1939 - Transportation

Transportation

Greek shipping executive Stavros Spyros Niarchos, 29, sets up his own firm under the name Niarchos Group, competing with his father-in-law, Stavros Livanos, and his brother-in-law Aristotle Onassis. After graduation from Athens University with a law degree 10 years ago, Niarchos worked briefly in an uncle's flour mill, saw how costly it was to pay the freight on Argentine wheat, persuaded his family that owning its own ships would save money, and acquired six freighters at an average price of $20,000 each.

The last prewar grain race by windjammers ends in victory for the 35-year-old Glasgow-built, steel-hulled four-masted Moshulu, designed for carrying nitrates but used since early in the decade to bring Australian wheat to Europe (see Preussen, 1897). Finnish shipowner Gustaf (Adolf Mauritz) Erikson, now 67, went to sea as a cabin boy at age 10, became a captain 10 years later, has competed in the grain races since they began in 1921, and bought the Moshulu 4 years ago, but the Germans will seize her when they take over Norway in 1942.

Commercial transatlantic passenger air service begins June 28 as 22 passengers and 12 crew members take off from Port Washington, N.Y., for Marseilles via the Azores and Lisbon aboard the Pan American Airways Yankee Clipper, a Boeing seaplane powered by four 1,550-horsepower Wright Cyclone engines (see 1935). Pan Am has been providing air service to the Caribbean, South America, and the Pacific, but Anglo-American disputes over airport landing rights have delayed the start of transatlantic service. The plane has separate passenger cabins, a dining salon, ladies' dressing room, recreation lounge, sleeping berths, and a bridal suite; the flight takes 26.5 hours, and the one-way fare is $375.

British Airways has its beginnings in British Overseas Airways (BOAC), created by a merger of Imperial Airways with British Airways under the leadership of former BBC director John C. W. Reith (see Imperial, 1924).

The first turbojet aircraft is tested August 24 at Rostock-Marienehe and demonstrated in October for top Lüftwaffe officials. Hans von Ohain has designed the Heinkel HE-178 with centrifugal flow engine for the 17-year-old Ernst Heinkel Flugzeugwerke at Warnemünde (see politics, 1925), and a patent on his design was issued 4 years ago (see politics [Me 262], 1942).

British aircraft designers work on a jet plane that uses a turbojet engine designed in 1930 by Frank Whittle, 32, whose Gloster-Whittle E.28/39 will be test flown for the first time in mid-May 1941.

The first American-made helicopter capable of sustained flight is demonstrated at Bridgeport, Conn., September 14 by Igor Sikorsky, now 50, who has been in the United States since 1919 and sold his company to United Aircraft in 1929 (see 1913; 1929; Focke, 1936). Sikorsky's VS-300 has a rotor over its cabin and a smaller, vertical rotor at the tail, controlled by foot pedals, for torque and direction control; more than 400 of the craft will be produced by mid-1945 for use in rescue work and to some extent for detecting German U-boats (see Piasecki, 1943).

German aviation pioneer Heinrich Focke establishes a new company under the name Focke, Achgelis to concentrate on helicopter development while the Nazi-controlled Focke-Wulf Co. increases production of its FW-190 fighter planes and FW-200 Condors. Test pilot Hanna Reitsch, 27, demonstrates the helicopter's versatility by flying one inside Berlin's Deutschland Hall, a space more confined than New York's Madison Square Garden. Focke's new company will be incorporated into VFW-Fokker Aircraft Co. in the 1960s.

Howard R. Hughes buys control of Transcontinental and Western Airlines (TWA) from a Wall Street banking house (see 1931; 1938). Looking for a way to beat Pan American on the transatlantic route, Hughes works with Lockheed engineers to develop a four-engined plane with a pressurized cabin that can fly at high altitudes at speeds exceeding those of Pan Am clippers (see Lockheed Constellation, 1943).

New York's La Guardia Airport (initially the North Beach Airport) opens December 2 on the east shore of Flushing Bay near the World's Fair grounds (see Newark, 1928). Newark has been the nation's largest airport, with more than 30 flights per day, and it remains closer to Manhattan than Floyd Bennet Field, which is eight miles away, so the U.S. Post Office has been delivering New York airmail to Newark, but Mayor La Guardia has pressed for construction of a passenger air facility in New York City. The Board of Estimate has voted in November to name the $40 million facility after the mayor; it has an advanced lighting system, will officially be called La Guardia beginning in August of next year, and by 1942 will be the world's busiest commercial airport, with more than 75 flights taking off and arriving each day (see Idlewild, 1948).

Dutch-born aircraft manufacturer Anthony H. G. Fokker dies at New York December 23 at age 49.

The Trans-Iranian Railway is completed in January after nearly 12 years of construction. Linking the Caspian Sea with the Persian Gulf, it has been built entirely with Iranian capital.

Spain's new Franco regime nationalizes the country's broad-gauge railway network and organizes Red Nacional de Ferrocariles Espanoles (see RENFE, 1848), but rail lines have suffered heavy damage during the war, and the equipment even on intercity express trains is antique by world standards. Narrow-gauge lines will be nationalized in the 1950s.

The Pacemaker goes into service on the New York Central for the Chicago run with a fare of just over $30 round trip in fancy coaches. The Trail Blazer goes into service on the Pennsylvania Railroad to compete with the New York Central on the Chicago run.

Union Station opens May 7 on Sunset Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles. Last of the great U.S. railway stations, it replaces the city's original Chinatown with a structure built by the Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, and Union Pacific railroads.

The Union Pacific's City of San Francisco bound for Oakland from Chicago derails near Carlin, Nev., August 12 while traveling at 60 miles per hour; the wreck kills 24 people and injures 115. Investigators discover evidence of sabotage (spikes have been removed and a rail relocated) but the perpetrators will not be found.

U.S. interurban streetcar trackage falls to 2,700 miles as buses supplant trolleys (see 1917; General Motors, 1932; criminal conspiracy conviction, 1949).

New York's Bronx-Whitestone Bridge opens April 30 to connect the Bronx with Queens; designed by Othmar H. Ammann, the bridge is 2,300 feet (701 meters) in length (the world's fourth-longest suspension bridge to date), has been built in 23 months at a cost of nearly $18 million, and facilitates access from Westchester County to the World's Fair and to the new La Guardia Airport.

The General Motors Futurama at the World's Fair in Flushing Meadow is a diorama that depicts the city of 1960. Designed by Norman Bel Geddes, now 46, the display shows crosstown traffic moving smoothly on underpasses; crowds wait in long lines to ride on moving chairs through the fair's most popular exhibit and get what for most of them is the first "aerial" view of the world.

Connecticut's Merritt Parkway opens June 22 with 38 miles of landscaped road winding through Fairfield County to link New York's Hutchinson River Parkway with Milford. Industrialist and banker Schuyler Merritt, 85, represented the state in Congress for nine terms and has headed the state commission that began building the toll road in 1934.

The Lincoln Mercury is introduced by Ford Motor Company's Edsel Ford (see Continental, 1941).

Less than 60 percent of U.S. families own automobiles. The figure will rise to 80 percent by 1964.

The U.S. Department of Justice indicts General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler for attempting to monopolize automobile financing by allegedly coercing dealers to use GMAC, Ford, or Chrysler financing facilities (see GMAC, 1919). Justice drops the indictments against Ford and Chrysler in exchange for promises that they will stop coercing their dealers if GM is convicted, but while that conviction will be handed down in 1941, GM will not be required to give up its GMAC subsidiary, nor will Ford or Chrysler have to divest themselves of their financing subsidiary. By the mid-1950s, GMAC will be the world's largest auto finance company, averaging 18.7 percent per year in net profits.

A new Fiat plant opens May 15 at Mirafori. It is designed to employ 22,000 of the company's 55,000-member workforce in two shifts per day.

The first Volkswagens roll off the assembly line at Wolfsburg (see 1938) and are offered under the name KdF Wagen as part of the Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) program to workers who collect enough stamps (a worker can buy a few stamps per week, and when his stamp book is full it is worth 990 Reichsmarks, the equivalent of about 800 hours' pay for a skilled worker, and can be exchanged for a KdF Wagen); the start of war ends this program, the Volkswagen chassis will be used to make military vehicles, notably the Kubelwagen, and the civilian car will not go into mass production for nearly a decade, but more than 20 million of the "beetles" will eventually be sold worldwide, exceeding the Model T Ford's record (see 1947).