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COURIER photo/Gabriel Fenoy
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| Claremont resident Warren J. Williams has been building model airplanes for over 80 years. The former aircraft maintenance manager for Lockheed was recently inducted into the Academy of Model Aeronautics Hall of Fame. |
Airplane buff shares love for the craft
Warren J. Williams Sr., a recent inductee into the Academy of Modern Aeronautics, has lived in Claremont for 4 years and, before that, Upland, but he was building model airplanes when he was 12 years old, living in Oakland, California.
Charles Lindberg was touring the country, and in 1927 he landed at the airfield in Oakland. Mr. Williams remembered the day clearly and obviously relished the experience.
“It was awesome,” Mr. Williams said. “I was building model airplanes at the time, living in Oakland, and I saw a notice in the paper.”
That same day, Mr. Williams had his first experience flying in an airplane, though he would not actually control the flight of such a machine until later in college. During college and continuing throughout his life, Mr. Williams would maintain a passion for aircraft and model planes.
Mr. Williams went on to work with Howard Hughes and Paul MacCready, and he has mentored people who have gone on to become world renown in various model aircraft contests and records, like Steve Brown and Cezar Banks.
Mr. Williams met Howard Hughes while he was working for Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank. He would help Mr. Hughes with his personal airplanes, all of which required special attention.
Mr. Williams’ son, Warren Williams Jr., said that his father underplayed the importance of his relationship with Mr. Hughes and the particular planes he worked on.
“He had people who he really, really trusted,” said Williams Jr. of Howard Hughes. “My father was the only person who was allowed to handle that.”
Mr. Williams worked for Lockheed for 35 years, and from 1938 to 1945 he lived in England and worked on planes there. During the Second World War, his experience was put to the test.
“I worked on all combat planes, bombers, you name it,” he said, and especially “All of the American types of planes.”
The bombers and planes would come in on large freighters, and Mr. Williams used to go on board just to get a good American dinner, which he found hard to come by otherwise. Once again, Mr. Williams Jr. insisted that his father was being modest, and said that the work done by his father on English and American planes put him in “a very, very sensitive position.”
After the war, Williams returned to the United States, and eventually met Mr. Paul MacCready, and worked with him on MacCready’s Gossamer Condor and Albatross. The Albatross and Condor were human-powered flying vehicles, and the Albatross won the Kremer prize for advances in human-powered flight, when it crossed the English Channel in 1979. (story continues below)
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COURIER photo/Gabriel Fenoy
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| Warren Williams prepares to launch one of his “mechanical birds,” or ornathopters, from inside his living room. |
Mr. Williams and Mr. MacCready were very close friends, and met before their collaboration on the Albatross, and would give lectures together, and also help each other out with research and exhibitions.
Mr. Williams described his first meeting with Mr. MacCready with the same matter-of-factness with which he described all of his other exploits.
“I used to fly in the hangar there at Tungsten, and this Sunday that I was there, he came in and he looked at me,” Williams explained.
Mr. MacCready was already thinking of building his Gossamer at the time, and he wanted Mr. Williams’ help on the project. In particular, Mr. Williams had some new ideas about bracing the wings that he worked on with Mr. MacCready.
Their working relationship was always good. Mr. MacCready would show Mr. Williams the plans for a plane, and Mr. Williams would draw up a model for him.
Another person whose life was strongly affected by Mr. Williams was Keith Varnau, a former Boeing employee who met Mr. Williams during his junior year of college, in 1967. Mr. Williams has been Mr. Varnau’s mentor since that day, and Mr. Varnau called him “a delightful man, a father figure for me.” Mr. Williams recently imparted the method for making his ornithopters to Mr. Varnau, when Mr. Varnau visited him here in Claremont.
Mr. Varnau recently started a non-profit group whose goal it is to encourage junior high and high school children to learn how to design and build model planes. Mr. Williams is a member of the board of directors of the organization, and provides advice, support and model planes to the organization.
In 2006, Mr. Williams was accepted in the AMA Hall of Fame, cementing his place in the history of American flight and model building, as an influential and skilled artisan. Mr. Williams said the award surprised him, but that he was honored to accept it.
Mr. Williams still makes models, and he works on them in his den, where he has a large collection.
“It’s therapy for me, it keeps me active,” he said.
—Tom Cross
