Montrose – Chalmer Bowen used to sit at cockpit controls next to the legendary Howard Hughes.
These days, he sits in a room in his Montrose townhouse decorated with 52 pictures of their days together, and he thinks about those flights.
“I look at them, and I remember. This is where I meditate,” said the 93-year-old retired flight engineer and test pilot.
Bowen worked 31 years for the Hughes Aircraft Co., and his memories of those days are as sharp as the blue skies he can still envision over Culver City, Calif., in the heyday of revolutionizing aircraft with Hughes.
“The first couple of years, it was a little rough. He was checking to see how qualified I was. It was nothing for him to say, ‘Oh Challie, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ But he’d go check it out and find out I did know.”
Bowen tested and flew many of Hughes’ well-known aircraft, including the Boeing Stratoliner, the Sikorsky S-43, the Spruce Goose and the XH-17 helicopter.
The Spruce Goose, a wooden plane designed to carry 750 troops, only had one flight, on Nov. 2, 1947. Bowen has a picture of himself at the controls with Hughes looking over his shoulder as they took the massive plane up for the mile-long flight.
Bowen said the most difficult aircraft to fly was the XH-17 – the largest helicopter ever built.
“You know Howard, everything had to be big,” Bowen said with a chuckle.
Bowen said on longer flights the two took together, Hughes would frequently go nap, leaving Bowen alone at the controls. Often, he said, there was a guest aboard.
“Ninety percent of the time, there was a lady friend with us. I was in the company of Liz Taylor when she was a 17-year-old starlet. There was Ava Gardner, Yvonne DeCarlo, Lana Turner. Oh, gosh, there were a lot,” Bowen recalls.
The Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum recently recorded Bowen’s recollections for an oral history.
Dr. Bob van der Linden, curator of air transportation for the Smithsonian, said not many people worked for Hughes as long as Bowen.
“People came and went and were summarily dismissed by Hughes,” van der Linden noted.
Bowen told about Hughes’ end days, even though he had already retired when Hughes died in 1976. Bowen said the few people still close to Hughes kept him posted on Hughes’ whereabouts and mental state.
Bowen said contrary to popular belief, Hughes had left Las Vegas before his death. He ended up living on the top floor of a London hotel, where he would disguise himself and slip down the back stairs to wander the city. His last days were spent on an island near Florida. Bowen said that it is his understanding that Hughes died during a flight to a Houston hospital after he became gravely ill.
“He just burnt out, that’s all,” he said.
Bowen didn’t. He attributes his long and steady career in aviation and his longevity in life to his faith. That faith is exemplified in a poem in his early days with Hughes. Even with a magnifying glass, Bowen can only read the tattered poem with halting difficulty because his once- perfect vision is now darkened by macular degeneration.
“The Lord is my pilot./I shall not crash./He maketh me to fly high and clear skies./He leadeth me down/To smooth landings. …”
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
