Flying Carpets, Flying Wings - Softcover

Barbara H. Schultz

9780965218122: Flying Carpets, Flying Wings

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0965218120 ISBN 13: 9780965218122

Publisher: Little Buttes Publishing, 2011

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Flying Carpets, Flying Wings is a biography about Moye W. Stephens, his friends, and his achievements in aviation. During the 1920s, Moye flew with Eddie Bellande, Jack Northrop, Allan Hancock, Howard Hughes, William Boeing and many other aviation notables. This led to a career flying Ford trimotors for Maddux, TAT, T&WA. From 1930 to 1932, Moye flew author Richard Halliburton around the world in a Stearman C-3B named the Flying Carpet. This is the first and only factual narrative of that flight. In 1939, Moye was one of a select few who founded Northrop Corporation when he flew several Northop prototypes including the N-1M flying wing. Moye's well-researched and definitive biography covers nearly 80 years of aviation history. Pictures are interspersed throughout the text - some photos have never been published before. The Appendix includes extra pictures, the Flying Carpet timeline, and the TAT information handbook. Individually shrink-wrapped.

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Book Description

From the Author

When one thinks of the rich history of the flying wing aircraft design, one name comes to mind: Jack Northrop. It was his passion to perfect the design that he believed was a "better" one that simply wouldn't let the concept die. Northrop worked for Allan Lockheed and then started three companies that carried his own name. The first became part of Boeing, the second part of Douglas and the third lasted and is alive and well today as Northrop Grumman.
                But Jack didn't do it alone. He had a knack of surrounding himself with brilliant men who shared his passion. One of the first pilots to work with Jack was Eddie Bellande, who in the 1920s mentored a bright, young flyer by the name of Moye Stephens. Recently, aviation historian and author Barbara Schultz published a new biography of Stephens, titled Flying Carpets, Flying Wings. Culled from hours of interview with Stephens before he passed away in 1995, the work is a fascinating glimpse into aviation of the 1920s and 1930s, and how Stephens helped build Northrop Aircraft.
                Stephens gave up a promising career in law to pursue his own passion of the air, and along the way he worked as a stunt and movie pilot, and gave flight instruction to luminaries of that era including Howard Hughes and Allan Hancock. Bellande also introduced Stephens to Allan Lockheed and several of the brilliant engineers who were working for him at the time, including Jack Northrop, Jerry Vultee, and Cliff Garrett, all of whom then learned to fly under Moye's patient tutelage.
                In 1990, when Barbara Schultz was doing research for her definitive biography of legendary aviatrix Pancho Barnes, she met and ended up interviewing Stephens and his wife, and discovered that, as Barbara has said in a recent radio interview, "He is a person who contributed greatly to aviation and his story was one of the important stories that needed to be told." Schultz uses her hours of interviews of Stephens not to just gather information on his experiences, but to allow Moye to talk to the reader directly, to tell the story himself. Stephens' years of surviving the riskiest time of flying naturally left him with much wisdom on the trade.
                For example, he told Schultz, "The flying game demanded payment for the favors it conferred. The fortunate gained a degree of skill and diligence; the inept, the reckless, and those abandoned by whatever gods guided their destinies paid the ultimate price. Pilots whose experience dated from the war years {i.e., WWI} or earlier, played the game long enough to lose friends and acquaintances in fiery crashes. Each knew, without words, that the ineffable fulfillment binding him to his calling was shared irrevocably by all. It set them infinitely apart from groundlings which, in the absence of an adequate means of expression, remained forever incapable of comprehending the substance of their bitter-sweet bondage."
                In 1931, while flying as an airline pilot with TWA, Stephens was approached by travel author Richard Halliburton who was seeking someone to fly him around the world. Stephens jumped at the chance, and in a Stearman C-3B biplane they named The Flying Carpet, the pair left on an 18-month adventure touring the world so that Halliburton could write about it.
                In 1939, Stephens was one of three partners who joined together to form Northrop Aircraft. Jack Northrop had bee frustrated at Lockheed because he was unable to develop his own designs and wanted a company where he could devote himself to designing state-of-the-art aircraft and leave the business end of things to others, such as Stephens. Besides helping with the business aspects, Stephens became Northrop's chief test pilot and flew with the company until the end of WWII.
                Schultz's biography is an exceptional piece of aviation story-telling, turning what could be dry history into a compelling read that opens up a time when aviation wasn't nearly as limited by regulation of economics as it is today.
                                                Alan Radecki
                                                Airshowstuff Magazine

           In the late 1920's, there was a famous author and adventurer named Richard Halliburton who decided he wanted to fly around the world and write a book about it.
But he wasn't a pilot so he had to find someone with intercontinental experience, back country prowess and aerobatic capabilities who could be his own mechanic, if necessary.
The pilot he chose was one of the top aviators of his time, Moye W. Stephens, who grew up flying wood and fabric airplanes and, eventually, was a test pilot on the Northrop Flying Wing. At first Halliburton wanted to use an autogiro (the aircraft would be shipped across the Atlantic) but Stephens talked Halliburton into using a conventional aircraft - a Stearman C-3B.
          For no pay, but unlimited expenses, the pair took off from Los Angeles on Christmas Day 1930 for a grand adventure with no particular destination except that it had to be exciting. They flew everywhere, from Venice, to Paris to Morocco to literally, Timbuktu.
The modified Stearman C-3B was named the "Flying Carpet" after the magic carpet of fairy tales, and was the title of Halliburton's 1932 best-seller. They embarked on what he called "one of the most fantastic, extended air journeys ever recorded" taking 18 months to circumnavigate the globe, covering 33,660 miles and visiting 34 countries.
         The pair made it to New York City, with frequent stops along the way due to engine problems (subsequently solved), then crated the airplane and boarded it on the oceanliner RMS Majestic. They sailed to England, where their extended mission began.
In Stephens, Halliburton, a careful planner, had chosen his pilot well, and, in a reassuring letter to his parents (January 23, 1932), recited his many flight skills. The around-the-world trip had cost Halliburton over $50,000, plus fuel; in the first year, the book he entitled The Flying Carpet (after his valiant plane) earned him royalties of $100,000, in those depression-era days a remarkably large sum.
              Moyes subsequently wrote his own book and often the two stories, while on the same particular event, did not coincide. Halliburton conceded that, while he did everything he said he did, he often added some color to make it interesting.
Barbara Schultz has done an amazing job in piecing together what really happened on that trip, plus the life story of this amazing pilot who was friends with the aviation luminaries of history, from Pancho Barnes to Jack Northrop. Included are numerous photos of the era and the colorful people Moyes took up for joyrides, such as the chief of a headhunting tribe in Borneo.
            It's a great read and a fascinating insight into what life was like before all the rules and regulations, bureaucrats and politicians got hold of aviation, when all you needed was an airplane and the sky.   If you think you may have missed out on the best of aviation, after reading the biography of Moye Stephens, you'll be even more convinced.

- Wayman Dunlap