The Guppy

Experts in the field of aeronautics said it would never get off the ground. Jack Conroy refused to listen to the doubters. So it was in the mid 1960s that Santa Barbara Airport became home to the Guppy, one of the largest airplanes in the world, a marvel of aeronautical engineering.

John “Jack” M. Conroy originally was going to be an actor. A native of Buffalo, New York, he eventually made his way to California, where he trained at the Pasadena Playhouse. He appeared in a number of movies as a member of The Tough Little Guys, a group that was supposed to rival the popular Dead End Kids.

Conroy caught the flying bug in 1940, when he earned his pilot’s license while in Hawai‘i, and he then served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. In 1955, he set a speed record for flying from one coast to the other in an Air Force jet. He then worked for a number of commercial airlines.