One of the most popular
replicas of a storied vintage aircraft to ever appear at EAA AirVenture
Oshkosh returns this year. SC Johnson Co.’s Carnauba Sikorsky S-38 is
an exact replica of the Sikorsky S-38 that H.F. Johnson Jr.,
third-generation Johnson family leader, piloted in 1935 to Fortaleza,
Brazil, to discover new supplies of carnauba palms. What the Brazilians
call "The Tree of Life" was the source of the world’s
hardest natural wax used by the company for its floor wax products.
The 15,000-mile round
trip, which originated in Milwaukee on September 24, 1935, took two
months to complete.
Sixty-three years later,
on October 22, 1998, Sam Johnson, fourth-generation Johnson family
leader, took off in the newly finished Carnauba replica to retrace the
journey his father had made. Accompanying Sam were his two sons, Fisk
and Curt Johnson. With Sam at the controls of the replica aircraft, the
journey took less than a month to complete.
Although about 100 S-38s
were built, none of the originals were known to exist. So, to re-create
the airplane, Born Again searched the Sikorsky archives for original
plans. Every part of the Carnauba was made using only original
blueprints.
Sam, who passed away in
2004, made a documentary, Carnauba: A Son’s Memoir, that
recounts the building project and chronicles Sam’s personal story of
retracing his father’s travels to Brazil with his own two sons. That
program is excerpted in the EAA AirVenture Museum at the Carnauba
exhibit, which features a cutaway of the airplane.
An interesting side note:
Just recently, Fisk and Curt led a family expedition to Indonesia where
the original Carnauba plane was located in 90 feet of water in Manokwari
Bay, New Guinea, Indonesia, after being lost underwater for nearly 70
years.
Look for Carnauba on
display throughout the week at EAA AirVenture’s main showcase,
AeroShell Square.
