‘Hollywood Bomber’ ready to fly again
Beech Model E18 once owned by renowned aviator Jackie Cochran
The Hollywood Bomber is a 1954 Beech Model E18S-9700 eight-seat aircraft that began life as a corporate aircraft moving people around the United States before changing hands multiple times. Cochran owned and flew the Beech Model E18S from 1969 to 1971, when her medical certificate expired. Cochran “flew the absolute heck out of it,” before she sold the cabin-class twin-engine taildragger, said restoration project leader Bill Goebel. According to her logbooks, Cochran’s final flight in the aircraft was on April 4, 1971. The Twin Beech, serial number BA-31, has been rebadged as N13JC in her honor.
Cochran, a hairdresser from Florida who worked her way up to a position at the prestigious Saks Fifth Avenue retail giant, earned her pilot certificate in 1932 after three weeks of lessons. Cochran added an instrument rating, commercial certificate, and an air transport pilot certificate before entering her first air race in 1934. She established a national cosmetics line while in New York but didn’t drift far from flying. The makeup entrepreneur flew general aviation aircraft around the United States to promote her products and was good friends with Amelia Earhart.
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum points out that Cochran was the first woman to fly faster than the speed of sound, and at the time of her death in 1980, she “held more speed, altitude, and distance records than any other male or female pilot in aviation history.”
Cochran helped form the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) in the 1940s, was the first female president of the international flying organization the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). The decorated U.S. Air Force Reserve colonel received three Distinguished Flying Cross awards and a Distinguished Service Medal.
TV talk show personality Merv Griffin purchased Cochran’s Beech Model E18S to use as a corporate aircraft. Griffin contracted pilots to pick up The Merv Griffin Show’s guests and deliver them to Santa Monica Airport (SMO), near Hollywood television recording studios. Goebel said the Twin Beech, an early predecessor of the King Air C90 turbine line, flew many hours as a Hollywood A-List celebrity hauler “taxicab” around the Los Angeles Basin, with an occasional trip to Las Vegas. Griffin’s pilot wrote down in a logbook the names of the celebrities he flew: actor and helicopter pilot Clint Eastwood, vocalist Leslie Uggams, actor Burt Reynolds, singer/actress Dinah Shore, and others were all passengers at one time, he said.
Goebel said the “Super 18” also logged some moments of shady history in the 1980s when drug running in an aircraft with good useful load was worth millions, before an aviation technical college rescued the airplane.
Tarrant County College attempted to train mechanics by disassembling much of the historic twin-rudder taildragger before realizing the job was too big to handle. That’s when the Vintage Flying Museum at Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW) in Texas came into the picture.
While much of the Hollywood Bomber’s internal structure was intact, various pieces had been dismantled in the name of education, and scores of parts were misplaced or lost. The wings, rudders, aluminum skin, and interior were all in “decent shape, but in need of serious restoration,” Goebel said. Consumables including rubber fuel bladders and hoses required replacement to combat dry rot. The mid-time Pratt & Whitney R-985-AN-14B 450-horsepower engines were in surprisingly good shape and just needed some TLC, but the dated avionics were way past their prime.
Goebel, the owner of Vintage Aircraft Services—a Texas-based aircraft repair, inspection, avionics, magneto, and engine overhaul shop—plays a dual role as taskmaster and cheerleader. He is especially proud that a group of female aviators have rallied to help with the project.
For the past two years the A&P/IA has visually documented on the “HangaRatz” YouTube channel the transformation of the Hollywood Bomber, while supervising and encouraging an eager crew of youngsters and seasoned aircraft restorers working side-by-side to make it airworthy again. Every rib, skin, fastener, or component has been inspected, buffed, overhauled, or replaced.
Although the aircraft hasn’t flown for 40-plus years and spent many a winter outside on the ramp, it was stored inside for about 10 years. “Getting the outer fasteners and that kind of stuff cleaned up…that’s a thing, that’s our biggest challenge,” said Goebel. “Every little rivnut, every screw, every pivot point, had some kind of corrosion on it. But the aircraft has some real neat provenance. That’s one of the cool things about it.”
The project nears completion at the Vintage Flying Museum hangar. The facility itself is a working museum, with 30 vintage aircraft or warbirds that are either flying, ready for flight, or being restored to flying status.
Goebel said the “Super 18’s” aged “dinosaur avionics, wiring, and harnesses were all ripped out” and replaced with a suite of twin Aspen Evolution 5000 color displays, an S-TEC 55X autopilot, a PS Engineering PMA 7000BT audio panel, a Garmin GTN 650 navigator and accompanying GTR 225 com radio, and an Appareo Stratus ESG ADS-B In/Out transponder. Electronics International digital engine gauges monitor the two huge radials and a pair of Hartzell three-blade propellers. Manufacturers who have donated time or resources are honored with a logo on the left side of the aft fuselage, while names of individuals who support the restoration are stenciled on its right side.
Goebel said he wants to keep the Hollywood Bomber true to its mission as an aircraft befitting the groundbreaking woman it honors. “It’s going to be a promotion piece for women flying—or for any who want to fly. It’s great stuff, bringing this one back after 40 years of sleeping. We really want this aircraft to be the focus of women in aviation—girls and women who fly, maintain, and engineer aircraft. We want to showcase that,” Goebel said. 
