Bellanca 28-70
The Bellanca 28-70 was a one-off long-range racing monoplane built by Bellanca in 1934 for Colonel James Fitzmaurice, sponsored by the Irish Hospitals' Trust, to fly the MacRobertson Race from England to Australia. It first flew on 1 September 1934 but never started the race: officials would not clear it at its design weight, and Fitzmaurice withdrew. After an abandoned London-to-Baghdad record attempt and a 1935 landing accident, it was rebuilt in 1936 with a 900 hp engine as the 28-90, set a New York-to-London record with James Mollison as Dorothy, and was sold to Republican Spain in 1937. It was the prototype of the 43 production 28-90 Flash aircraft; no example is documented to survive.
Why It Mattered
The Bellanca 28-70 was a one-off long-range racer built for Colonel James Fitzmaurice, sponsored by the Irish Hospitals' Trust, to contest the 1934 MacRobertson Race from England to Australia. Fitzmaurice asked for an aeroplane capable of flying 3,000 miles non-stop at 235 mph, and ready to start the race in less than five months. The finished racer reached England in time, but race officials would not clear it to take off at its design weight, and Fitzmaurice withdrew rather than race with its fuel, and with it its range, cut away. Rebuilt two years later with a more powerful engine as the 28-90, the same airframe went on to set a New York-to-London record in James Mollison's hands, so the design's one famous flight came in its second life.
Design Notes
Albert W. Mooney designed the 28-70 as a low-wing monoplane, its two crew seated in tandem under an extended canopy, with retractable main landing gear. Its structure was conventional Bellanca practice: a wooden frame with fabric covering and a two-spar wing, braced externally by tie rods running from the wing to the fuselage and to struts beneath the belly. An unusual set of braces above and below the wing supplemented that structure, and the cockpit canopy of Plexiglas was, for 1934, a novelty. A 700 hp Pratt & Whitney twin-row radial provided the power; the model number itself recorded the formula, 280 square feet of wing and 700 horsepower. All the fuel sat ahead of the cockpit, in a 480-gallon main tank and a 120-gallon auxiliary, and loaded with 600 gallons the aeroplane grossed 8,350 lb, far beyond the 400-gallon capacity it had been designed around.
Operational History
Fitzmaurice and his co-pilot Eric "Jock" Bonar made the first flight on 1 September 1934, after a rapid series of tests in New York; that flight exposed aileron control problems that needed modification. Painted as race number 29, the aeroplane was then crated and shipped by sea, and its ferry flight to Britain on 9 October was troubled, a cracked cowling forcing a landing at Amsterdam. It reached Mildenhall, the race start, only four days before the 20 October start, registered in Ireland as EI-AAZ and named Irish Swoop. The race committee judged the entry not "race-ready": the Bellanca had been certified around a 400-gallon fuel capacity but now carried far more, and officials refused to let it take off above 5,350 lb against a design weight of 8,350 lb. Limited by penalty to 120 gallons of fuel, Fitzmaurice withdrew the Irish Swoop hours before the start. Recertified in its new configuration, he and Bonar set out on 29 October 1934 to set a London-to-Baghdad record mark, but fairing and cowling trouble ended the attempt over Belgium. The aeroplane was shipped back to the United States to finish its tests, and on 15 April 1935 a gust of wind flipped it onto its back in a landing accident during a proving flight, badly damaging it.
Afterlife
The damaged racer sat at the factory until 1936, when it was rebuilt around a 900 hp Pratt & Whitney R-1830, redesignated the 28-90 and registered in the United States as N190M. James Mollison bought it for $28,000, renamed it Dorothy, and in October 1936 set a new New York-to-London record of 13 hours and 17 minutes in it. A month later his attempt on the London-to-Cape Town record ended on the banks of the Nile, where a broken fuel tank forced him down. In 1937 Mollison flew the aeroplane to Madrid and sold it to the Spanish Republican government, which apparently used it for high-speed reconnaissance during the Spanish Civil War. Bellanca meanwhile developed the design into the production 28-90 Flash, of which 43 were built; none of the production aircraft reached Spain, the orders being diverted to China and, later, to Mexico. Writing in 1972, Don Berliner concluded that, according to all official records, not an aeroplane of the Flash family remained, and the 28-70's Spanish service is the last chapter of the airframe that any source consulted for this record documents.