BIRTH OF THE NATION'S FIRST JET FIGHTER CONSTRUCTION DURING WORLD WAR II LANDED PLANE SPECIALIST IN LANCASTER.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

PALMDALE - In the midst of World War II, David Kingsley was stationed in the San Francisco Bay area when the Army Air Corps asked for volunteers to go to England to work with a new airplane.

Kingsley's commander didn't know much about the new airplane. Some people said it had a propeller in the rear; some said it had no propeller at all - an idea the commander found amusing.

Kingsley, an airplane instrumentation specialist, agreed to go. It was November 1943, and Kingsley ended up not in England but in the Antelope Valley, working on America's first jet fighter, the Bell XP-59 Airacomet.

``They flew us to Muroc Army Base,'' Kingsley said, speaking of what is now Edwards Air Force Base. ``It was hardly the green fields of England.''

At the time, Muroc was a tiny, sunbaked gunnery range, but it had the attributes necessary for testing a top-secret jet-powered airplane - the isolation, clear weather and the enormous, smooth-surface dry lake beds for use as runways.

Little more than a year before Kingsley arrived, the first XP-59A arrived in secrecy at the north end of the Muroc dry lake bed, near what is now NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. The twin-engine, single-seat jet made its first flight in October 1942.

At the time, the United States was trying to catch up in jet technology. Germany had flown a jet airplane in 1939 and was well along in developing the Messerschmitt Me262 fighter-bomber, the first jet aircraft of any nation to see combat. Great Britain had flown its own jet in early 1942.

``I couldn't believe it,'' Kingsley said of seeing the XP-59 for the first time. ``It was such a complete leap in technology.''

The jet required a new mind-set for workers. A civilian with the squadron was knocked down by the jet exhaust when he made the mistake of walking too close behind a fighter, Kingsley said.

``The first thing you learned when working with airplanes was not to walk in front of an airplane,'' said Kingsley, now 86. ``Now, you were never to walk behind one.''

At Muroc, the Army Air Corps formed the 412th Fighter Squadron. It was to train P-59 pilots and crews and to evaluate the jet in mock combat against other aircraft, such as the P-51 Mustang, said Raymond Puffer, an Edwards historian.

Designed for high altitude flight, the P-59 had huge wings, which cut its performance at lower altitudes. It was also hard for pilots to keep the plane's nose pointed toward its target, Puffer said.

Kingsley described the P-59 as a bit slow and cumbersome. It had a rated top speed of 440 mph, barely faster than a piston-engine P-51 Mustang, and was quickly succeeded by Lockheed's P-80 Shooting Star, which could do well over 500 mph and in the Korean War won the first jet-on-jet fight.

Puffer had a more blunt description of the P-59.

``It was a pig,'' Puffer said. ``Rather than fix the problems, the military waited for the P-80. That was a barn-burner.''

In mid-1944, Kingsley headed from Muroc to Palmdale as a member of the 445th Fighter Squadron, one of the new P-59 squadrons being formed in Southern California. The squadron, with its fifteen P-59 aircraft, would set up shop at the airfield that is now Air Force Plant 42.

Long before it would become an aircraft production center, Plant 42 was an Army airfield, used for bomber training during the early days of World War II. When Kingsley arrived, the only other unit there was a squadron of P-61 Black Widows, big twin-engine fighters developed for night missions.

The hangar used by the P-59 squadron still stands on the installation, a Quonset hut-style structure that did not have a wall on either end at the time.

Workers put up with dust blown into their faces by the Antelope Valley winds. The squadron attempted to close off one end of the hangar with some canvas, but one day the wind blew the canvas away and it was never seen again.

The squadron spent about a year in Palmdale before the military took away the P-59s and transferred the unit to Santa Maria.

``They found it wasn't too wise to send it (the P-59) into combat,'' Kingsley said. ``They turned us into a P-51 outfit.''

The P-59 never saw combat, but it did start the United States' efforts in jet aircraft and it marked the start of the transformation of Muroc from a gunnery range into a flight test center.

The airfield that would become Plant 42 was declared surplus by the military in 1946 and purchased by Los Angeles County for use as an airport. In 1950, it reverted back to the military for use in producing and flight- testing jet fighters.

Kingsley left the military in late 1945, after the surrenders of Germany and Japan. After spending a couple of years in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles, Kingsley moved to Lancaster to start a glass business, the first in the Antelope Valley, and to raise a family.

Jim Skeen, [phone]

james.skeen(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) David Kingsley, who worked at Muroc Army Base during World War II, moved to Lancaster after the war.

(2 -- 3) In wartime, David Kingsley, inset, worked on the P-59 with the rest of the squadron, background, in the Antelope Valley.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer