Nose Art: Rapid Transit

RAPID TRANSIT (3/14/38 )

In 1937, VGL engineer Frazier Beaumont developed the world’s first twelve-cylinder reciprocating airplane engine and mounted it in a Convair AT-19, which he named RAPID TRANSIT because it was designed for cross-country mail transport. When VGL pilot Katherine McIntyre flew RAPID TRANSIT and shaved twelve hours off the standing transcontinental air transport record in 1938, the Post Office bought twenty-two of the converted Convairs. In honor of the feat, McIntyre named her first translocation pod RAPID TRANSIT II IN 1956.

RAPID TRANSIT II: Type: UFT 3D
Commissioned: July, 1956
Twenty-seven missions, 1956-1957
Decommissioned: April, 1967
RAPID TRANSIT III: Type: System 3.0
Commissioned: March, 1994

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Nose Art image ©2009 Virtual World Entertainment, LLC.