Back in the day, Ford made airplanes, too:
Back in the day, Ford made airplanes, too:
That’s a Ford Trimotor. I’ve ridden on one a few times. Very basic transportation!
At one time a Ford Trimotor provided passenger service between islands off the northern Ohio coastline. We’d take it when visiting relatives in the area. This was in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
I spent a good part of my life not far from Willow Run Airport (by Detroit/Ann Arbor) watching the various air shows over the years there, many featured WWII aircraft of various kinds. One I’ll never forget is the bombers, there were about six that did various stunts as they all landed in a row on the main strip. Across the field a couple hundred yards you can see the old Ford plant where these bombers will built so many decades before, it was possibly the most haunting thing I’ve ever seen...in a good way though.
My house was about 15 miles north of the airport - and for a couple of days before the event the bombers flew over my house at a real low level carrying people for paid rides as this is how the owners paid to keep the bombers going.
You can hear the engines of the planes many miles away, they flew bizarrely low and at a very slow speed and you can’t see them coming until they are right over you - the faces of passengers were quite visible, that’s how low. The sound of those engines is something you’ll never forget (especially many of them) and not knowing which direction they were coming from. As a victim in those days knowing you might get bombed to smithereens and had a matter of seconds of life left had to be terrifying.
Probably best that TWA is no more. A modern trans airline just wouldn’t be the same.