bomccarthy
Posts: 414
Joined: 9/6/2013
From: L.A.
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ORIGINAL: Commander Cody
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ORIGINAL: bomccarthy
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ORIGINAL: Commander Cody
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ORIGINAL: bomccarthy
15 years ago, I was working on the creative team of a recruiting/ad agency in Long Beach, CA. We were on the 7th floor of a building at the southeast end of Long Beach Airport and the creative team's windows faced north, with the final approach path to the airport's small plane runway 500 feet away. I used to watch a DC-3 twice each day coming back from its regular mail run to Catalina Island. One day, I heard something bigger - I looked up from my monitor to see an olive drab B-17 500 feet away and at eye level. I don't recall which one it was, but it was giving "tours" of Long Beach/LA Harbor and the surrounding area all that week. I didn't pay the $500 for the flight, but I did walk through it one afternoon, and spent the rest of the week mesmerized as it came in for a landing 3-4 times each day.
I used to work at that airport on the Douglas side. I hear it's all gone.
Still, I heard the Thirsty Isle is still nearby, where I enjoyed many a long Friday lunch shooting stick and ordering Coors Extra Gold liters from the old blonde witch behind the bar. To the uninitiated, the Thirsty Isle was built in the early 40s, when B-17s were rolling off the Douglas line (built under license).
Cheers,
CC
Gawd, I'd forgot about the Thirsty Aisle. By 2000, it mostly attracted a mix of local tech workers, the few Boeing people that were left in the C-17 and Phantom Works programs (all concentrated in the few buildings on the south side of the airport), and some bikers. They served some good burgers at happy hour, but you were never sure what the cook might have done to them.
You can't even tell Douglas was there anymore - I think the logo is still on one building (Long Beach declared it a historic item). All that land is sitting unused because of contamination over the course of 60 years. Ironically, that B-17G might have been built there. Douglas built something like a third of all B-17Gs (I think) at Long Beach. My dad was a Douglas/McDonnell Douglas/Boeing engineer for 45 years, first at El Segundo then at Long Beach. He used to take us to the open houses as kids in the 70s, letting us sit at his drafting board.
The Thirsty Isle was known for its half-pound steer burgers. We used to joke that the large lady who cooked them would put each patty under her arm for extra seasoning. My last day at Douglas I had an epic send off at that place and almost missed my flight to Auckland (by way of HNL) from LAX that evening.
I was in Test & Certification (i.e. Flight Test) from '88-'91 at Douglas on the MD-11, with a year of that spent in the glorious garden spot of Yuma, Arizona. I wonder if I crossed paths with your old man.
Cheers,
CC
You quite possibly did run across him. He was assigned to the MD-11 for quite awhile in the 80s and 90s. For him, that project signified the end of Douglas. I have never heard any other side of the story, but he won't forget the project heads deciding to hand design of the engine nacelle to the engine company. As he recalls, their design miscues caused the MD-11 to miss its range projections by 5%, just enough so that Delta cancelled its order, and the other airlines followed. He and the other engineers in his group argued that they could fix nacelle design if McDonnell Douglas could negotiate a few months delivery delay with Delta, but the brass said no - and that was the effective end of Douglas.
Always the history buff, my dad said that Boeing treated the Long Beach plant like Rome treated Carthage - they must have sowed salt in the ground after they bulldozed the buildings, so nothing could ever rise up from that real estate again. Which is why Long Beach airport is now surrounded by mostly vacant land. He believes that Boeing has a long corporate memory -- they couldn't forget, or forgive, the DC-3 destroying the career of the 247 (or the DC-8 challenging the 707, and officially exceeding Mach 1 in the process).
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Slightly OT: Of all the times not to have a camera - 
....GP
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