Instead of whirling away, his '50s 'saucer' just faded
A local inventor's Lennocopter promised to fly into outer space. It did get off the ground - but only inches.
By SCOTT TAYLOR HARTZELL
Published December 24, 2003
ST. PETERSBURG - When space travel dominated the 1950s, Clarence D. Lennon fascinated the press with his flying saucer.
"A St. Petersburg inventor has invested more than $10,000" and six months' work in the construction of a flying saucer "which he believes will fly coast to coast in 30 minutes," the St. Petersburg Times wrote.
Lennon called his craft and his corporation Lennocopter. He offered stock to the public and sought military interest. "The Lennocopter will rise directly up and sail away," Lennon, then 76, told Florida Trend magazine in 1958.
Ahla Harrison, 68, then secretary to Alden K. "Bobo" Hayes, manager of the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport, where Lennon worked on the craft: "Most at the airport had a stand-back and wait-and-see attitude. Some were a bit skeptical."
In the mid 1930s, Lennon envisioned the concept of circular-shaped aircraft. His flying saucer garnered patent number 2,432,775 on Dec. 16, 1947.
"I have utilized the principles of a rotating circular disc to provide for both vertical and horizontal movement," Lennon wrote in his patent information. "(This) will result in an airplane having higher operating efficiencies than an aircraft of conventional design."
In 1958, Lennon lived at 1014 12th Ave. N. He had built 60 percent of his Lennocopter at St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport.
Milford R. Minor and Gaines English were his early builders. "It's against all theories of aviation," Minor said. "We're out to prove or disprove Mr. Lennon's theory."
"Anything is possible in aviation," Bobo Hayes said. "That's the darnedest-looking contraption I ever saw . . . but Buck Rogers things are happening practically every day."
Lennon's concept was as simple as Einstein's Theory of Relativity recited backward, Florida Trend wrote. A muffler silenced the Lennocopter's $1,500, 15-horsepower aircraft engine, which applied "the laws of cyclonic action to the gyroscopic laws in all spinning objects," Lennon said.
Lennon, a retired florist and machine manufacturer born in Ann Arbor, Mich., said extreme hydraulic force would speed his 18-foot-round craft. It would travel, he added, into outer space at nearly triple the speed of sound.
"In discussion of any new and radically different idea, it is difficult to avoid thinking of it in terms that are familiar," read his prospectus. "Progress requires an open mind. The drag of yesterday's thinking has been a burden."
In 1960, at a rented garage encircled by barbed wire where Routes 688 and 693 met, Lennon watched his craft hover several inches off the ground. "I am sure as sunshine that it will work," Lennon said then. "I've got a lot of secrets not yet incorporated. The Russians are doing the same thing."
Later in 1960 during a trial run, however, "One of the airfoils came off and the damn thing nearly hit Lennon," said Joe Moore, 77, another of the craft's builders. "There was no way to control the thing."
At one point, the military told Lennon his craft would never fly.
"The price tag of the present ship will be $35,000 to the dealer," the prospectus went on. "Whether it is $200 for one share (of stock) or $400 for two shares, you can think of the investment as savings or a life insurance policy.
"The Lennocopter HAS become a reality."
On Feb. 21, 1961, headlines read, "Flying saucers may be coming" after Lennon rented a hanger at Clearwater Municipal Airpark for $75 a month. Bob Bickerstaff, Clearwater Flying Co. president, boasted that the airpark could be the next Kitty Hawk, the site of the Wright Brothers' first flight.
At the hangar in May 1962, Lennon unveiled his one-man craft to the public. They will be produced, he said, at a consumer cost of less than $10,000 each. "We know it will fly," Lennon told a mesmerized crowd.
But the Lennocopter could hover only a few inches above the ground before its pilot lost control. Lennon, then 80, stopped testing the flying saucer. "He was not successful," Ahla Harrison said.
Said Moore: "Lennon sort of disappeared into the woodwork."
