20 replies to this topic

[Vitesse2]

Was Christian Kautz really a test pilot for Lockheed during World War II? This seems to be one of those ‘received wisdom’ things and is stated in many places - on Wikipedia, obviously, plus Historic Racing and many other F1 sites. Or is this a bit of 'promoter's fiction' designed to remind people of his existence when he returned to racing in Europe after the war? Or maybe even either a complete fiction or just a  simple error?

 

In late 1939, Christian Kautz - who, while a student, had represented Oxford University as a skier - had qualified as a ski instructor and he and his German-born wife Marie-Laure emigrated to the United States in early 1940, apparently with the intention of setting up a ski school in partnership with his friend Martin Fopp, who later became a multiple US champion skier. However, he and Marie-Laure seem to have divorced almost as soon as they arrived there and he remarried in mid-1940, to department store heiress Mignon Woidemann. In mid-1942 he became a US citizen, at which point he described himself as a 'flying student' - when he had registered for the draft in 1940 he didn't declare an occupation. So would someone who apparently didn't even have a full pilot's licence in 1942 really have been hired as a test pilot? Seems unlikely. I can believe he might have been a ferry pilot, taking planes from the factory to operational air bases, so could that be the real story?

 

However, it gets more confusing. There are several post-war travel records for a 'Christian Kautz-Scanavy'. The home address on two of them, in 1946 and 1948, in Loma Vista Drive, Beverly Hills, tallies with that of Christian and Mignon Kautz. The 1946 one – TWA from Paris to New York - is near-illegible, but in 1948, travelling KLM from Amsterdam to Boston, he is described as a pilot. So far so good – other details like the middle initials CR (for Constantin Richard) also tie in. And as we know, Christian Kautz was one of the three fatalities during the ‘black weekend’ at Bremgarten in 1948, the others being Achille Varzi and Omobono Tenni.

 

So, the next mystery is where did the second half of the surname come from? And why?

 

Researching this further I discovered that Mignon remarried, less than a month after Christian’s death, to one William W Winans. Marriage records show her as Mignon Kautz-Scanavy.

 

However, in later years there are records of a Christian C Kautz-Scanavy travelling by sea from New York to Cannes (‘in transit to Switzerland’ on a one-year visa) in 1956 and two return journeys – Paris-Los Angeles on Pan-Am in 1958 and Zurich-New York by Swissair in 1960. No ages given, unfortunately. But the 1956 outward record says that this chap was born in California. Mr and Mrs Winans – as well as Neva Nadine W Winans, who was their daughter, born in 1949, were also on board, in transit to Switzerland. The two airport arrivals both give an address in Pacific Palisades CA. As do later arrival records for William and Mignon Winans. What I haven’t been able to find is any trace of the birth of Christian C Kautz-Scanavy. There are no 1940s Kautz births which fit and the name Scanavy seems exceedingly rare; possibly Greek. So who was he?

 

At some point Christian C Kautz-Scanavy seems to have moved to Virginia and apparently died in 2005. So was Christian C Kautz-Scanavy actually the test pilot? Has someone put two and two together and made five? Is there any evidence to be found in the period 1942-48 confirming that Christian Kautz the racing driver actually was a test pilot?

[nexfast]

I suppose you are familiar with this:

 

https://www.myherita...n_kautz-scanavy

 

He could be a twelve-year old kid. Son of Christian and Mignon?

[Vitesse2]

I suppose you are familiar with this:

 

https://www.myherita...n_kautz-scanavy

 

He could be a twelve-year old kid. Son of Christian and Mignon?

Yes, I had seen that, but don't have access to that site - and what is strange is that Ancestry doesn't seem to have any record of that birth. It's usually very good on Californian births. With luck there might be something in the LA Times or similar which might provide some sort of confirmation.

 

Working hypothesis would be that the 1956 visit was to meet the Kautz family and/or attend a school in Switzerland.

 

Although none of that solves the test pilot question!

[ReWind]

Christian Constantin Kautzscanavy was born on May 29, 1944 in Los Angeles County, California. His father's last name is Kautzscanavy, and his mother's maiden name is Woidemann.

 

Source: CaliforniaBirthIndex

[Vitesse2]

Thanks Reinhard. But that one still doesn't show up on Ancestry!

[Rupertlt1]

Headline:

Round the Tables at the Dinner-Dance

for the Airborne Forces Security Fund

(Function held at the Savoy Hotel.)

Photo showing couple seated at the dinner table. Caption:

"Mrs. Margaret Sweeny and Mr. Christian Kautz

were two more of the guests."

The Tatler, Wednesday 23 June 1948

The man in the photograph in Tatler is one and the same with a photograph of Christian Kautz, the racing driver, as published in the book Verstummte Motoren by René Häfeli, 1969.

(Bremgarten was 4 July 1948.)

 

RGDS RLT

Edited by Rupertlt1, 03 April 2020 - 22:05.

[Vitesse2]

Thanks, Rupert. Actual date of that function, according to The Times, was June 2nd. However they just reported that it was going to happen in their June 2nd edition - and that it had happened in their June 3rd edition!

 

I have a picture from a Reno paper of Christian and Mignon, taken just after their marriage.

 

Mrs Margaret Sweeny was somewhat infamous and will be better remembered by those of us of a certain age under her later married name of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll.

[Rupertlt1]

Thanks, Rupert. Actual date of that function, according to The Times, was June 2nd. However they just reported that it was going to happen in their June 2nd edition - and that it had happened in their June 3rd edition!

 

I have a picture from a Reno paper of Christian and Mignon, taken just after their marriage.

 

Mrs Margaret Sweeny was somewhat infamous and will be better remembered by those of us of a certain age under her later married name of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll.

 

Yes, Mrs. Sweeny has a striking décolletage in the photograph - dressed to kill.

 

RGDS RLT

[Michael Ferner]

Yes, Mrs. Sweeny has a striking décolletage in the photograph - dressed to kill.

 

RGDS RLT

 

We need evidence.

[Vitesse2]

The plot thickens. Although it gets no further regarding his status as a test pilot. This portrait of Kautz is on a Swiss website called Portrait Archiv:

 

 

Described as being 'Christian Kautz-Scanavy' and sourced to the Museum Burg in Zug.

 

In days gone by, newspapers in popular holiday resorts often published lists of current visitors to their hotels. In Montreux, there was a publication dedicated purely to this, entitled the Journal et liste des étrangers. In 1924 there is an interesting conjunction of surnames at the Grand Hôtel des Narcisses in Chambly ...

 

https://scriptorium....70,746,1340,526

 

Curiouser and curiouser.

[Doug Nye]

Remember that 'test pilot' is a term often applied in a somewhat misleading manner.  

 

Lockheed produced something over 19,000 aircraft during the Second World War - including more than 2,700 B17s under sub-contract to Boeing.  While leading 'test pilots' became celebrities for venturing into the unknown flying new types - or assessing new variants - the majority of company pilots spent their hours aloft engaged in far more prosaic tasks, simply flying a shake-down programme on brand-new aircraft straight off the production line, before a batch would be signed-off for service or delivery crews to take them through the Air Force unit delivery system.  

 

If Kautz was indeed on the Lockheed payroll in a flight crew capacity he could well have been assigned to such routine production check flying rather than anything much more exciting.  

 

Lockheed's most celebrated test pilots of the period were Tony LeVier, Ben Kelsey and Milo Burcham - the latter losing his life flying a 'Shooting Star' P80 prototype in company service in 1944.

 

DCN

[Vitesse2]

I've just come across what may be the original source for the 'test pilot' description. The February 15th 1946 issue of The Autocar - pp132-3 - includes an article by John Dugdale, who was holidaying in the United States as a form of recuperation after his long sojourn in various Italian and German PoW camps.

 

Writing from a ski resort in Utah he recounts a meeting and long conversation with Kautz, in which he specifically says Christian was 'a test pilot for Lockheed'. But the article and accompanying illustration add another two twists. Kautz is pictured with the actress Norma Shearer and her husband Martin Arrougé, with a caption stating 'Arrougé and Kautz were test pilots during the war'.

 

Arrougé was a former ski instructor who had married Shearer in 1942 after she was widowed. From what little I can find about him he appears to have been in the US Navy during WW2 - see here: https://gistbay.com/martin-arrouge/ - and according to his entry on FindaGrave he was a 'naval aviator' and later moved into real estate development. No mention of any test pilot role.

 

However, in the same article, Dugdale also mentions - correctly - that Reggie Tongue had worked as a test pilot for Rolls Royce ...

[buswalker]

I've just come across what may be the original source for the 'test pilot' description. The February 15th 1946 issue of The Autocar - pp132-3 - includes an article by John Dugdale, who was…..

Your suggestion cannot be correct.

 

Several German / Swiss sources quote the ‘test pilot’ idea (which I am sure was a fiction…).

They would certainly not have obtained their information from John Dugdale in ‘ The Autocar’.

Surely this fiction came from Kautz himself, who is known to have ‘embellished’ various other points in his CV/family background.

[Vitesse2]

At the point in time when Dugdale's article was published, Kautz had not returned to Europe - the text also specifies that he was 'as keen as ever to get back to racing. In fact he is soon making a trip back to Europe to see what are the chances of racing in Europe this year or next', although he was very probably already in contact with - at least - de Graffenried and perhaps Basadonna, given that Écurie Auto-Sport was in operation by early May 1946.

 

So it seems likely that this was the first time his claim to have been a test pilot - which as Doug noted can be a fairly loose description and which his apparent lack of flying experience suggests was probably something of an exaggeration - appeared in print. I'm not aware of an earlier mention of it.

[Doug Nye]

If perhaps having pulled strings to get oneself seconded into a non-combat - company 'pilot' - role, one would gain experience very, very, very quickly...  There could be a very fine distinction between being a 'delivery pilot' and describing oneself as a 'test pilot'.

 

All I have ever heard about Kautz is that he seemed to be quite highly regarded within the motor sporting glitterati of the late 1930s and late 1940s as "a pretty decent chap" - with allowances for his being Swiss (a non-combatant during the war years) and, worse for many of the British racing fraternity, one who had removed himself to "a funk hole" in the US during the unpleasantness.  There would have been a strong compensatory motivation for him to describe himself as he apparently did to ex-PoW Dugdale.

 

DCN

[Vitesse2]

Exactly my thoughts on reading that, Doug. John Dugdale almost certainly wouldn't have known of Tongue's test pilot role until after his release - even if, as is possible, they corresponded during his incarceration. So perhaps his mention of it to Kautz might even have been a trigger to him to 'big up' his own experiences.

 

Christian was of course the 'right sort of chap', having attended Oxford University.

[10kDA]

There exists a misconception that test pilots fly the prototypes, one-offs, and experimental aircraft while other piloting functions of perceived "production" models are handled by "not test pilots". Every time a letter-suffix was bumped up or even when equipment aboard a proven airframe or engine was changed, those new configurations were tested, and the pilots were genuine test pilots and considered so by the military, company management and other pilots as well. This could be something as seemingly minor as a new type or location of a radio antenna on the external surface of an airplane, for instance. Virtually no innovations or upgrades were incorporated without test flying before any models so equipped were released fo delivery; at least that's how things worked in the US during WWII production and to my knowledge, subsequent to WWII as well.

 

A great friend of mine was a USAF test pilot for certain programs on the F-106, which had been in service for quite a while by that time and would soon be transferred to Air National Guard units from regular USAF. Was it prototype work? Only in terms of the equipment tested, not the airframe itself. But his status was as a test pilot for those programs, one of which resulted in a modified canopy offering far better visibility for the pilot, incorporated as a retrofit to a great many of the proven airframes already in service. Most military aircraft models have numerous changes, large or small, over the course of their service lives.

[sabrejet]

Further to misconceptions above, manufacturers usually divided their test pilots into 'experimental test', 'engineering test', 'production test' departments and so on. Experimental or engineering test might include a new model or subtype, or experimental equipment on those aircraft. Or investigating in-service issues which involved the requirement to expand the flight envelope or investigate excursions from it.

 

Production test involved the flight testing of each aircraft as it rolled off the production lines: the US alone produced thousands of examples of many types up to the 1970s and just one example of a particular type could take a number of test flights before the bugs were fixed. So not all test pilots are - or were - investigating anything novel or experimental.

 

Then, a production aircraft would be handed over to an Air Force, Navy, Marines or civilian test pilot, who would perform an acceptance test flight before it was delivered to the user organization. Again, more than one flight might be required.

 

This is all without including test pilots regularly working on development programmes in-service for each armed force, including weapons test, weapons development, fleet test etc. Then those of organizations such as the engine manufacturers, NACA/NASA and many lesser-known companies who bailed aircraft for their own testing. 

 

I'm sure there are more examples, but I would not be surprised if the number of 'test pilots' employed in the USA during the 1940s/50s numbered into several hundreds, mostly unsung.

[Vitesse2]

'Terminological inexactitude'? I had a similar experience recently on Facebook when an American insisted that AFP Fane - who flew an unarmed PR Spitfire - was a 'combat pilot'. His definition of a combat pilot appeared to be any pilot who was flying within a war zone - although I didn't press him on whether that would include someone at the controls of a C-47 glider tug or a Taylorcraft L-2 ...

 

Reggie Tongue was a genuine test pilot, seconded from the RAF to Rolls Royce to help with engine development.

[10kDA]

If you're getting shot at, you're a combat pilot, even if you can't shoot back with anything substantial. L-2s, L-3s, and L-4s were all delivered to conform to the same Request For Proposal. My mother owned an Aeronca L-3B for a while.

 

https://militaryavia...llery-spotting/

[sabrejet]

If you're getting shot at, you're a combat pilot, even if you can't shoot back with anything substantial. L-2s, L-3s, and L-4s were all delivered to conform to the same Request For Proposal. My mother owned an Aeronca L-3B for a while.

 

https://militaryavia...llery-spotting/

 

100%. I had a similar 'discussion' with someone who said that in-theatre training flights were not 'operational'. Yet every contemporary unit record I go through states that crews lost on training flights in this way WERE 'operational'. The difference being that these same crews are recorded as 'KNIA' (killed, not in action), rather than 'KIA'. But still operational losses.

 

Semantics? No. I think it is very important to in no way devalue what these men and women were doing: they were often in harm's way. And test pilots, usually conducting their work 'safe' back home, were also very brave folks, pushing the boundaries. Even Production Test pilots were flying into the unknown.

 

Milton really did put it very well.