Flying Helmet, Neal Loving

Neal V. Loving was the son of the first black optometrist in Michigan. He studied aeronautics at Cass Technical High School in Detroit and working with business partner Ms. Earsly Taylor, Loving co-founded the Wayne Aircraft Company. During World War II, the two pilots joined the Civil Air Patrol and organized and led CAP Squadron 639-5.

Loving lost both legs in a glider crash in 1944 but he had returned to flying by 1946. In 1950, Loving became the first African American, and the first double amputee, to earn a Professional Race Pilots Association license to race airplanes. He earned an aeronautical engineering degree and worked for the U. S. Air Force at Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio, until he retired in 1982.

The WR-3 is one of 5 airplanes that Loving designed and built. He flew the airplane more than 690 hours. The WR-3’s configuration is unique. It has a two-seat, tandem, open cockpit and the strut-braced wings sit low on the fuselage. Loving designed the wings to fold back against the fuselage to allow the pilot to tow the WR-3 behind an automobile. Streamline fairings cover the fixed landing gear.

Neal V. Loving was born in Detroit, Michigan, on February 4, 1916. His father was the state’s first black optometrist. Loving’s interest in aviation started early: He was 11 years old when Charles A. Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, and the achievement and worldwide media attention it drew boosted Loving’s fascination with flight.

Loving studied aeronautics at Cass Technical High School in Detroit. He built a flightless ground trainer that earned a Mechanix Illustrated project-of-the-month award, and the Detroit Department of Recreation hired him in 1936 to teach model airplane building. In 1941, Loving and business partner Ms. Earsly Taylor set up the Wayne Aircraft Company in Detroit to manufacture a glider designed by Loving called the S-1. Soon after the United States entered World War II in December 1941, Loving and Taylor formed the Civil Air Patrol squadron 639-5 to train young people in military drills, flight theory and practice, and parachute training. Loving lost both legs when he crashed while flying the S-1 glider in July 1944, and during a five-month stay in the hospital, his fiancée broke off their engagement and his mother died.

Loving eventually recovered and he and Taylor set up the Wayne School of Aeronautics in 1946. In 1950, he designed and built his first homebuilt airplane, a midget air racer called the WR-1. Loving further personalized the airplane by naming it Loving’s Love. With Loving’s Love, he became the first African American certified to race airplanes. In 1954, the Experimental Aircraft Association recognized Loving’s Love as the most outstanding new homebuilt aircraft design. Loving donated Loving’s Love ten years later to the Experimental Aircraft Association Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and the famous racer is displayed there today.

In 1955, Loving entered Wayne State University as an engineering student, and in 1961 at age 45, he graduated as the oldest full-time engineering student in university history. In his autobiography, Loving’s Love – A Black American’s Experience in Aviation (Smithsonian 1994), Loving does not say whether he experienced racial prejudice while earning his degree, but Loving’s longtime friend, Clark Beck, noted in Mark Martel’s article, “Neal Loving in Context,” some of the conditions African Americans faced when pursuing careers in engineering.

“At Purdue University, the dean of engineering told Beck, ‘your people can not be engineers’ and ‘if you enroll you will not graduate.’ Beck transferred to the University of Cincinnati where he ‘was largely ignored and made to feel invisible.’ A decade later at Yale University, 80% of black freshman dropped out of the engineering program.”

While working on his degree, Loving designed and built a ‘roadable’ airplane called the WR-2. Loving intended for pilots to tow the WR-2 behind an automobile between the airport and storage in the home garage. The WR-2 did not meet his expectations so he abandoned the project and started thinking about an improved design.

After Loving earned his aeronautical engineering degree in 1961, he joined the staff of the Flight Dynamics Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. From August 1961 to February 1966, he was the project engineer on the High Altitude Clear Air Turbulence project. Later he studied how to make aircraft structures using composite materials consisting of carbon fibers bonded with resin. Loving developed the composite speed brake fitted to all McDonnell-Douglas F-15 Eagle jets.

Loving finished his second roadable airplane design in 1967, the successful WR-3. He fitted a two-seat tandem open cockpit and set the strut-braced wings low on the fuselage. Ready for flight, the wings spanned 24 feet 10 inches but Loving could fold back the wings against the fuselage to reduce wingspan to 94 inches, which allowed him to legally tow the WR-3 behind an automobile. By fixing the landing gear in down position, the aircraft could roll on its own tires when towed. Loving powered the homebuilt with a Continental 4-cylinder air-cooled engine. He built the airframe with wood and covered it with fabric.

Loving flew the WR-3 more than 690 hours from 1968 to 1992. In February 2020, the Hoosier Air Museum in Auburn, Indiana, generously donated the WR-3 to the National Air and Space Museum. It is on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.

Wingspan, ready for flight, 7.6 m (24 ft 10 in.)

Wingspan, folded for transport by road, 2.4 m (94 in.)

Length, 6 m (19 ft 9 in.)

Height, 2 m (6 ft 6 in.)

Weight, empty, 356 kg (785 lb.)

Weight, gross, 559 kg (1,232 lb.)

Engine, Continental 4-cylinder C-85-12F, 85 horsepower

Builder, Neal Loving, 1968