brougham

1929-06-30

Not quite Britain only imported one B-1 and that was G-AAEK. This one went Down Under and even if Australia didn't exactly crawl with American aircraft they managed to import four Broughams in a rather short period of time as G-AUGR, G-AUIX, G-AUIZ and G-AUNZ. Something tells me it is the fixed registered one G-AUNZ we are looking at. This one unfortunately went missing during a flight from Oz to New Zealand on Jan 10th, 1928. Stig

Not a "Grumman Bomber," but actually the Sikorsky S-29 (S-29-A, reg. no. NC-2756, c/n 1) painted in German markings, as it portrayed a Gotha Bomber in the Howard Hughes movie "Hell's Angels" (1930). As per Wikipedia,

The Sikorsky S-29-A was an all-metal, twin-engine biplane airliner, first flown in 1924. It was the first aircraft that aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky designed and built after coming to the United States, hence the special "-A" suffix signifying "America".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-29 Ultimately the aircraft would crash during filming on March 22, 1929. The S-29 was placed in to a spin to portray the Gotha being shot down, but went out control. Tragically, while pilot Al Wilson was able to bail out of the aircraft, a mechanic, Phil Jones, who was in the rear of the aircraft setting off smoke bombs, was unable to and perished in the crash. Nevertheless, the footage of the aircraft spinning out of control was used in the movie.