It was On This Day that things went bad for Captain Milburn G. "Mel" Apt, working for Buffalo’s Larry “Bell Aerospace” and flying the Bell X-2. The year was 1956. He hit Mach 3—making history—and his plane was never found.
Bell X2. That would be Buffalo’s Larry Bell. So who was Larry Bell and what did he and his company mean to Buffalo and the United States?
I talked to his old and good friend today, Conrad Mikulec, who remembers that “California had Howard Hughes. And Buffalo had Larry Bell. Those are our country’s only two real airline Bookends; all the others are just pages inbetween, or at best, some very good chapters.”
Conrad Mikulec is in his own right a Buffalo legend—he developed the ABC fire extinguisher, and he invented the first aluminum scuba tank for Jaques Cousteau, enabling recreactional scuba diving, --and he personally sailed his own Tall Ship the “Star of Peace” to Viet Nam’s Hanoi Harbor to enfree the young and future Senator John McCain.
For reference, I’ve known Conrad Mikulec since I was his morning paperboy decades ago. He’s still a feisty 72 year old living in Buffalo, yet he's really just going on 16, with miles and dreams to go.
Conrad went on to say: “Damn, if Larry Bell had just lived, Buffalo would never have lost its forward zeal. Everyone in Buffalo loved him, and he knew every one in the company and in Buffalo—and the world—and even the unions loved him.” More on Conrad and Larry Bell in a minute, but first, here’s today’s "Mach 3" spellbinding story:
From On This Day, September 27, 1956, the records state: “On the morning of 27 September, Captain Mel Apt was launched from the B-50 for his first flight in a rocket airplane. He had been instructed to follow the "optimum maximum energy flight path" and to avoid any rapid control movements beyond Mach 2.7. Flying an extraordinarily precise profile, he became the first man to exceed Mach 3 that day, as he accelerated to a speed of Mach 3.2 (wow--an amazing 2,094 mph at another amazing 65,500 ft).
The flight had been flawless to this point, but, for some reason, shortly after attaining top speed, Apt attempted a banking turn while the airplane was still well above Mach 3 (lagging instrumentation may have indicated that he was flying at a slower speed or perhaps he feared he was straying too far from the safety of his landing site on Rogers Dry Lake).
The X-2 tumbled violently out of control and he found himself struggling with the same problem of "inertia coupling" which had overtaken Chuck Yeager in the X-1A nearly three years before. Unlike Yeager, however, Apt was unable to recover and both he and the aircraft were lost.”
Conrad Mikulec spoke to me today and remembered: “Larry Bell was a creative sonofabitch—a real creative animal. That guy was going places world wide and for world history—he just died too damn young. He was a great guy.”
Conrad remembers how “Larry Bell’s chauffeur, Larry Leonard, would pick me up and take me around town with Mr. Bell. I was a kid, okay a smart one—unafraid, 13, and I liked hanging around with Mr. Bell. But he always asked me to call him Larry, and I tried, but it always somehow came out Mr Bell.”
Then Conrad tells a very unique Buffalo story: “Larry Bell asked me to fly a helicopter when I was 13 years old…it was to land me to play in the high school honors ball game at Delaware Park. The year was 1949. The City had no allowance for helicopters at all, but it mandated legislatively not to allow airplanes to land in the city.
Mr. Bell insisted we do so—and I was 13, and I contacted my Dad’s friend, Buffalo’s Mayor Miuck, who with me persuaded the allowance for the landing—I made the first helicopter landing in Delaware Park in 1949 for Mayor Miuck for the ball throwing—it was and is the first legislature in Buffalo for helicopter or airplane landing and it still stands.”
I asked Conrad Mikulec about the Captain Mel Apt crash at Mach 3. He responded that as tragic as that was, there was more to the story. It took place three years earlier, and Conrad was there…
Bell records show that: “Following launch from a modified B-50 bomber, Bell test pilot Jean "Skip" Ziegler completed the first unpowered glide flight of an X-2 at Edwards Air Force Base on 27 June 1952.
Ziegler and this aircraft were subsequently lost in an inflight explosion during a captive flight in 1953. Lt. Col. Frank K. "Pete" Everest (1920-2004) completed the first powered flight in the second airplane on 18 November 1955 and, by the time of his ninth and final flight in late July the following year, he had established a new speed record of Mach 2.87 (1,900 mph).
The X-2 was living up to its promise, but not without difficulties. At high speeds, Everest reported that its flight controls were only marginally effective. Moreover, simulation and wind tunnel studies, combined with data from his flights, suggested that the airplane would encounter very severe stability problems as it approached Mach 3.”
Conrad remembers the loss taking place on Lake Ontario and told me: “I knew Skip Ziegler well, knew his sister too, who lived down the street from us. Damn sad day that was. I asked Larry Bell whatever became of Skip—Mr. Bell told me they kept looking but never found him.”
Conrad spoke further of Bell: “It was the fifties, the war was over, aerospace was the gleam on the continent and the world. Larry Bell was its visionary, its seer, true. And he was a Buffalo boy true too. He was Buffalo's future. He was a once in an era legend. Who knows though-- maybe there's a Larry Bell mustering around in Buffalo now-- that's what we need, a ballsy visionary.”
His eyes tear a bit, and he continues:
“If only Mr Bell had lived. He loved this city, and this city loved him. Hell, the whole country loved him. He knew and let everyone know he knew them; shook hands with everyone at his plant, every day. He was making this city of Buffalo the aerospace capitol of the globe—and he damn well would have done it if he lived. Everything hung on him here—he was pure genius and energy --and a helluva likeable guy.”
I asked, what about the dangers—the fatalities like we speak of On This Day occurring? Conrad roared and said “Hell, we just fought a world war and we won! Of course there’s dangers in testing. Of course there’s test fatalities. Doesn’t mean crap. You feel bad for the guy that dies, but you do it. The guy himself knew the risk. Risk is god-damned life worth living, don’t you see?”
What would have Larry Bell’s Buffalo looked like, I asked Conrad, and he said: “For one thing, we never would have lost even one Fortune 500 company…no way would anyone leave with Bell’s foresight and excitement for this aerospace capitol area he was building in Buffalo. When he died, a damn accountant took his chair at Bell Aerospace and the whole place went to crap. Period. An accountant filling Larry Bell’s shoes? Forget about it!”
The always respectful but intellectually feisty 13-year old Mikulec always wore a tie and jacket when he hung with Lawrence Dale Bell. Conrad went on: “I took a drive with Mr Bell one day—he wanted to show me where the Buffalo International Airport was going to be—land he’d bought—the dream he sought to develop.”
I asked Conrad if it was the current location. “Hell no—Bell was locating the airport at the edge of Erie and Niagara County—near the barge canal…it would have been and I believe him the most strategically aligned airport of modern times, right here. The man was a genius. This Buffalo was Larry Bell-destined to be the absolute aerospace city of the future.”
Larry Bell loved to party in Buffalo, too, with every bit of Buffalo-- and he lived for genius dreams of aerospace, at the luxurious Campanile Apartments on Delaware Avenue (that were designed by architect B. Frank Kelly in 1929).
We can remember Larry Bell now the way one remembers, say, a terrific uncle; --the nostalgia makes you yearn for a return, but the real gusto is in our bottling their spirit, and unleashing it to our own present time. There's room for Larry Bell's spirit in Buffalo right now, for it is the present dawn, in our time and duty.
Somehow, though, you just wish you could sit and listen to Larry Bell over a 1950's style cocktail, maybe an Old fashioned, a Manhattan with Bitters, or a Rob Roy-- you know? Genius.
But that’s the news from On This Day from Buffalo-- and cheers, to all the blessed air space above us.