Jack Frye blog Coverage & Brazil

The Jack Frye blog is doing well covering many countries now, and I want to thank all of you who are reading along and for sharing the web address with others. We are continuing to bring you stories about our favorite airline president with historical facts and figures as well as other accountings that may not have been previously known.

 

Have a look at the global map below that currently represents the blog coverage. Darker color means more traffic. While reviewing the traffic sources and figures it’s interesting to note Brazil is a large factor in our viewership. Let me come back to this. Russia has much traffic but I’m not all that confident it is for being interested in Jack Frye. I’m sorry, I cannot trust the Russian arena for authentic searching to learn about Jack. Australia, New Zealand and surrounding islands have decent coverage but we would welcome some improvement. The UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Mediterranean seem to be on board with good numbers. And the US for obvious reasons. So, looking at the map we seem to be covering all four corners of the globe, and that's good news.

Jack Frye blog audience, 5/2013

 

Back to Brazil... My wife and I recently spent a full day at the Family Research Library in West Los Angeles obtaining family genealogy information to add to the family tree. So I decided to look into the Frye family a bit to see what I could come up with that might add to what I already know. Low and Behold I found Jack Frye’s 1947 Brazilian photo passport no. 31626 as shown below!

 

 

 

 

l almost fell of my comfortable chair and raised the eyebrows of my genealogy attendant helper when I let out a burst of laughter. After a few minutes of joyful noise of actually finding a document of Jacks in West LA, I began to put some things together. No doubt Jack flew all over the world and probably had passports for many countries of which I hope to find as well. But this passport from Brazil is quite interesting as it is dated March 19, 1947, no more than a month after he resigned from TWA and all that rigmarole with Hughes and the board.

 

Brazil? Why Brazil... Ah ha, this makes the connection with Jack’s later airplane designs, the Safari and his working with the Helio Corporation to bring the Courier and Stallion airplanes down to Tucson by developing new manufacturing plants for the aforementioned under ‘The Frye Corporation’ which he had already established in Fort Worth, Texas in 1954. This is well documented historically leading up to his tragic car accident. I now see that all along, Jack Frye back in the early 40’s or maybe 1938-39 was looking ahead to South America for TWA expansion utilizing new routes and wanting to develop new aircraft that would service that market in its jungle topography. Hence the Safari and Courier STOL (short take-off & landing) aircraft. Talk about a visionary. Who other than Jack Frye would have conceived this new territory? I am not aware of any other that would have had the vision for Brazil.

 

It’s really too bad Hughes didn’t have the guts and vision like Jack to invest and develop new world markets that would have propelled TWA as the leader then and even to today. There was nothing in aviation Jack Frye wasn’t capable of succeeding with.

 

If Jack had been able to live out a full life, I would venture to say he would have been the most prolific all time aviation pioneer of them all, no question about it. By 1970 he would have been only 65 years old, in the prime of his life propelling the Jet Age even further, safer and more economically than we see today. Not to mention new and innovative aircraft designs we don’t see in the air today. This is how influential and for the better Jack Frye would have contributed had he lived another 15 years.

 

Just thought I would share this new find about Jack Frye. The Brazilian passport that helped Jack see beyond smaller men’s dreams and horizons of aviation progress.

 

Now, back to the Constellation aircraft development and its launch into aviation history...

 

TWA in Brief

Frye, along with Charles Lindbergh and D.W. Tommy Tomlinson were a special committee to evaluate and order a modern airliner. A letter by Frye, dated August 2, 1932 was circulated to certain aircraft manufacturers with T&WA's specifications. Donald Douglas met the challenge with a revolutionary design for the prototype DC-1 and production model DC-2.

DC2 with DC3 in tow

On February 18, 1934, Frye, Edward Rickenbacker and a team of T&WA pilots flew the mail from Burbank to Newark, with three stops in the record time of 13 hours and two minutes. When the mail contracts were re-awarded to the airlines in May of 1934, Frye again made headlines when he piloted a Northrop Gamma with a load of mail across the country, with one stop in a new record (commercial) time of 11 hours 30 minutes! At the end of 1934, Jack Frye was elected president of TWA and Paul Richter VP-Operations. Later, Walter Hamilton was promoted to VP-Maintenance and Overhaul.

Jack Frye piloting the GAMMA

In January of 1936 the Air transport Association of America was formed and Jack Frye was among the original directors. Others included such well known airline presidents during the '30s as C.R. Smith, Bill Patterson, Edward Rickenbacker, Tom Braniff and Bob Six. Also in 1936, Frye was a VP with the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences.

Under Frye's leadership, TWA was an industry leader with regard to researching the problems and benefits of high-altitude flying. The DC-1 was used for a while, flown by Tommy Tomlinson. In June of 1939 the trio of "Jack, Paul and Ham" was broken when Hamilton resigned to accept an executive position with Douglas Aircraft Company.

Howard Hughes and Frye disembarking a "Connie"

Photo courtesy John Underwood collection

Jack Frye personally induced Howard Hughes to secretly purchase the majority of TWA's outstanding stock in early 1939. Although five of the Stratoliners were due for delivery in mid-1940, Hughes and Frye were negotiating with Lockheed for the proposed 300-mph Constellation. Due to the war emergency, production of the Constellations was delayed and it wasn't until early 1944 when the prototype C-69 was completed. On April 17, 1944, Hughes and Frye set a new cross-country speed record when they flew the C-69 from Burbank to Washington D.C., in six hours 58 minutes! Frye kept a separate office in Washington during the war and was a strong lobbyist on behalf of TWA.

Later after disagreements with Hughes, Frye and Richter resigned from TWA in 1947. Jack went with General Aniline and Film Corporation as president until he resigned in 1955 to form a new aircraft manufacturing company. This was tentatively known as the "Frye-Robertson Aircraft Company", based in Fort Worth, with plans to build the Frye F-1 transport. Later he would begin developing a new commuter plane called the SAFARI.

Walt Hamilton returned to TWA in early 1946, but in March of that year passed away at the age of 44. Paul Richter passed away in May of 1949 at the age of 53. In February 1959, Jack Frye was killed in an auto accident near the entrance to the Tucson Airport. He was age 54. The Three Musketeers of aviation had passed on.

On June 20, 1992, Jack Frye was enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame. TWA Senior VP-Flight Operations Capt. J.G. Colpitts accepted the award on his behalf. Jack joined a very exclusive group of airline presidents who were previously honored: William Patterson, United (1976); Edward Rickenbacker, Eastern (1965); Robert Six, Continental (1980); C.R. Smith, American (1974; Juan Trippe, Pan Am (1970). They were fierce competitors back in the formative years of the nation’s major airlines.

Thanks to Mr. Ed Betts and the American Aviation Historical Society (AAHS) for this brief historical content of Jack Frye's story and facts.

Excerpts taken from AAHS Journal, Vol 39, Number 3,  Fall 1994, used by permission.