YAWB (Yet Another Weird Boat)

Yes, I’m writing yet another post about a strange boat.  But, as usual, you have to go around three sides of the barn to get to the horse at the end of the rope in your hand.  Unless you are Quentin Tarantino, the only way to start a story is at the beginning.

The Douglas DC-3 airplane, introduced in 1935, revolutionized the aviation industry.  This was an almost perfect airplane, that was so rugged and reliable that many of them are still in use, despite being more than old enough to qualify for Social Security.  They were ruggedly dependable and reliable, they were easy to fly, and most importantly, they could carry enough passengers and freight to be profitable without being subsidized for carrying the mail.  This just may be the best airplane ever designed, and will certainly be the first plane to still be working despite being a hundred years old.

Almost immediately other aircraft manufacturers raced to produce competing planes—usually with four engines, longer fuselages, and a longer range.  None of the planes proved to be as versatile and capable as the DC-3.  Even today, after 88 years, the only thing that can replace a DC-3 is another DC-3.  One of the newer designs, however, deserves to be mentioned.

Boeing was already developing the B-17 Flying Fortress for the American military when it took the B-17 design, keeping the wings, tail, rudder, undercarriage, and engines but substituting a new, much larger, pressurized and circular cross-section fuselage.  In other words, it was a civilian transport version of the B-17, with a pressurized cabin that would enable the plane to carry more passengers and ascend above turbulent weather, while going faster and farther than the DC-3.  This was, for its time, the perfect plane for airlines.  And a few of them actually bought several of the new Boeing 307 Stratoliners.

In 1940, you could pay TWA $150 for a ticket to fly from New York to Burbank California in only 15 hours.  Amazingly, the plane had to stop only three times (in Chicago, Kansas City, and Albuquerque) for gas.  The overnight flight would even provide a sleeping berth for an additional $120.

Unfortunately, after only ten of these planes were built, the world plunged into World War II and Boeing stopped production of the Stratoliner to concentrate on building bombers for the military.  The few airlines that had already taken delivery of the aircraft turned them over to the military who removed the plush passenger seats and carpet and converted the planes to C-75 transport planes.  After the war, these planes found their way into various militaries around the world. 

Four of them were shot down by either the Pathet Lao or North Viet Nam.

One of the Stratoliners, however, had been sold to Howard Hughes for $315,000 before the war.  In 1938, Hughes had set the world record for a round-the-world flight in a Lockheed Model 14 Super Electra in 91 hours and 14 minutes.  Since the Boeing plane was both faster and had a longer range than the Lockheed, Hughes had planned to break his own record.  Normally, Boeing would not have sold a much sought after plane to a civilian, particularly with a war looming on the horizon, but since Hughes owned the majority of the stock of Trans World Airways and Boeing hoped to sell a lot of planes to TWA, Hughes got the fourth plane off the assembly line.

Hughes took possession of his Stratoliner in July, 1939 and was in the process of having long range tanks installed when Germany invaded Poland in September, 1939.  The new record attempt was canceled and Hughes had the plane stored at Hughes Aircraft in Glendale, California for the duration of the war.  If you are wondering how Hughes managed to keep the government from taking the plane for military use, Hughes kept them at bay by dismantling his airplane.

Following the war, Hughes had the plane extensively remodeled for his own person use, intending to use the plane as sort of a flying Winnebago. At a cost of over $250,000, renovation of the plane (that Hughes named The Flying Penthouse) included removal of the long range tanks and installation of a bedroom, two restrooms, a galley, and a large living room (sporting a large wet bar).  At the same time, Hughes replaced the engines with larger and more powerful models.  

A lot of the life of Howard Hughes is surrounded in mystery and that includes his use of his Stratoliner.  We will probably never know how often he used it, who else flew on it, and where it went, but we do know that, just before 1949, Hughes spent $100,000 to remodel the interior in preparation for selling the plane to Glenn McCarthy, the Texas oil millionaire.

“Diamond Glenn” McCarthy was the king of the wildcatters—a man who made and lost fortunes on a regular basis.  In 1949, he opened the Shamrock Hotel in Houston, that was the largest and most luxurious hotel in the world at the time.  If you have ever seen the movie, Giant, McCarthy was the model for Jett Rink.  Just as in the movie, McCarthy used his Boeing 307–now renamed the Shamrock—to fly in Ava Gardner, Bob Hope, Ginger Rogers, Jack Benny, Betty Grable, and other Hollywood stars to his hotel.

Note.  Many years later, I worked at the Shamrock Hotel while I went to college and have written about the hotel several times.  Though it had been decades since McCarthy had owned the hotel, I saw the hoofprints from McCarthy’s horse on the parquet floor of the private elevator that went from the underground parking garage to his penthouse.  The stories of a drunken McCarthy riding his horse up and down the halls of the hotel are true.  

Glenn always had several business plans in the works simultaneously, and he gambled a fortune on each.  Take, for example, his idea to build a massive enclosed baseball and football stadium on land he owned on the south side of Houston.  Other projects included KXYZ radio station in Houston, two banks, a bar, a brand of bourbon called "Wildcatter", the McCarthy Chemical Company, a magazine, 14 "throwaway" newspapers and a movie production company known as Glenn McCarthy Productions.  Glenn’s wells hit oil 38 times, and he won and lost fortunes throughout his life.  In one of those losses, the Shamrock Hotel went to the Hilton Corporation and Howard Hughes repossessed the Stratoliner.

By this point, Hughes was no longer interested in using the plane for personal transportation nor was he interested in selling it.  Though the airframe had less than 500 hours of flying time, it just sat at an airport for years, until Hurricane Cleo severely damaged the plane.  Eventually, the wreck was sold to Kenneth W. London for $69.

It was not feasible to make the plane airworthy again, so London cut the wings and tail off, fastened a hull under the fuselage and converted the plane into a houseboat called the Londonaire.  Powered by two V8 engines that were linked to the original flight controls, steering the unusual but speedy houseboat has been described as: “driving it is like driving a school bus. On ice. Backwards. Downhill. Blindfolded, and occasionally a little drunk.”

The 56-foot-long planeboat was then sold to Dave Drimmer for $7500, who finished the conversion for a measly $200,000.  Sometime during the conversion, Jimmy Buffet saw the former Boeing floating in a Florida harbor and became enchanted with it.  When he described the unique houseboat in his book, he called it the Cosmic Muffin.  While only Buffet knows what the term means, Drimmer renamed the boat and it remains the Cosmic Muffin to this day.  Most of the interior remains as Howard Hughes last saw it, including the wet bar and cockpit.

Drimmer lived on the planeboat for years until the cost of maintaining the craft became too heavy and he donated the vessel to the Florida Air Museum, where it has been restored (as a houseboat not a plane) and is on permanent display.

If you are interested in seeing the last airworthy Boeing 307, it is at the National Air and Space  Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.