Dave Bole says his
1943 Howard
DGA-15P“isn’ta
showwinner,”
becausehefliesit
often.PerhapsReno
attendeeswillprove
himwrongand
crownthis“Damned
GoodAirplane”
witha People’s
Choiceaward.
DAMNED GOOD AIRPLANE –
1943 HOWARD DGA-15P
Airplane mechanic Dave Bole had a friend who
got him hooked on vintage airplanes, but he never
thought he’d be able to afford a Howard. “When
fuel prices spiked [in the late aughts] the cost of
gas-guzzling airplanes went down,” he says.
He found his Howard—the beefier military
variant with a Pratt & Whitney R-985 radial
engine—in 2011 in Iowa City. The prior owner
was an instructor who accompanied Bole back
to Seattle in the copilot seat and checked him out
on the aircraft. “I had very little tail-wheel time
when I bought it,” Bole says. He’s averaged about
75 hours every year since.
HisHowardwasoneof 16 basedatNavalAir
StationKaneoheBayinHawaiiduringWorld
WarII,whereit wasusedas aninstrumenttrainer.
Afterthewar,theNavysoldit for$633toa pri-
vateairline.Fromthereit spenttimedropping
ratpoisononsugarcanefields.ANavycaptain
boughtit andhadit shippedtoCaliforniain1969,
whereit wasrestoredinSantaPaula.
Aftera crashin1985,it wassubstantiallyrebuilt,this time in Wyoming. But it’s been flying for a
lot more years than it’s been idle, and it looks it,
its owner readily admits. “I fly it an awful lot.”
That’s because the Howard DGA—for “Damned
Good Airplane”—is fun to fly. “It has a tremendous
amount of power compared to what I’m used to:
a Bellanca Viking, various Cessnas, a Mooney,”
Bole says. “It’s a 4,500-pound airplane. If you can
get it trimmed out, it has high wing loading so it
handles turbulence very well. If you get it up to
10,000 feet, it’ll cruise at 175 or 180 miles per hour,
burning 22 or 23 gallons per hour.”
Those fuel stops are lengthy because someone
always wants to come talk about his Howard. “But
it’s worth it,” Bole says. “The enjoyment of flying
somethingthatoldandhistoric,thatmakesa lot
ofnoiseanddrawsa lotofattention—it’sworth
it.Ofcourse,if youmakea badlanding,it ends
uponYouTube,”helaughs.38 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.comCOURTESY JONATHAN APFELBAUM