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Vigilant Movie Star If you ever wondered what would happen if a mad

scientist placed cotton fabric and steel tubing over a praying mantis and then shot it with an enlarging ray, chances are the “monster” would look just like a Stinson L-1. Although the Stinson Aircraft Co. lacked enlarging equipment, it did have a new design in the works that it hoped would compete with the Luft-waffe’s new liaison aircraft, the Fieseler Storch.

In 1940 the Vultee Aircraft Corp. acquired Stinson Aircraft and created the O-49 observation goliath that the Army redesignated as the L-1 Vigilant in 1942.

The Stinson Vigilant was equipped with full-span au-tomatic slats on the leading edge of the wings and pilot-operated slotted flaps on the trailing edge. Be-cause of this, the L-1 was well suited for short-field work during World War II, as well as glider towing, ar-tillery spotting, transporting of supplies or wounded soldiers, and basically any task it was assigned to perform. If terrain was an issue, the L-1 was able to overcome by using skis on snow or floats for water takeoffs and landings. Because of the L-1’s versatility and unique looks, Kermit Weeks knew he wanted to have one for his Fantasy of Flight collection.

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“In 1985 I was very fortunate to purchase the Tall-mantz collection — also known as the Movieland of the Air Collection — which the Stinson L-1 was a part of,” said Kermit. “As a side note, when Paul Mantz was killed in 1966, there was a consolidation of needed air-planes versus ones they could do without. In 1968 they had an auction of those aircraft. What was interesting was, I was 15 years old at the time and heard about this auction in the newspaper. Deciding I needed to own some of these historic treasures, I sent them a letter, hand-printed, explaining that I would like to buy the Fokker D.VII for 25 bucks, with a secondary offer of 25

bucks on the Sopwith Camel and 25 bucks on the Pfalz D.VIIII. But I explained that if I couldn’t get one for 25 bucks, I would put the whole 75 bucks on the Fokker! Unfortunately, I never heard from anyone, so I assume I was outbid! But I obtained a lot of other cool airplanes later on, including the L-1.”

Kermit’s L-1, serial No. 40-3102, was manufactured in late August 1941 and assigned to various duty sta-tions with observation squadrons up and down the East Coast before being sent to Arizona in January of 1943 and converted into a glider tower. In mid-February 1943, while at Wickenburg, Arizona, the L-1 was dam-

Kermit Weeks’ Stinson L-1by Jim Busha

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aged during landing. The aircraft struck an obstruction, which tore away the left landing gear and damaged the propeller, left-wing strut, and left aileron.

After repairs, the L-1 continued to soldier on in the skies of Arizona before being modified from an L-1 to an L-1E. The E models had ambulance interiors along with twin Edo floats. In October 1944, this L-1 was moved north and tasked with search-and-rescue duties in Alaska, where it served out the remainder of WWII before being surplused. Paul Mantz purchased the L-1 on February 8, 1946, for $890 from the Reconstruction Finance Corp. in Oklahoma. It was pressed into service shortly thereafter and was soon earning its keep in Hol-PHOTOS COURTESY OWNER

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lywood and beyond. It was used as an aerial camera platform in many classic aviation films, including The Great Waldo Pepper, The Spirit of St. Louis, and Disney’s The Boatniks. Its last showbiz job was a 1977 episode of Starsky and Hutch.

Strawberry Fields ForeverWhen Kermit got the L-1 to Flor-

ida, he found it was in great flying condition, but the fabric was covered in white movie paint. The studios were in business to make money, not keep airplanes looking pristine.

“We cleaned it up, and I eventually got a banner-towing endorsement and used the L-1 to tow a large ban-ner encouraging people to visit the Weeks Air Museum in Miami,” said Kermit. “That was my early attempt at marketing, and I don’t really know if it made a difference or not, but boy oh boy, was it fun!”

At that time, the southwest sec-tion of Miami was still fairly open when Kermit flew the L-1.

Among the acres and acres of Key lime groves, orange groves, and strawberry fields was Burr’s Berry Farm, where you could pick fruit yourself or stop by the farm’s stand to pick up a quart or two of fresh berries. But what it was most famous for were the homemade strawberry milkshakes you could buy right at the stand.

“Burr’s was located only 3 miles from the Tamiami Airport, still within the control zone, and Char-lie Burr, the owner of the field, had two small grass strips on his prop-erty where he operated a Cub or something of similar horsepower,” said Kermit. “Charlie gave me per-mission to land there, so it started out that I would just hop in to get a strawberry milkshake. But then I began to push myself and the L-1 to see how quickly I could get there and back. This became known as The Great Strawberry Milkshake Challenge. I began to time my-self from engine startup to engine shutdown with the shakes back at Tamiami. But word soon spread,

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and when others found out about the strawberry delicacies, they of course wanted in on the action. Even the control tower guys had a craving for these frozen goods, and they began to put me ahead of all the departing traffic so I could not only keep breaking my record but also provide what seemed like half the airfield with fresh milkshakes delivered from my L-1!”

Broken, Bent, and Beat Up But Not Down!

In 1992, Hurricane Andrew took its toll on the Weeks collection and didn’t discriminate over what it wrecked. The L-1 was not spared.

“It was dinged and bent and eventually trucked up to our new facility at Fantasy of Flight in Polk City between Tampa and Orlando, where it was placed in the hands of expert restorer Paul Stecewycz, my longest-serving employee,” said Kermit. “When Paul started the res-toration in the early 1990s, there was some banter back and forth between Paul and me about how

this restoration might be pretty straightforward. Nineteen years later one of us proved to be wrong.”

As L-birds go, the L-1 is much more complicated than you would expect a standard L-bird to be. The L-2, L-3, and L-4 are all pretty sim-ilar in size and ease of maintenance or restoration. Even the L-1’s little brother, the L-5, which is more so-phisticated and somewhat similar as far as being overbuilt structur-ally, is much easier to repair and restore than the L-1. Both Kermit and Paul agree that Vultee-Stinson must have learned something from the L-1 when it built the L-5. For

Paul Mantz

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one thing, the L-5 is half the size and still carries the same number of people.

As a prewar airplane, delivered to the Army Air Corps in August 1941, the L-1 featured the U.S. Ar-my’s standard olive drab colors.

“That’s why I wanted to replicate that scheme,” said Paul. “During the restoration, I found over 10 re-pairs to the fuselage tubing. I had initially thought about changing them out but decided against it be-cause they are part of the history of the airplane. I’m glad I didn’t change them because, through the documentation, I found that after it was repaired and recovered it was sent to Alaska and served there from 1944 until the end of the war as an air rescue aircraft along with several other L-1s, so there is a good chance it rescued quite a few soldiers in that theater.”

According to Paul, the movie world actually saved the airplane — after the war most of these air-planes were scrapped. The ones that were purchased, mostly by those who wanted a good bush-plane, found out that if you dam-aged something it was not going to be an easy fix.

“Believe me when I tell you they are not the easiest airplanes to work on because of the complex-

ity of the construction,” said Paul. “It’s a shame, because of the over 325 built, there are only seven sur-vivors, with two to three fliers in the whole bunch. The L-1 is a very complicated aircraft to restore. There is a lot of structure to deal with, and one of the bigger chal-lenges was the control surfaces are all spot-welded stainless steel. That was something that can’t be easily repaired, and we had to come up with tooling and a spot welder to deal with those repairs.

“ The wings are also very in-volved, especially with the leading-edge slats. All of those had to be repaired thanks to the damage left by Andrew. The slats were banged

up pretty good; they are manufac-tured with magnesium ribs inside the slats, so all those had to be cast in aluminum and made to replace all the broken ones. The wing struc-ture had its own issues as well, be-cause many of the secondary ribs are 16 thousandths thick, which is very thin material and difficult to repair.”

Paul also pointed out that the rear spar is machined out of a sin-gle piece of aluminum.

“The front spar is conventional, and it was a shame to have to cover the airplane because there is so much beautiful engineering hid-ing just underneath the thin layer of fabric,” said Paul. “But if you

Specs: With Comments From Kermit and Paul122 mph top speed — That must be going downhill with a tailwind. 31 mph stalling speed — You can practically take off and land any-

where you want with the airplane, especially if you have a craving for strawberry milkshakes!

2,653-pound — Empty weight51-foot wingspan — They are a monstrosity and a work of art as well. 4 degrees of dihedral — I always remark that those balsa-wood, rub-

ber-band, wind-up airplanes with plastic gear legs were the model used to build the L-1; they look eerily similar. Another fun fact about this airplane is found in the pilot manual, which says, “Use ex-treme caution when taxiing the airplane with flaps down and when the wind speed is over 30 mph because the airplane will become airborne.”

34-foot, 3-inch fuselage — Built to carry everything, including the kitchen sink.

Fun factor — A perfect 10!

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bend or break the rear spar, you can pretty much kiss the airplane goodbye or make it into a tree fort for your kids, because to have a new one made would cost an astro-nomical amount of money.”

While doing research, Paul dis-covered that the Fieseler Storch was a major influence on the de-sign of the L-1.

“ I be l ieve the des ig ners at Vultee-Stinson said, ‘Let’s take the basic Storch idea and make ours as complicated as we can!’” said Paul. “The L-1 wasn’t a cheap airplane to build either. Production cost in 1940 was astronomically high at $21,000 [almost $355,000 in to-day’s dollars], compared to a Piper L-4, which was about 1,500 bucks back in 1940. Before the war ended they did realize it was too big and cumbersome for many of the liai-son missions; it took a lot of men

to move it around on the ground, and it was a maintenance hog when work needed to be done on it, such as an engine change. In re-ality, the L-1 had a low production run for a WWII airplane, with only 325 examples built.”

Just one example of how dif-ficult the L-1 was to construct: It was built using fabric that lays over a steel tube structure and has a 16/1,000th (0.016) tube as stringer material, which is squished out into an oval shape and wraps over the airplane, giving it its distinc-tive appearance and shape.

“When we got the L-1, all the original stringers were broken and many were replaced with wood stringers. No one would quote me a price to replicate them in 16/1,000ths (0.016), and I finally found a place that would do them in 25/1,000ths (0.025). We ended

up adding three and a half pounds to the airplane, plus it was stron-ger, so it was a win-win.”

Another challenge Paul faced was all the glass. When Tallmantz owned the airplane, it had faired over the top with Plexiglas, which just didn’t look correct to Paul.

“I had to remove all of it, and luckily we located a complete war-time piece that was broken and crazed and sent it to Aero Trader in California, and they were able to remanufacture all new glass for us, which was made up of four large pieces on top along with side win-dows and windshield.”

As for covering, Paul and Kermit decided to go the old-school route to give it that period-correct look.

“We decided to cover the fuse-lage in grade A cotton,” said Paul. “We lucked out because we had some rolls of cotton in storage from a different project, and those were 90-inch rolls, which you can’t get anymore. That was a bless-ing because the fuselage is made up of two pieces of fabric that are sewn into one tube-like sheet that is pulled over the structure, glued, and then stitched on. I was on my back for three days stitching the fabric to the fuselage!”

All the little details came into play with this project, including the use of curved zippers.

“The original drawings show al-most 40 of them — they are in-spection openings and they call for a curved zipper,” said Paul. “All I

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thought was, ‘Oh my God, can you make this project any more com-plicated?’ I started calling zipper manufacturers and explained my dilemma, and at first many said they could do it, thinking it was for a backpack or purse. I said, no, it’s on a flat plain surface, and four separate companies said, ‘Oh, that can’t be done; it’s impossible.’ I told them I had the drawings, and they said, ‘Best of luck, but ain’t no way.’ I got a lead on an older gentleman in North Carolina who worked at a fas-tener company, and I explained the issue to him, and he said, ‘Oh yeah, I know exactly what you are talk-ing about.’ A week later I received an exact copy of a curved zipper. I or-dered 60 of them at 10 bucks apiece — a pretty good deal in my mind, with plenty of spares left over.”

During our walkaround inter-view, Paul gently grabbed the left aileron, smiled, and said, “This was the most difficult part to restore/find. The original left aileron was

heavily damaged during Hurricane Andrew; it was mangled. I set it aside, and during the long rebuild, I kept getting asked, ‘How are you going to manufacture a new one?’ I kept saying, ‘I’m not worried; there is a left aileron out there some-where that will find its way here.’ Halfway through the project, we were contacted by a guy who was trying to sell us a set of L-1 floats. They were not in the best shape, but they were fixable. This guy then reluctantly let it slip that there was a fellow in Alaska who might have other L-1 parts. When I finally got through to him and asked him if he had any parts, he said, ‘Parts? I have a whole airplane.’ When the snow up north finally melted, he sent me some photos. He had a whole L-1 sitting there. It was nasty-looking, all ragged out, but a whole airplane nevertheless.

“The wings still had the original fabric on them from 1941, with all the markings in place — faded, but

there. I asked him if he had a spare left aileron by chance, and an ele-vator, and he sent me a picture of him standing next to a perfect left aileron. I told him I was very in-terested in the parts, and he said if we wanted the parts, we would have to buy the whole airplane. Ker-mit agreed to buy it, and now we owned another L-1 project. But that didn’t last long. [Kermit later sold that project to Pat Harker of Anoka, Minnesota, who along with Ameri-can Aero of New Smyrna, Florida, finished the project days before EAA AirVenture 2016 and walked away with the Reserve Grand Champion: WWII award.] The aileron still had some of its original fabric on it, and I swear it would have punch tested; it was that good! It was pristine — the only control surface on the en-tire airplane that doesn’t have a repair on it.”

According to Paul, there were a lot of factors in the rebuild of the L-1, and he is not ashamed to say it

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took 13 years to rebuild. “Unfortunately, it was with a lot

of stop and goes,” said Paul. “Ken Kellett was a huge help, and he as-sisted on the covering. Rick Reeves did most of the metalwork, and Andy Salter fine-tuned and over-hauled the big 295-hp Lycoming 680 radial engine in-house. There are at least 10,000-plus man-hours on this project, which is beyond ri-diculous for a liaison airplane.”

Paul installed the original radio equipment the airplane would have had during WWII to give it that wartime look. To honor its years as an aerial camera platform, Paul also preserved many of the Tall-mantz modifications.

“The back hatch of our L-1 was restored to maintain the lineage of the airplane,” said Paul. “Although not authentic as it would have come from the factory during the war, we wanted to honor the modi-fications that [Frank] Tallman and Mantz made for its role as a cam-era platform. What they did was created a sheet-metal hood aft of where the passenger sits and fab-ricated it so it could be removed. Frank Tallman cut one of the di-agonal tubes out and replaced it with a metal ring where they would mount a 35 mm camera. We left that all in because it is part of the airplane’s ancestry.”

So was it worth spending more than 13 years rebuilding the L-1? Ac-cording to Paul, it’s difficult to answer that question with just one word.

“I was glad it was done and was

happy with how it turned out,” said Paul. “There are some angles on the airplane that are real nice-looking and pleasing to the eye, while there are others that make you kind of curl your lip and shudder and say, ‘What were they thinking?’ But it played a very important role during WWII.

“During the restoration, the L-1 and I had a love-hate relationship. I had been through other projects, like Kermit’s Wildcat, which was a hundred times easier than this airplane. I had to go through vari-ous blind corners and figure things out on my own. One positive out-come is that the L-1 has prepared me for any project out there; there will never be one more difficult or longer than the L-1. But like Ker-mit says, it’s not really about the finished project, it’s about the jour-ney, and I couldn’t agree more. All the people I got to meet and the places I traveled to in order to hunt for parts, and then seeing this proj-ect come together, that’s what it’s all about with these old treasures.”

L-1 FlyingPaul finished the L-1 in 2015,

and they took it to Lakeland, Flor-ida, for the annual Sun ’n Fun Fly-In in April 2015, walking away with the Grand Champion War-bird award. According to Kermit, all credit goes to Paul and the oth-ers who assisted him with this res-toration. Everything looks factory fresh, including original radios, curved zippers, flare pistol, instru-ments, and so on.

As for f lying it , Kermit just shakes his head and grins when he talks about it.

“It’s a big airplane — absolutely huge!” said Kermit. “I have a lot of time in our Storch, which as L-birds go is at the top of the list for slow-speed maneuverability. Someday I am going to demonstrate a fly-off between the two airplanes. Right now, I think the Stinson may fly a little slower than the Storch, but the Storch will beat it hands down for shortest distance to take off and land in.

“On takeoff, the L-1 takes a little longer to get airborne, but once in the air it’s faster than the Storch. The Storch has fixed slots in the wings, while the Stinson, which was a later design, has slats; they are ba-sically slots that move in and out from the wing as airspeed decreases — they pop out automatically, no lever to operate. So when you start pulling the power back on final and the airspeed decreases and you hit a certain angle of attack, the slats begin to pop out, giving the pilot excellent low-speed handling capa-bilities. Even though the airspeed gauge is reading zero, the plane is still flying at around 25 mph. Even if it fully stalls, the landing gear is so strong and stout that it will ab-sorb any kind of impact from 5 or 6 feet, and it just plops in to land. The L-1 is a creature of its own. It’s big and stable, with side-slanted win-dows giving you a tremendous view of the world around you. When we got the L-1, it was a movie hack. It was beat up and tired; Paul was the true savior of this airplane.

“I was simply observing the prog-ress and writing checks for it while Paul did the majority of the work. The L-1 is an early part of my past flying experiences in Miami, so it’s a special airplane to me. When you look back at these times, you realize we are, right now, this very second, creating the ‘good old days.’ One day I am going to look back on these times and say, ‘Oh, God, that was so cool flying the Stinson L-1!’”

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