Excerpt from:

                  THE AVIATION CAREERS OF IGOR SIKORSKY
                                   by
                            Dorothy Cochrane

            ...The S-29-A proved to be a durable aircraft and the impressive
    passenger logs illustrated the broad public attention focused on the
    project.
            Crashes were still an all too familiar part of aviation, as
    Sikorsky found out one evening when returning from a flight to Staten
    Island.  The S-29-A was not equipped for night flight, and they had left
    Staten Island late in the day.  Dusk descended upon the aircraft and its
    passengers.  Through mix-up with the ground crew, who failed to light a
    signal flare, Sikorsky overshot Roosevelt Field and flew on into the
    darkness.  Realizing he had missed the field, he decided to land.  He
    began his descent, and while he searched for a landing site in the gray
    landscape below, there was a sudden bump.  Sikorsky continued on and made
    a safe landing in a field.  Later he discovered a tree limb protruding
    from one wing and surmised that he had clipped the branches of some trees
    on his way down.  This sobering event illustrated how close the aircraft
    had come to disaster.  Its loss would have been fatal to the company.
    Sikorsky saved the tree limb and placed it in his office as a symbol of
    fate.
            The Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation, with its investors
    and the S-29-A design team, hoped a new era in commercial air
    transportation was near at hand.  The S-29-A was an excellent aircraft,
    but the company received no contracts.  The anticipated market for large
    transport aircraft had not appeared.  To recover some of the investment,
    Sikorksky decided in 1926 to sell the S-29-A to the flamboyant racing
    pilot Roscoe Turner.  Turner flew the aircraft for advertising and
    charter flights, and kept in touch with Sikorsky regarding performance,
    hours, and miles flown.  In 1928 Turner sold the S-29-A to Howard Hughes
    for use in the movie HELL'S ANGELS.  The airplane was modified to
    resemble a German Gotha bomber and was destroyed in a spectacular
    crash....[9]   [p.80]  
    
    

                               

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    APPENDIX 2- TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

    Model: S-29-A
    Type:  Landplane-sesquiplane
    Year:  1924
    Manufacturer:  Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corp.
    Engines:  Liberty x 2
    BHP/RPM:  400/
    Propeller:  3.15 m. (10 ft. 4 in.) x 2/2 blades
    Length:  15.19 m. (49 ft. 10 in.)
    Height:  4.11 m. (13 ft. 6 in.)
    Wing span(s) upper/lower:  21.03 m./19.05 m. (69 ft./62 ft. 6 in.)
    Wing chord(s) upper/lower:  3.12 m./1.78 m. (10 ft. 3 in./5 ft. 10 in.)
    Stabilizer area: 5.39 sq.m.(58 sq. ft.)
    Elevator area:  3.53 sq.m. (38 sq. ft.)
    Rudder(s) area:  3.53 sq.m. (38 sq. ft.)
    Fin area:  None
    Weight empty:  3526.68 kg. (7775 lbs.)
    Gross weight:  5443.1 kg. (12000 lbs.)
    Low speed:  90.1 km./hr. (56 mi./hr.)
    High speed:  185.1 km./hr. (115 mi./hr.)
    Service ceiling:  3749 m. (12300 ft.)
    Rate of climb:  1524 m./8.8 min. 3048 m./23 min. (5000 ft./8.8 min.
            10000 ft./23 min.)
    Duration hrs.:  n/a
    Range:  n/a
    No. built:  1

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        Author's footnotes:

        [9]  Sergei Sikorsky, "The Development of the VS-300," in
             VERTICAL FLIGHT: THE AGE OF THE HELICOPTER, ed. Walter J.
             Boyne and Donald S. Lopez (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
             Institution Press, 1984), p. 55.



     Source:  Dorothy Cochrane.  THE AVIATION CAREERS OF IGOR SIKORSKY.
              Los Angeles, California: Produced for University of
              Washington Press by Perpetua Press, 1989.


       Data transcription by:  Milton Sandy, Jr. May 30, 1993.