Howard DGA-6 (Mister Mulligan)
| Howard DGA-6 | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Role | Air racing |
| National origin | United States |
| Designer | Ben Howard, Gordon Israel |
| Introduction | 1934 |
| Number built | 1 |
The Howard DGA-6 was a pioneer racing plane, nicknamed Mister Mulligan. It was the only airplane ever designed for the specific purpose of winning the Bendix Trophy. The plane was designed and developed by Ben Howard and Gordon Israel, who later became an engineer for the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation. Mister Mulligan was designed to fly the entire length of the race nonstop and at high altitude. Neither had ever been done before. Mister Mulligan won the trophy, and thus changed the way in which long distance airplanes were designed.
The Bendix Trophy was a cross-country race from the west coast to the site of the National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio, and typically was the starting event of the week-long aviation festival. The Thompson Trophy was awarded to the winner of the unlimited division in closed-course pylon racing at the National Air Races.
The sole original DGA-6 was constructed in 1934 in the defunct factory of the American Eagle-Lincoln Aircraft based at Fairfax Airport in Kansas City, Missouri. It featured a steel tube fuselage with a plywood-skinned wing. Howard freely admitted he was inspired by "seeing the Monocoupe from the wrong end" during air races; The DGA-6 can thus be termed an "overgrown Monocoupe".
While en route to the 1934 air races, oxygen and fuel system problems caused an off-field landing, which damaged the landing gear and propeller. The aircraft could not be repaired in time and missed the 1934 season.
In the 1935 Bendix race the aircraft was loaded with 300 gallons of gasoline, 30 gallons of oil and oxygen equipment for two, giving it the ability to fly for seven hours at 22,000 feet (6,700 m). At that load the aircraft required 1,500 feet (460 m) of runway and had an initial climb rate of close to 2000 ft/min.
Howard and Israel flew the DGA-6 in the 30 August 1935 Bendix Trophy race and won with a speed of 238.70 miles er hour, and Harold Neumann racing the DGA-6 flew at 220.19 mph (354.36 km/h) in winning the 2 September 1935 Thompson Trophy race at the 1935 National Air Races. No other pilot or single aircraft had ever won both races. Howard's DGA-6 also had the distinction of being the only racer during the golden age of airshows to evolve into a successful commercial production aircraft, first as the Howard DGA-8 and DGA-9, and later the DGA-11 and DGA-12.
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