What is this plane? #17

[howardwhite 5]

Thanksgiving Special.
HW

[Amazon 7]

You have to wonder if anyone ever actually built one...

http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2007/10/sky-toboggan-1935.html

[SkydiveJack 1]

Oh, why that's the Sky Toboggan!

I didn't cheat, not really.

[IEJuggalo 0]

...there is NO WAY I am gonna get in that thing.

[Jim_Hooper 4]

Quote

You have to wonder if anyone ever actually built one...

http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2007/10/sky-toboggan-1935.html

Jack, Jack, Jack –

For such a knowledgeable aviation historian, you disappoint me with your flippant attitude regarding the ‘Sky Toboggan’. As I’m sure you know, the XST-1 was originally designed as a Pursuit ship for the Army Air Corps in the mid-1930s. Flight tests revealed severe longitudinal problems, along with other inherent design flaws. The program was cancelled and the prototype XST-1 sold for scrap. Fortunately, it was acquired by Elmo ‘Spot’ Rathbone, a name undoubtedly familiar to you as one of the more colorful barnstorming pilots and parachutists of the era.

Although well known amongst the aviation fraternity of the time, it wasn’t until the 1936 Iowa State Fair that Spot achieved international, albeit short-lived, fame. With the XST-1 flown by his partner Ozzie Grizarde (the first to actually dub it the ‘Sky Toboggan,’ rather than, as often written, Rathbone’s on-again-off-again former stripper girlfriend, Rose ‘Peaches and Petals’ Holcutt), Spot did his trademark show-opening 100-foot pull off, only to have the apex of his canopy snag on the empennage. As a horrified crowd looked on, Ozzie made dozens of low passes as Fair officials tried again and again to pull the hapless parachutist into motorcars, passing him bottles of white lightning between rescue attempts. While the ever-loyal Ozzie concentrated grimly on saving the life of his old friend, Spot’s nips of moonshine saw him becoming increasingly animated by the attention of the many photographers. The race against time was lost as the fuel ran out and the engines died. The aircraft stayed aloft just long enough to miss the beauty pageant, before it hit and skidded across the fair grounds into the 4F judges’ tent. The XST-1 was destroyed. Though Ozzie survived except for an enduring stutter, his role in the extraordinary saga was ignored, while Spot was featured on the cover of Life magazine, along with six inside pages devoted to his miraculous escape.

As you know, there is some debate about the provenance of Rathbone’s nickname. The brutal fact is that at the end of a somewhat insalubrious evening a year or so after the Iowa State Fair episode, he had the names of all the girls he had ‘known’ tattooed in concentric rings between his eyebrows and hairline. On sobering up, he realized that not only would the evidence lend itself to the successful prosecution of the many paternity suits then pending, but the loading of shotguns by various outraged fathers. This being the days before laser removal of embarrassing body art, he had no choice but to return to the tattoo parlor and have the names hidden under a permanent, solid black circle.

A naturally vain man, Rathbone tried hiding it by cultivating bangs down to the bridge of his nose. This produced a somewhat startling effect. It also dashed his hopes of making it in Hollywood. In a cruel twist of fate, Ozzie, still smoldering over not sharing equal billing in Life, let slip to a Los Angeles Times reporter what other barnstormers had taken to calling his former partner. It was too much for Spot, who thereafter took to wearing a leather flying helmet wherever he went, removing it only in the privacy of his bath. He became increasingly eccentric and, soon forgotten by the public, disappeared.

Much speculation and rumor surrounded his disappearance, until an unconfirmed sighting of him in the early-50s. A French yachtsman and his glamorous aviatrix wife, who claimed to have recognized him from the Life magazine cover photo, had put into Penang. And there in a harbor cafe, they spotted a decrepit figure wearing a moldy leather flying helmet and equally moldy seatpack, one hand demonstrating aerobatic maneuvers, the other waving a rusty ripcord as he expounded drunkenly about the XST-1 Sky Toboggan and silk parachutes to a table of bemused Malay stevedores. Was it really the legendary Elmo ‘Spot’ Rathbone? We may never know.

So Jack – and Howard, if you’re listening – may I suggest that in the future you’re a little less hasty in sniggering about an aircraft and personality of such profound historical significance. Both Spot and the XST-1 deserve better. I trust you both feel suitably chastened.
Hoop