A Short History of the Classic Massey-Harris Tractor

As the Great Depression ground to a close in the not-so-distant wake of the stock market crash of 1929, the agricultural industry found itself a very drab, ulitarian outlet of product, even at its flagship level. The Art Deco wave was on, and chrome and streamlining were now king. Farm tractors, however, were, by nature, the draft horses of the Heartland, without romance or inspiration, plodding monotonously along on their steel 'horseshoes' (their steel wheels) un-noticed across the agscape in their day-to-day life.

Elsewhere, streamlining had taken the auto industry by storm, and the railroad, also. The new, sleek, flowing lines promised speed, power, and excitement. They oozed prestige, and success; the new streamlined automobiles, even if dirty and drab from dirt roads, were instantly destinguishable from their not-so-much-older ancestors, providing their owners with a 'keep up with the Jones's' notch in their cap.

Farm tractors, however, were the last to get this treatment, and practically all bore very simple, ulitarian in nature sheet metal cladding. Only the top of the engine was covered, and only for some protection from the elements, not style. Fenders were usually generous, but only for protection from the steel wheels, and the copious amount of mud and dirt they spaded up and brought around with them, revolution after revolution. Radiators were given no more thought of style, only a mesh (if at all) covering for protection. So there, for the vast majority, was the formula of style: a slightly peaked (for drainage), plain hood; a set of full fenders; and a flat mesh covering over the front of the radiator, often with a starting crank sticking out underneath: a constant and sobering reminder of the cantankerous method and nature of starting it in the morning. Many tractors were only painted in drab grey, allowing even less yet distinguishability from other brands. They offered no more visual excitement than an old claw hammer.

1938, however, ushered in a whole new image for the farm tractor at Massey-Harris.

The 1938 Massey-Harris Twin Power 101 burst onto the agscape in a flash of bright red, yellow, and chrome. Sleek, sweeping lines, festooned with row after row of punched louvers, characterised the appearance of the 101. A fully rounded, stylized grille, with accenting strips of chrome wrapped around it, flowed into full side panels for the engine, continung all the way to the operator's platform. The hood was rounded on top, and over the front of the grille. Scallops were created in the lower sides of the hood, and continued all the way to the dash. The dash itself was all new, and wrapped around the back of the gas tank and the battery compartment. Battery compartment? Yes: the Twin Power 101 came with push button electric starting as standard equipment. The sleek, auto-inspired instrument panel contained oil pressure, ampereage, and water temperature gauges, a choke control knob, key switch, and the push button for the starter. Starting the tractor was now as thoughtless, effortless, and convenient a task as starting the most modern and prestigious automobile. The frame was cast in a smooth, continuous, scalloped form that complimented and almost mirrored the hood, unifying the sleek, overall effect of the streamlining process.

Under the long, sleek new hood was a relative newcomer on the agricultural scene as well: a six cylinder engine. M-H opted for Chrysler's well proven, T116 six cylinder, in line, L head engine, of 200 cubic inch displacement. It had a modern, vaccum advance distributor. That, and the rest of the electrical system were provided by Autolite. A Pierce belt driven governor was added to adapt the automotive engine to the constant RPM requirement of agricultural usage. It very responsively controlled engine RPM at any throttle setting. A Modine radiator handled the cooling duty, and a Donaldson air cleaner provided a steady supply of particle-free air to the Marvel Shebler carburator. A Borg and Beck, foot operated clutch controlled the smooth engagement of the auto-derived, 4 speed forward, 1 reverse transmission.

The 101 Twin Power was available in both standard and row crop configurations.

As to the Twin Power label sported prominently on the forward part of the hood in contrasting yellow decals, it referred to the dual modes of field and road operation, and the belt pulley operation as well. A special throttle linkage was connected to the 4th gear and belt pulley shifter rails. When 4th gear or the belt pulley was engaged, this linkage allowed an engine RPM increase of 200 from the regular governed speed of 1800 to 2000 for extra power running large threshing machines in belt pulley operation, or over ten percent extra speed on the road.

Yes, the sleek styling wasn't all show and no go--the Twin Power 101 had a governed speed of nearly 20 miles per hour on the road. This was a vast improvement in transport speed over the ox plodding rates of former steel wheeled tractors. There was no possible way of travelling at such a rate of speed on the spade lugged steel tractor wheels of virtually and almost literally yesterday, so the Twin Power 101 came with the recent and revolutionary rubber tractor tires as standard equipment. Steel wheels were still available, but few opted for them on such a state-of-the-art tractor. Rubber tires granted ever so much more operator comfort and quiet, protected the tractor itself from the tremendous shock loads unforgiving steel lugs transferred through it on hard surfaces, and gave greater traction to boot. And, allowed greater transport and working speeds.

The 1938 Massey-Harris Twin Power 101 was Hollywood come to the Heartland. It had all the class of an Auburn Speedster. It looked faster than the family car. This tractor was a jolting injection of pure excitement into the farm power scene. It was thoroughly modern, sleek, and prestigious. It evoked speed, power, and pleasure of operation... and it delivered! On the showroom floor, it commanded attention. On the road, it turned heads. In the field, it provided a new level of performance, comfort and convenience.

The 101 was practical and progressive at the same time. It was a dramatic change in midrange farm power. Styling had come to the farm--in a big way--to stay.

Belated Support for Howard Hughes and His Hercules

History can be rough on the people that make it. History was the roughest on the greatest history maker of all: Jesus. Political leaders, technological leaders, and artistic leaders all had their own crosses to bear. Each took their bumps and bruises on their way to success and triumph. Name a great name down throughout history, and there was a trial or an adversary for each as they came to greatness. Often, their trial resulted in their ultimate demise.

Howard Hughes's albatroSs around his neck was the H-4 Hercules Flying Boat, the largest wingspan airplane, and the largest flying boat ever built. Or, a fitting name for an albatros: 'the Spruce Goose'; the moniker of mockery for the Hercules that Hughes understandably despised and detested.

After the United States entered World War 2, the Navy found ship and materiel losses in the Atlantic to be greater than they bargained for. The wolf packs of U-boats preyed mercilessly upon the Navy and merchant supply ships making the crossing to Great Britian. Hitler knew that to cut off a military's supply was the first and most important step in disarming and therefore neutralising it and its threat.

In 1942, responding to the alarming losses on the perilous Atlantic run, Henry J. Kaiser, the man behind the mass production Liberty ships, proposed a flying boat capable of carrying 750 fully supplied troops, or two Sherman tanks, to fly them over to the Old Country. The height and speed of an air transport would make it virtually impossible for U-boats to successfully engage them, and therefore should minimize losses, and maximize deliveries of desperately needed men and material.

The HK-4 (ultimately the H-4) Hercules was the result of that proposal.

Hughes Aircraft, owned by Howard Hughes, was contracted to design and build the prototype of these leviathan transport planes. Kaiser and Hughes collaborated on the HK-4 in the beginning, but Kaiser dropped out late and Hughes completed the monstrous aircraft himself, abbreviating the model name to H-4, or the Hercules, as it was best known.

The Hercules was a gigantic aircraft. It had a length of 219 feet, a height of over 79 feet, and--it's greatest dimensional claim to fame--a wingspan of 319 feet, 11 inches. That's almost a third the length of the Queen Mary. It was astoundingly enormous for the time, and many people, especially its critics, thought something that big could never fly. For a size comparison, check out the graphic below: that's a DC3 of the same scale next to the Hercules!



I don't think any size comparisons do greater justice to the scope of the Hercules than that. It is jaw dropping in its enormity.

That very awe inspiring size is what made the H-4's ability to fly a subject of much public debate. Maine senator, R. Owen Brewster (acting on behalf of Pan Am airlines, Hughes's own TWA's greatest airline rival), was the most virulent of all Hughes' detractors. He made life miserable for him. He derisively referred to the H-4 as the "Spruce Goose", or the "Flying Lumberyard". 'Bad news is good news', and Brewster made the best--or the worst--of it for Hughes and his massive flying boat project, skillfully using the media to add weight to his claims that the Hercules was a blatant and purposeful misuse of taxpayer's money, and would likely never fly.

Brewster made two mistakes:

1: he grossly underestimated Howard Hughes, and,
2: he didn't know anything about established airframe design parameters

Possessing a love for anything of a mechanical nature from the Art Deco era, I have a December 1936 Popular Mechanics Magazine that depicts, on its cover, passengers disembarking on shore from an absolutely enormous flying boat. This flying boat, predating the Hercules's proposal, mind you, of eight years, was to have a length of 375 feet, and a wingspan of 550 feet. It was to have a 200,000 horsepower engine, and four 5 blade propellers 60 feet in diameter to propel it. This almost inconceivably gigantic aircraft was nearly double the size of the Hercules completed over 10 years later!


Now that's BIG!

(Don't forget, this was from the dreamy, romantic technological era of streamlined, Art Deco BIG: Cadillac and Marmon V16 cars, then REALLY BIG: the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, the Normandy, the Hindenburg, the Graf Zeppelin, the Akron and Macon, the Empire State Building, etc.; they were made to happen, so why not a REALLY BIG airplane? In an era like that, the reality of such a concept was only a matter of time.)

It sounds, as I said, almost inconceivable, but, it was founded on solid, proven aviation mathematics. Rather than being complex, the formula for exponential increases in size of a conventional airframe is very simple. This is how it works; exerpting from the PM article: "Doubling the size of a plane multiplies its resistance four times and its weight eight times. To carry this weight, eight times as much power is required, but since the resistance is only increased four times, the plane can fly faster."

From that, let's go back to the Hercules; it was about half the size of this proposed passenger flying boat in wingspan. Well, to use the equation listed above, the Hercules was equipped with 8 Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major radial engines, of 3000 horsepower each, giving a total of 24000 horsepower, in a flying boat about half the size of the Popular Mechanics proposal, itself based on solid aviation formulae. "To carry this weight, eight times as much power is required..." The PM's proposed unit had 200,000 horsepower to the Hercules's 24,000 horsepower... or, "eight times as much" for "[d]oubling the size of a plane". Being of conventional construction, the Hercules was therefore based on solid, proven mathematics. It WOULD fly, whether it was ever tested or not.

To draw further from the PM article: "These days no designer merely hopes that his new plane will fly. He knows that it will. Formulas, backed up by wind tunnel tests of models, give him an accurate idea of a plane's capabilities even before the raw materials are ordered." Howard Hughes may have been a risk taker, but he was certainly no fool; he knew the Hercules would fly while it was still on paper.

He also may have been eccentric, but he wasn't crazy.

The overwhelming public opinion, in particular driven by Brewster's media posturing, that "something that big could never fly" had apparently overlooked the existance of dirigibles. Don't forget, there were already the aforementioned gargantuan airships flying overhead, and each of them almost the size of an ocean liner or the Empire State Building. Yes, their time had come and gone, and, due to some spectacular failures, tragedy was intermingled with the very word 'airship', but REALLY BIG vehicles, albeit of an entirely different configuration, had already flown for years, and a few very successfully. Airplanes were dramatically more successful than lighter-than-air craft, and the Hercules was only a scaled up version of what was already flying. This basic concept apparently went--no: flew... right over Brewster's head, but it ended up bringing him crashing back down to earth...

During Brewster's Senate War Investigating Committee hearings, Hughes testily stated, "The Hercules was a monumental undertaking. It is the largest aircraft ever built. It is over five stories tall with a wingspan longer than a football field. That's more than a city block. Now, I put the sweat of my life into this thing. I have my reputation all rolled up in it and I have stated several times that if it's a failure I'll probably leave this country and never come back. And I mean it."

Brewster's congressional committee to vilify Hughes for using the Hercules (and his XF-11 reconnaissance plane project also) as a facade to misappropriate taxpayer's money backfired when Hughes flew back to California to perform 'taxi tests' on the Hercules on November 2, 1947, and, after doing so, took off and flew a short flight, just to prove to his detractors that the Hercules could indeed fly.

He knew it could all along.



According to the December 1936 issue of Popular Mechanics, aircraft engineers over ten years earlier would have known the H-4 Hercules could fly. If the simple equations of airframe parameters had been made public soon enough, none of the political archery surrounding the reputational crippling of Howard Hughes needed to have taken place. Historical aviation mathematics, could therefore have saved Howard Hughes the time and stress, and the American public the debacle and spectacle of the Senate War Investigating Committee.

The core issue, of course, was Brewster's cowtowing to Jaun Tripp, chairman of the board of directors of Pan Am, in an attempt to monopolize the transatlantic air route for itself. Brewster bit off more than he could chew when he attempted to sabotage Hughes' opposition of his Senate bill to offer TWA a monopoly on transatlantic airfare. Howard Hughes owned controlling interest in TWA, Pan Am's only rival for the transatlantic route, and, destroying Hughes' reputation--and possibly his finances--would heavily damage TWA's in turn, and likely cost them the ability to make a transatlantic route feasable, making a merger with TWA appear to be the only way out. It is possible that Brewster knew the H-4 would and could indeed fly, but his focus on misappropriation of funds was most likely only a premise to force Hughes to submit to merging TWA with Pan Am to avoid further public humiliation. Hughes was already becoming known for avoiding the public eye at all cost, and the threat of the very public exposure of the hearings was designed and expected to make Hughes catipulate to Brewster's and Pan Am's bullying. During the hearing, Hughes alleged that the senator had offered to drop all investigations and proceedings against him if he would simply sell his interest in TWA to Pan Am; a powerfully structured form of industrialized blackmail.

The entire scheme backfired spectacularly for the senator and his commission due to the foresight, insight, and dogged determination of Hughes.

Ironically, Brewster's committee in return was a boondoggle of taxpayer's money; in the wake of Hughes' powerful retorts, it quietly disbanded without ever turning in a formal report; Brewster's committee wouldn't allow Hughes the gratification of finding him not guilty. More to the point, the committee, on behalf of senator Owen Brewster, wouldn't allow itself to suffer the shame of having to admit it was wrong. Without any formal admission of conflict of interest, no apology followed for Hughes, either. Hughes' accusations of corruption and collusion on the part of Brewster during the hearings held more water in the public eye than the original accusations against Hughes Aircraft. Hughes' only vindication came with the flight of the H-4 Hercules, and the disbanding of the committee created to destroy him. (Not one to stop at mere vindication, however, in later years, Hughes went on to bring about Brewster's political demise, supporting his rival for the Maine Republican Senate nomination, Frederick Payne, with massive amounts of campaign funding.)

Unfortunately for Hughes and the Hercules, by the time of his triumphant maiden flight, the war had ended, and the need for an air transport of the capability of the H-4 had passed. The jet age was just around the corner, and the vastly more powerful jet turbine engines made the radial piston engines of the H-4 pale by comparison; any large--but not that large--future transport would be jet propelled anyhow, relegating the Hercules to obsolesence. It was a case of too much, too late.

Hughes maintained the Hercules in flight ready condition in a climate controlled hangar from 1947 until his death in 1976, at a cost of a million dollars per year, proving his belief in the design. The Hercules is now the main feature exibit at the Evergreen International Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.