The Folkerts SK-2, also known as Speed King Two, "Toots" and "Miss Detroit" was a racer built for the 1936

National Air Races The National Air Races (also known as Pulitzer Trophy Races) are a series of pylon and cross-country races that have taken place in the United States since 1920. The science of aviation, and the speed and reliability of aircraft and engines grew ...

Design and development

Clayton Folkerts designed his second racer, the SK-2 ''Toots'' after leaving the Mono-Aircraft Company, and Waco. It was commissioned by

TWA Trans World Airlines (TWA) was a major American airline which operated from 1930 until 2001. It was formed as Transcontinental & Western Air to operate a route from New York City to Los Angeles via St. Louis, Kansas City, and other stops, with ...

pilot Harold Neumann in 1936. The aircraft was a mid-winged conventional geared aircraft with crank activated retractable landing gear and trailing edge flaps. The

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraft t ...

was built of welded steel tube with

aircraft fabric covering Aircraft fabric covering is a term used for both the material used and the process of covering aircraft open structures. It is also used for reinforcing closed plywood structures. The de Havilland Mosquito is an example of this technique, as ar ...

and the wings were made with

spruce A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' (), a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal (taiga) regions of the Earth. ''Picea'' is the sole genus in the subfami ...

spars and

plywood Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...

covering. The

Menasco C-4S The Menasco Pirate series were four-cylinder, air-cooled, in-line, inverted aero-engines, built by the Menasco Motors Company of Burbank, California, for use in light general and sport aircraft during the 1930s and 1940s. The Menasco engines c ...

engine featured a one-foot propeller extension to allow a more streamlined cowling.

Operational history

In the 1936 National Air Races, Harold Neumann won three firsts, two seconds, and placed fourth in the Thompson Trophy race.

Steve Wittman Sylvester Joseph "Steve" Wittman (April 5, 1904 – April 27, 1995) was an American air-racer and aircraft engineer. An illness in Wittman's infancy claimed most of his vision in one eye, which convinced him from an early age that his dre ...

survived a flight in the SK-2 with a ruptured gas tank that leaked into the cockpit. In St. Louis, pilot Roger Don Rae landed gear up, badly damaging the aircraft. At the 1937 National Air Races, the aircraft was renamed "Miss Detroit" and pilot Roger Don Rae placed three seconds and one fourth place. In the 1938 Oakland Air Races, the rear fuselage was metalized. Pilot Gus Gotch was chosen as pilot; he entered a

spin Spin or spinning most often refers to: * Spinning (textiles), the creation of yarn or thread by twisting fibers together, traditionally by hand spinning * Spin, the rotation of an object around a central axis * Spin (propaganda), an intentionally b ...

on a pylon turn and was killed when the aircraft struck the bay. The cause was undetermined, but fellow racing pilots blamed the heavy locking mechanism for the landing gear as a contributing distraction in high-speed low level flight.

Variants

The Folkerts SK-3 has a nearly identical design, except for a longer nose for a Menasco C-6S-4 engine.''Aeronautics,'' Volume 44, 1961.

Specifications (Folkerts SK-1)

References

;Notes ;Bibliography * Foxworth, Thomas G. ''The Speed Seekers.'' New York: New York: Doubleday, 1976. . * Matthews, Birch. ''Race with the Wind: How Air Racing Advanced Aviation.'' Minneapolis, Minnesota: Zenith Publishing, 2001. . * Matowitz, Thomas G. Jr. ''Cleveland's National Air Races'' (Images of Aviation). Mount Pleasant, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2006. . * Schmid, Sylvester H. and Truman C. Weaver. ''The Golden Age of Air Racing: 1927–1933.'' Oshkosh, Wisconsin: EAA Aviation Foundation, 1983. . * Vorderman, Don. ''The Great Air Races.'' New York: Doubleday, 1969.

External links