The Screaming Eagle was Geegaw Hackwrench's airplane used on a single flight for the Rescue Rangers. It was featured on Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers in the pilot episode "To the Rescue".
History[]
The Screaming Eagle was conceived and built by the Ultra-Flite Laboratories as an experimental device. It is unknown how it became Geegaw's property, but he used to be its long-time owner. His daughter Gadget used her technical skills to modify several things on the Eagle, and after she had lost her father, she still kept the plane. It was Monterey Jack's property since Geegaw had promised that his best friend should have it.
When Monty came back once again, this time with Chip, Dale, and Zipper, he originally wanted to ask Geegaw to fly them to Glacier Bay. However, since Geegaw wasn't there anymore, Gadget took over the part as the pilot and flew Monty and his new friends—and her own new friends to be—to their destination. Unfortunately, this was the Screaming Eagle's last flight. Gadget had omitted to mount vats on the plane for touching down on ice, so the landing gear wheels ended in a crash.
Some parts of the destroyed Screaming Eagle were reused for building the Ice Breaker, and possibly also for the Ranger Plane.
Construction[]
Seemingly unusual for the animal society, the Screaming Eagle was a rather conventional mid-wing airplane and an almost industrial construction. None of its parts appeared like scavenged from humans. On each side of the cylindrical fuselage, a straight, trapezoid-shaped wing was attached. The wings contained the main gears while a nose gear was located in the fuselage, right behind the front motor compartment. All three gear legs were retractable and ended in a single wheel. These wheels did not only look like suction cups, they could be brought into a horizontal position and used as suction cups. To adapt the Screaming Eagle to different ground surfaces, at least a set of vats could be mounted.
Maybe the weirdest feature about the Eagle was its mode of power. It was equipped with two electric motors powering one propeller each. What made it so abnormal was that both motors sat inside the fuselage—one in the nose, one in the stern. This made building a single tail difficult, and so the Screaming Eagle had a twin tail.
The spacy cabin contained four seats, one of them for the pilot as the Eagle lacked a second set of controls for a co-pilot. A movable canopy made of large transparent surfaces between three formers closed it from the top and protected the passengers from external influences such as the weather. Its foremost part, one could call it the windscreen, was fixed and could be kept clean and dry with a wiper. The cockpit was quite close to that of a human aircraft. It had a real yoke (as opposed to the bottle caps used on the Ranger Plane and the Ranger Wing) and a set of miniature guages.
When not used, the Screaming Eagle was kept inside the bomber plane which was Geegaw and Gadget's home. However, getting it outside for a flight was time-consuming, and the bomber lacked space for a runway. So a ramp was erected in it to direct the Eagle upwards, and the aircraft itself was accelerated to take-off speed by using explosives as a means of propulsion. It is not proven that Geegaw had sufficient engineering skills, so it must be supposed that Gadget has developed this take-off aid.
According to her own words, she has also changed a few things about the Screaming Eagle itself. The canopy of the bomber could be opened with some electric drive, remote-controlled by a switch on the dashboard, left of the yoke, because Geegaw was left-handed. Another custom-made feature was the ejection mechanism for the pilot's seat. And though there is no proof for this, it is probable that the double plunger shooters on the wings weren't part of the original design either, also because they reflect Gadget's style more than anything else on the plane; however, they must have most likely been mounted when Geegaw was still there. The same applies to the suction cup-like wheels.
