The following is reprinted in its entirety from an article in the January-February, 1965 Tigereview, page 2
Flying Tiger planes have been used for about every purpose in the air that flying men can imagine but it remained for a testing company to come up with a “first” that, in half a century or more of flying, nobody ever thought of before. The test? To find out how a new design of ultra-modern light poles could stand up under severe wind conditions. And here’s how it all worked.
On a wintry day, a Tiger Super H Constellation (N6914C) was flown from FTL’s Newark base to the Caldwell-Wright airport, 10 minutes away, and positioned directly in front of three new types of steel and aluminum poles. There, for a day, the plane stood, blasting the poles with varying degrees of prop gusts, ranging from 60 to 100 miles an hour in intensity. The tests had been ordered by the Department of Traffic of the City of New York and were carried out under the supervision of the United States Testing Co., of Hoboken, N. J., which came up with the novel idea of using an airplane to find out how the poles could stand violent winds. Jerome Pillersdorf of the U.S. Testing Company’s Materials Engineering Division said it was “the very first time light poles had ever been tested in such space-age fashion.” Equipped with signals and luminaries suspended from the graceful, drooping arms, the metallic light poles swayed mightily in the far-above-gale-force winds activated by the whirling propellers. But pole arms remained intact, signals and luminaries were absolutely undamaged. The base of the pole remained rooted firmly in the frozen soil.
Pictured at the pole test were, left to right, Harry Subkowski of Wilber Smith Associates (PR-firm for United States Testing Company; New York Deputy Commissioner of Traffic Vincent Huddnut; Edward Cleary of Wilber Smith Associates; and Sheldon Picnic, Department of Traffic, City of New York. Light pole is shown in foreground, with crane to position it at left and the wind blaster, – FTL Super Connie (N6914C) — in background.
Anemometers placed on the pole recorded wind velocities with minute accuracy, registering 108 mph at the peak point, according to Pillersdorf. He said conditions were “ideal” for the tests and the two primary objectives were: to determine if the new-type poles would stand up under a full load when subjected to actual severe wind conditions and, second, to learn from the dynamic testing such information as will be helpful in developing a meaningful specification to be used by the City of New York in its continuing procurement of poles.
Captain Oakley Smith, FTL Chief Pilot al Newark, headed the crew that ferried the Super Connie to Caldwell-Wright field. Many of the preliminary arrangements, planning and staging involving the charter of the plane by U.S Testing were initiated by Ernest W. “Bus” Loane, Assistant Chief Pilot at EWR. Later, Robert H. Nicholas, assistant DSM at EWR, became the Tiger liaison with Pillersdorf and was on the scene when the testing took place.
Pillersdorf characterized the tests as a “complete success” just before arrival of nightfall and the crew departed happily for home after one of the strangest days of “flying” they ever put in.