From a distance, Charlie looks like every other Skywagon. Look inside the cabin, and you’ll see that it was stuffed with giant aluminum fuel tanks, with nothing but a tiny space for the left seat being all that remained of the stock interior. Jerrie had upgraded the panel to include the latest long-range radio equipment that was available in 1964; however, beyond the modifications to make the flight, Charlie was just a tough and dependable airplane with enough useful load to tanker the fuel required to fly extremely long legs over angry oceans.

I learned about Charlie in 2000 after reading Jerrie’s book, Three-Eight Charlie. There was incredible aviation detail jumping off every page, and each word was a delight. This courageous woman flew herself solo around a world, and the rest is—or at least should have been—history.

Except it wasn’t.

Charlie Gets Snubbed

After asking how many of the members of my local aviation club knew who the first woman to fly solo around the world was, exactly zero knew about Jerrie Mock or her solo circumnavigation. I was disappointed at that moment because her name should be spoken in the same breath as Charles Lindbergh and other aviation legends we so easily remember.

I soon found myself in Washington, D.C., so naturally, I planned a visit to the National Air and Space Museum. Upon arrival, I fully expected to see Charlie hanging next to Lindy’s Spirit of St. Louis. After all, Lindy flew across one ocean single-engine, but Jerrie flew across several oceans, also in an airplane with nowhere to go but down if its one engine bought the farm.

I searched the entire museum and did not see Charlie. I was told by the info desk that it was in storage out at the museum’s Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility in Suitland, Maryland. After a quick metro ride, my tour group at the storage facility was soon strolling through numerous large buildings, and as the tour was about to end, I spotted a red-and-white Skywagon with its wings removed sitting in a rather dimly lit warehouse.

The tour guide confirmed it was Jerrie’s airplane.

With knowledge of what this woman did in this airplane, I stood in confused awe. I felt Charlie’s presence in an odd, surreal way, as if its soul was reaching out to me. Standing there looking at the dismantled Skywagon, I felt an energy between it and myself that to this day remains strong. I quietly wondered why aviation history had been so cruel to Jerrie, her airplane and her accomplishment.

In defense of the NASM, the tour guide told me that Charlie had at one time been on display, and would be hung “someday” in the new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center that was under construction at the time. But in that moment, it remained a noteworthy airplane that seemed sadly neglected. A powerful sense of urgency sweep over me, and I knew I had to do something to make this right.

Jerrie and Charlie faced numerous adventures on their journey. Through heavy icing over the Atlantic to being welcomed by a squad of soldiers aiming rifles at them in Egypt, both the pilot and the airplane persevered. I decided that a full-length feature film about the flight would correct this malfunction of aviation history.

The Meeting

It was not long after that I found myself sitting across from Jerrie in her Florida home, pouring over musty boxes of paperwork that included photos, telegrams, receipts—really an endless flood of her personal documentation from the flight.

I had gone to meet Jerrie for one purpose: to negotiate the movie rights to adapt her book Three-Eight Charlie into a screenplay. After some intense discussions, I eventually got her to sign an exclusive deal so I could acquire the rights and try to sell her story to the movie studios. But after a few years and several screenplay rewrites, the movie project never materialized and the project died. Had a studio picked it up, I believe it would have been the perfect film to inspire a whole generation of young women to pursue flying as a hobby or career.

In 2005, Dorothy Cochrane, NASM’s general aviation curator, granted me full access to Charlie for a private photoshoot before it was hung from the rafters at Udvar-Hazy. The photos reveal that Spirit of Columbus is exactly as Jerrie left it when she returned from her world flight, with typewritten notes for changing frequencies and moving fuel around the complex ferry-tank system still taped inside the cabin.

Today, Charlie has been moved downtown into the NASM as an important focal point of its new Thomas W. Haas “We All Fly” general aviation gallery, scheduled to open in 2022. While Jerrie has gone west, Charlie will now live on to tell the public about that 1964 flight, and after 58 years, it will finally get the recognition that is so richly deserved.

I encourage you to read the book, long out of print, but with reprints available at 38charlie.com. And if you get to the NASM and find a stock red-and-white Cessna 180 on display, that’s Charlie. Do yourself a favor and hang out with it for a while—because, trust me, it’s got quite an adventurous story to tell.

Editor’s Note: This article appeared in the November 2021 issue of FLYING.

The post One Iconic Cessna 180 Has Quite a Story to Tell appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The Class of 2022 will officially join the National Aviation Hall of Fame on September 24, 2022. 

The Inductees 

Willa Brown

Brown became the first African-American woman to earn a pilot’s certificate in the U.S. in 1938. In 1941, she joined the Chicago squadron of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), becoming the first African-American officer in the CAP.

Brown was also the first African-American woman to run for Congress (1946). She lost that race, but she continued to be an active voice in the fight for civil rights until her death in 1992. Brown also trained more than 200 Tuskegee Airmen.

Joe Clark

Clark was the founder of the blended winglet, which enhances the performance of airplanes and has a positive impact on sustainability, resulting in less fuel consumption, longer aircraft range, and reduced carbon emissions.

In the 1980s, he co-founded regional airline Horizon Air and in the 90s., he founded Aviation Partners, where he would design and sell the winglets.

Margaret Hamilton

Hamilton led the NASA software team that built the program that landed astronauts on the moon in 1969.

She coined the term “software engineer” to describe her role in developing the in-flight systems software and priority displays for the Apollo command module, lunar lander, and Skylab. 

Geraldine ‘Jerrie’ Mock

Mock took her first flight at the age of 7 and was hooked from then on. Also known as “The Flying Housewife,” Mock became the first woman to fly solo around the world when she completed her 29-day journey on April 17, 1964. The journey also made her the first woman to fly across two oceans, and first to fly across the Pacific in a single-engine airplane, a 1953 Cessna 180 named “Charlie.”

“We believe that this is an excellent class and we are already looking forward to their induction in our home, the birthplace of aviation, Dayton, Ohio,” Lodge said. “From pioneers Brown and Mock to visionaries Clark and Hamilton, and to aerospace hero Musgrave, the NAHF’s Class of 2022 represents the best in aviation. We applaud the Board of Nominations for their challenging and thorough work.”

Story Musgrave

Musgrave is one of only two astronauts to make six flights into space, and he’s the only one to have flown aboard all five space shuttles. A former U.S. Marine, he also has degrees in mathematics, operations analysis, chemistry, literature, and physiology, as well as a medical degree from Columbia University.

How The Class is Created

The NAHF Board of Nominations consists of more than 130 aviation professionals nationwide. Through a thorough vetting process, the board selects a prestigious group of air and space pioneers to be considered for the induction in the NAHF every year. Since being founded in 1962, the NAHF has enshrined 254 persons into the only congressionally chartered aviation hall of fame in the U.S. 

The post National Aviation Hall of Fame Announces Class of 2022 appeared first on FLYING Magazine.