Grumman’s Amphibious Passenger Haulers

Although Grumman never designed a bonafide “airliner,” it built three amphibious aircraft that found limited passenger-carrying applications.

Founded by Leroy Randle Grumman, who was once plant manager of the Loening Aircraft and Engineering Corporation, on January 2, 1930, the Grumman Aircraft and Engineering Corporation itself planted its initial – although hardly sedentary – roots in Baldwin, moving to progressively larger facilities, first to Valley Stream eight miles away, then to the Fairchild Flying Field 16 miles away in Farmingdale, and finally to the sprawling Bethpage plant with which it was, for the most part, synonymous, on April 8, 1937. The need for even more space prompted its secondary location at the United States Naval Air Facility, designated its “Peconic River” plant in 1953.

Principally a supplier to the Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard, it produced its famous F2F, F3F, F4F Wildcat, F6F Hellcat, F7F Tigercat, F8F Bearcat, F9F Panther and Cougar, F11F Tiger, TBF Avenger, and F-14 Tomcat series, which were instrumental in the victorious conclusion of several wars.

Grumman G-21 Goose

Grumman’s first amphibious aircraft, the G-21 Goose, was also its first monoplane.

“In 1936, the Grumman Aircraft Corporation of Bethpage was approached by several wealthy Long Island residents who needed a small plane for personal transportation,” according to Joshua Stoff in Historic Aircraft and Spacecraft in the Cradle of Aviation Museum (Heart of the Lakes Publishing, 1991, p. 29). “They wanted an aircraft large enough to carry their families and baggage on trips, luxurious enough to fit their business needs, and flexible enough to take off and land either from the land or the sea.”

Their selection of Grumman was the result of a referral. The initial request was to Loening for a successor to its Air Yacht and Commuter amphibians. Since it did not possess the facilities to undertake the project, Loening, who himself was a Grumman consultant, recommended them. Work on Design 21 began in 1936.

Representing transitional technology, it featured a riveted aluminum structure with a 38.3-foot overall length; a high-mounted wing, which had a 49-foot span and 375-square-foot area but incorporated aft, fabric-covered sections, and control surfaces; two outboard wing floats; two nine-cylinder, 450-hp Pratt and Whitney Junior radials attached to the leading edge; a two-step hull for aquatic surface operations; a conventional tail; two single-wheel, upward-retracting main wheels for nesting in the fuselage sides; and a tail wheel.

The enclosed cabin, located behind the two-person cockpit, accommodated up to six and was entered by an aft port door. Convenience was provided by a small galley and a lavatory. Baggage compartments were in the nose and behind the cabin.

When it flew on May 29, 1935, it became Grumman’s first twin-engine, land and water design and the first with significant civil and commercial application.

The 65-minute inaugural flight from Bethpage, with a Manhasset Bay landing for demonstration purposes to Leroy Grumman, led to type certification four months later, on September 29. Its gross weight was 7,500 pounds. Its cruise speed was 175 mph, and its payload- and fuel-determined range varied from 795 to 1,150 miles.

“The ease of handling, good stability, and satisfactory performance demonstrated during the trials soon made the Goose a very popular aircraft with civil and military customers alike,” according to Rene J. Francillon in Grumman Aircraft since 1929 (Putnam Aeronautical Books, 1989, pp 96-97). “Moreover, it proved to have a very strong airframe, thus endowing many of the 345 aircraft built by Grumman between May 1937 and October 1945 with a long service life.”

Its $60,000 price tag did not deter orders. Aside from providing, as intended, comfortable transportation from water-fronting Long Island mansions to Wall Street and being used for similar, private purposes in the rest of the country, Canada, and the UK, this forerunner of the modern turboprop and jet executive transport had commercial application, as indicated by KNILM’s, KLM’s East Indian subsidiary, operation of it in March of 1940.

Bob Reeve, who amassed experience connecting Anchorage and Cold Bay during World War II, began regularly scheduled service to the Aleutian Islands in April of 1948 as Reeve Airways with a motley fleet of Long Island-originating aircraft, including the G-21 Goose and the Fairchild 71, along with Douglas DC-3s and Sikorsky S-43s.

In the Caribbean, St. Croix-based Antilles Air Boats operated 18 G-21s, linking several islands as of February 1964, and Mackey Airlines connected Miami with the Bahamas with its own G-21As until Eastern acquired it in 1967.

Two carriers used the type for the short, 21-mile hop from the California coast to Catalina Island—Avalon Air Transport from Long Beach and Catalina Seaplanes from San Pedro Harbor.

Of the 13 G-21s Alaska Coastal Airlines operated, one was turboprop-retrofitted.

Grumman G-44 Widgeon

Although the G-21 Goose sold well and even contributed to Grumman’s profitability in 1937 and 1938, it was associated with two negative aspects – namely, it was too large and too expensive for its intended market, prompting the company to consider a smaller, lighter, less-costly counterpart. The result was the G-44 Widgeon.

Resembling a scaled-down Goose with high wings, two six-cylinder, two-bladed, air-cooled, 200-hp Ranger engines, a hull-fuselage, and outrigger floats, it first flew from Bethpage on June 28, 1940. It could accommodate three to four passengers, cruised at 138 mph, and cover 800-mile distances.

Operated, as intended, by the US Army Air Services, the Navy, and the Coast Guard, along with the air arms of several other countries, it had limited commercial application. But prior to and during World War II, Pan American used three to train seaplane pilots. Mount Cook Airlines of New Zealand offered passenger service between Invercargill and Stewart Island with re-engined G-44As.

Closer to home, Long Island Airlines, which acquired Montauk Caribbean in 1985 and operated a fleet of Widgeons, offered five daily round-trip flights, entailing 55-minute flying times, from East Hampton to New York, with westbound departures at 08:25, 10:20, 12:30, 15:00, and 17:15, and eastbound returns at 08:55, 11:05, 13:20, 15:50, and 18:00.

“Now you can fly to New York in twin-engine Grumman Widgeons,” it advertised. “All-metal construction, twin Ranger engines, and a quiet, spacious, well-ventilated cabin make it the ultimate in present-day medium-size aircraft. You fly in the Widgeon with the same complete confidence and peace of mind that you ride in your deluxe motor car. You lounge in relaxation as distance shrinks swiftly under your wingtips. You can chat, read, or work as easily as in your home or office. The Widgeon’s rugged Grumman construction is your assurance of dependable air transportation. Flown by thoroughly trained pilots, with many hours of flight time on land and water, the time-pressed businessman will find this service the answer to his transportation problem.”

Grumman G-64 Albatross

Another, but larger amphibian, which retained the Goose and the Widgeon configurations, was the Model 64 Albatross, which found even less commercial application.

Sparked by the Navy’s 1944 need for an amphibious, all-weather utility aircraft, it featured a 60.8-foot length, an 80-foot span, an 833-square-foot wing area, a wider-track tricycle undercarriage, a 29,500-pound maximum takeoff weight, a 1,150-mile range, and a 150-mph cruise speed as the military SU-16A.

After it first flew from Bethpage on October 1, three years later, it was primarily ordered by the Air Force and the Coast Guard, which equipped their rescue squadrons with it, accounting for the 466 built between 1947 and 1961.

Nevertheless, it found limited passenger-carrying applications. Transocean Airlines, under contract from the Department of the Interior, replaced its Consolidated PBY-5 Catalinas with three converted, 15-passenger Albatrosses in the fall of 1955, connecting the Carolinas, Marianas, and Marshall Trust Territory Pacific Islands with them. After Transocean’s bankruptcy less than five years later, Pan American took over the routes and the aircraft. When more suitably-sized runways were ultimately built, the Albatross operation was discontinued and the route authority was given to Air Micronesia in 1968.

Supplementing its twin-engine G-21s and quad-engine Sikorsky VS-44 flying boats, Chalk’s International operated Grumman-converted Albatrosses designated G-111s, the first of which flew on February 13, 1979. Powered by 1,475-hp Wright Standard radials with automatically-feathering propellers, they featured modernized cockpits and 28 non-reclining seats and were inaugurated into service two years later, in July of 1981, between Ft. Lauderdale and Paradise Island, the Bahamas.

Although Grumman reacquired some 50 surplus, ex-military HU-16s for this commercial conversion purpose, the market never materialized, only leaving the 13 G-111s.