Pilot giving up piece of aviation history

Tri-Motor was Ford foray into airplane manufacture

GOLDSBORO -- Dreams do take flight. Wednesday morning, Dolph Overton's came in for a final landing.

Overton is 81 now, and after suffering a couple of strokes that sometimes leave him lost in the town where he has lived for years, he no longer navigates a car, let alone an airplane. So he's selling the one he loved the most.

Overton was a flier in his day, starting in the small craft his father flew when Overton was a boy. At 14, Overton bought one of his own, the first of many he would have throughout his life. By his mid-20s, he was serving with the Air Force in the Korean War, an ace fighter pilot with five kills to his name.

And of all the birds he ever flew, his favorite was the 1929 Ford Tri-Motor he bought in 1969 in Missoula, Mont.

A big box of a thing, the Tri-Motor represented Henry Ford's first foray into airplane manufacturing, a move that brought credibility and the auto-maker's proven mass-production skills to a still fledgling technology.

An experimental Tri-Motor was built in 1925, with the improved 4-AT rolling off the production line the next year, followed by the most popular model, the 5-AT.

In all, about 199 Tri-Motors were built before Ford's personal pilot, Harry Brooks, was killed in a crash in 1933 and Ford shut down manufacturing and dismantled the plant in the midst of the Great Depression.

The Tri-Motor, while not revolutionary, combined a number of modern design ideas into a single craft that became known for its strength and durability and served as the first passenger plane for more than 100 commercial airlines.

It was all metal, with a skin of corrugated aluminum. It was bulky, with a wing span of more than 77 feet and a cruising speed of 90 mph. It was loud, leaving unprotected ears ringing for a day or two. It had the wooden steering wheel off a Ford Model T and the braking system off a car. But it could carry eight passengers in leather-seated comfort, with a pilot, co-pilot and a flight attendant.

"It's a very easy-to-fly airplane," Overton recalled as he waited for his Tri-Motor to come home to a hangar at Goldsboro-Wayne Municipal Airport. "I like easy-to-fly airplanes."

The Tri-Motor, nicknamed "The Tin Goose," dates from the romantic age of aviation, and did its part to make flying an adventure. Before the Tri-Motor, it took a week to travel across the country. And while a Tri-Motor's primitive technology limited it to daytime flight, a traveler could leave New York in the morning, fly until dusk, land, board a deluxe Pullman train car, ride through the night, catch another plane at first light and do it all again until he reached California in three days.

Charles Lindbergh flew Tri-Motors. Amelia Earhart did. Admiral Richard Byrd made the first flight over the South Pole in one in November 1929. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt's campaign traveled in a Tri-Motor.

Overton guesses he put fewer than 50 hours on his plane, some of those with one of his five children, Dolph IV, on board. For decades, he dreamed of restoring the plane to its original glory — leather seats, mahogany interior, harlequin-printed lampshades and all.

It almost never happened. Years ago, he took the plane to Virginia, where it hung in the Richmond Museum of Aviation, wingless, a silent relic.

As fewer and fewer surviving Tri-Motors could be found — less than 10 are still flyable — Overton decided the time was right. While he couldn't divide the plane among his children and grandchildren, he could fix it up, sell it, and give them the proceeds.

Overton hauled what remained of his craft to the blue-gray hangar where Bob Woods of Woods Aviation quietly brings old planes back to life, on the edge of the flight line of the tiny Goldsboro airport. It took Woods a while to work his magic; replacement parts are nearly non-existent, and most everything had to be machined by hand.

When it was finished, in 2005, Overton took it back to the museum in Richmond. He took a stab at selling it on eBay in 2006, but turned down a bid of $2.7 million.

This time, he really will let it go. The plane will be sold at absolute auction — no reserve — on Jan. 17. The sale will be held during Barrett-Jackson auctioneer's annual collectible car sale in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The plane took its last flight under Overton's ownership on Wednesday. Airshow pilot Jimmy Leeward of Florida handled takeoff and landing. In between, Dolph IV held the controls of his father's plane.

He did a fly-by, waving at his white-haired father who stood on the flight line admiring the three engines' growl.

The plane made one last circle, ducked its broad wings and rolled in.

Overton let out a breath as it touched the ground.

"That's the one I was looking for," he said. "The last one. It was pretty."