To Read Sport Aviation's January 1990 Ed on the ... - Courtesy Aircraft

week or so Molt was back at Long Beach for
another two years. The interesting thing
about this little episode was that the pilot with
whom Molt switched duty assignments was
Joseph Kennedy, Jr., the older brother of
later-to-be President John Kennedy. Joe
Kennedy died during World War II while on
a top secret mission against German fortifications.
Shortly after arriving at Long Beach the
first time, Molt had bought the paperwork for
a wrecked 40 hp J-2 Cub and by purchasing
the variou s airframe components from aircraft
supply houses, built a new airplane
around the old data plate. It was hardly a
stock J-2 when he was finished, however.
While still in college, Molt had become interested
in radio and had somehow found
the time to attend classes at the YMCA to
prepare himself for taking the test to obtain
his government radio license. It was this interest
that, in part, induced him to transform
his Cub into what was then an IFR or "blind
flying" trainer, complete with gyro instrumentation
and a homebuilt radio capable of "riding
the beam" of the AIN radio facilities then
in use for navigation. Molt got his civilian instrument
rating in this airplane . .. despite
the fact that it was so heavy and so draggy
with its wind driven generator and antennae
that with two aboard, the poor little ol' 40
horse Continental could hardly drag the thing
above 2,000 feet!
The "beam rider" radio had been designed
and built as a collaboration between Molt
and an electronic whiz named Lester Ray.
Other pilots at Long Beach saw it and began
pestering Molt to build them one also, so he
eventually decided to start a company to
manufacture what he had already named the
Taylor Airphone. There were commercially
available aircraft radios for light planes in the
late 1930s, notably those developed by Bill
Lear, but most were too expensive for owners
of the smallest aircraft. Molt determined
that his market niche should be a series of
panel mount and portable aircraft radios for
the low priced end of the private aircraft ownership
spectrum, so after mustering out of
the Navy in 1939, he set himself up in business
as Taylor Airphone Products and
began manufacturing and marketing his
radios.
Unfortunately, Molt's career as an aircraft
radio manufacturer was to be cut short by
World War II. He was still in the Navy Reserve
and in July of 1941 .. . with war obviously
imminent even though Pearl Harbor
was still half a year away ... he received the
call from Uncle Sam: Get your affairs in order
and report to the Naval Aircraft Factory in
Philadelphia ... in two weeks! His service
record, he would later learn, that listed a
background including engineering, radio and
flying had caused him to be selected for what
wou ld be one of the more hush-hush programs
of the war. Molt would spend the next
five years developing drones and guided
missiles .. . and on April 9, 1942 would become
the first person to guide a surface-tosurface
missile successfully to its target. In
1943 top secret Project Gorgon was established
to develop what we now call cruise
missiles and Lt. Cdr. Molt Taylor was assigned
as the project officer. Both turbojet
and rocket Gorgon missiles were designed,
built and flown . They differed from today's
cruise missiles with their inertial guidance
systems in that they were controlled visually
by means of a television camera mounted in
the vehicle . .. with the controller 20 or more
miles away in a "mother ship" aircraft ...
peering into a television screen. Within days
of the Japanese surrender in August of 1945,
Molt was directing the first successful test
flight of a turbojet powered Gorgon 111-B ...
from a FM-2 Wildcat. Molt proved he could
launch a Gorgon from under the wing of a
PBY, guide it to its target .. . and still fly the
fighter. With every large aircraft thus a potential
missile launcher, the loss of lives in conventional
bombing raids could have been
dramatically reduced, because the fighter/
launcher would only have to fly within control
range of its target, fire its missile(s) and
stand off while guiding it right down a factory
smokestack. For his work on the missile program,
by then Commander Molt Taylor was
awarded this nation's Legion of Merit ... and
the Navy made a concerned effort to get him
to commit to a career in the service and continue
his work.
The atom bomb and the end of World War
II changed everyone's plans, however. Many
of the hundreds of thousands of suddenly
released servicemen faced uncertain futures
with quite a bit of trepidation ... but not Molt.
As always, he had a number of irons in the
fire and the only question was which one of
them he would pull out. One of the projects
he had worked on during the war was a small
amphibian that was to be utilized as a drone.
It was unique in that it had a low wing, with
the wing roots serving as sponsons. He had
recognized that the configuration would
make a great sportplane, so after his release
from active duty in 1946, he and several
others formed a company to design and build
such an aircraft ... almost entirely of magnesium.
Called the Duckling, it had a nose
and cabin section somewhat like a Seabee,
but, of course, had the low wing .. . a ''floatwing",
Molt called it.
<strong>To</strong> produce the Duckling, a plant was
needed and Uncle Sam's War Assets Administration
had plenty of those available for
a few cents on the dollar. Molt and his group
were the successful bidder for the Bellanca
No. 2 Plant at New Castle, DE ... but were
in for an unpleasant surprise when they arrived
to take it over. It turned out that water
and road access to Plant No. 2 came through
Bellanca Plant No. 1 .. . and the company
was not about to aid a competitor in the postwar
lightplane market. The deal fell through
and the Duckling was not to be ... although
the ''floatwing" configuration would surface
again years later in the form of Molt's popular
amphibian, the Coot.
The brief sojourn in New Castle was not
totally in vain, however ... in fact, it would
be a major turning point in Molt's life. While
there he chanced to meet inventor Robert E.
Fulton, Jr. and became totally enamored with
his roadable airplane, the Airphibian. For
Molt the experience was much akin to a religious
conversion. In a cognitive flash he
simultaneously grasped the concept of the
vehicle, saw its portent for the future ... and
realized that at last he had discovered his
life's work. There is no zeal to surpass that
of a person who believes he has found the
reason for his existence, and if you have
ever experienced the fervor with which Molt
Taylor describes even the most superficial
aspect of his Aerocar, you quickly realize just
how complete, how all consuming was his
"conversion" that day 44 years ago.
This was not to say, however, that Molt
found no fault with the Airphibian. It was the
concept that had taken possession of his
soul, not the machine, itself. Fulton's car had
to leave its wings and propeller at the airport
to be driven on the highway ... which meant
it had to return to that same airport to fly
again. Molt saw a need for more utility. Remembering
his experiences ferrying Luscombes
and Culvers across the U. S., he
envisioned a craft in which he could be flying
along and upon encountering a front, could
land, fold the wings, hook them up behind
the car like a trailer and drive through to the
other side of the bad weather. Then, he
could simply pull into the next airport,
reinstall the wings and fly on to his destination
... and have an auto to drive to the very
door of the person or firm he intended to
visit. Such a vehicle, he believed, would revolutionize
personal travel, increasing the
door to door speed over certain distances
just as the auto had improved on the speed
of the horse and buggy. In areas of the country
without scheduled air service, there
would, in fact, be no faster means of going
SPORT AVIATION 13