AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2018 - 63

BIG, HIGH, AND FAST

Hulking Mister Mulligan
left a legacy of speed

We top off all three fuel tanks (122 gallons) and cruise at
9,500 feet to pick up a 30-knot tailwind that brings us home
to the Mid-Atlantic in four hours and 15 minutes. The period
music on the XM radio seems right
for this journey, and the roomy cabin,
overstuffed leather seats, and the airplane's signature speed and stability
make it an unforgettable trip.
I've traveled this route many times
and know the sequence of navaids by
heart. But the DGA-15 makes you see
the familiar from a new perspective.
It's novel for pilots and passengers
alike.
Benny Howard died in 1970 and didn't get to see the
modern renaissance of the DGA-15. He had finished his flying career as a test pilot for Douglas Aircraft, and when he
passed away, Donald Douglas Sr. eulogized him this way:
"There never was, nor will there ever be, another human being as
interesting as Benny, as intelligent, as exasperating, or as lovable."
Those adjectives apply to his masterpiece, the DGA-15,
too.
AOPA
EMAIL dave.hirschman@aopa.org

The Howard DGA-6 known as Mister Mulligan was a radical departure from previous air racers-and it profoundly influenced
the young aviation industry going forward.
Designer Benjamin O. "Benny" Howard had previously
been known for designing midget air racers. After Mister
Mulligan, his aircraft company received a surge in investment
that transformed it to a major
manufacturer of large, corporate
aircraft.
Big, powerful, supercharged
radial engines such as the Pratt &
Whitney Wasp on Mister Mulligan
soon dominated military, airline,
and corporate aviation, and they
propelled airframes higher, faster,
and farther than ever before.
Mister Mulligan won both
the Bendix transcontinental and
Thompson pylon races in 1935,
the year it was publicly unveiled, a
singular achievement that was never repeated. But as disruptive
as the airplane was to the aviation industry, it was far more life
altering for Howard, its co-creator and first pilot.
Born in 1904 in Palestine, Texas, Howard grew up poor, left
school at 16, and worked as a roustabout in west Texas oil fields.
He became infatuated with aviation after seeing an itinerant flying circus, saved enough money to buy a Standard biplane, and
crashed it at 18 while attempting to teach himself to fly, breaking a leg and killing his passenger. Howard moved to Dallas at 19
to work as a rigger at Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Co., and he
built his first airplane from spare parts.
Howard's first design customer was a Houston bootlegger
who hired him to modify a biplane to carry cases of then-illegal
liquor during Prohibition.
Howard focused on speed, and he entered a series of air
races flying airplanes of his own design. He became an airline
pilot in the 1920s and flew Ford Tri-Motors but kept active in burgeoning air races. In 1929, he teamed up with Gordon Israel, then
an engineering student, to produce a series of diminutive racers
that pushed 200 miles an hour in closed-course races.
The hulking Mister Mulligan, with its radial engine, high wing,
and spacious cabin, was totally different from Howard and Israel's
previous designs. The brawny airplane could carry several hundred gallons of avgas, climb to more than 20,000 feet, and cover
vast distances.
But its reign as a racer was short, and it didn't end well.
In the 1936 Bendix race from New York to Los Angeles,
Howard and wife Maxine were crossing New Mexico when
Mister Mulligan's propeller threw a blade. The instantaneous
shaking was so violent that Howard was knocked unconscious,
then came to and crash landed in rough terrain. He and Maxine
were seriously injured, and Howard lost a leg below the knee
as a result of the crash.
Mister Mulligan was destroyed in the accident, and no
detailed engineering drawings of the one-of-a kind airplane
had been created. But the roomy, fast, long-range airplane
captured the imagination of investors, and the young Howard
Aircraft company on Chicago's south side created the DGA-15
for this new market.
Howard, however, was drawn to new aviation achievements-not entrepreneurship. When Howard Aircraft folded
after World War II, he became a test pilot and project manager
for Douglas Aircraft in California. He made initial flights in the
DC-4E, A-26 Invader, DC-6, and others.
He was still obsessed with speed at the end of his life
and worked with auto designer Carroll Shelby on his Cobra
race car.
-DH
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2018

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