Sky Girls

by Gene Nora Jessen

  Some aircraft had undergone various repairs after their flights in, and they needed to be test-flown. The women gave a last check of the rigging in flight. Moving surfaces such as the ailerons on the wings needed to be smooth in trail and in balance for maximum speed. Even a slightly drooping aileron would add drag and slow the aircraft down. (It seemed odd that so many of the airplanes’ parts, such as ailerons, empennage, and fuselage had acquired French names. But France had been an early contributor to the development of powered flight.)

  Many white-coveralled feminine figures were to be seen flat on their backs under the belly of their airplanes scrubbing off oil and dirt. Slick airplanes slip through the air faster. They wiped smashed bugs off the wings’ leading edges and applied polish. Each pilot test-flew her airplane, confirming it was in absolute readiness. The fuel tanks were topped. There was an old aviation maxim that nothing was more useless than runway or fuel left behind. A pilot careless about fuel quantity would pay with a forced landing. And the pilots who started their takeoff run midfield could well wish they had the runway they’d left behind as they struggled to climb over trees or wires at the end of the field. Maybe that was why there always seemed to be a cemetery near the airport.

  The pilots prepare for takeoff at Clover Field.

  Once the airplanes were checked and rechecked, each pilot turned to her road maps and the new aeronautical charts. She had drawn a line the night before along the course she planned to follow, with a hash mark every ten miles, and applied the magnetic variation correction to her heading. Each pilot had studied the course carefully, and she even wrote notes alongside the course line—reminders of checkpoints to watch for. On this morning, each aviator folded the chart and tucked it in a safe corner of the cockpit to be stashed under her leg in flight, protected from the wind. It was difficult to fly the airplane while unfolding a chart in an open cockpit out in the breeze, so the en route unfolding was carefully programmed before departure. The racers loaded the required gallon of water and three days’ food in each airplane along with a parachute—ready for any eventuality.

  Unless they flew aerobatics, most of the women did not wear parachutes as a general practice. However, even the nonconformists followed the race rules and dutifully strapped them on. Back on October 20, 1922, U.S. Air Corps test pilot Lieutenant Harold Harris had worn one of the then new-fangled ’chutes to test fly a fighter plane with experimental ailerons. The parachute was not comfortable, and he very nearly took off without it—after all, the things had not yet saved anyone’s life. But Harris dutifully ’chuted up. During a friendly dogfight with another pilot, the lieutenant’s airplane broke apart, and he jumped. The startled man pulled three times on the ripcord before discovering he had been pulling on a leg strap fitting, but finally felt the canopy blossom at the last possible moment. Lieutenant Harris became the first person ever to have his life saved in an emergency by a manually operated parachute.

  Leslie Irvin was the designer of the Army’s parachutes and was, himself, the first person to voluntarily jump out of an airplane to test his design. After Harris’s successful save, a newspaper reporter suggested a club for those who owed their lives to a parachute. The subsequent club became known as the Caterpillar Club, both because caterpillars lower themselves to earth on threads, but also because the parachutes were made of silk manufactured by caterpillars. Just a couple of weeks after Harris, another man, Lieutenant Tyndall, jumped for his life when his airplane’s wings came off. The next person to have his life saved was a stunt jumper who dove out of an airplane with six chutes on, planning to open one after another. The first five became entangled, and the sixth saved his life. The first female member joined the club on June 28, 1925. Irene McFarland took to the silk using an emergency parachute when her primary failed to open. Irvin started keeping a record of the members of the Caterpillar Club.

  By the end of World War II, the Irvin Parachute Factory had recorded twenty-seven thousand Caterpillar Club members. They had also received a telegram from Lieutenant General Jimmy Doolittle, whose life was saved by parachute three times in three years. It said, “Aeroplane failed; chute worked.”

  The Women’s Air Derby pilots learned right away that their stops, and the accompanying festivities at each, were terribly overscheduled. This created a certain amount of friction between the women and the officials. The hosts at each fuel and timing stop tried to outdo the previous town in the hospitality department. The non-aviators planning the events, luncheons, dinners, speeches, and entertainment were appropriately filling the agenda. The fact that the pilots would want to supervise while their airplanes were serviced did not occur to the planners. Of course, the women would have preferred to camp under the wing rather than endure all the social obligations, but they were polite, not wanting to appear ungrateful for the hospitality. Yes, there was a difference between male and female air racers.

  The racers paced the tie-down area, gave and took advice from each other, rechecked the weather, and practiced handling the persistent reporters. Each of the racers had been in the public eye before dealing with curious and adoring fans. However, only Amelia Earhart and Ruth Elder had any real idea of the reporters’ aggressive behavior—ambushes veiled as “the public’s need to know.” Trying to play down the male versus female angle, Earhart said, “It’s a sporting event and nothing else.”

  Still, these women were unintentional pioneers, their air race is one of the more intriguing chapters in the infancy of civil aviation, and the public did want to know. In the early twenties, Army General Billy Mitchell had preached against governmental neglect of military air power, spurring passage of the Air Commerce Act of 1926. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover implemented improvements to airfields and safety, including a pilot licensing requirement by 1927, and airplanes were licensed two years later. Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight from New York to Paris in May 1927 stimulated ardent interest in learning to fly and awareness of the great potential of air commerce. By 1929, just two brief years later, air racing was the rage, now even for women.

  A crowd gathers near one of the Travel Airs.

  Aircraft use grew more diverse with air ambulances, bush flying, crop dusting, and freight transport uses. Civilian aircraft manufacturers popped up, with Matty Laird in Wichita, Kansas, being one of the first. The success of the Laird Swallow biplane was catalytic. It attracted former military aviators Lloyd Stearman and Walter Beech, plus farmer Clyde Cessna to the business. The work of these men established a foothold in Wichita, a first step towards the city’s claim to the title of Air Capital of the World. (Wichita would eventually count sixteen aircraft manufacturers to its credit.) Travel Air Company built 547 aircraft in 1929, no mean feat considering the technology of the day. And the Travel Air Company’s open-cockpit biplanes dominated the 1929 air derby fleet. Stearman and Cessna soon left Travel Air to form their own airplane companies, and Beech then sold Travel Air to Curtiss-Wright, staying on to manage the company. Walter Beech resigned in 1932, and with $25,000 in capital, he formed his own company, which evolved into Beech Aircraft Corporation. His secretary, Olive Ann Mellor, became Mrs. Beech.

  The nineteen planes on the tarmac that morning (with Mary Haizlip still missing) were disparate, and the wide variety of aircraft available to the competitors prompted the air-race sponsors to form two divisions by engine size. The first division was composed of aircraft with engines of 510-cubic-inch displacement or less, which included the Monocoupe, Fleet, Golden Eagle, Travel Air with the OX-5 engine, Moth, and Eaglerock—the smaller, lighter, sport planes, they called the CW class. The second division covered up to 800-cubic-inch displacement engines, which included the Wright J5 engine Travel Air, Waco, Swallow, Lockheed, Spartan, Rearwin, Curtiss Robin, and American Eagle. These were the heavier, working aircraft, or the DW class. Depending upon the engine, the Travel Air was competing in both classes. The cubic-inch displacement was defined by the sum total volume of all the engine’s cylinders. Later, engines were differenti
ated by horsepower, but in 1929, cubic-inch displacement was the defining distinction.

  Increased publicity buzz about the Women’s Air Derby worked much to the benefit of the aircraft manufacturers. As aviation was becoming an exploding industry and manufacturers envisioned skyways like highways, it was in their interest to support a spectacle that proved anyone, “even women,” could fly their planes.

  Few really considered women as less capable pilots than men. They already had too much evidence to the contrary. But the bias of the times made patronage, however false, almost mandatory. Heck, they thought, women have something to prove, and in so doing will help business. They queued up to have their airplanes represented in the spectacle.

  The press was quick to point out that of the eleven female transport pilots licensed by the United States government, seven were in this race. Barnes didn’t mind pointing out that “those dumbasses got it wrong, as usual,” since, actually, ten of the eleven females holding the prestigious transport license were racing, with only the UK’s Lady Mary Heath missing—and she would be flying the pylons in Cleveland. Despite professional acumen on par with men’s, the group was variously dubbed the Petticoat Pilots, Sweethearts of the Air, Ladybirds, or “Flying Flappers.” These descriptions had the effect of trivializing their aptitude and the race itself. On the other hand, it energized the women to disprove the implications of these demeaning tags. Earhart claimed that a female spectator had even poked her with an umbrella “to see what these women pilots were made of!”

  Reporters dug to find out why women wanted to trespass into the male domain. A woman clad in white coveralls, hair pinned back out of her face, hands showing evidence of engine oil rather than dish soap, tried to explain, “The glory of soaring above God’s Earth and the satisfaction of taking the machine up and bringing it back to the ground safely, through my own skill and judgment, has melted away the boundaries of my life. Racing opens my door to the world. Don’t cut me off from the adventure men have been hoarding for themselves in the guise of protecting me from danger.” For this nameless spokeswoman and for the others, an airplane was obviously the badge of emancipation.

  Nearly every news article had its share of asides—male opinions of the “little ladies” who dared to race airplanes, which the following typified: “Women pilots are too emotional, vain, and frivolous to fly and are hazards to themselves and others.” While the press and the opposite gender whittled away at the women pilots’ confidence, the contenders themselves were supportive of one another, but only up to a point. Their competitive spirit remained intact. Psychological games, designed to produce insecurity in other contenders, were underway. Crosson put a blanket over her shoulders and hunched over the elevator hinge on the horizontal tail, obviously making a secret adjustment in the up-and-down movement. As planned, her maneuvering did not go unseen, and the other racers and mechanics were soon buzzing, speculating which special elevator adjustment would make the airplane go faster. The brainwashing campaign started.

  A tall and shy twenty-three-year-old local pilot by the name of Howard Hughes was watching, and he smiled at the charade and subterfuge. “Good luck, Miss Crosson,” he offered. Crosson and the others couldn’t have imagined where this handsome young fellow Hughes was going in aviation, though they all knew he was in the movie business.

  Like Crosson and her brother, many of the women were half of a flying duo. Claire Mae Fahy arrived with her husband, a Lockheed test pilot, Lieutenant Herbert J. Fahy, who had in May established a new solo endurance record of nearly thirty-seven hours. Lieutenant Fahy would follow his wife along the race route to be on hand to tend to mechanical needs, which would undoubtedly arise along the way. He preferred to worry from where he could see her, rather than from a distance.

  Herb Fahy called out to Crosson too, “Congratulations on your altitude record!” She had established this on the same day as Herb’s own endurance record.

  “What a team you and I would make,” Crosson teased enthusiastically. “Did you hear that I got race number one?” she exclaimed, as a huge grin took charge of her face. “Claire’s going to have to pedal hard to keep up with me, ’cause with that number, I’m destined to get to Cleveland first.” German pilot Thea Rasche was not the only non-U.S. pilot of the group. Jessie Keith-Miller, known as “Chubbie,” though she was a tiny person and not chubby at all, was Australian. Keith-Miller had met Captain Bill Lancaster of the Royal Air Force while on vacation in England, and she agreed to help him raise funds for a flight to Australia, the first being in a light aircraft, if she could go along. She helped him in an Avron Avian named the Red Rose, which departed London in October 1927. A sandstorm in the desert between Palestine and Baghdad brought them down for a precautionary landing, at which time they picked up a passenger—a cobra. Once in the air, the snake made a worrisome appearance, and Keith-Miller dispatched it with alacrity, dropping the snake over the side of the cockpit.

  Chubbie Keith-Miller

  Within five hundred miles of their destination Down Under, engine failure put Keith-Miller and Lancaster on the ground with a severely damaged airplane. During the three-month repair period, Bert Hinbler, an Avro Factory test pilot who was seeking the same London-to-Darwin record, passed them by. Nevertheless, the pair continued on to a tumultuous welcome. Now, instead of completing the first flight from London, they were the first flight from London with a passenger—and a woman passenger at that.

  Keith-Miller was not then a pilot, but she caught the flying fever. Though each was married to another, she and Lancaster fell in love and became inseparable. They made their way to America, where Keith-Miller learned to fly. She resolved the little detail of her lack of flying credentials, and the press overlooked it. The media loved her, and their attention made her fame even greater in the U.S. than in her native Australia. The Bell Aircraft Corporation offered her a new two-place biplane trainer to race, rebuilding the cockpit around her tiny five-foot-one-inch figure. Though she was certainly inexperienced at piloting, she well knew the pitfalls of long-distance flying.

  Takeoff at Clover Field.

  By one thirty in the afternoon, nineteen airplanes were lined up for takeoff in two long rows. The adjacent Douglas Aircraft factory buildings were a significant reminder of the World Cruisers built for the U.S. Army and accentuated the historical importance of the event about to begin. Could the women withstand the stresses of competing with one another in these volatile machines of the air? Should they be home in the kitchen wearing an apron? Gladys O’Donnell responded defiantly to an insolent reporter, “My mother never gave me the keys to the stove!”

  Crowds lined the sides and the end of the field. Somebody had said there were three thousand citizens out for the takeoff. Were they there to watch history or to see what kind of women would fly these machines? Were they ghoulish people who wanted to be on hand for a wreck? Each racer preferred to believe that the crowd was cheering for her alone. Clover Field’s proximity to the movie studios ensured that plenty of celebrities were there to witness the takeoff. Cowboy star Hoot Gibson had personally offered many of the pilots a sincere “Godspeed.” Author Edgar Rice Burroughs thrilled both Crosson and Thaden when he wished them luck and fun.

  Marvel Crosson sat impatiently in her cockpit, wiping sweaty hands on her coveralls and checking the maps one more time. Just as soon as Crosson strapped herself in and the engine was cranked, and she awaited her turn to go, one obscure law of nature presented itself—as it often did. Crosson suppressed her need to run to the bathroom and forced her mind into another direction: “I wonder how many people are out there?” “Will Joe be waiting for me in San Bernardino?” “How many of us will actually make it to the finish line?” These diversions didn’t work; they only made the need worse. But as the race got underway, Crosson forgot the “call of nature” altogether.

  At last, at 2:00 p.m. a radio-relayed pistol shot from the Cleveland terminus signaled the flag drop, and the race began. There was finally action to damp
en the racers’ nerves as they concentrated on their immediate next job—a good, smooth takeoff and turn on course. The race was 2,759 miles long, averaging just over three hundred miles per day. Starting in Santa Monica, California, the racers were to be in Cleveland, Ohio, by August 26 for the start of the Cleveland Air Races. At stake was nearly $25,000 in prize money, but even more important, the hope for fame and respect that could be leveraged into a job.

  Louise Thaden couldn’t block the memory of her carbon monoxide problem with the Travel Air. As the engine warmed up, she took regular whiffs of hot, outside air through the new cockpit air tube. She wondered why her engine was the only one putting out the killer fumes.

  Thaden’s larger engine put her in the DW “heavy” competition class. Walter Beech had gone the extra mile for Louise, and she had the new NACA-developed (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) full-engine cowling around the nose of her plane. The challenge had been to provide streamlining while simultaneously cooling the engine with baffles that moved the air around the cylinders. Smooth structure, instead of an open space or a sharp corner or a cylinder poking out, translated into speed. This one aerodynamic improvement was rumored to give her as much as a twenty-mile-per-hour advantage. Even sitting on the ground, the modified airplane looked substantially faster, smoother, and more streamlined than others that were uncowled. Though Thaden didn’t have the benefit of Walter Beech’s rumored Travel Air Mystery Ship, the new cowling was enough of an edge.