From SFTE Flight Test News 2020.03.12

 Lee Erb of the North Texas Chapter passed away on 13 February 2020 at age 90.  He grew up in Conneaut, OH and earned a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering from Parks Air College of St. Louis University.  He worked a couple of years at McDonnell Aircraft Corporation on the XF-88 and the “short” afterburner.  He then followed a job opportunity at Bell Aircraft, which was building a new plant in Fort Worth TX to build helicopters.  There he met his future wife, Mary Alice Stewart.  Returning home from their honeymoon he was handed an official letter by his Father-In-Law, the local letter carrier, notifying him to report to Edwards AFB to serve his ROTC commitment. 

Arriving in November 1954, he became an FTE on the YC-121F, a Lockheed L-1249 Constellation fitted with P&W YT34 turboprops.  This airplane was ridiculously overpowered, able to reach drag divergence Mach number in level flight.  While never put into production, it did serve as a test bed for developing the engines to use on the Douglas C-133 Cargomaster.  His biggest project was flight testing the Piasecki H-21C with his test pilot, Maj. Gus Vincenzi.  This helicopter would go on to serve operationally and as a rescue helicopter for flight test programs, including the X-15.

In 1956 he left Edwards to pursue a Masters of Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Colorado in Boulder CO.  Completing this, he returned to Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth where he worked in rotor aerodynamics, wind tunnel testing, and agricultural aviation (spray bars on a Model 47).  He even tested an Apollo capsule rotor recovery system using his 1953 Studebaker as the test platform.  Because of his 20 months as an Air Force FTE he was considered the local “Flight Test Expert”.  He was called upon to resolve a dispute between the Air Force and the contractor about power required in hover data for a helicopter.  He did this by forcing the test pilot to truly be stable in hover, not stirring the stick, under tight tolerances.  Projects he worked on included the XH-40, UH-1, AH-1, JetRanger, and XV-15.

After being laid off from Bell in 1982, he worked for Aerospatiale Helicopters, DynCorp (A-3 and S-3), and Menasco (F-22 nose landing gear), until declaring himself semi-retired in 1999.

Lee joined SFTE and the North Texas Chapter during the 1980s.  He worked on the committee to organize the 1996 SFTE International Symposium.  He pushed the sale of the book “Flight Testing At Edwards:  Flight Test Engineers’ Stories 1946-1975” which contains two of his stories.

Even though his first love was aircraft design, Lee often stated that the most significant part of his career was his 20 months as an Air Force FTE.  That kind of experience was not common around the contractors, and frequently they turned to him for advice on how they should test something.