Aero Spacelines Pregnant Guppy

The Aero Spacelines B-377PG Pregnant Guppy is an airfreighter especially designed to transport the elements of rockets necessary to the realization of the space program Apollo.

The idea

The accelerators of the rocket Saturn V, vector essential to the conquest of the moon in which NASA had engaged, were cylinders of 12 m length and 5,5 m in diameter. Built at Douglas Aircraft with Sacramento, California, they were to be conveyed with Cape Canaveral, Florida, place of launchings. Road transport or railway was excluded and the largest airfreighter available was far from having volume necessary. Conceived to be vertical and full of fuel, they were to thus be charged vacuums on a barge and conveyed by sea route via Panama and its channel. A 15 days way, under the constant monitoring of 5 engineers who had great difficulty to prevent that certain parts arrive deformed or corroded.

It seems that it is during a dinner between friends that Jack Conroy and Lee Mansdorf erected scaffolding the project to produce a plane able to meet the obvious need for NASA: an airfreighter enough large to be able to convey in 24 hours and with a minimum of risks booster rockets of Saturn V of California in Florida. Conroy was not a technician but an intuitive pilot and a visionary. Pilot of the Air Force, it had beaten speed records transcontinental on F-86 in 1955 (Operation Boomerang). He ambitionnait to make progress the world of aviation. Mansdorf was a broker, buying and reselling planes whose Majors did not have any more the utility. Golds at the time it had a growing number of Boeing 377 Stratocruiser and KC-97 Stratotanker which seemed to be able to be used as a basis for the future cargo liner.

The development

Lee Mansdorf called upon Abe Kaplan, engineer working at Strato Engineering, an independent research department, to establish a preliminary draft and go was taken with Werner von Braun… three days later! It is to say the urgency for NASA.

Von Braun having expressed its interest (without formal engagement), Mansdorf constituted in Van Nuys Aero Spacelines, Inc. Jack Conroy was the executive director and Mansorf vice-president, the presidency returning with Lloyd Dorsett, industrialist of Norman, Oklahoma, which financed the company. Strato Engineering provided the studies and One Mark Engineering was to ensure the construction of the apparatus. Without any official support, the financing of the project was right quickly of the capacities of Lloyd Dorsett and one needed all the energy of Jack Conroy, which had to pawn its house and to sell its cars, so that the project succeeds.

Two Stratocruisers were selected for conversion, old a Clipper of the Pan Am being used as basic cell 15923, N1024V and the other 15976, ex [[BOAC] /Transocean] providing parts, in particular an additional section of fuselage. The fuselage was indeed initially lengthened of 5,08 m behind of the aerofoil. Two in-flight tests only were carried out, then a new fuselage 9,54 m in diameter was brought back on the old one. The speculations went good progress on the capacity of the apparatus has to fly, the more so as the tests of blower had been limited to the maximum. Controlled by Jack Conroy, assisted of Clay Lacy (copilot), Bob D' Agostini (flight engineer) and Bill Cuff (mechanic), B-377PG took off without problems of Van Nuys the September 19th, 1962. But the police force had closed the streets in the south of track 16, where firemen and ambulances were in alarm!

As of the following day Jack Conroy claimed the authorization with FAA to present the prototype to NASA because finances of Aero Spacelines were with lowest. Subject to prohibition to fly over a school or a hospital, the four-engined plane could thus leave Van Nuys for Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Houston, seat of the Space center of the Manned flights of NASA. September 24th the four-engined plane added up already 8:40 min vol. on September 26th the prototype was presented to the Center of the space program of NASA to Huntsville, Alabama. Von Braun controlled itself the four-engined plane, which maintained its line of flight with a cut engine on each side. It seems that it is during these presentations which official of NASA declared that the prototype resembled a " Guppy Gestant" , ( Pregnant Guppy ) and that this designation was officially preserved.

Conroy jack having obtained a letter of intensions of NASA, what to calm the creditors, it any more but did not remain to remove the old fuselage to release the totality of the compartment, offering a finished cross-section 5,50 m in diameter. A dorsal edge was added in front of the drift to improve the stability of the plane and the fillets wing-fuselage were redrawn to remove the turbulences noted at the time of the retraction of the shutters. The engineers of NASA could then begin tests of loading, using a third stage of reformed Saturn IVB.

An impressive plane

The Pregnant Guppy was thus presented in the form of a monoplane to low wing cantilever to retractable three-wheeled train. The aerofoil, the gear landing and the engines were those of the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, just like the lower part of the fuselage, the cockpit to the empennage. But the higher fuselage was considerably bulkier, with a Master-couple of 6 m for a theoretical payload of 15.420 kg. By safety reason it was limited to 13.155 kg for the commercial flights. It had been planned in the beginning to carry out a fuselage of which the upper part would be articulated on the side, the space modules being charged by grutage. This idea was quickly abandoned with the profit of an aft section of entirely detachable fuselage on the level of the trailing edge. A folding frame with casters, travelling with the plane, was to thus be fixed under the back fuselage, then 32 bolts having to be loosened to allow the withdrawal of the back fuselage.

The principal weakness of the Pregnant Guppy was in fact its motorization, the engines Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major of 3500 ch being not very reliable and impossible to give on the way in vol. the many tests carried out by FAA then NASA showed however that, in spite of the rebounded shapes of the fuselage, the apparatus remained handy in flight with two broken down engines on the same side. But like a flight between Long Beach and the Kennedy Space Flight Center was immobilized three days and half in October 1963 due to change of engine, NASA required of Aero Spacelines of prépositionner a certain number of words of replacement all along the course to avoid such delays!

A career without history for a sad end

Declared `Public Aircraft' on July 10th, 1963, therefore like the military aircrafts or governmental not subjected to the regulation of FAA, the Pregnant Guppy accomplished its first commercial flight mid-September 1963. In 1966 a radar was added to the base before fuselage and tests of takeoff assisted by means of bottles JATO were carried out, but this solution was not employed for the commercial flights.

This plane was reformed in 1974, after more than 6.000 hours of flight without incident major, and bought by Allen Paulsen, director of American Jet Industries. Tractor Inc needing an aft section of fuselage to build the last Super Guppy intended for Airbus, it was dismounted, and the elements not used reinforced in 1979.

External bonds

All Guppy and of the fabulous vidéos!
strange story of the very ugly plane which carried out America on the moon

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