OTHER RESOURCES

Very readable volumes about the Grand Central Air Terminal are these books:

Underwood, John. 1984. Madcaps, Millionaires and 'Mose'. Heritage Press, Glendale, CA. 144pp.

And...

Underwood, John. 2007. Grand Central Air Terminal. Arcadia Publishing. Charleston, SC. 127pp.

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Thanks to Guest Editor Bob Woodling for help researching this page.

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I'm looking for information and photographs of this airplane to include on this page. If you have some you'd like to share, please click this FORM to contact me.

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FOKKER F-10A NC455E

This airplane appears three times in the Grand Central Air Terminal (GCAT) Register. Tower Operators A.J. Lygum and "Shelton" did not identify the pilots or numbers of passengers. Below is a photograph of NC455E from the link.

Fokker F-10A NC455E, Albuquerque, NM, Ca. 1929 (Source: Link via Woodling)
Fokker F-10A NC455E, Albuquerque, NM, Ca. 1929 (Source: Link)

The link describes the context of the photograph as follows, “Frank Speakman and his partner William Franklin were Santa Fe Railway employees that leased 140 acres of flat East Mesa land in 1928. With the help of Albuquerque Mayor Clyde Tingley, the two partners began a project to create and aviation center. Speakman left the Santa Fe Railway to devote his time to the establishment of the Albuquerque Airport.”

The Abuquerque, NM Airport was also known as Oxnard Field. It became the local civil airport, and later the location of Kirtland Air Force Base. Another airport was later established nearby by Western Air Express/T.W.A. to handle their transport traffic. That location became the modern Albuquerque International Sunport. Please direct your browser to the link for details and aerial photographs of those early airfields.

The landings of NC455E at GCAT were listed as March 31, 1931 at 4:49PM, April 14, 1931 at 10:17PM and April 29, 1931. The airplane was S/N 1017. It was operated out of GCAT by T.W.A. Incorporated on its route between Los Angeles, CA and Kansas City, MO. An intermediate stop was Albuquerque.

NC455E appears at Register pilot Harlan Hull's page as the airplane he and Ormond Gove flew from Agua Caliente, Mexico on September 7, 1929. Please direct your browser to Hull's link for details of this flight. I have no further details regarding ownership transfers or ultimate fate of NC455E. If you can help fill in the blanks, please let me KNOW.

NC455E is also logged twice in the Oxnard Field Register from Albuquerque, NM (no Web site yet; in planning stage). It landed there on May 12, 1929 at 1:30PM eastbound to Kansas City, and on May 14, 1929 at 4:17PM westbound to Los Angeles. This timing very nicely traces its round-trip work on that route. The flights were underpopulated by passengers: eastbound there were five passengers and westbound there were no passengers, just the two pilots.

 

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THIS PAGE UPLOADED: 02/27/16 REVISED: