GORDON ISRAEL ON MISTER MULLIGAN
"I was with MULLIGAN all the time until it was cracked up in the 1936 Bendix. We built it in the old American Eagle factory in Kansas City, Kansas, over at the Fairfax Airport. It was completed in time for the 1934 Nationals and Benny and I knew we had a high performance airplane."

"In the fall of 1934, one Saturday afternoon, Benny and Mike, another guy and myself decided to go down to Wright Field and heckle them a little bit. So we flew down there and Benny put on quite an exhibition with MULLIGAN, rolls, loops, Immelmanns and everything else, and we were all dressed in our Sundaygo-to-meetin' best. We landed and taxied up to the control tower there. The whole gang came out to see what the hell was48cooking and they saw us gettin' out with no parachutes and they about died. At that time MULLIGAN could whip the pants off any fighter the Air Force had, literally fly circles around them."

"After the crack up of MULLIGAN in 1934 (with Harold Neumann) kept Benny from winning any prize money that year, he appealed to United Air Lines to let him fly in the 1935 Bendix so that he might recoup some of his losses. They gave their approval but not for the closed course races. They took a dim view of one of their pilots flying around pylons and the .effect it might have on passengers and potential passengers."Smiling confidently Ben Howard and youthful appearing Gordon Israel stand before their 1935 Bendix Trophy Race winning vehicle, Mister Mulligan, at Burbank prior to commencing race. Street clothes such as these were standard attire in the relative comfort of the cabin of their big white monoplane; oxygen masks were used for high altitude flying. Note the streamlined rocker box clearance bumps on the tight cowling surrounding the Wasp engine and the short exhaust stacks whose din must have punished their eardrums in flight.

With MISTER MULLIGAN all primed and ready for the cross-country Bendix Trophy Race in 1934 Benny had to find an experienced pilot since his employer, United Air Lines' President, W. A. Patterson, forbade him from doing any air race flying. He succeeded in engaging the services of Harold Neumann, a very capable man who later became a Boeing 707 Captain for TWA. Neumann and his co-pilot, George Cassidy, ferried MULLIGAN from Chicago westward for the starting point of the Bendix, Burbank, California. Flying at altitudes of 20,000 feet and higher to avoid the weather both men suffered from lack of oxygen and eventually lost consciousness. The plane flew along until it ran out of fuel over the Nevacla-California border. As the plane glided down, the denser air revived Neumann sufficiently to permit him to make a crash landing in Hawthorne, Nevada. Fortunately neither man was hurt seriously but MULLIGAN suffered landing gear and propeller damage which could not be repaired in time for the Bendix. MULLIGAN'S chance for glory would have to be postponed for another year, and once again Howard called upon his majordomo, Gordon Israel, to proceed to the scene of the wreck and do whatever was necessary to make the plane flyable again.

Israel headed west in his '32 Ford to meet Cassidy at Hawthorne, Nevada. There he assessed the damage to MULLIGAN, procured a trailer and dismantled the plane sufficiently to be carried on the trailer. The two men then proceeded to make the precarious 350 mile trip to Los Angeles over the winding roads of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Arriving safely but with the '32 Ford the worse for wear, they repaired MULLIGAN in a hangar at Mines Field, now L.A. International, with the help of some aircraft woodworkers just recently laid off by Lockheed. As soon as it was airworthy, Howard and Neumann flew out from Chicago to ferry the ship back east. Howard was delighted with the job done by Gordon and all three flew back to Chicago in the rejuvenated MULLIGAN. By then Benny had succeeded in obtaining permission from United to pilot the plane himself, with Israel as co-pilot. Their chances for a victory looked excellent with Roscoe Turner the main competition. Other contestants included Russell Thaw in a Wright Cyclone powered Northrop Gamma ' Roy Hunt in a Wasp engined Lockheed Orion, Cecil Allen in a revamped Gee Bee and Amelia Earhart in her relatively slow Lockheed Vega.
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GORDON ISRAEL ON THE 1935 BENDIX TROPHY RACE WITH MULLIGAN
"We had enough fuel when we took off out of Burbank to go non-stop to New York and also had a 50 gallon oil drum in back of the cabin to provide enough oil because those ""Wa-saps" as we called them then, the Pratt and Whitney R-1340, every once in a while started swallowing oil and we didn't want to have to make a landing to replenish the oil supply."

441 just spelled Benny during the flight. Actually if he hadn't been such a master pilot I probably wouldn't be here today, because the night before the start of the race, predictions were for lousy weather in Cleveland and the fog was starting to roll across the mountains into Burbank. So a pilots' meeting was held along about 8 or 9 o'clock in the evening and it was agreed that nobody would take off until the weather was more certain. But Amelia Earhart wanted to fly in the Bendix and realizing she had no chance of really winning in her Vega, she still wanted to fly in it for sportsmanship"s sake and so in order to get to Cleveland before the 6 o'clock deadline of the following evening, she had to take off shortly after midnight. Everybody in the race agreed, and she signed a statement to the effect that if she took off shortly after midnight and nobody else could get off the ground that day, she would automatically cancel herself out of the race and not win without the other competitors. So everybody agreed to go ahead and let Amelia take off. Along about 2 otclock in the morning while Benny and I were sleeping on cots in Charley Potter's hangar, we heard an engine roar. We jumped out of the cots, went dashing downstairs and asked, "What was that just taking off?"

Well, one of the guys, Roy Hunt, had decided to pull a fast one. He had a Locheed Orion and took off just as the weather was really getting socked in out there. So we enlisted some help and pushed MULLIGAN out to the northwest end of the field and got her fired up. By the time we were ready to go, you couldn't distinguish any light at the other end of the field.

"We had an old beat-up, directional gyro on the airplane that had a bad habit of wandering and it wouldn't dare stand a take off, so Benny and I agreed that I would hold the gyro caged during take off and as soon as I felt the airplane was really airborne, and not going to settle back in again, I would uncage it. Well, I never pulled a knob out straighter in my life. Benny and I got on the gyro but within 30 seconds it started to drift. At that time instrument flying had not progressed to the state-of-the-art it is today and the average guy would have believed that directional gyro and wound up on the deck."

"Not Benny. He monitored the gyro with the turn and bank indicator instead, and realized that the gyro had gone ape. So he climbed up and circled the four legs of the radio range station at*Burbank, cutting the legs as close as he could. He climbed to 7 or 8,000 feet before he broke out on top; the sweat was just pouring off of him.

"MULLIGAN was an easy airplane to fly in normal loading configuration but freighted down as we were for the Bendix with 50 gallons of oil, additional fuel and oxygen tanks in the back, the center of gravity was too far aft and the plane was very unstable longitudinally; you had to stay with it constantly. For a pilot to take over instantly and appreciate that one instrument had gone bad, while believing5. Benny and Mrs. Maxine (Mike) Howard pose in front of Mister Mulligan in New York prior to start of ill-fated 1936 Bendix Trophy Race. With no real speed competition in the race they were certain to win until Mulligan's propeller threw a blade over New Mexico and forced them down. Both were seriously injured and spent many months recuperating. Mulligan was a complete washouf and unrepairable. (Bendix Corp.)Wthe other one, and climb up on instruments with so unstable an airplane, took great piloting ability. When he broke out on top he said to me, "How about taking over? I need a little rest."

"'Even with the visual horizon of stars it was still a handful of airplane to fly and I also got tired before long. We had two RCA AVR 7A receivers in the airplane, no transmitter, but Benny had previously arranged with United Air Lines to give us weather reports at 15 minute intervals all the way across the country. When we were a little east of Pike's Peak it became obvious that the weather over the entire eastern seaboard was questionable. In fact, it was bad from Chicago on east. All of the airlines were grounded, so we elected to land at Kansas City, where, on the way west, we had arranged for a fuel stop in case of such an emergency, That way we would have enough fuel to go to Cleveland and if we couldn't land, we could at least get back out to weather that was above minimum.""At Kansas City we were told about Cecil Allen being killed shortly after take off in his Gee Bee out in California and even though everybody was half expecting it, it still came as a shock. We all knew he was afraid of the airplane. Some religious society had bought the crack-up that Russ Boardman had been killed in at Indianapolis the year before. They had it rebuilt and Allen having committed himself to fly it for them, didn't want to back out. He nearly cracked it up landing at Burbank when he brought it over from LAX, which was then called Mines Field, to be there for the start of the race. It nearly got away from him then; he overshot and poured the coal into it and pulled up abruptly. It started to snap roll and he caught it just in time."

"That was a miserable airplane, a miserable airplane, to fly. The airplane was fast; it won the Thompson Trophy Race in 1932 which was proof of that, but you didn't dare yaw the airplane at low speed or you were in real serious trouble; or you didn't dare make any abrupt changes in angle of attack or you were also inAn apparently ordinary cabin monoplane, albeit trim, Mister Mulligan, was probably the finest all around racer of its decade, and undoubtedly one of aviation history's most remarkabie classics.trouble. It just wanted to snap roll."
"We dropped the flaps when landing in Kansas City and with the disturbances of Allen being killed and getting the fuel into our plane in a hurry, we took off out of there with the flaps still down. During the flight we communicated by hand written notes passed back and forth to each other. It was so noisy in the cabin due to the short stacks pounding against the aluminum side panels that it was impossible to hear each other. Mike (Mrs. Howard) still has all of those original notes incidently. Anyway we were flying at such a high altitude, we flew the race at 26,000 feet from California, that we wanted to save our breath. On the climb out from Kansas City we commented to each other on how fast the plane got off the ground and upstairs. Being a relatively short trip from Kansas City to Cleveland we planned to fly at only 20,000 feet."
"I was tuned in on a Chicago range station, and as we crossed the Mississippi River Benny wanted to change range stations. The radio controls for the receivers were over behind the flap handle; there was a Johnson bar on the left side of the cockpit that operated the flaps. Benny went to change frequencies and having a hard time getting at the knobs on the radio, he thought to himself, "I never had this problem before." He looked around and found that the flaps were down about 15 or 20 degrees. Actually this helped the climb out of Kansas City and we may have even gained in getting a faster take off and climb to cruise altitude. So we actually flew with the flaps down between Kansas City and the Mississippi River."

"We were the first airplane to land at Cleveland for about eight hours and the weather was down. If Benny's regular route on United Air Lines at that time had not been flying from Chicago to New York I don't think that even he would have elected to go on into Cleveland. But because he was so completely familiar.

Additional vertical fins were added for directional stability. This particular model has huge volume floats which must have yielded minimum draft. Below right: Beautifully kept OGA-15 still in flying condition today sits proudly on display at a midwestern fly-in. The Howard design, although nearly 40 years old, retains a modern appearance by today's standards. (Leo J. Kohn)with the surrounding terrain we went on in. At the south end of the Detroit beam he told me, and remember this is all by notes, to keep a sharp lookout for any landmark and the first thing I saw was a big aerial sign indicating Port Clinton, Ohio. I punched Benny and wrote a note saying, "Port Clinton," but he had decided already through United Air Lines radio that the way was clear on in to Cleveland. One of the notes that he wrote on the way in was "Do you think we ought to drop the flaps and sneak in across the finish line, down close to the stall speed, and make the people wonder how we ever got from California so fast while flying at that speed?"'

"At 26, 000 feet the top speed of MULLIGAN was about 290 to 300 mph. We got a bum break in that a big low pressure area that was down over the Gulf and a big high pressure area that was up over Canada caused us to not get the tailwinds that we normally expected at that altitude. We couldn't afford to waste much time because we knew Roscoe (Roscoe Turner in his Wedell-Williams Special) would have had us. We really sweated it out; we knew the time was approaching for his arrival and we kept looking towards the southwest to see if there was anything on the horizon. As it turned out we beat his time by something like 23 seconds. Some people facetiously implied that if Roscoe had not posed for pictures at his refueling stops he would have won the race. I don't believe that about him, especially when there was prize money involved. Roscoe was a publicity hound, there is no question about that. I donft say that in a52derogatory way, but during the depression years ole Roscoe was eating steak while the rest of us were lucky to find a hamburger someplace. He was some aviator though, that's for sure

"THE THOMPSON TROPHY
"Benny used to call his wife, Mike, Mulligan once in awhile; I think that's where the name MISTER MULLIGAN came from. After our success in the 1935 Bendix he entered MULLIGAN in the Thompson a few days later and asked Harold Neumann to fly it, since United Air Lines wouldn't allow him to. Neumann was very experienced at that time and a good choice."

"Benny always stood out on the field like a pit man in an automobile race giving cues to Harold: Harold was cruising at pretty high speed, he didn't have it at full bore, but just enough to keep ahead of the rest of the competition. Realizing then that he had Harold in a comfortable position, Benny waited to make his move on Roscoe Turner who was leading in his Wedell-Williams Special, when, suddenly, Roscoe blew his engine. That thing he was flying was a vicious son-of-gun. When he landed he just didn't have any visibility. The oil smoke was coming out of that thing so bad that he just couldn't see anything and I'll never forget that landing; at the last minute he frantically flared the thing and boy the airplane came down like a bouncing ball."

"So with Roscoe out of the race Harold and MULLIGAN went on to win the Thompson Trophy for 1935. Harold Neuman also won the Greve Trophy Race in the Menasco powered MIKE to give Benny a clean sweep of all three of the major races that year. With the prize money, Benny decided to proceed with his plans to build a commercial adaptation of MULLIGAN."

"Before the start of the 1935 Bendix Race I worked for about two months on the applied loads analysis of what was going to be the commercial version of MULLIGAN. This airplane was one of the first to be licensed under some new regulations that came out, in which you had to have a rational approach to airloads distribution. I worked up the applied loads report, and at that time the Washington office headquarters was the only one that could approve the analysis and so we mailed it in to Washington. We then went on to Cleveland and won the Bendix and Thompson."

"The Howard Aircraft Company was started in 1935 and several airplanes were delivered before Benny cracked-up in the 1936 Bendix Race. The plant was located near Chicago Municipal Airport in an industrial district on 65th Street about 2 blocks from the airport boundary. Airplanes were built-up there and we hauled the fuselages and wings to a hangar at the airport where they were assembled. This plant was maintained through a good part of World War 11 but there was a larger production facility at St. Charles, Illinois where most of the airplanes were put together."