Coke's Collectibles

Colgate W. Darden III doesn't throw things away. That may explain why he has five 50- to 60-year-old antique aircraft — all in flying condition — based at his manicured grass strip nestled among the pines near Columbia, South Carolina. "When I bought them, they weren't antique. They were good, used airplanes that have gotten old since I bought them," the retired physics professor notes. He still uses two of them for personal transportation.

Only four of the aircraft seem suitable for an occasional business trip or a hamburger run, however; those are the 1941 Meyers OTW trainer biplane, the twin-engine 1934 Douglas Dolphin 8 amphibian, the 1939 Spartan 7W Executive transport, and the 1937 Lockheed 12A twin-engine business aircraft. But a DC-2? Asked how he came to acquire a 1935 Douglas DC-2, "Coke" — as he is known to friends — withdraws his cigar for a moment and jokes, "Just unlucky, I guess." Actually, he was quite lucky to acquire it after a friend discovered the huge white aircraft for sale in California. With 21 very narrow seats crammed into it, the aircraft, a veteran of military service in World War II, had later become an airliner flying between Long Beach and San Diego. It was white when he bought it, but has since been painted in the colors of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines for a television show on historic aircraft.

The 154-kt Lockheed 12A, once flying the line for Continental Airlines early in its career, was acquired from an oil drilling company. The company was about to go public, and its directors thought that carrying three of the Lockheeds on the books might look bad to prospective stockholders. So it sold this one. A deck of playing cards once used by bored drilling executives rests in a rack above a table in the back of the Lockheed, waiting for more players.

Luck also played a role in the purchase of the amphibian. The Douglas Dolphin 8 had been purchased in the late 1960s by investors who intended to put it into charter service in the Bahamas. But while the aircraft was based temporarily in Miami, an FAA inspector found that he could easily put his penknife through the aircraft's water-logged wooden wings, and he demanded repairs. After the aircraft had been disassembled, the owners ran out of money, and Darden bought it as a pile of parts. Darden said he believes that it is the last Dolphin flying.

While the Spartan gets the call most often for Darden's trips, the Dolphin appears to be his favorite. Purchased new by William E. Boeing in 1934 upon his retirement from the company he founded, it was used primarily for fishing trips to Alaska. William Boeing, Jr., now a Seattle real estate manager, remembers flying often aboard the 105-kt aircraft in his teenage years. He knew it then as Rover, and recalls the interior as "dark, with blue seats." While he subsequently entered aviation as a businessman, he never learned to fly. "Unless you are going to pursue it, it is better to be a passenger," Boeing now says.

Boeing's pilot for those trips was Clayton L. Scott, now 93, who still works daily in his Seattle-area hangar, rebuilding two Cessna 195 aircraft on floats. One of them is for his personal use. Scott, who as a Boeing test pilot flew the B-52 bomber, recalled that the Dolphin was highly reliable, never giving any trouble. Once, when he was returning the aircraft to Seattle after maintenance in Los Angles, the circular portion of the engine cowling behind the propeller came off at 5,000 feet; Scott jokes that maybe it lassoed a cow's neck below. Later, during a tedious trip to New York — and another to Florida — so that Boeing could see his horses race, Scott recommended a faster airplane to his boss. The Dolphin was then traded for a Douglas DCÐ5 that had been a prototype used for testing.

It was Scott who offered an explanation as to why a small wing connects the Dolphin's 450-hp Pratt & Whitney R-985 engines. "The wing was to smooth the airflow and add stability to the airframe," he said.

There are interesting tidbits of trivia about some of the other aircraft, too. For example, the "OTW" after the Meyers name means "Out to Win," and expressed the company's hopes for winning a contract from the Civilian Pilot Training Program. Only 100 were bought to train World War II pilots. Darden bought it (or rather, them — his OTW is made from parts of two aircraft) because he thought it would be a good aerobatic aircraft — but it wasn't, so now it sits in a dark corner of the DC-2 hangar, unlooped. He bought it for $2,500.

The Spartan was delivered to the Red Rock Glycerin Company with red and gold trim and a gold rocket painted on the side, according to the book The Spartan Story, by Chet Peek and George Goodhead. It lost its rocket for an olive-drab sheen when the aircraft entered the service of the Army Air Corps.

It doesn't appear to be history, however, that attracts Darden to these aircraft. He acquired most of them in the 1960s. Rather, it is his family's interest in aviation and his love of radial engines that appear to have driven his collecting. "Father was a pilot in the first world war," Darden said. "I asked him what he did, and said he never got out of sight of the field." (His father went on to become a Virginia state politician, the governor of Virginia, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and finally the president of the University of Virginia. A business school there still bears his name.)

"My younger brother decided he would take up flying while studying at the University of Virginia. I said, 'Maybe I will do it, too.'" But it was some time before Darden could win his pilot certificate. Engineering studies required most of his time, and they were followed by a master's degree in physics. He finally found time between earning his master's degree and his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He put his physics training to good use, helping to strengthen the country's defense program during the Cold War before entering teaching. "I am now not allowed to read some of the papers I wrote," Darden admits.

Now retired, the 67-year-old Darden can devote more time to the reason he bought the aircraft in the first place: flying. When it came time for our photo shoot, Darden warmed the Dolphin's engines for 20 minutes to bring the 18 gallons of oil up to temperature, and took the graceful amphib with its 60-foot wingspan for a checkout flight around the pattern. "You worry every time it takes off," said Mark Phillips, Darden's full-time mechanic. "That's because it is the last one flying." Before the second takeoff, it was noted that the airspeed indicator was stuck on 70 mph, so a flight in the Lockheed 12A was quickly substituted.

The Lockheed had been tuned to perfection by Phillips, as though the aircraft had come off the production line yesterday. Phillips' wife had recently spent more than 30 hours polishing it. Slight movements of the throttles brought instant response from the Pratt & Whitney R-985 engines (the same as those used on the Dolphin and the Spartan). The cockpit sits 10 feet in the air when on the ground. Darden touched down smoothly as though he flew it every day. In fact, he had not flown the airplane in many weeks.

At day's end it was time to put all the aircraft back in their hangars. The DC-2 proved its reputation for cantankerous behavior by rolling off the concrete wheel pads and coming within three inches of the back hangar wall before stopping. In its previous fits of pique, the aircraft has had three in-flight engine failures. The Dolphin slipped easily into a hangar it shares with two antique autos, a 1954 Messerschmitt Kabinroller and a 1927 Chevrolet Capitol. A squirrel has taken up temporary residence in the Chevy.

And how did he end up collecting antique cars? More bad luck? There wasn't time to go into the story. Darden and his wife, Barbara, slipped into a car with a vanity license plate, "Muon," (a subatomic particle) for the journey up the driveway to their home. Does he plan to give any of the aircraft away? After all, the National Museum of Naval Aviation at Pensacola, Florida, has its eye on the Dolphin.

"I don't know what I will do with them — leave them in my estate, perhaps. I'm not ready to give them up yet," Darden said. He has been named to the South Carolina Aviation Hall of Fame for his selfless preservation efforts.

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