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Registration Number NC7805
Diesel Down
This airplane is a Lockheed Vega 1, S/N 28 (ATC 49) manufactured
on December 11, 1928 by Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, CA. It
came with a Wright Whirlwind J5C engine (S/N 9214) of 220HP. It
was a five-place aircraft.
Curiously, the airplane landed first at Tucson on October
30, 1928 (check the Register, you’ll see), a full two
months before the record says it was manufactured. At
this visit it was flown by E.L. Remelin. He carried Allan
Lockheed and Norman Hall as passengers. Perhaps
this was an example of the product not matching the paperwork
for an executive hack? Regardless,
they were eastbound from Burbank,
CA to El Paso, TX.
It sold for the first time on November 13, 1928 (again, before it “officially” was
manufactured) to Cromwell-Hunt Aero Service, San Angelo,
TX. Carl
D. Cromwell was president of Cromwell-Hunt Aero Service. The
Vega was to be used, “for oil business, recreation,
taxi service.”
A few months after it was delivered, it suffered an accident
on March 4, 1929 at Clarksville, TN. The pilot, Register signer Embree Hunt,
cracked the fuselage in three places. It was rebuilt
at the Lockheed factory using a new fuselage.
NC7805 sold on November 26, 1929 to Cromwell Air Lines,
San Angelo, TX. This was probably just a shifting of
resources within the Cromwell-Hunt Aero organization.
Somewhere around 1930 it sold to R.O. Dulaney, Jr. of Fort
Worth, TX. We find the airplane at Tucson for the second
time on November 9, 1931 with Dulaney as pilot carrying one
passenger. Their home base was listed as Ft. Worth,
but they did not cite their itinerary.
On November 23, 1931 it was sold back to Lockheed Aircraft
Corporation, repaired and remodeled. Lockheed sold
it on March 16, 1932 to Mrs. Albert Harold Bromley of Parral,
Chihuahua, Mexico. She, in turn, sold it to C.C. Spangenberger
of Dallas, TX on March 26, 1932.
It is during this quick purchase and resale that we find
NC7805 at Tucson for the third and final time on March 17,
1932, piloted by Edward
F. Booth. Booth’s itinerary
is from Los Angeles to Dallas. An easy deduction is
that this visit is during the ferry flight from Lockheed
Aircraft, via Mrs. Bromley, to its new owner in Dallas. Pilot
Booth (q.v.) seems to have been in an aviation services capacity
at that time, and it makes sense that either Lockheed, Bromley
or Spangenberger would have contracted with him to ferry
this newly remanufactured Vega.
Under Spangenberger’s ownership, NC7805 was given
an NX license, painted red and black, and a 240HP Guiberson
diesel engine was installed. Guiberson
Diesel Engine Company was based in Dallas, TX. In May,
1932 the airplane was flown from Dallas to Camden, NJ by
Harold Bromley in 13 hours 15 minutes. He also made
a non- stop New York-Los Angeles flight in preparation for
a Pacific flight attempt (Seattle to Tokyo), which never
took place.
On January 5, 1933 the airplane was sold to Cardiff & Peacock,
Ltd. of Bakersfield,
CA. It was converted back to the
standard Wright Whirlwind J5 engine. Six months later,
on July 11, 1933, it suffered another accident at Dos Palos,
CA and was “washed out.” No further information.
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UPLOADED: 03/09/06 REVISED: 06/13/07, 01/24/09, 03/12/10
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