This is What's the Deal, Grosse Ile, the podcast that explores the people places history and events that make rosio unique. I'm your host, Ben fote. Now this intro may seem like a communication breakdown. But I assure you that in the end, I'll bring it on home. There's the story that I'd heard that left me dazed and confused. The story is of this tangerine shaped blimp built on rosio way more than 10 years gone. In fact, it's been almost 100 years since it was built. I'd lost hope and finding someone who could talk about it until I read my employee newsletter from the Henry Ford several weeks ago, a co worker had written a book about Michigan aviation history. I bought the book and read through it but Grosse Ile didn't get mentioned. What a heartbreaker? Well, I didn't let that determine. I still contacted the author and he said he'd be giving a talk at the Grosse Ile Historical Society on October 3, and would love to talk about this thing I was interested in the Z MC two. That was great. And this conversation is the result. Now if you'll indulge me, I'll only toss a couple more song references in after our conversation before explaining. But first very Labine? Well my guest for this episode is Barry Levine. Barry has written a book called Michigan aviation people and places that changed history. While it doesn't mention the aviation history of Brazil, specifically, he'll be giving a talk at the grocery aisle Historical Society next month. Thank you for joining me, Barry. And thank you for stretching a bit to talk about some of gross sales, and Michigan's lesser known aviation history.
Well, sure thing, Ben, thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.
Well, let's start with your your latest book, Michigan aviation. How do you tackle such a broad topic? And what what compelled you to write it?
It's a compendium of short stories about Michigan aviation. And I think what the origin was my work volunteer work at the Yankee Air Museum and belville, where I've been since 2015, am a docent there. So I get to talk to lots of guests, and lots of our staff, whether the paid staff or the volunteer staff have tons of aviation history and background. And I got to think, geez, this people, this is interesting stuff. So the way I wrote the book, it's not about wingspan of bomb low capacity, you can find that on the internet. And it's not that compelling. But there were so many personal stories about Michigan, it's not a complete comprehensive A to Z going back to the year 1900. Because I'd be running until I'm 800 years old, and you're not gonna live that long. But what I hope it does is just inform the readers that we've had some remarkable people and events here in the state. And if you're interested in learning, and learning more, mission accomplished, and I also try and touch on some of the aviation museums. In Michigan, you've got people, if you're paid staff, you're not gonna get independently wealthy. unmute Aviation Museum, PayScale is mostly volunteers. And we got some super dedicated people keeping these stories alive. And I wanted to highlight that too. So I hope I did a good job with it.
Well, I grew up in Ohio, and we had frequent trips to the Air Force Museum down in Dayton. So I really just learned Ohio's place in aviation history, which I'll tell you they're super proud of. And exactly, I'm related to Neil Armstrong. So so he's part of the family. You know, so what are what are some of the highlights? It's easy to talk about Ohio highlights with with john glenn and Neil Armstrong and the Wright brothers. But But what are some of the highlights of aviation in Michigan?
Well, one highlight though, I'll give you three, because there's many many more, but I don't want to go on for 10 hours here. We'll run bomber plant, which is in Bellville, Ypsilanti was agricultural land, apple, orchard wheatfield, soybeans, whatever they had, in a 1941 Ford Motor Company at the direction of the federal government broke ground in a bomber plant that built 8600 B 24 bombers, which was a key part of the Allied Arsenal during the war. And there's books and literature out there. It reads like a novel just a drama with the Ford family and the government and Henry Ford and Edsel Ford. In the early days, a plant wasn't called Willow run, it was nicknamed Willow run, because the planes were such a poor quality coming off the line. But as that's not the people, they had no aviation expertise, and they were in this rush mode. But between the military and the government and Ford and the workforce on the line, everyone pulled together and the production problems largely went away and they had a great great production war record. So that's an incredible story at the Henry Ford. We have for example, and I've been there many times as a guest I said, I've worked there part time starting in 2019 is a little itty bitty yellow Stinson airplane monoplane. So one day I start reading the description about it and these two guys, Bill Brock and actually tried to fly that airplane around the world took off from Dearborn and I had flying Westies in May as far as Tokyo was something like 22 or 23 individual stops and you look at that thing and that's to take away anything from Charles Lindbergh who did amazing accomplishment but this was it was More than that, because this was around the world and different languages and customs, getting into these countries and getting fuel and the weather and just goes on and on and on. And then another thing I'd like that's a great story of our Michigan Strategic Air Command bases. There were three bases in northern Michigan, one in outside of Marquette, one on Skoda. And when and kincheloe, which is just south of Sioux Sainte Marie, they're all close now the Cold War ended budget cutbacks to the last more gone by the mid 90s. But the work and service of these men and women is mostly men, but needed women in the military by that as well. It was just phenomenal. He had to deal with the Cuban Missile Crisis. They sent crews to Vietnam, they were on these chrome dome missions where they're already fully fueled and loaded up with nukes in the air. So they got the command from the Pentagon, go fly to Moscow. Those guys were on their way. So it's and that's just a sample of it. And what I wrote wasn't chapter and verse year by year by year, I tried to, I tried as best I could to capture the essence of the story, and why why the reader might want to learn more about it. Yeah,
and in Grosse Ile seems to have an odd place in that Michigan aviation history, even before the Naval Air Station started in the seaplane base. So grisea was home to a workshop or development center or were something like that, that that build a metal clad zeplin. How did how did that come to be?
It's a great question because it's To my knowledge, it's the only metal clad Zeppelin in aviation history. I mean, maybe there's some new ones aliquot Goodyear flies around a football games. But there were two guys Ralph Upson was an engineer in a phone and curl fridge was this kind of like aviation visionary, the early days and they were in Detroit, and they were able to raise money from people like Henry and Edsel Ford helped fund something called the aircraft Development Corp, which was a subsidiary company associated with the Detroit Aircraft Corporation. And the airplane to the day this is in the early 1920s. They were very loud, they weren't comfortable. They've short range they were slow prone to break down. So you can think that a dirigible Zeppelin might be the way to go. So these guys came up with a idea of a metal clad zeplin zmc to zeplin. Metal clad. I don't recall offhand where the number two came from helium.
It's it's for the the element. Yeah.
Oh, so thank you. So I learned something today. Thank you. Thank you, Ben, for the clarification. That's great. Yeah. So while these guys are thinking about that, and trying to raise money for the venture, and they quickly realized that the Army or Navy would be a good, like a good prototype. So the thought was maybe they built one Army Navy lighted maybe they'd order more or they could demonstrate to the civilian world that needs to be practical. So I got a $300,000 grant from Congress to help build it. Well, all this is going on. There was a naval base with its origins go back to Bell Island Selfridge, but there's a teeny tiny naval base, and it was shot like they fly it from belville to Salford. Well, the people in Detroit and probably people in Windsor, too, didn't think this was a great idea. It was loud. The airplane might fall out the sky in their house, so can you please move? And one of the there was a armory. It was called the Detroit armory. I guess it was kind of like a warehouse I guess for the military. And the commanding officer was a fella named William broadhead and broadheads. antecedents go back to a fella named William McComb, who was one of the early settlers of Brasil. So I don't know I haven't read it but logic certainly suggests he would be that broadhead to be familiar with Rocio and my think was a good place to be. So another element in the story is ransom old 12 found the Oldsmobile Motor Company, a very wealthy individual had a summer home and elbow Island, which I guess is adjacent to Brazil. Yep. And he owned the fair amount of acreage on the very southern end of Brazil facing down into Lake Erie. So from the Navy's viewpoint, if you want to see planes, you got water access. You're kind of away from population centers, because my guess would be Grosseto was very sparsely populated back in the 1920s. So it can work and quiet and for whatever reason the Olds or his descendants wanted, he was still alive and may the family said we've got enough business up in Lansing, we've got other things to do. So they sold it. So aircraft development blossom the land, and then they paved this 3000 foot. Diane's 3000 foot diameter circle that was gonna be like a runway and takeoff area for the Zef. One. Sure. Wayne County paid with 20. I'd like a 20 foot wide surface road sometime around 1927 or 28. And then the field cover but it's really unique. If you look at any photograph in the area you have the runways are triangular and right in the center of this thing is circular. It may not be unique, but it's got to be pretty doggone close to it. Yeah. And then it's a terrific resource for anybody interested in gross sale histories of historic museum on the island. People they're a super help helpful. We got archive records and I got a whole Have a book from the people down there by a fella named Walker Morrow. Morrow was born right around the same time the Wright brothers first flew, and he wrote an account of his life. And you know, like anybody you live long enough, you have ups and downs and good periods not so good periods, the moral word for the zipline company. So he's one of the guys actually building the thing. So it's really kind of a rare first person account of working in today's zeplin plant in the 1920s. So there's not many human beings that are now that could make such a claim, I don't think
yeah. So if if my understanding is right, when they built that zeplin the the description I read about it was that, that they use rivets almost like he would use stitches in Yes. In fact, in a sewing factory. That's exactly right. So So how far how close were those those rivets?
I don't know how close they were, but they were very effective in that the zeplin leak much less helium than a typical fabric covered blimp leaked either helium or hydrogen. So I don't think was perfect. I mean, this is 1920s technology. And one of the engineers designed this riveting machine that you've alluded to Ben, and they kind of assembled it like to upside down tea cups in this big hangar, which no no longer standing, but it's very as I'm sure was the biggest building ever built in Rosales history, please I'm almost certain it was an A soundless thing. And they had visions for additional ongoing zipline production. So it rolls out of the hangar in August of 1929. Of course, two months after August 1929 came October 1929 in the depression and there were a lot of well known aviators came to see it no Earhart was on Grace Hill, Charles Lindbergh was on grow seal. so widely post was well known aviator, the aero, diagnose plane crash in Alaska. So it's lots of interest in this thing. And it was a biller for the Navy. It flew successfully to the Navy station and Lakers New Jersey, which I think somewhere Metropolitan New York City area, and they had visions, but then the depression had hit. The zipline orders dried up the Navy budget dried up. And at the aircraft development company went out of business with a depression. You know, the backstory was when I first started, you had mentioned that it wasn't in the book, I wish it was but it's like after I sent the text to the editors. I started researching rosio Geez, this would have been pretty good. But I started the editorial process. I will say a bit of shameless self promotion, Michigan history magazine, part of the historic Society of Michigan, you're going to have an article that I wrote about grow sealed naval aviation sometime early 2022.
All right, we'll make sure to highlight that when it comes out. So the thing that that I'd gotten confused by and we sort of hashed out in the past couple weeks is that that I thought that that it was Curtis Wright that had done that. So Curtis Wright had built a hangar I think that is still around. And if I if I get all the pieces, right, they actually built the engines for that aircraft.
Yeah, we're right engines, the same type of engines at the Ford try motors use the early one. We're right. J five engines. I think we're the two engines of power. There's f1.
Okay. Yeah. And that was after Orville Wright had left the company and yeah.
Well, between Curtis Wright Orval is,
yeah, and actually, between Curtis Wright and Curtis too, so yeah, so my understanding is that was that was not a clean break for your side. So some drama is always good. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and of course the Detroit Aircraft Company Corporation had its own had its own drama. And and I was consulting with some folks at the museum. And I guess part of the the reason for all this, why aircraft was those companies weren't all that valuable. They'd been they'd been traded and closed and all this. I guess, the the federal government had what claimed all the patents for aircraft technology in World War One. So
yeah, it sounds right. So how do you commercialize it? Right, you were at a point where the commercial aviation industry that we know is just in its early in its infancy. I mean, the airplanes were dangerous, and it was slow, and they didn't go very far. So it didn't look like a huge, huge upgrade trains, the tri motor, which I said has the same engine that the zipline did, yeah, really was a breakthrough because it really started pointing things in the right direction, saying we could make money here. They try carrying Air Mail for a while, but then they had all sorts of air, air mail plane crashes in the 20s. I mean, it was up and up and down industry. And then of course the depression turned everything upside down for a while too. Yeah,
I remember growing up I think a tri motor tri motor would come and visit our air show at in Marysville, Ohio. And I think that tri motor was used to pick up kids on like middle bass and South bass Island and take them to school, like in Sandusky or something.
Oh, yeah. There's a whole island airline. Yeah. Used to fly out and put in a punching bag and the islands out there and for years using a tri motor.
Yeah, so we got to see that plane. I don't think so. rode in and I may have but that's that's been a long, long time ago, the history then of that company so it went out of business 1929 1930 somewhere in that era, is there anything left at that company? Or is there anything else that that the company to trade Aircraft Company or
not that I know of, just like some of the early car companies and aviation companies are gone. I mean, the people might have moved on because if they were talented, the aviation industry would be will always be looking for talented people. So someone very likely moved on and had very successful careers. But to my knowledge that company's gone, the building went first I really got excited with this pervert was used to build a bowling alley in Trenton. And it got the Holy smokes. What a neat picture for the magazine article. But more important than the magazine was just a piece of history. Yeah, the bowling alley was torn down to a shopping center now so Gonzo, in which left the pipe I believe there's a facility on the island called a pilot house. Yes. It's like a hotel restaurant. Yeah, that used to be the bearer for Curtiss Wright had a flight school for a short period of time. Okay. That guy, Carl French, the aviation innovator. He ended up with a group called the les voyage or part of my bismil French accent. So it was not a strength in high school, I can assure you, but and then they sold out and they had a right head of flying school and they provide service to the aviation industry that exists in Brazil. They went away, but the pilot house remains. So that's standing hangar, one standing from the Navy days, right. And then part of it's been readapted. I guess it's admissible offices for gross shield Township.
That's right. And I think that started in 1998, or 99. Yeah, so
most of the Navy buildings were torn down almost all of them.
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for helping us connect to this obscure history. It's definitely unique to grow steel, where have you found photographs? You've talked a little bit about photographs? Is there a place online or
that is a that's its own research topic is getting photographs, and now like that, and then the copyrights to use it? Oh, sure. Google Images is actually pretty decent source. But for like grow sale history. The Walter bruiser library that's part of Wayne State University has a number of photographs, online, digital images, I can see him but if you want to download and print, you got to work out a fee. So that's a pain. The National Archives have some gross Hill pictures, and because if they're taken by somebody who's in the service, and they're doing their job, it's copyright belongs to the US taxpayer. Right. And then the Grosse Ile historic Museum, they've got a in depth series of archives and photographs are just incredible. I don't know how much you want to call it a public research facility, but the people there were very helpful to me, but I don't want to speak for them as to what public access might exist, but they've got a quite a collection. Yeah.
And as a matter of fact, we'll get to that because you're you're going to be speaking with the Historical Society about Yankee Air Museum on October 3. Yep. You want to share any teasers of anything, any big reveals for way to talk about there.
It's about the history of the museum. I wrote a short book to publish late 2018 as one arcadius series about the history of the museum. And it's incredible. We've been at it for 40 years this month, September of 2020 was our 40th year in business. They had ups and downs. We had a a fire destroyed the original hangar, but we've rebuilt live and easy to call it quits. But a lot of his talks about the volunteers that we have and their dedication to aviation history. Talk a little bit about aircraft restoration. Believe me those guys won't let me turn a wrench on one of their airplanes. But if you've got skill will be glad to have you. Tell us about our air shows what we have. And we've had some really interesting aviators and artifacts come through. But I think the best part of the museum's is guests coming through because they've got some stories. You just you know they're telling the truth, but you just can't believe it.
Absolutely. So the air shows are connected to the Yankee Air Museum
there we hosted in Wayne County Airport Authority, but this year, last year, we had no show because of COVID. Right? Yeah, kind of like a driving movie. So but it worked very well. We had the Thunderbirds came on. And so there's some behind the scenes, we have some sort of appearance fee, and then we'd sell tickets to it. So it's not, our airplanes will fly in it. But we invite aircraft operators from other parts of the country to come and fly their airplanes and you really seem to like and we've been doing Sunder over Michigan is the marketing name since Oh, three. And there are other air shows that will run even before that. So we've got a there's a long history of air shows. Yeah, we'll run
if I remember right, the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels flew this year.
Correct. First time. I think we guys were the Defense Department gave him a waiver for the two groups up here at the same show at the same time. Yeah.
And then they were all at the Henry Ford museum for a free autograph signing and in photo event that was the meet
and greet. People love them. And when you see if you ever have an opportunity to see these guys fly, it's incredible because they're so fast and so close to each other. perfections got to be the only acceptable standard if you want to be a Blue Angel or Thunderbird. That's it.
Yeah. Absolutely. And you have to be the right size and you can't wear glasses.
Yeah, yeah. vision which I know I don't have. Yeah, me neither watch right out. Yep.
Well back to your books. So how are your books available? How can we we get a hold of those
Yankee Air Museum gift shops, one source, Amazon's probably the easiest source to know. And I just need a Google search my name Barry Levine at Google search, maybe Michigan aviation Yankee Air Museum. We'll come right up.
All right, and I suppose you will have some with the on October 3? Certainly. Certainly. Well. So there's a question I asked every guest. That is a question about a wish. So if there is there a wish that you'd make for for gristle or for Michigan, or? or any of that? what's what's your wish?
health, peace and serenity. For everybody? Anybody listen to this? That'd be what I'd wish. Yeah. I mean, we live in troubled times. So something like that can't hurt.
Absolutely. Absolutely. We're probably living in innovative times to the the innovation that came out of out of that that period of the 20s. Oh, yeah. Maybe we'll see some of that come in here too.
So absolutely phenomenal. Well,
I want to thank you for sharing your your wealth of knowledge about about the aviation history that this obscure history that that we just happen to have here on the island. I appreciate I appreciate you and and your effort to preserve and organize our region's history.
Well, thank you very much, then I appreciate the opportunity. It's fabulous research. I'd encourage anybody to pick up a book and read about it. I really
hope a lot of folks get to hear Barry talk about the Yankee Air Museum on October 3, look for links to his books and the rosio Historical Society in the Episode Notes. One thing I did want to add to our conversation has all of my love. When the XBMC two was being constructed, it was as Barry described like an upside down teacup. As the show grew taller and taller scaffolding allowed the builders to install supports inside or at least that's how I understand it. I imagine it would be like a stairway to heaven. And if you've got a whole lot of love for the song title references, you've already figured out that they relate to the band that played the immigrant song Led Zeppelin. The band took a did rice of comment that it would go over like a lead balloon and history was made sort of story of a metal zeplin really needed some lead to go with it. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the rights to die or make here for the background music. So I chose something a little closer than what I normally use. I hope you enjoyed it. What's The Deal? Grosse Ile is produced by me Ben fote and float media productions LLC. Look in the Episode Notes for ways you can subscribe, share and support the podcast as well as give feedback. Thank you for listening to What's the Deal. Grosse Ile
