the changed form.
The Northrop P-61 Black Widow was a radically new night fighter in World War II. On first recognition of the need for an in-depth night fighter, the P-61 would quickly become the plane of selection. That combination would make it the first U.S. warplane purposely designed to fly at night and equipped with radar. It saw action in most theaters of the war—in Europe, the Pacific, and up over the Hump into China Burma India. It was a twin-engine, twin-boom aircraft with a crew of three and was quite heavily armed with cannons and machine guns.
Despite all the innovations of its design and ability, the P-61’s actual contribution to the outcome of the war was quite limited, downing a total of only 127 enemy aircraft, including 18 V-1 Buzz Bombs. Nevertheless, the legend of the Black Widow lives on, largely through the exploits of the “Lady in the Dark,” a P-61 flown by Captain Lee Kendall. This aircraft managed the last two aerial kills of World War II, shooting down Japanese planes without firing a shot by crashing them.
The P-61 was used in a post-war collective effort by the U.S. government in one of the early and most influential studies into thunderstorms, which greatly facilitated modern meteorological concepts. Thus, its contribution to military flying and weather studies stamped its footprint in airmen’s history.