FRANK SINATRA AND HIS LEAR JET N175FS
The way he
flew his plane
In late May 2005, Ronnie Powers casually flipped through some papers
left on his desk. They detailed the ownership history of an abandoned plane he
had recently bought in California for $45,000. The sheaf was, he assumed, just
more paperwork cluttering his office at Griffin Spalding Airport, 38 miles
south of Atlanta.
Powers, CEO of Atlanta Air Salvage, frequently bought such aircraft.
Even today, Atlanta Air is known as a "boneyard," the end of the line
for hundreds of planes too damaged, too outdated or too forgotten to be of much
use to anyone else. Powers pulls them from water, drags them from ditches,
takes them wherever he can find them -- and for all he knew, this latest
aircraft, now rusting out in San Jose, was a typical purchase. "A lawyer
called one day and said, 'We've got an old Lear for sale. Will you give us
X?'" Powers recalls. "We were just going to break it down for parts,
and I wasn't even sure it was good for that."
Powers sent his chief operating officer, Ken Williams, to the San Jose
Jet Center to see what it would take to drag Learjet Serial No. 31 back to
Georgia for its autopsy. Williams snapped photos and took notes. The plane had
been locked in a hangar for more than a decade, abandoned by its owner until
the unpaid hangar fees had reached nearly $20,000, at which point someone had
simply hauled it out back and left it in the rain. There were twigs stuck in
the wheels. The logbooks were gone.
When Williams returned to Atlanta, he called Lear to run a
historical-records search, which he forwarded to his boss. Powers thumbed
through the stack now, half-interestedly scrolling back through the plane's
life. Before being shipped out to San Jose, it had bounced between owners in
Illinois. It had been repainted multiple times. Oddly, the N number seemed to
have been switched back to its original vanity registration after having been
changed several times.
Then, deep in the pile, Powers came across a letter dated October 30,
1964. It was a receipt from Lear Jet Corporation, made out to California
Airmotive Corporation, which was buying a plane for a client. The receipt said
simply, "Please convey to Mr. Sinatra our congratulations and our
intention to deliver to him the world's finest business machine." Powers
looked at that N number again -- N175FS. His eyes widened. Suddenly, this was
no mere hunk of scrap metal.
Fly me to the moon/ Let me play among the stars/ Let me
see what spring is like/ On Jupiter and Mars...
If ever a plane played
among the stars, it was N175FS. From June 1965 until he sold it two years
later, Frank Sinatra and his famous friends logged more than 1,500 hours on the
small, powerful early business jet. Sinatra routinely used it to shuttle the
Rat Pack from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and his home in Palm Springs. He wooed
Mia Farrow in it, and intimidated Michael Caine, then dating his daughter
Nancy, in the back. Celebrity private-plane culture was practically invented on
it: At a time when few had their own private jets, when most Americans had
never seen a private jet, Sinatra and his plane were like Hollywood's version
of the first kid in class with a car. Dean Martin borrowed it to fly to movie
sets. Marlon Brando and Sammy Davis Jr. took it to Mississippi to meet Martin
Luther King Jr. for a civil-rights rally. Elvis Presley eloped with Priscilla
Beaulieu aboard it.
Today, N175FS sits in a warehouse at an undisclosed location in
California under the care of Jeff Thomas, a noted aircraft historian and
consultant who is safeguarding the plane for its current owner, a Belgian
collector. Word of Ronnie Powers's discovery spread fast. Within two days, the
Belgian's representatives had contacted Atlanta Air Salvage. A month later, a
deal was struck, nondisclosure agreements signed and money wired from an
account in Monaco.
Thomas, who helped Paul Allen collect the vintage military planes
housed in the new Flying Heritage Collection museum in Everett, Washington,
spoke with Private Air on the condition that we not identify the current owner
or the aircraft's location. He assures us, however, that N175FS is well (or
well enough for a plane that was this close to being recycled for scrap). The
wing and horizontal stabilizer have been removed for easier storage, but
"the plane is fully restorable," he says, "even flyable."
Thomas says his client hasn't decided if he'll be the one to oversee
the restoration. At the same time, they seem to be making moves -- 10 years
after Sinatra's death -- to position the plane for resale. Thomas recently
commissioned a marketing firm to assemble a book-length binder of old
photographs, press clippings and correspondence that would probably sell
briskly at Barnes & Noble. Topping the list of possible buyers, he says,
are the major Las Vegas casinos -- and perhaps Graceland, which is home to two
of Elvis's planes, a Lockheed JetStar and a Convair 880. Knowledgeable sources estimate
that Sinatra's plane, even in its current condition, could be worth nearly
$650,000.
And yes --
should the thought have crossed your mind -- Thomas says the owner would
consider selling to a private collector. "But he wouldn't sell it to just
anybody," Thomas says. "After all, this is a plane with a lot of
history."
Come fly
with me, We'll fly, we'll fly away/ If you can use some exotic booze/ There's a
bar in far Bombay/ Come on fly with me, we'll fly, we'll fly away...
From early on, Sinatra's life was closely linked with aviation. Legend
has it that his mother, Dolly, dreamed he would become an aircraft engineer;
when she learned he wanted to sing, she threw a shoe at him. The Lear wasn't
Sinatra's first plane -- he had owned a giant dual-prop Martin 404 and a tiny
French Morane-Saulnier 760 jet -- but by the mid-'60s, the Chairman of the
Board also owned a record label, a film company, real estate across the
country, even a missile-parts manufacturer. Lear's early production lagged
behind demand, but six months shy of his fiftieth birthday, Sinatra took
ownership of the revolutionary business jet and named it Christina II, after
his youngest daughter.
Inside, the jet had two leather seats at the rear of a 17-foot cabin
and a single seat up front, along the port side, by the door. A couch sat along
the opposite side, running up to the cockpit. The 43-foot-long aircraft was
equipped with twin General Electric CJ610-4 engines that generated 2,850 pounds
of thrust and sounded roughly like the end of the world. Climb-out generated
3G's and continued on at 6,000 feet per minute. "There isn't a jet
produced today that has the climb performance of the Lear 23," says Clay
Lacy, who sold Sinatra the plane. Sinatra had his trimmed in orange, his favorite
color.
While he owned the Lear, Sinatra also had access to three others
through Lacy, who was quickly becoming the largest distributor of private jets
on the West Coast. The men traded hours in the various aircraft depending on
need and availability, almost like an early fractional program. Many stars of
the day waxed poetic about flying on Sinatra's plane. Beatles roadie Mal Evans
described in his diary a 1967 flight with Paul McCartney on one of the sister
jets: "We left Denver in Frank Sinatra's Lear Jet [sic], which he very
kindly loaned us. A beautiful job with dark-black leather upholstery and, to
our delight, a well-stocked bar." Evans's home video of the flight, which
can be seen on YouTube, shows McCartney recording the experience with his
camera. He appears awestruck -- and this was a Beatle.
Other famous names appreciated Sinatra's generosity, as well. On May
1, 1967, Presley and Priscilla snuck out the back of Elvis's estate in Palm
Springs, drove to the airport and boarded N175FS, bound for Las Vegas and a
justice of the peace. "I was both exhausted and relieved when we finally
returned to Palm Springs aboard Frank Sinatra's Learjet," Priscilla wrote
in Elvis and Me. Hours later, she was pregnant. Mia Farrow, meanwhile, has
recounted how her first date with Sinatra -- to a screening of None But the
Brave -- ended with an invitation to fly to Palm Springs. "That was a
whole other city," she said. "We were in L.A., and I didn't think I
could do that -- I didn't have my pajamas or anything. He said, 'Well, how
about if I send my airplane for you tomorrow?'" Farrow described the next
day's flight as "the boldest thing I ever did."
A year later, after their wedding, N175FS whisked the 21-year-old
actress and 50-year-old singer to the south of France for their honeymoon.
Several months earlier, though, Lacy says, he had flown her down to Acapulco on
one of the sister jets, for a vacation with Sinatra. Lacy had tried to help
with customs, collecting her paperwork and identification to present to
security. But all the border agents really cared about was a piece of paper the
waifish star pulled from her purse. It read, "I hereby give permission for
Mia to leave the country on a trip to Mexico." It was signed by her
mother.
Now 75, Lacy still runs
Clay Lacy Aviation (one of the largest FBOs in California), and his
recollections remain invaluable. Don Lieto, the former chief pilot for Sinatra
Enterprises, died more than 30 years ago, making Lacy one of the last able to
give firsthand accounts of the plane. Sinatra's own musings, typically, were
almost maddeningly vague. It's difficult, for instance, to pin down the jet's
influence on his music -- Sinatra recorded both "Come Fly With Me"
and "Fly Me to the Moon" before he owned it, and "Leaving on a
Jet Plane" after. He did, however, once note of N175FS in an aviation
journal: "I had to make frequent trips to work at the studios in Hollywood
plus singing engagements out of state, so it made sense to be
self-sufficient...A good example is the [trip] just finished that took us to
the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island, St. Louis, Chicago and points
west."
The Newport festival is widely regarded as a crucial turning point in
Sinatra's career. Occurring just a week after he took delivery of N175FS -- and
after a few years in which Sinatra seemed thrown off-stride by the emergence of
rock n' roll -- his 20-song set demonstrated that in many ways the best was yet
to come: Four months later, his Thanksgiving TV special, Frank Sinatra: A Man
and His Music, won an Emmy. In the months that followed, he recorded three of
his biggest hits: "Strangers in the Night," "That's Life"
and "Somethin' Stupid," a duet with daughter Nancy. At the very
least, then, N175FS appears to have been good for getting work done.
And not just work. Lacy recalls one particularly active day in early
June 1966: Lacy had Christina II because he was scheduled to fly the camera
ship for publicity photographers to capture the Air Force's cutting-edge XB-70
Valkyrie above Edwards Air Force Base. (The cameraman needed a plane capable of
chasing a bomber that hit Mach 3; Sinatra's 518-mph Lear 23 was the fastest
civilian aircraft they could find in Southern California.) But as Lacy prepared
to fly from Van Nuys to Edwards Air Force Base, he received word that he'd have
to make a detour. Now.
The night before, Dean Martin's birthday party at the Polo Lounge in
Beverly Hills had grown rowdy. Fred Weisman, the retired president of Hunt's
Foods, sitting at the next table, apparently complained about the noise. Words
were exchanged, punches were exchanged -- and while Sinatra told Time magazine
that "I at no time saw anyone hit [Weisman] -- and I certainly did
not," someone certainly did. With one of the Polo Lounge's phones, in
fact, hard enough to fracture Weisman's skull.
Lacy taxied up to Gate 3 at Burbank Airport just after 6 a.m. to find
Sinatra and Martin still wearing their suits from the night before. Sinatra's
left arm hung in a sling made from a pillowcase; Dino sported a shiner and had
bloodstains on his shirt. He muttered something about leaving the country, but
Sinatra merely settled into his seat and shrugged. "Nah," he said.
"We'll hide out for a few days. It'll be fine."
The pilot dropped the duo in Palm Springs, then continued on to
Edwards. But the day still had more excitement in store. As the final photos
were taken, an F-104 flying in formation with the Valkyrie collided with it,
slicing off its tail and engulfing the F-104 in a fireball. A photographer in
the back of the Lear captured the disaster on film. The $700 million Valkyrie
prototype rolled onto its back, entered a flat spin and smashed into the desert
floor in an enormous cloud of black smoke. The fatal crash (only one of the two
Valkyrie pilots ejected safely; the F-104 pilot also died) is thought to be the
most expensive collision in aviation history, and the photographs became a
centerfold in Life magazine. And, as usual, Frank Sinatra's plane was on the
scene.
I
planned each charted course/ Each careful step along the byway/ More, much more
than this, I did it my way...
In June 1967, Sinatra put his Lear up for sale and traded up to the
improved Gulfstream GII. N175FS began life after Sinatra with Thomas Friedkin,
chairman of Gulf States Toyota and later a fixture on the Forbes 400 list. Next
came Bernie Little, central Florida's exclusive Budweiser distributor (the N
numbers were changed to 777TF and 477BL, respectively). Then it passed through
multiple owners in Illinois -- during which it once spent a year outdoors with
birds nesting in the engines and mud daubers clogging the fuel lines. In 1985,
Robert Brandis, owner of Brandis Aircraft in Taylorville, Illinois, made it
flight-worthy again, restored the fs to the tail and gave the plane its current
charcoal, black and red color scheme. He sold it to Stanley Furmanski, a
California doctor who, soon after acquiring the plane and hangaring it in San
Jose, allegedly tried to run down an FBI agent in a car, and was sent to prison
for insurance fraud. The plane then vanished until Atlanta Air's Ken Williams
pried open the door.
Around the time N175FS was disappearing, Lear itself almost exited the
stage. After a succession of ownership changes and its purchase in 1990 by
Bombardier, some at the giant Montreal-based aviation manufacturer questioned
the value of the brand, and whether its designs shouldn't simply be called
Bombardiers. They soon thought better of it, though, and the company has recently
made a concerted effort to reconnect with Learjet's roots.
In 1965, Lear was a homegrown Kansas company run on a shoestring, when
CBS aired a primetime special about Sinatra's life. The show is widely
remembered for Walter Cronkite's probing questions into Sinatra's Mafia ties --
which, ironically, prompted him to threaten to kill the producer -- but it was
also noteworthy for five minutes of black-and-white footage of Sinatra standing
by the fuselage at LaGuardia Airport, gushing about his new airplane. Back in
Wichita, the phones started ringing off the hook. "It wasn't rocket
science," recalls Bill Lear's daughter, Shanda Lear-Baylor. "When any
new product is embraced by someone like Frank Sinatra, it becomes something
everybody has to have."
Bombardier, of course, were as surprised as anyone to learn of
N175FS's recent reemergence. In a sense, though, they've been planning for this
moment. In connection with the forty-fifth anniversary this year of the first
Learjet flight, the company has announced the release of the new eight-seat
Learjet 85. It's the company's first all-composite jet -- with a profile
strikingly reminiscent of those early Lear 23s. "We kept the pointy nose,
the T-tail -- we pushed our designers to stay within that envelope," says product
manager Brad Nolan. "Evolutions in aerodynamics have taken place, but this
plane will be immediately identifiable as a Learjet." And in keeping with
tradition, the 85's twin PW307B turbofans will generate 6,100 pounds of thrust
at takeoff. Each.
Sinatra would surely approve. When people think of Frank Sinatra, they
don't immediately think "aviation buff." But Ol' Blue Eyes grew to be
close to Bill Lear, and sent him a steady stream of personal letters
philosophizing about such seemingly mundane details of the jet's interior as
the pullout card table. The bar of Sinatra's Palm Springs estate contained a
radio he used to communicate with aircraft overhead, and this passion for
aviation remained even after Dolly Sinatra was killed in a 1977 private charter
plane crash, en route to Las Vegas to hear her son sing. (Note from Vern: I
recall this accident. A chartered Lear
Jet took off from Palm Springs enroute to Las Vegas and crashed into Mt. San Gorgonio)
|
Jan 6, 1977 |
Natalie "Dolly" Sinatra |
Near Palm Springs, California |
Gates Learjet 24B |
After leaving Palm Springs Municipal Airport, the plane never changed
heading and flew into a mountain. Crew error. 4 killed |
One of Lacy's most enduring memories of Sinatra is of picking him up
at the Palm Springs airport. Sinatra stood waiting with Kirk Douglas; they
needed a ride to emcee a Hollywood event. They were tight on time. But the
airport had a new fuel truck -- and once employees drove out to the plane, they
couldn't get it to start pumping. "Kirk was nervous as hell," Lacy
remembers. "He's thinking they'd miss the event, the whole night was
ruined." The workers sprinted off to get help. Sinatra strolled over to
the fuel truck and began flipping levers. When the boys returned, they found
Frank Sinatra, cool as could be, standing there with a smile, just a man
fueling his airplane.