Born in New York City on February 26, 1888, Chance Milton Vought attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He then specialized in engineering at NYU and at the University of Pennsylvania. After leaving college in 1910, he learned to fly and qualified for Pilot License Number 156 on August 14, 1912, at Cicero, Illinois. After a variety of jobs in aviation, in 1916 he became Design Engineer for the Wright-Martin Company.

On June 18, 1917, Vought formed The Lewis and Vought Corporation in Long Island City, New York with his father-in-law, Birdseye Lewis. In 1922 this became Chance Vought Corporation with Vought as its president. From the VE-7 trainer in 1917 to the record breaking O2U observation aircraft in 1926, Vought became a leading aircraft manufacturer for the U. S. Navy. The O2U observation biplane was the first to bear the name Corsair, first to use the Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine and its air attacks against rebel fortifications in Nicaragua were a first in aviation history.

In February 1929 Chance Vought Aircraft joined Boeing, Pratt & Whitney and Hamilton Aero as part of United Aircraft and Transport Corporation. Later that year Stout Air Services, Sikorsky Aviation, Standard Steel Propeller, Northrop and Stearman were acquired by United Aircraft. In 1930 Chance Vought moved from its Long Island City plant to a brand new facility in East Hartford, sandwiched between Pratt & Whitney and Hamilton Standard and fronting on Rentschler Field. On July 25, 1930, Chance Milton Vought died of septicemia. Due to Federal anti-trust judgments, on August 31, 1934, United Aircraft and Transport was dissolved and the next day United Aircraft Corporation began operations with fewer divisions.

Stratford Operations

By 1939, need for factory space in the East Hartford plants to accommodate expanding orders at Pratt & Whitney, Hamilton Standard and Chance Vought, coupled with the demise of flying boat business at Sikorsky in Stratford made it sensible to consolidate the two airframe producing divisions in the underutilized Stratford plant. Vought–Sikorsky Aircraft came into being on April 1, 1939.

By 1942, production of the OS2U Kingfisher and F4U Corsair totally filled the Stratford plant. With the delivery of "Exeter", the third VS-44A in wartime camouflage paint on June 23, 1942, Sikorsky flying boat production ended. However, helicopter production was increasing to the extent of requiring separate facilities and organization. As a result, Vought-Sikorsky Division was separated into Chance Vought Division and Sikorsky Aircraft Division which was relocated to Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Closing the Stratford Plant

In 1948 and 1949, Vought moved from Stratford to Grand Prairie, Texas, near Dallas. This was primarily to take advantage of a newer government owned factory promising lower cost operations in addition to better flying weather. The factory was used by North American Aviation during World War II. In 1948 more than 250 F4U-5s were produced in Stratford; the last one was delivered on January 1, 1949. The move was accomplished in stages and by January 1949 the move was more than half completed. Over 16,000,000 pounds of freight (over 500 freight cars) were delivered to Dallas and 700 employees transferred. In April 1949, F4U-5 delivery from the Dallas plant began. The first three F6U-1 were completed in Stratford and trucked to Dallas for delivery while the other twenty-seven were completed in the Dallas plant.

Pilot Bill Millar flew the first XF7U-1 Cutlass into Hensley Field at Dallas from NAS Patuxent Naval Air Test Center, Maryland, on January 19, 1949. The same day pilot Bob Baker landed aircraft #2 at Carswell Air Force base in Fort Worth for continuing flight tests.

During its ten years at Stratford, 1939 through 1948, Chance Vought had built more than 8,100 airplanes for the Navy, including over 6,600 Corsairs during WW II

SB2U Vindicator (V-156) Scout Dive Bomber - Chance Vought Aircraft’s first monoplane was the "Vindicator. The XSB2U-1 first flew at East Hartford in 1936 and production of the SB2U-1 and –2 occurred in East Hartford during 1937 and 1938.

The first Vought production aircraft built in the Stratford plant was the SB2U-3. The prototype XB2U-3 first flew in February, 1939, and after initial testing, it was delivered to the Marine Corps modified with floats. After testing as a float plane was not encouraging, the floats were removed and the aircraft was accepted. Vindicators flown by two man Marine Corps crews took heavy losses as they helped defeat the Japanese at the Battle of Midway Island in the Pacific early in 1942. The Vindicators were also active in the Atlantic, flying from the USS Ranger on convoy and anti-submarine operations.

The aircraft were produced for the French as the V-156-F . When France was overrun by the Germans in 1940, the V-156-F contract with France for fifty aircraft was taken over by Britain. Minor changes were made and the aircraft were re-designated as V-156-B1 and given the name "Chesapeake".

The SB2U-3 had a length of 34 feet, a wingspan of 42 feet and a height of 10.25 feet. It’s 825 horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-1535-46 Twin Wasp Jr. engine swung a 10 foot diameter Hamilton Standard constant speed propeller. Its empty weight was 5,634 pounds and maximum gross weight was 9,421 pounds. Cruising speed was 152 miles per hour and maximum speed was 243 mph at 9,500 feet altitude. A total of 245 SB2U aircraft were produced with 57 SB2U-3 aircraft produced in the Stratford plant. The last aircraft was delivered in 1942.                                            

OS2U Kingfisher (VS-309, VS-310) Scout Observation Aircraft -Designed and built in Hartford, XOS2U-1 prototype was first flown in 1938. All production, however, was at Vought-Sikorsky Division in Stratford, beginning in 1940. By October 1942, the OS2U–3 version was already in active anti-submarine service and the Kingfisher production line had nearly rolled to contract completion as the F4U Corsair production line built up alongside.

The OS2U-3 had a two-man crew, pilot and gunner/radioman. The floatplane version was 30.9 feet long, had a wingspan of 35.9 feet and was 15.1 feet high. The 8.5 foot diameter propeller was powered by a 450 horsepower Pratt & Whitney R985-50 Wasp Jr. engine. The aircraft empty weight was 4,560 pounds with a gross weight of 6,108 pounds. The maximum speed was 171 mph at 5,000 feet and cruising speed was 152 mph

A single main float and two small wing/outrigger floats could be interchanged with wheel landing gear so the aircraft could operate from land bases or aircraft carriers or be catapult launched from battleships, cruisers, destroyers and sea plane tenders. When launched at sea the aircraft would be recovered by landing alongside the ship and lifted aboard by crane.

While gaining a reputation for strength and reliability in the services, public recognition came in 1942. In October that year Captain Eddie Rickenbacker and his B-17 crew went down in the Pacific and drifted for over three weeks. At dusk on November 12, a Kingfisher on patrol spotted the crew in a life raft and landed to rescue the four beleaguered survivors. Only two men could fit inside the OS2U, so the Captain Rickenbacker and the other man were lashed to the wings. The severely overloaded "Bug", as that aircraft was named, taxied over forty miles of rough water to land. The "Bug" had already flown over a quarter million miles in 1,100 hours over two years; rugged, indeed!

In order to clear Stratford production space for the F4U Corsair fighter, production of the Kingfisher was transferred to the Naval Aircraft Factory Johnsville, Pennsylvania, where 300 nearly identical OSN-1 aircraft were built. Total Kingfisher production was 1,628 aircraft, including over 100 Stratford manufactured OS2U-3 aircraft that went to Allied nations.

F4U Corsair (V-166B) Navy Fighter - The Corsair was conceived as a high speed Navy fighter by the Chance Vought engineering department in East Hartford under Chief Engineer Rex B. Beisel . Its XR2800-4 Double Wasp engine with a two-stage supercharger delivered 1,800 hp. to a 13.3 foot diameter Hydromatic variable pitch propeller. To accommodate this large propeller in the smallest possible low-drag airframe, an inverted gull wing configuration was used. This arrangement provided a clean right-angle wing to fuselage intersection with short, rearward retracting and totally enclosed landing gear. In addition, the low wing hinge point allowed the outer panels to be folded up into a condensed package. With internally wing-mounted machine guns, clean air intakes and a flush riveted and spot welded airframe, the Corsair was designed to be the fastest fighter aircraft to date.

Built in the experimental hangar at Stratford, the XF4U-1 achieved first flight on May 29, 1940 and within weeks became the first production aircraft to exceed 400 knots in level flight.

F4U-1 Corsair continued

The first production contract for 584 F4U-1 Corsairs was signed in June 1941, powered by 2,000 horsepower R-2800-8s. But serious operating problems loomed, the most important being the pilot’s inability to see to land on a carrier. A hasty redesign (F4U-1A) raised the pilot’s seat four inches and replaced the "squirrel cage" canopy by an early "bubble" section canopy. Other changes, including heavier armor and a larger tail wheel, were required. Rapid speed-up of the assembly line made it necessary to schedule changes; mandatory fixes came on the 6th and subsequent aircraft. Others came on 125th and subsequent. The first five aircraft remained as flight test aircraft, basically unchanged.

By the end of 1942 the Navy had accepted 178 F4U-1s. In 1943 Charles Lindbergh, a close friend of Igor Sikorsky, who was often at the Stratford plant, began to spend more time with Vought test pilots. Corsairs were being assigned to new Marine Corps squadrons and news from the Pacific sounded good. Major Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, VFM-214 (Black Sheep Squadron) commander, had shot down five Japanese in one day, to become first "ace in a day" and would go on to become the WW II top ace with twenty-eight victories.

Work proceeded on an F4U-2 night fighter; eventually thirty-four were built. In 1943, with problems solved, F4U-1 production rapidly expanded; 75 per month, 77, 113, 132 and by December, 235 were produced. With heavy Corsair production demands and contracts to produce Sikorsky helicopters, the divisions were separated in January 1943, becoming Chance Vought Division and Sikorsky Aircraft Division. Sikorsky moved to a Bridgeport factory and Chance Vought took over the entire Stratford plant.

Even this change didn’t satisfy the need for Corsairs and licensed production by Goodyear Aircraft Corporation for the FG and F2G and by Brewster Aeronautical Corporation for the F3A.

Corsair Specifications and Production

XTBU-1 Sea Wolf & V-326 Flight Test Aircraft - In 1939 the U. S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics requested proposals for a new carrier based torpedo bomber and in April 1940 chose Vought-Sikorsky to develop the aircraft that they had proposed. The single prototype XTBU-1 (BU 2542) first flew December 20, 1941, two weeks after Pearl Harbor. Named the Sea Wolf in an employee contest, the three man bomber was powered by a 1,800 hp. Pratt & Whitney R-2800-6 had a top speed of 311 mph. It had much better performance than the existing Grumman made TBF Avenger and the Navy planned to purchase 1,000 of them.

The development program however, was long and tortuous. On March 30, 1942 it went to Naval Air Station Anacostia for Navy evaluation and test. During arrested landings, the arresting hook caught and ripped the aft end off the aircraft. The two sections were returned to Stratford and the experimental shop worked day and night for four weeks to rebuild the aircraft, to catch up on a lagging flight test schedule. The day they finished, as they pushed it across Main Street to the hangar, a Navy cadet lost control of his trainer and drove it into the rear of the Sea Wolf, badly damaging the tail assembly. Rebuilt again, the XTBU-1 was finally accepted by the Navy and a production contract was agreed upon.

By now, however, the Stratford plant was fully committed and at the peak of Corsair production. There was no way to start another line. So Consolidated Aircraft was contracted to produce the Sea Wolf as the TBY at an unused bus factory in Allentown PA. The first production TBY-2 (there was no TBY-1) was delivered in November 1944. There were 180 aircraft delivered before the Navy cancelled the contract, realizing that the war would be over before the aircraft could be deployed. The delivered aircraft became utility aircraft and some were assigned to reserve squadrons. The Sea Wolf’s time was not to be.

The XTBU-1 had a wingspan of 56.9 feet, a length 39 feet and a height of 18.6 feet. The crew of three was composed of the pilot, a radio operator and a gunner. The single engine was a Pratt & Whitney R-2800-6 of 1,800 horsepower (later and R-2800-22 of 2,200 horsepower) which drove a 13.3 foot diameter propeller. Maximum speed was 211 mph.

During the XTBU-1 development program, Pratt and Whitney Aircraft expressed a need for a high altitude engine test aircraft. It made sense to develop that aircraft using the maximum components from an existing aircraft. The Vought engineers selected the XTBU-1, designed a pressurized cabin which the experimental shop incorporated into a modified XTBU-1 that was designated the V-326. With that pressurized cabin for the flight test crew and provisions for a variety of test engine, the aircraft was sent to East Hartford where it was used for engine tests at Renschler Field.

V-173 Flying Flapjack and XF5U-1 (V-315) STOL Fighter - The most unusual aircraft built by Vought in Stratford was the all wing V-173. Called the "Flying Flapjack", "Zimmer Skimmer" or "Zimmer Bug", this aircraft was designed solely by Charlie Zimmerman who was never a Chance Vought employee.

From 1933 to 1937, Charles Zimmerman explored unorthodox aircraft designs as Chief of the Stability and Control Section of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the predecessor to NASA). On February 14, 1938, he received a patent for a radical all wing aircraft that was nearly circular. Two huge propellers were mounted on shafts that extended forward from the wing leading edge. The wing (aircraft) had an aspect ratio of 1:1.26. The cockpit was originally designed for the pilot to be prone. Ailerons and elevators were combined into two rear appendages called ailevators. The aircraft was to take off nearly vertically, with the large propellers providing thrust and lift from the airflow over the upper surface. As it moved forward in the air, it would rotate to the horizontal and accelerate to flight speeds over 500 knots. In forward flight, propwash past the wingtips countered tip vortices, to fool the wing into thinking it had a much higher, more efficient, aspect ratio. In theory, the wing was stallproof.

With NACA’s concurrence, in 1937, Zimmerman approached United Aircraft and Vought made a proposal to the US Navy on August 15, 1939 for a full scale prototype. On May 4, 1940, a contract was in hand.

The resulting V-173 was a compromise to Zimmerman’s intent. Budget limitations precluded applying advanced technology to rotor/propeller design, light weight gearing, control surface design, dynamics and prone pilot cockpits. The final prototype was an underpowered STOL with long ungainly landing gear and a seated pilot. It was built of wood and fabric and powered by two A80 (80 horsepower each) Continental engines. But it served for proof of concept. On a cold windy November 23, 1942, pilot Boone Guyton took it up. After an extremely short takeoff, he headed over the Sound and found himself unable to budge the stiff controls, heading out to sea. Physical strength alone enabled Boone to force the plane around. At the first landing, he pulled the nose up hard and the aircraft nearly stopped in the air and landed with a thirty-foot run.

Other new problems were solved and some near disasters occurred, but flight tests continued. Test pilots, admirals, even Charles Lindbergh, all checked out the V-173’s astounding near-vertical performance; a letter of intent for the XF5U-1 (V-315) was issued on September 17, 1942. The highly classified program called for two aircraft, one (Bu No. 33958) for static test and one (Bu No. 33959) for flight test and concept validation. The program went slowly, due both to low priority to recurring vibratory problems in the novel new subsystems.

Finally, the need disappeared when the war ended and the advent of the turbojet engine made new propeller-driven fighter aircraft obsolete. No. 33959 was taxi-tested in February 1947 and prepared for shipment to Edwards AF Base when on March 17 the contract was cancelled. By order of the Navy, the two XF5Us were demolished by a wrecking ball, but the V-173 went to the National Air and Space Museum, where it still awaits restoration.

F6U-1 Pirate Turbojet Fighter - The XF6U-1 (V-340) was Vought's first jet aircraft. To compare potential aircraft/engine design combinations, Vought, Bell, McDonnell, Republic and North American were each commissioned to develop their first jet aircraft. Vought's contract, issued by the Navy on December 29, 1944, was for a straight wing carrier fighter using a new NACA 65-212 supercritical airfoil and a new NACA developed wing-root engine air intake. It was powered by Westinghouse’s first production axial-flow jet engine, the 3,000 pound thrust J34-WE-22, exhausting below the tail cone. The engine of the XF6U-1 (V-352) was later replaced by a J34-WE-30A, fitted with a Solar afterburner, for a total thrust of 4,225 pounds; also used on the production F6U-1 -- the first production afterburner.

The XF6U-1 had another first; it and the XF5U-1 were the first aircraft constructed by a new technique using sandwich material, Vought’s Metalite™. Although a few WW II aircraft had been of pure monocoque construction using plywood, most had been of semi-monocoque aluminum frames and stringers. Metalite™ panels of low density balsa wood core, bonded on both sides to aluminum skins, were formed in molds, cured in an autoclave and joined to beams and bulkheads with flush rivets. The inherent stiffness of the Metalite™ minimized stiffeners required for a strong, low-weight structure. The finished aircraft displayed mirror smoothness and low drag.

A bulging cockpit canopy added good sideward, downward, vision. The XF6U-1 had Vought’s first tricycle landing gear. Armament consisted of four 20 mm. cannon in the nose; potential gas ingestion from gun gas ports near the engine inlets was never completely tested. Wind tunnel tests done at MIT confirmed low speed flight characteristics, but in spite of unknown compressibility effects and entry into transonic flight with afterburner, no high speed wind tunnel tests were done.

Three XF6U-1 prototypes were built – two for flight test and one for static test. Chief Test pilot Boone Guyton conducted the first flight tests. Navy war ace Paul Thayer was hired to complete the Pirate flight tests; Thayer went on to become president of Vought, then chairman and CEO of its successor LTV.

With an engine of new and novel design and a predicted long takeoff distance, Muroc Dry Lake in California (now Edwards Air Force Base) was chosen – fortunately -- as the test site; the first aircraft (Bu.No. 33532) was crated and trucked there. Its first flight, on October 2, 1946, resulted in a frozen engine and a dead-stick landing. The engine’s new oil mist lubrication system had drunk all six gallons of lube oil within an hour. With no spare engine available, it was forty-five days before the bird would fly again. With careful monitoring and frequent exchanges, the program could proceed, except that the dry lake flooded over. Flight operations shut down for several weeks, but this gave many hours for engineers to pore over what data they had received, with priority on engine and flight boundary evaluation. Resuming the tests, several new problems surfaced in this unexplored regime of flight.

After about six months, the second XF6U-1 was flown from the Stratford plant in four stages, to join the first at Muroc Flight testing there lasted for about a year; then the two aircraft were ferried to NAS Patuxent River, where flight evaluation by Vought and Navy pilots continued.

XF6U-1 Pirate continued

XF6U-1 performance, particularly on hot days, was inadequate, compared to those swept wing higher powered configurations being wrung out for the military by the competition. During 1948 aircraft number one flew home to Stratford,-- the first jet aircraft ever to land at Bridgeport Airport – to have an afterburner installed. With a J34-WE-30A engine and a Solar afterburner -- now

with a total 4,200 lb. thrust -- installed and with the dorsal fin and wing root fillets and a few other modifications, this aircraft became the F6U-1 prototype, the first afterburner equipped service aircraft. The production F6U-1 also had speed brakes to limit the Mach number in a dive and two 140 gallon wingtip tanks.

Vought received an order for thirty production F6U-1s as it was moving operations from Stratford to its new home in Dallas TX. In 1948 the first three production Pirates were nearly completed in the Stratford plant and subassembly work was done on twenty-seven more. On January 1, 1949, the first three aircraft arrived in Dallas by truck and subassemblies followed at a rate of one aircraft per week. The first production Pirate rolled off the assembly line at the end of February, but because the runway at adjacent Hensley Field at Dallas was still being lengthened, the first test flight took place at Ardmore, OK, on June 29. The last of the thirty aircraft was delivered in February 1950.

By that time, the underpowered straight winged 1944 design was obsolete and its successor the XF7U-1 Cutlass had been flying for more than a year. All but one F6U-1 were assigned to Navy sponsored research programs; that one became a camera carrying F6U-1P at Langley.

F6U-1 Specifications and Production:

Wingspan 32’ 10"; length 37’ 7" (with afterburner); height 12’11".

Power: Westinghouse J-34-WE-34, 3,200 lb. thrust; total thrust with Solar Model A-103B afterburner was 4,225 lb.

Empty weight 7,320 lb.; Gross weight 13,100 lb.

Maximum speed with afterburner, 596 mph, stall 98 mph.

Service ceiling: 31,000 ft.

Range, 1,170 mi. with auxiliary fuel. Fuel capacity, 320 gallons internally plus two wing tip tanks of 140 gallons each.

Armament: (4) 20 mm. M-3 (T-31) cannon with 150 rounds ammo.

Number built: (3) XF6U-1s, (30) F6U-1s.

First flights: XF6U-1 October 2, 1946.

XF7U-1 Cutlass Twin Jet Fighter

The last aircraft created by Chance Vought in Stratford was the XF7U-1 Cutlass. This unusual twin-jet, single seat, "tailless", swept-wing Navy fighter was the first US combat aircraft to be designed from the start to use afterburners. It was designed to operate at Mach 0.95 up to 40,000 feet. Its swept wing had "ailevator" control surfaces on the trailing edge, outboard of two wing-mounted vertical fins.

Design commenced early in 1946 on the fighter, said by the Navy in 1949 to be "capable of speeds in excess of current models of operational jets, land or carrier based." Three aircraft were built in Bernie Whitman’s experimental shop. First flight occurred on September 29, 1948. While experimental flight testing continued, the Navy ordered fourteen production F7U-1s.

Specifications of Production F7U-1 (X aircraft were basically the same. Changes to F7U from Xf7U included Increased tail area, modified landing gear TO and landing positions, wing pylons added for 250 gal. external tanks.

Dimensions:

Wingspan: 38’ 8"

Overall Length: 39’ 7"

Height: 11’ 10"

Weights & Capacities:

Empty Weight: 12,837 lb.

Maximum Weight: 24,000 lb.

Fuel Capacity: 971 gallons.

Powerplant Characteristics: Type; (2) Westinghouse J34-WE-34 with afterburner. (X and early F7U-1 had –32 engines. Later F7U-3 had J46-WE –3)

Rating: 3,000 lb. static thrust at SLS. With afterburner, 4,900 lb. (F7U-3 had 3,960 lb. thrust & 5,800 with afterburner.)

Performance:

Vmax, SLS 680 mph.

Initial ROC 15,100 fpm.

Service Ceiking: 38,000 ft.

Range at Vcr: 975 miles.

Armament:

(4) 20 mm. cannon.

Underwing bomb load: 5,400 lb.

Provisions for: pod with (32) 2.75 in. FFAR rockets.

Number of Aircraft Built;

XF7U-1: 3 F7U-1: 14 F7U-3: 180 F7U-3M: 98 F7U-3P 12 Total F7U production: 307

XSSM-N-8 Regulus Cruise Missile - In October, 1945, Vought began to work on missiles for the Navy. The Bureau of Aeronautics had defined its needs for pilotless aircraft and in June, 1946, the company signed a study contract for a short range ramjet-powered supersonic surface-to-surface missile, designated P/A-6 (V-353). Realizing that the development time for a ramjet engine was excessive, in 1947 the Navy opted for a turbojet powered subsonic surface-to-surface cruise missile. On May 21 Vought submitted a proposal for such a missile and on 23 December signed Contract No. 9450, for development of the Regulus I XSSM-N-8 cruise missile. Design work began immediately.

The requirements were:

Range: 500 nautical miles maximum.

Speed: High subsonic, Mach 0.85 – 0.95.

Warhead: At least 3,000 lbs.

Accuracy: 0.5% of range from nearest terminal guidance station to point of  impact.

Targets: Fixed.

Guidance: Basic guidance to be inertial, programmable; provision for superimposed electromagnetic wave command correction in course. A minimum of one aircraft or submarine will exercise command.

Altitude: Up to 40,000 feet; variable and controllable.

Configuration: Length 30 feet maximum. Body diameter about four feet. It is desired to carry two missiles in a ready hangar that will replace the conning tower of the submarine.

Wings: Wings of about 60 square feet each; 10 feet in length and six feet chord; detachable or fold-back. Wings to be rigged out by two men in 40 seconds.

Weight, Stowage Weight of 10,000 to 12,000 lbs. In accordance with preliminary estimates acceptable. Missile to be stowed and handled in cradle; may be removed from cradle when passing through reloading hatch between missile compartment and ready hangar.

Fuel: Gasoline or kerosene fuel to be carried in a tank external to submarine pressure hull.

Launching: Missile to be launched form short launcher on deck of submarine. To be loaded directly on launcher from ready hangar. It is desirable that arrangement for loading and firing be such that the missile can be fired within 60 seconds of opening hangar door. Solid fuel booster desired for launching, to be put in place after missile is in ready hangar.

Time Scale: Missile to be ready for NAMTC evaluation tests in January 1951.

The XSSM-N-8 design proceeded rapidly. The decision had already been made to use the Allison J-33 jet engine, a proven engine. Jet Assisted Takeoff (JATO) bottles were selected for accelerated takeoff. Vought’s proposal to install extensible landing gear and a parabrake to permit reuse of the test missiles was eagerly accepted by the Navy. The objective was to produce an operational missile as soon as possible.

The design team went to work in early 1948. Roland Christie led the airframe team and George (Wingy) Delaney did the wing. (George was Wingy not for his engineering work, but because he had been a trumpeter in the Dorsey Brothers’ Band and an eight-fingered trumpeter at that.) We worked together in the third floor of the new engineering addition, right outside the Preliminary design room. It was a new world for the designers. Simplification, for expendable birds, was the rule. No human factor rules applied. The structural design safety factor was doubled, so structural tests could be eliminated. In a Matter of months the design was complete. The Regulus design was one of the last engineering efforts in the Stratford plant. That year the company began its move to Dallas.

Regulus I was built in Dallas. First flight was November 22, 1950. From 1952 until contract termination , when the Navy decided to concentrate on ballistic missiles, the program progressed to a fully operational system. The Navy ultimately installed it on five missile submarines and eleven guidance subs. The submarine fleet made 41 strategic deterrent patrols armed with Regulus, until ceasing operations on July 14, 1964. A total of 514 Regulus I missiles was produced. It all began in Stratford CT.

Specifications:

Dimensions:

Wingspan: 21’. Length: 34’ 5" Fuselage length: 32" 2" Fuselage diameter 4’ 8" Height 8’ 10"

Weights & Capacities:

Empty Weight 10,154 lb. Launching Gross Weight 13,998 lb. Flight Gr. Wt. 11,941 lb. Fuel Cap. 310 gallons.

Powerplant Characteristics:

Allison J33-A-14 or –18A, 4,600 lb. thrust at SL Performance:

Time to climb to 35,000 feet, 11.8 min.; Vmax at 35,000 feet, 543 knots; landing speed 190 knots;

Max endurance at 35,000 feet, at Mach .85, with zero fuel on recovery, 35 minutes.

Connecticut Air and Space Center ©2005
 Stratford CT