The Dearborn 2021
by Tom Fey
Published 29 Oct 2021; Revised 06 Dec 2021
All photos by Tom Fey unless otherwise noted.
Based on feedback, the experimental AEHS meeting held in Dearborn, Michigan on October 5th and 6th, 2021 was enjoyed by the 6 to 10 people in attendance. I believe the lost year of 2020, health issues, time, and circumstance inhibited a larger attendance, but I can easily say I very much enjoyed the company of my fellow AEHS members and their spouses.
The first evening, Monday, we gathered in the hotel lounge, visited, and ultimately had dinner at the onsite restaurant. Starting on Tuesday morning and running through Wednesday evening, compliments of the AEHS and a member donation, we had a meeting room for our exclusive use.
On Tuesday morning we enjoyed wandering among the spectacular collection of automobiles, aircraft, steam engines, stationary engines, tractors, timepieces, Mathematica displays, and other wonderments held by the Henry Ford Museum. The building is very large, 1930s art deco, meticulously detailed and maintained. The Ford has a Fokker F-VII Tri-motor, Lockheed Vega 2D, Ford Trimotor, Stinson SM-1 Detroiter, Douglas DC-3, and replica Dayton-Wright racer on display.
Many of us signed up for the mid-afternoon Rouge Factory tour where the four-door version of the Ford F150 pickups are produced, one every 56 seconds. Visitors are bussed from the Museum to a five-story observation tower that provides a panoramic view of the Rouge Complex. The Rouge at one time contained all the manufacturing capability required to produce steel, rubber, glass, and components from raw stock delivered by railroad or bulk shipping via the Rouge River, processed on site into automotive components and sub-assemblies, then fed to the Ford assembly lines. The dormant steel plant looks to be a mile away from the observation deck yet takes up 30° of the horizon, and new construction can be seen everywhere.
After a multi-media show describing the history of Ford and pitching ownership of an F150, you were elevatored to a catwalk that overlooked the perimeter of the F150 assembly line. You could take as much time as you liked overlooking the factory, the upper part of the plant filled with conveyers filled with doors, truck beds, windshields, and other assemblies making their way to a timely arrival at a precise destination. It was fascinating to see a modern assembly line in action, and despite the many robotic assemblers, there is a lot of human handwork involved in the construction process. It was a feast for the mechanical eye.
Lucky for us, that Tuesday evening the Dearborn Hilton put on a drinks and buffet event for Hilton Honors members and their guests, so we were able to enjoy a selection of free food and drink in the lobby atrium at our leisure. Afterwards we moved over to the meeting room where Tony Kambic showed some of his extensive collection of aircraft and airframe restoration images taken over his years as an aero-interested traveler and volunteer with a number of museum organizations. Tom Fey narrated through his photographs taken at Oshkosh 2021 and other things residing on the laptop and thumb drives via a TV and small speaker system.
On Wednesday the group visited the Yankee Air Museum at the Willow Run airport in Ypsilanti, 20 miles west of Dearborn. We were greeted happily by a P&W R-4360-4W standing upright in its transport can that had been rebuilt in 1952 by/for the Navy. This water-injected engine was used in the Goodyear F2G Super Corsair. The docents were very helpful and a nice selection of aircraft and artifacts were displayed as well as a P&W R-2800, Allison V-1710, Ranger V-770-11, and Hispano-Suiza 8A V8 on stands. A newer addition was a full scale, large-room sized underwater diorama displaying a Douglas SBD displayed in as-found condition on the bottom of Lake Michigan. Flash photography was prohibited, so usable detailed photography, particularly data plates, was hard to achieve. The Museum’s plans for expansion and construction have whipsawed with government, funding, and turf battles, but they do an excellent job with what they have.
Willow Run was a massive, historic factory producing B-24 Liberator bombers during WWII and the site went on to become a predominantly air freight center that supported the burgeoning just-in-time automotive factories in the Detroit area. Two sections of the Willow Run factory survive, one of which houses the restoration shops, large aircraft storage, and the flying B-17 and B-25 of the Yankee Air Museum which were seasonally off limits during our visit. AEHS board member Gary Van Farowe spent decades working for the aviation division of Johnson Controls based at Willow Run, so five of us took a Gary-guided van tour around the airport, learning its history.
Once the airport tour was complete, we headed to Ypsilanti to find some Detroit-style pizza. Unknown to us, the recommended establishment didn’t open for another 90 minutes, so we drove around early afternoon Ypsilanti, ultimately finding a two-man pizza/calzone shop that seemed glad to see us. Indoor seating was closed due to Covid, so we took indoor chairs to sit outside, pizza boxes on our laps, watching traffic, eating, talking, and laughing about whatever crossed our minds. It was glorious.
On Wednesday evening local member John Fowler joined us and Tom Fey revisited the subject of Propfans supplemented by discussion of whatever subject matter people brought up. Somewhat later, and still in search of true Detroit style pizza, some of us adjourned to Buddy’s Pizza where at least my own gustatory odyssey was completed.
And that was it. I choose to believe the attendees enjoyed a low-key, welcoming, figure-it-out-as-we-go-along meeting format in a geographic area with plenty of things to see and do. In contrast to the fifteen previous AEHS Conventions, and by design, the Dearborn 2021 experiment was neither aggressively promoted, amenity-filled, or highly structured. It was an effort to see, in a low-risk manner and communicated solely by the AEHS Message Board, if a new format could work. With thanks to those that were able to attend, contribute, and advise, I believe, despite a minimal, but highly interactive turnout, that it did indeed work out.
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| Maureen and Tony Ward, Joe Kettner, Robert Nishimura, Gary Van Farowe, Bill Ross, Tom Fey, and Tony Kambic at the Yankee Air Museum | Ford Mk IV that won the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1967 | Notice the "Gurney bubble" on the roof. Dan Gurney was 6 foot 4 inches tall, required a bubble in the roof line for helmet clearance. | Turns out Henry’s wife Clara drove a 1914 Detroit Electric car. Look at those curved windows. | Information on the Detroit Electric automobile | 1902 Ford racer #999 which was Barney Oldfield’s first driving and racing experience. Four cylinder, 1,156 in³, no transmission. Achieved the landmark 60 mph = a mile minute. |
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| Tiller steering on race 999 | Rear view of race 999 | 1927 La Salle Roadster. Elegant paint job. | Wheel on 1927 La Salle Roadster | 1938 Dodge Airflow tank truck with 1,175-gallon capacity powered by a 331 in³ L-head straight 6-cylinder engine of 100 horsepower | Rear view of the Dodge Airflow tank truck |
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| 1952 Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Frame by Dodge, body work by Gertenslager, Chevy 350 V8 engine. | Wienermobile. Love the curved glass windshield panels. | Summers Brothers Goldenrod land speed record car. Four naturally-aspirated Chrysler 426 jn³ hemi engines driving all four wheels to a record 409 mph in 1965 on 2,400 combined horsepower. | Each intake fed a plenum that supplied two engines. The car is 32 feet long, weighs 8,000 pounds. | Goldenrod was 28 inches tall at the flat top of the engine deck, maximum of 42 inches tall at the fin. | Bob Summers piloted the car. |
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| 1951 Beatty Lakester speed record car built from an aircraft belly tank. 400 horsepower from supercharged 260 in³ Oldsmobile V8 powered the car to 243 mph in 1962. | The 2016 Ford GT that won the LMGTE Pro class at the 24 hours of Le Mans (Henry Ford Museum) | The modern race car steering wheel in the Le Mans winning 2016 Ford GT. Busy fingers. | 1926 Fordson tractor cutaway | 1926 Fordson tractor drive gears | 1926 Fordson tractor worm gear |
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| Jim Clark’s revolutionary, rear engine, Indianapolis 500 winning 1965 Lotus-Ford. Ford V8, 256 in³, 495 horsepower at 8,800 rpm. | Like the steel safety cables used on the engines of Formula 1 air racers, modern stock cars use tethers to keep heavy parts from departing the vehicle | 1923 Canadian Pacific wedge snowplow driven by one or two steam engines. Notice the building pillar which is surrounded by a radiator for heating the building. | 1920 Dayton Wright RB-1 racer (replica). Original was powered with a 250 hp Hall-Scott L-6a engine. | The Dayton Wright RB-1 had linked leading and trailing edge surfaces for changing wing camber while in flight. | 1926 Ford Flivver with 35 horsepower Anzani engine. Only five aircraft were made. |
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| 1926 Ford Flivver | Wright J-5 Whirlwind on the 1927 Stinson SM-1 Detroiter Spirit of Detroit made 225 horsepower | Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Wasp engine. Early versions made 450 horsepower. | 1917 Liberty V-12 Model A engine of 400 horsepower made by Lincoln. Packard, Ford, Marmon, and Buick also manufactured the Liberty. | 1925 Fokker F.VII Tri-Motor from the Byrd Expedition which attempted flight over the North pole | Wright Whirlwind on the Fokker F.VII of 200 horsepower |
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| Ford Trimotor | Massive snow skis with custom industrial-strength gear fittings for the Ford Trimotor | Ford Trimotor snow ski bottom with errant paper airplane | 1929 Lockheed Vega 2D with P&W Wasp of 300 horsepower | 1939 Douglas DC-3 | Elegant hot water radiators surround pillars throughout the Henry Ford Museum |
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| Willow Run historical plaque at the Yankee Air Museum | P&W R-4360-4W standing vertical in storage can. The -4W was water injected and used in the Goodyear F2G. | P&W R-4360-4W storage can data block | P&W R-4360-4W storage can data block. Engine preserved in August 1952. | P&W R-2800. The Dash number was stamped over and unreadable | R-2800 with General Electric "Turtle Shell" magneto |
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| Poor photo of the Allison V-1710 showing the slotted spark plug cooling blast tub | Hispano-Suiza 8A V-8 engine. 220 horsepower. | Gary and the Bell AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter | Republic F-84 in USAF Thunderbirds colors | Republic F-84 in USAF Thunderbirds colors | Intake duct for engine-less USN Blue Angel McDonnell-Douglas F/A-18 |
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| Complete B-24 cockpit section | Pilot in Command seat in the B-24 cockpit | Replica SPAD XIII aircraft built by the Yankee Air Museum | Exposed wings on the SPAD XIII replica | Bellcrank and wooden strut that connect the upper and lower ailerons on the SPAD XIII replica | Full scale diorama with Douglas SBD Dauntless in as-found condition on the bottom of Lake Michigan in 1996 due to a 1943 WWII training accident. (Yankee Air Museum) |
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