David
J. Bean
THE
RESTORATION
David J. Bean not
only knew Jack Northrop, the founder of present-day
Northrop Grumman Corporation and one of the most memorably noted of the
aircraft designers and builders who enabled the transition of manned
flight
to the modern age of aerospace, he worked for him. Beginning at
Northrop
Aircraft, Inc., in 1946, after serving as an Air Force pilot during the
Second World War, David J. Bean retired 38 years later, having served
as
manager of new business proposals and Aircraft Group program manager
for
22 years. The importance and presence of the Northrop N-3PB seaplane in
his life occurred gradually, beginning in 1977, when he was one of the
key team members called into a special meeting at Northrop to evaluate
a proposal from Ragnar Ragnarsson, co-founder of the Icelandic Aviation
Historical Society. Ragnar had heard rumors among Icelandic farmers in
the back country that a military seaplane had crashed in the Thjorsa
River
during WWII and disappeared. For several years, the thought of finding
this airplane and recovering it for restoration disturbed his waking
hours
and sleep, as though it were a special mission ordained for his
performance.
With the formation of the IAHS in 1972, recovery of the airplane became
almost a full-time pursuit as it took shape as a “mission impossible,”
the sort Icelanders find high adventure. The Thjorsa, originating over
200 miles in the interior, in the midst of ageless glaciers, is the
longest
river in Iceland. Legend has it that once the Thjorsa takes something,
it never gives it back. The meeting to evaluate this mission impossible
restored memories the author had of the golden years of aviation and
the
beginning of the company. The N-3PB had been the first airplane
designed
and produced under Jack Northrop at the new company he had started in
1939
in Hawthorne, California, where the author had worked all his career in
aerospace.
Two years of
uncertainty followed, as first Ragnar tried to determine
whether the airplane even still existed. After two surveys of the last
known location of the airplane in the murky, frigid, swift flowing
river,
the plane was discovered, not just submerged, but buried in the lava
silt,
sand and clay of the riverbed.
Two more years of recovery were necessary before the plane was finally
brought to the surface in pieces flown by C-130 transport to the
Northrop
Aircraft production plant adjacent to Northrop Field in Hawthorne.
Exactly
one year from the day it arrived, the plane was rolled out looking like
it was ready and eager to fly again. After exhibits in Southern
California
and Iceland, the plane was finally returned to its original owner,
Norway,
where it resides today on permanent exhibit at the Air Museum in Oslo.
The N-3PB was the
fastest military seaplane ever built. Though designed
to patrol the hundreds of fjords along the thousand-mile Norwegian
coast
on the Atlantic, it never got deployed for that mission, for Norway was
invaded and occupied just as the production contract with Northrop was
signed. Instead, the plane was shipped to Iceland and flown by
Norwegian
aviators operating as RAF Squadron 330(N). The Restoration tells the
story
of the crash, search , recovery, and restoration that led to a new
ascent
for those who participated, and a model for all to follow.
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