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Rotorcraft Pioneers Floyd Carlson

By Brad McNally Contributing Editor

The birth of the helicopter can be attributed to the engineers and designers who had the vision to see something that had never been built before. However, the growth of the helicopter should be attributed to the pilots who had the ability to fly a machine that had never been flown before. Without the early helicopter test pilots the helicopter’s unique capabilities would have never been explored. Floyd Carlson is one of these early helicopter pilots and his contributions to the helicopter in the 1940s were instrumental in shaping its future. For 40 years, Carlson helped define the helicopter’s limits and find its maximum utility, laying the groundwork for the helicopters and helicopter operations that we know today.

Floyd William Carlson was born on May 4, 1917, in Jamestown, NY. He was the youngest of Sven and Ina Carlson’s seven children. Floyd’s interest in aviation began at an early age and he spent much of his time at the Jamestown Airport, which was built and operated by his older brother, Milt. Floyd never received a high school diploma, likely due in part to the fact that he would often skip school and hide in the trunk of his brother’s car to go to the airport. In addition to running the airport, Milt Carlson owned a WWI Jenny trainer airplane. Floyd would sell tickets for rides in the Jenny with Milt. Floyd began flying under Milt’s tutelage at the age of nine. By the age of 16, he had received his private pilot’s license. In 1938, at the age of 21, Floyd got his first professional pilot job as a charter pilot and instructor with Buffalo Aeronautics in Buffalo, NY (Carlson, T., n.d.). Around this same time, the United States got involved in WWII. Bell aircraft, which was also located in Buffalo, was a major supplier of fixed-wing aircraft for the U.S. military. The Bell P-39 Airacobra fighter plane quickly became an important part of the war effort. In June of 1942, P-39 production was ramping up and Floyd Carlson was hired on at Bell as a P-39 test pilot.

While working as a test pilot on the P-39, Floyd also became involved with a group of Bell engineers led by Arthur Young, the genius behind the Bell helicopter. Carlson was assisting Young’s group with the design of the helicopter flight controls. By the end of 1942, the first prototype Bell helicopter was completed and a full time test pilot was needed in the helicopter group. Bob Stanley, Bell’s chief test pilot, attempted to hover the experimental helicopter. Despite Arthur Young’s request to keep the helicopter tethered, Stanley had the tether removed. This resulted in the helicopter rolling over and Stanley being thrown into the rotor blades. Although he suffered only minor injuries, Stanley was understandably not impressed with the helicopter. Despite the accident, Larry Bell was not willing to give up on the helicopter project. Floyd Carlson was transferred from his fixed-wing test pilot duties at the main Bell plant and assigned to the small helicopter team that was working in an abandoned Chrysler dealership outside Buffalo, in Gardenville, NY (Spenser, 1998). Carlson quickly became a valued member of the small Gardenville helicopter development group. He was the only professional pilot in the group and his fixed-wing test pilot background helped him quickly learn to hover the new helicopter while it was tethered to the ground. On June 26, 1943, Floyd Carlson flew the first Bell Model 30, known as Ship1 or Genevieve, untethered for the first time. The flight took place in the meadow behind the converted Chrysler dealership and made the Model 30 the third successful North American helicopter. Carlson noted that there were some severe vibrations as the speed of the aircraft approached 25 knots. Although an aerodynamic analysis by Bell engineers showed that the vibrations would decrease as aircraft speed increased, Arthur Young halted further test flights until a solution to the vibrations could be developed. Despite not being an engineer or even a high school graduate, it was Carlson who devised the solution to the vibrations. He proposed a brace that was attached at the root of the rotor blades to stiffen them in the chordwise direction. This brace would later be known as the “Swedish Yoke” in honor of Carlson’s Swedish ancestry (Young, 2004). Within weeks the “Swedish Yoke” was installed on the Model 30 and Carlson was flying at speeds over 70 miles per hour.

By the middle of 1943, flight testing had outgrown the field behind the converted car dealership and was taking place at a grass airfield not far away. In preparation for performing test flights at altitude, the Gardenville team decided that it was necessary to conduct autorotations. Although Arthur Young had demonstrated the feasibility of autorotating a helicopter with his helicopter models, a power-off landing had not been attempted in the Model 30. In September of 1943, Floyd Carlson made the first autorotation in the Model 30. His first several attempts were successful, but they had too much forward airspeed at touchdown. On a subsequent autorotation, he attempted to decrease the forward airspeed by flaring the helicopter. The aft landing gear struck the ground first, causing the failure of a bolt which attached the bottom of the tail boom to the fuselage. The tail boom then separated from the fuselage and was pushed up into the main rotor (Spenser, 1998). The helicopter eventually ended up on its side, split in half with the rotor blades destroyed. Luckily, Carlson was not seriously injured in what would be the only major crash of his long helicopter career. He was soon back at the controls of a helicopter, continuing his test flight duties in the second Bell Model 30, known as Ship 2. The original Model 30 was rebuilt after the autorotation crash and became known as Ship 1A. As the success of the helicopter program increased, Larry Bell decided to start showcasing the helicopter and its unique abilities. On May 10, 1944, Floyd Carlson flew Ship 2 inside the Buffalo Armory to demonstrate its abilities to the press and regional Civil Air Patrol. This is believed to have been the first indoor helicopter flight in the Western Hemisphere and only the second in the world (Tipton, 1983). Less than two months later, during a Fourth of July celebration at Buffalo’s Civic Stadium, Carlson flew the rebuilt Ship 1A in front of 42,000 people. The highlight of the show was when Floyd hovered Ship 2 while resting one of the front nose wheels in the outstretched hand of inventor Arthur Young (Spenser, 1998).

While helping to develop and determine the capabilities of the helicopter in the mid 1940s, Floyd Carlson would perform some of the first non-military helicopter rescue missions ever conducted. The first rescue occurred in January of 1945 when Jack Woolams, a Bell test pilot, was test flying a P-59 Airacomet. Woolams was forced to eject from the P-59 at 10,000 feet, suffering a severe head injury when he hit the tail of the plane. After ejecting, the sudden deceleration caused by his parachute deploying jerked his boots off of his feet. Woolams landed in a remote field and walked barefoot for several miles to a farmhouse where a farmer phoned for help. The roads were blocked due to heavy snow, and an ambulance was unable to get to Woolams. Larry Bell personally ordered the use of his still experimental helicopter to help save the life of his test pilot. Floyd Carlson took off in Ship 2, landed in a parking lot to pick up Dr. Thomas Marriott, and then flew to the farmhouse. He was able to land on an area of snow packed down by the farmer, who had been instructed to do so by Bell factory personnel. Dr. Marriott treated Woolams’s injuries and frostbite at the farmhouse until a snowplow was able to clear a path for an ambulance to retrieve the injured pilot (Norton, D., 1981). Woolams later made a full recovery thanks to Floyd Carlson’s quick delivery of medical assistance. In March of 1945, two ice fishermen, Arthur Johnson and Wallace Gillson, were trapped on an ice flow drifting in Lake Erie. After several failed attempts to reach the stranded fishermen by rescue boats, the Coast Guard contacted Bell Aircraft to determine if their new machine could help. At the time of the incident the center of gravity of the Model 30 and the range of controllability were not well defined. Floyd Carlson flew Ship 2 to the shore of Lake Erie near where the men were stranded. With the help of a Harry Finagan, a Bell mechanic, Carlson tested the controllability of the helicopter with only one person in the cabin and no ballast. Finagan held onto the landing gear to simulate the trapped fishermen. Once Carlson was satisfied that he could transport Finagan from one spot on the beach to another with enough control authority to safely fly the helicopter, he proceeded out to rescue the two men one at a time (Carlson, T., n.d.). Bart Kelley, Bell’s chief engineer, recorded in a report on the rescue that the fishermen were extremely thankful; however they were very upset that Carlson wouldn’t allow them to bring their catch of fish with them.

Although he remained very active in helicopter development and testing of design and engineering improvements, Carlson’s duties grew to include demonstrating the helicopter’s unique capabilities to the public. In 1945, Carlson gave demonstrations to such important political figures as Vice-President Harry Truman and helicopter rides to the likes of New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and New York Governor Thomas Dewey. In 1946, Floyd Carlson played a key role in helicopter history. Bell Aircraft developed its fourth helicopter after learning from all its experimental models. This aircraft, the Bell Model 47, was submitted to the Civil Aeronautics Authority (or CAA, the precursor to today’s FAA) for certification. The problem was that no helicopter had ever been certified by the CAA so new standards had to be developed. Floyd Carlson, along with several other Bell Aircraft engineers and pilots, helped to adapt the fixed-wing certification standards to helicopters and to determine the training and certification standards that would be needed for helicopter pilots (Padfield, R., 1992). Carlson did the majority of the certification flights, which included teaching the CAA certification pilot how to fly a helicopter. On March 8, 1946, the Bell Model 47 received the first commercial certification ever given to a helicopter, followed by Approved Type Certificate Number One (NC-1H) two months later (Spenser, 1998).

Following the historic certification of the Model 47, Floyd Carlson continued to develop and promote the helicopter. On March 31, 1946, he made the first international helicopter flight when he flew a Bell helicopter from New York to Toronto, Canada. The flight was part of a long distance fuel consumption test. He also began commuting to and from work by helicopter, to the excitement and support of almost all his neighbors in Williamsville, a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y. However, it became obvious that not all the neighbors were pleased when the mechanics found a bullet hole in the Plexiglas bubble of the helicopter. This event ended the easy commute for Carlson, who had to resume driving through the snow-covered streets again. In 1951, Bell decided to move its new and rapidly-expanding helicopter division to Texas, and Carlson relocated to Fort Worth to continue his duties as chief test pilot. On August 11, 1955, Carlson made the maiden flight in the XV-3 convertiplane. The XV-3 was an experimental tilt-rotor aircraft that was a predecessor to today’s V-22 Osprey. The first flight in the XV-3 only consisted of hovering and Floyd Carlson did not try to convert from helicopter to airplane mode (Brown, D., 1995). However, this flight was a major breakthrough for tilt-rotor technology. In February of 1956, Floyd Carlson had the opportunity to return to his hometown of Jamestown, NY. The purpose of the visit was to fly another Jamestown native, Lucille Ball, and her husband, Desi Arnaz, into the small town in Western New York for the world premiere of their movie, “Forever Darling.” Later that month, Carlson and his wife, Evelyn, met Lucy and Desi again in Fort Worth, where television producers were meeting with Bell executives regarding their planned series “Whirly-Birds.”

Despite the occasional publicity flight, Carlson continued as one of Bell’s main test pilots. On October 20, 1956, he made the first hovering flight in the XH-40 which would be the start of the UH-1 Iroquois series. Also known as the Model 204, or simply the Huey, this helicopter was the first of arguably the most successful helicopter line in history. In addition to being the first flight of one of the most famous helicopters in history, this flight had additional significance for Carlson and all of the Bell employees. Upon completing the maiden flight of the Huey, Floyd Carlson was informed that Larry Bell had passed away earlier in the day. Carlson made the first flight in every new model of Bell Helicopter until the AH-1 Huey Cobra in the mid 1960s and continued to work for Bell Helicopter until retiring in 1982. His career with Bell spanned 40 years and he held such positions as chief pilot, special projects engineer, director of flight and technical advisor to the technology staff. During his career, Carlson accumulated over 20,000 flight hours in both helicopters and airplanes. Floyd Carlson passed away on April 9, 1984, at the age of 66. On his weekly radio show, Paul Harvey paid tribute to Carlson’s invaluable contributions to the helicopter when he announced, “We’ve lost one of our irreplaceables – Pappy Carlson is dead…If anybody wrote the book on helicopters, he did.” In recognition of his pioneering efforts in helicopter development, Floyd Carlson received numerous honors and awards. For his gallant use of the experimental and unproven helicopter to rescue two fishermen from an ice floe drifting offshore in Lake Erie in 1945, Carlson received the U.S. Treasury Department’s Silver Life Saving Medal. The American Helicopter Society named Carlson an Honorary Fellow in 1954. In 1973, the Helicopter Association of America honored Carlson as a Pioneer in the helicopter industry, and in 1977 he was made an Honorary Fellow in the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. The Helicopter Association International awarded him the 1982 Lawrence D. Bell award for long and significant contributions to the helicopter industry. In honor of Floyd Carlson’s ground breaking use of the helicopter to rescue downed Bell Aircraft test pilot Jack Woolams in 1945, Bell Helicopter instituted the Marriott-Carlson Award in 1986. This annual award recognizes the most deserving people in the hospital-based emergency air medical service.

Floyd Carlson was one of the most influential early helicopter pioneers. His outstanding pilot skills and keen test flight abilities helped establish Bell as one of the leading names in the helicopter industry, a position that it still holds today. Carlson was at the controls for some of the most important milestones in helicopter history, flying the third successful North American helicopter and then helping to develop and promote it. His expertise was an indispensable part of the historic certification of the Bell Model 47. Floyd Carlson’s career in the helicopter industry spanned a remarkable 40 years in which he brought the helicopter from its infancy in the Model 30, to wide spread use in the venerable Huey and even beyond with tilt rotor technology and the XV-3. His contributions to helicopter development can be rivaled by few, making him a true Rotorcraft Pioneer.

References

Carlson, T. (n.d.) Unpublished biography of Floyd Carlson.

Brown, D. A. (1995). The Bell Helicopter Textron Story, Changing the Way the World Flies. Arlington, TX: Aerofax Incorporated.

Norton, D. J. (1981). Larry: A Biography of Lawrence D. Bell. Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall.

Padfield, R. R. (1992). To Fly Like a Bird. Potomac, MD: Phillips Publishing.

Spenser, J. P. (1998). Whirlybirds: A History of the U.S. Helicopter Pioneers. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press

Tipton, R. S. (1983). They Filled the Skies. Fort Worth, TX: Bell Helicopter Textron Inc.

Young, A. M. (2004). Nested Time: An Astrological Autobiography. Cambria, CA: Anodos Foundation