AIAA SF Evolution of Flight

AN INTERVIEW WITH RAYMOND KELLY

Recently, San Francisco Section Chairman, Stephen Jaeger and former chairman and long time member, Norm Bergrun lunched with 99 year old Raymond Kelly, a Fellow of the Institute and a retired engineer for United Airlines.

As a high school student, Raymond Kelly saw his first airplane as it touched down in a park in Chicago. It was probably 1918 and the airplane was most likely a military aircraft that the Army was flying to support our allies in the Great War. Mr. Kelly grew up on a farm in Indiana (a rural upbringing was something that he shared with most Americans of that era) and it was his farming skills that inadvertently led to his interest in airplanes.

While attending Franklin College in Indiana, Mr. Kelly found work as a farmhand to help pay for college. One day in 1921, a barnstormer came in, landed in a hay field and asked the farmer, Kelly's boss, if he could fly out of his field. The pilot would sell airplane rides aboard his Standard for $10 a flight (a steep sum at that time.) The pilot couldn't afford to pay the farmer but he offered an airplane ride instead. The farmer, who had no intention of "getting up on one of those things," offered the rides to his farmhands. Towing along a camera for his first of many airplane flights, Mr. Kelly remembers, "I was so enthused, I knew then what I wanted to do." A few years later, in 1925, Mr. Kelly received his bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in Aeronautical Engineering from Purdue University.

Mr. Kelly started as a Junior Aeronautical Engineer at McCook field in Dayton Ohio. It was there he encountered Orville Wright as he was touring the instrument shop. (Mr. Kelly found he wasn't very impressed with the inventor of the airplane.) Kelly then worked for a time at American Paulin System in Los Angeles, which built the first sensitive aircraft altimeters. In Dayton, Mr. Kelly worked with the famous Lt. Albert Hegenberger. On May 9th 1932, Lt. Hegenberger made the first solo take-off and landing, solely by instruments, in a Douglas BT-2. Just three years earlier, Lt. Jimmy Doolittle performed the same feat with a safety pilot. Kelly knew both of them. Kelly started his long career at United Airlines in 1930 as an Aeronautical Engineer for what was then Boeing Air Transport in Cheyenne Wyoming."We were flying single engine biplanes for carrying mail." Kelly said.

Mr. Kelly worked for a time on flight testing to understand the peculiar and deadly hazard of aircraft icing. He recounted that at one time he and veteran pilot Carl Christiansen were up inside the clouds aboard a Boeing 247 over Cheyenne. The aircraft started to shake foretelling an imminent stall. "With my engineering background and all, I thought it was going too far," Kelly said, "so I started pushing forward on the stick." Christiansen slapped his wrist, "get your hands off it, I know what I'm doing!" The thoroughly-chastised Kelly and pilot-in-command Christiansen survived the flight.

In 1959, Kelly became Director of Technical Development. Under his direction, the group developed United's requirements for transcontinental jet transportation. One of his last roles was representing the company on an industry committee deciding the requirements for the design of a Supersonic Transport that the Boeing Company was considering as the next bold step in airline transportation. Mr. Kelly advised against United's involvment, citing the aircraft's poor economic prospects. Mr. Kelly retired from United Airlines in 1966 but his career continued for another ten years with the consultant firm, R. Dixon Speas Associates.

It is fortunate for historians that at the very beginning of his career, Kelly also took on a new hobby: Filmmaking. Mr. Kelly spent 40 years documenting his life, his family and career in silent 8mm films. The best of these films were compiled ten years ago by Kelly's grandson. The video, produced for Boeing and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, features Mr. Kelly as narrator. He begins the video with a ride aboard a Trimotor - the latest in air transportation - droning above the snowy landscape of the Midwest. During other flights we get to peer straight down into the snow-covered streets and skyscrapers of depression-era Chicago. Further on, He takes us on a 1939 VIP flight aboard a brand new triple-tailed Constellation. The camera turns to the cabin where company and industry representatives, dressed up for the occasion, react like school children as they marvel at where the incredible pace of technology had taken them a mere 33 years since Kitty Hawk.

Another incredible moment captured by Kelly's camera is the famous jet-selling roll of the Boeing 707 over Lake Washington performed, without company permission, by pilot "Tex" Johnson. As far as Mr. Kelly knows it is the only video record of the event. Although they must have been impressed, United opted instead for the Douglas DC-8.

Mr. Kelly would also witness the space age as a VIP for the launch of Apollo 12. Unfortunately, the camera was turned off just before a lightning bolt struck the rocket on its way into orbit. Mr. Kelly's last film voyage takes us around London's Heathrow airport and then aboard the new supersonic Concorde for a flight past the sound barrier. The video itself is a fascinating journey through time as seen by one engineer who witnessed and contributed to a century of manned flight. Mr Kelly has donated a copy of his video to the AIAA San Francisco Section.

-Stephen M. Jaeger

(Originally published in the March/April 2000 AIAA San Francisco Section Newsletter)

WebMaster: webmaster@aiaa-sf.org 10/28/99