Sikorsky S-39C NC50V story by Gilles Auliard, information by restorer Dick Jackson

The custodian of the "Spirit of Igor". "Every time I was asked about the first flight of the airplane, I always answered it would take place on Thursday, but I never said which Thursday" recounts Dick Jackson, a grin on his face. "On June 8th I took the airplane for some fast taxi runs to try out the brakes. During the second run, I put about half-throttle, and the tail lifted. I thought everything was feeling pretty good. I pushed the power a little more, and had the same good feeling. I pushed a little more, and a little more, and we were airborne. We went around the patch and landed; it was the day" This is the simple story of the first flight of the 1931 Sikorsky S-39C NC50V (c/n 912), an event that took "40 years and 40,000 hours", according to Dick, to happen. In the world of antique aviation, the Sikorsky S-39 amphibian is a legend, having a long and colorful history and flying well into the 50s. The very first of the S-39 type was designed by the venerable Igor Sikorsky, and was, basically a scale-down version of the twin-engine S-38, powered by two 4-cylinder Cirrus-Hermes I engines in the 105-115 hp range. It was then decided to redesign the light amphibian into a single-engine configuration. The new Pratt & Whitney Wasp Junior engine of 300 hp, was a logical choice. The second example of the series was a completely new airplane. Flight test were satisfactory, but the overall performance was not up to the expectations. The twin vertical fins were revised into a single one, the complicated landing gear was modified, and a complete aerodynamic clean-up implemented. Of the 23 S-39 aircraft built, only three are known to be in existence, one at the New England Air Museum, one at the bottom of Two Lakes, in Alaska, USA, and Dick Jackson's example. Dick explains his choice of restoring one of those rare machines; "For me, the ultimate flying machine is a biplane on floats. The answer was to find an antique amphibian. But antique amphibians are few and far between, and some are good machines, while others pretty bad. The Sikorsky S-39 was highly regarded, and the more I learned about it, the more I liked the idea. The type seemed to have been used intensely, and built some high time, most of them over 1000 hours. This is the sign that it is a good machine. Most of them ended up in Alaska, as bushplanes, another indication of their qualities. So there were some good reasons for me to look for a Sikorsky S-39. "I spent 3 years researching the FAA records and following the chain of ownership to track the resting location of the airplanes. It appeared that all S-39s ended their life in Alaska. In 1964, in Naknek, Alaska, we found the remains of the airplane we restored since. We also acquired two hulls in very bad shape, a set of wings and some parts, that we stored in Anchorage. In 1965, the hull of NC50V was recovered , and brought to Anchorage. We also spent two weeks at Two Lakes, looking for the remains of the only S-39 known to be complete. It crashed in 1958, flipping over upon landing and sank." The restoration process was long and arduous: "The airplane is a very complicated structure. It is an assembly of tiny little pieces, literally a million of them. It took a year for the 950 Sikorsky employees to build 20 S-39. If you calculate it, it took some 50,000 hours to build one. It took us 40 years and 40,000 hours to rebuild the airplane. We started with parts from 5 identified airplanes. The first center section I found was from N809W, one wing from NC54V, a tail boom from N58V and, most important, a float from NC14326. This S-39 belonged to a New York newspaper and crashed in 1935. All those part were not usable, and were mostly used as a pattern. We pretty much had to rebuild everything. The center section of the wings is the part that gave us the most troubles. This is a very complicated structure, with two metal spars, the fuel tanks and the engine mount." The airplane has been painted in the giraffe paint scheme, as was the well-known S-39-CS NC52V. In 1932, Osa and Martin Johnson purchased two amphibians form the Sikorsky Aviation Corporation, a twin engine S-38-BS, which was painted with zebra stripes and named "Osa's Ark", and a single-engine S-39CS painted in giraffe spots, and named "Spirit of Africa". The planes were flown from the Sikorsky factory to the Brooklyn docks where they were hoisted on board of the City of New York, a boat departing for Cape Town, South Africa. The "Flying Safari", which involved traveling 60,000 miles, stretching from Cape Town to Cairo, is covered in Martin's classic book "Over African Jungles" and in their movie " Baboona " released the same year. In reference to the "Spirit of Africa", and in homage to Igor Sikorsky, Dick's airplane is named the "Spirit of Igor". One of the most awaited restoration of these last 10 years, the airplane was presented for the first time at the New-England chapter of the Antique Airplane Association. The event took place on the 4th of July week-end at the little New Hampshire coastal airfield of Hampton. A major commitment for Dick will be the National Air Tour, scheduled to start from the Ford Proving Grounds, in Dearborn, Michigan, on September 8. He explains his involvement with this happening: "Two years ago, Greg Herrick already had the idea of recreating the 1932 Ford Air Tour on his mind, and asked me if I would join in if it ever happened. I agreed to it without thinking twice. In retrospect I realized that it was the incentive I needed to complete the project. I had that deadline, and had to push hard to make it. This was a team effort, and I could not have done it with the help of some good friends who spent countless hours." After flying the S-39 for some 4 hours, he offers this insight: "We spent a lot of time rigging the tail. It had to be right the first time. On the first flight we almost had the perfect trim. All what we did after was give a turn on the rear strut. The airplane does not have any tendency to pitch up and down. It seems to be the spirit of the airplane, on take off, you pitch the nose up a little, and you get the impression you are levitating. You know, the magic carpet feeling. When you cut the power off, the nose has the tendency to drop a little. If you did not know where your engine was, you would think it is in the nose. I found out that when I slow down, I get a little buffeting, which is, from what I read, a characteristic of the S-39. When I slow it down to around 60 kt (111 kmh), I get a pretty high rate of sink. It is supposed to stall at 52 kt (96 kmh), and probably does. I am very cautious about getting too slow. I've already had a bad experience coming over the tree line here, and I do not care to repeat it." Dick, who gave 40 years of his life to resurrect this magnificent machine, does not claim ownership of the result of his efforts: "We do not own antique airplanes, we are only their temporary custodian, and we keep them before releasing their custody to a younger generation". The aviation world, and more specifically, the antique airplane community, owes a great debt of gratitude to Dick Jackson, the custodian of the "Spirit of Igor".