Sky Girls

by Gene Nora Jessen

  Neva Paris, who grew up in Kansas City, was as excited on this leg as Thaden had been going into Wichita. Like everyone, she was flying in lowering ceilings and rain showers, straining to spot her checkpoints. Unless the showers started merging and forming thunderstorms, she was okay. When the college town of Lawrence came up on the left, Paris knew she was right on course, and the airport would be easy for her to spot despite the intermittent pelting of rain.

  It was Neva Paris’s turn for the spotlight. She proudly received her hometown’s homage and was on center stage for the newspaper there. “Could any woman learn to fly?” a reporter asked.

  “Yes, indeed. As much so as they can learn to drive a car. The way they are making planes today, there’s no great danger. That’s just what this women’s derby hopes to prove—that women are as much at home in the air as men.”

  “Do you still get a thrill out of flying?”

  “Oh yes, I always will—it’s a sport of the gods. I enjoy takeoffs the most. They never seem to lose their allure. But I am getting the greatest thrill of my life right now in this air derby. I’ve never been so interested in anything before… I want to see if it goes over big. It’ll do wonders for aviation.”

  The Kansas City stop was quick, for fuel and a bite to eat, with some of the racers not even leaving their aircrafts. Those who took advantage of the luncheon at the Art Goebel Flying School liked the chance to clean up best of all. Neva Paris ran from airplane to airplane to tell the competitors of a meeting planned under the grandstands in Cleveland. She was the beacon lighting the way for a formal organization for women pilots.

  The society reporters seemed to dominate the duty roster that day for the Kansas City Star. They especially loved Chubbie Keith-Miller’s Australian accent.

  “Aye, your blithering deserts,” they quoted Keith-Miller, “do I like them? I sat down in one for ten hours the other day. Naow, I shall not leave my plane until I see it serviced. Bring on your oil and gas. Fill up the extra tank, please, and look you that it runs cock-full. Overflowing, quite—do you catch me?”

  Typically, the reporters seemed more interested in pilot appearances than race results. Some of the copy read like a fashion report:

  The boyish looking lass in white unionalls is Gladys O’Donnell. Mary Von Mach of Detroit wore a black shirt, corduroy breeches, and high-tops, and looked quite fit for a hunting trip. Her face was brown as an Indian’s.

  What a contrast, that skin, with Phoebe’s. Phoebe Omlie of Memphis, of course, leader in the light plane class. Mrs. Omlie doesn’t tan—she burns. She wears a cloth hat, not a helmet, and unlike Mrs. Miller, who was light as a jockey aboard her little ship, Mrs. Omlie goes in for a solidifying weight. It keeps her little Monocoupe steady as it tears through atmosphere with that sturdy purr.

  That orange Lockheed is Amelia Earhart’s—Amelia, with the calm air. She freckles and tans, and looks a bit weary. Thea Rasche, buxom German fraulein, was last to arrive in a slow plane. Ruth Elder landed with the wind behind her, but smiled down her embarrassment at the blunder.

  So much for the beauty pageant. The reporter did manage to include one technical quote from Mary Haizlip having to do with wind correction: “I allowed five degrees coming over, and I smacked the field right on the nose.”

  A prominent column on page one of the Kansas City Star broke the story of Ruth Elder’s matrimonial plans under the headline, FLYING TO HER WEDDING. Walter Champ Jr. proposed just before the Santa Monica takeoff, and Elder had made up her mind by the first stop. The groom was somewhat perturbed at the instant publicity, not yet having advised his mother of the approaching nuptials. He would learn that his life had taken a public turn. Sharing page one alongside the happy news was the exposé of an ambitious farming operation cultivating a marijuana crop large enough to supply the entire southwestern United States. The policeman assigned to burn the crop declared the smoke made him “light in the head,” and he beat a hasty retreat.

  The racers had traded the awful bumps of the desert for smooth air, but they also gave up unlimited visibility for haze. The midwestern flyers knew this was a normal sky condition and acknowledged that the luxury of great visibility was over. They generally followed the Missouri River most of the way on over to St. Louis, crossing it twice, then keeping the flowing landmark on their right wing until it led them into East St. Louis. St. Louis deserved a salute as the racers sped by. The city had had the foresight to sponsor Lindy.

  There were several minor mishaps along the way. One unnamed racer spotted the capitol building in Jefferson City, which meant she had strayed, losing some time being south of course. Mary Haizlip landed in Washington, Missouri, with a broken fuel line that she repaired herself. A farm youth offered to help her crank the airplane for takeoff, but when he couldn’t manage, Haizlip cranked it herself. That took fancy footwork, grinding on the crank then scrambling up into the high cockpit.

  Only the year before, Oliver Lafayette Parks, a Chevrolet salesman who had opened a flight school on Lambert Field in St. Louis, decided to relocate onto his own airfield. He selected some bottomland on the east side of the river in Cahokia, Illinois, calling his operation Parks Air College. Though a mile and a half from the Mississippi River, protective levees had not yet been built, and the land was swampy. But the flight students arrived in generous numbers, living in dormitories on the field. Ever the ultimate salesman, Parks sold 128 Travel Air airplanes in his first year as Parks Air College.

  Lafe Parks required his students to fulfill one hundred hours of “work time.” One of the jobs was to distribute coal-oil railroad lanterns around the perimeter of the field at dusk and light them, only to extinguish and gather the lanterns up again at daylight. Before the end of 1928, Parks the innovator had his field lighted by floodlights and a beacon, more modernized than St. Louis’s Lambert Field. Parks’s four hundred flight students made his flight school the largest in the United States, and the field was selected for the racers’ St. Louis stop.

  Finding postage-stamp-size Parks Airport on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River in low visibility was a strain. Landing an airplane on it and stopping short of the fence turned out to be an even bigger challenge—good practice for students, scary for a first-timer. Additionally, the airport conformed to the unwritten law Will Rogers described—landing fields are obliged to have obstacles such as telephone lines and tall trees at both ends. City fathers and airport owners were not yet dedicating any land as an obstacle-free approach path to an airport.

  The problem posed by trees or power lines was the inability to land at the approach end of the field because of the slope of the descent, while leaving plenty of landing area for rolling out and stopping. When the wheels put down halfway down the field, little room was left for stopping. Pilots learned pretty quickly to diminish the lift, side-slip to shorten a horizontal distance, and accelerate the vertical until safely past the wires.

  Blanche Noyes and Neva Paris both suffered landing gear damage after intentionally ground-looping to avoid running off the end on their landing at Parks Field. Thea Rasche was still contending with dirt in the gas. Bobbi Trout, catching up to the main body of racers, welded a loose exhaust pipe before moving on. These were all too typical malfunctions and normal field repairs. All were repaired in time for the Sunday morning takeoff.

  National Exchange Club officials flying along in support of the racers in their personal airplanes were appalled to be groping through the haze, straining to see Parks Airport even though they knew it had to be immediately east of the river. Luckily, they arrived after most of the racers and spotted the airplanes, several parked at the edge of the field, one landing and another scrambling to get out of the way. Contending with the same challenges as the racers, their admiration for these women grew. Exposure to women who had dreams and pursued them, some even in life-threatening situations, caused flying sponsors to examine their own sometimes too-cautious path through life.

  It was always possible to get an airpla
ne into a field with no chance of getting out. Obstacles at the departure end inhibited the climb out. A low-powered airplane with engine performance further diminished by summer temperatures might not be able to climb above wires or trees that bordered a short field, especially in afternoon heat. Sometimes, a farmer would be asked to take down a fence. Pilots accepted the hand they were dealt. Curiosity along with daring and defiance all added up to the challenge and fun of flying air machines.

  Meanwhile, growing tumult over the Graf Zeppelin’s ’round-the-world flight engulfed the racers and the public. The behemoth was flying at over sixty miles per hour out of Tokyo toward the American mainland. Every airplane and balloon in southern and central California was booked to watch the great airship’s arrival on the continent from the air. The appearance from the north would be broadcast in four languages, while a naval flight patrol circled the airship to ensure its safety in the airplane-saturated sky. The Weather Bureau advised the Graf to abandon plans to approach the American continent via the great circle route as far north as Seattle. Volatile head winds were forecast. The Graf ’s passengers, when crossing the date line in the Pacific, got a kick out of riding through two Saturdays in a consecutive forty-eight-hour period.

  The 1929 flight was completed safely, and the Graf continued ferrying passengers across the Atlantic. However, only eight years later, the landing disaster of the giant zeppelin Hindenburg led to the class of airships’ extinction, and long-range airliners took the Zeppelin’s place.

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 25, 1929

  Race Day 8

  EAST ST. LOUIS TO TERRE HAUTE TO CINCINNATI TO COLUMBUS

  158 MILES, 158 MILES, 100 MILES

  The plane accident was terribly unfortunate, and it no doubt will have a tendency with some of the more skeptical ones to say that aviation is unsafe. The death will receive tremendous publicity all over the country, but on Monday morning, when you read this, if you had the entire statistics of everybody all over our country, who was killed today by autos, well, it will be lucky if it’s under twenty-five. Yet some of their deaths will never be published beyond their own country newspapers. Yet every one of them is just as dead as those on the plane. So, sir, travel by air is here to stay, and all the doubt in the world can’t stop it. And accidents by plane will be taken the same as we take the news that a train at a grade crossing has killed a truckload of people just a matter of fact.

  Yours, Will Rogers

  Syndicated newspaper column

  Fog did not deter the racers from hustling to the airport at dawn Sunday morning. The Cleveland Aeronautical Exposition was opening that day, and the All Women’s Air Derby would terminate on Monday—if the fog ever lifted in St. Louis. Over one hundred thousand people were already on hand in Cleveland for the event’s opening ceremonies, and the crowd was expected to swell ten-fold by the finish. Elsewhere, three cross-country derbies were underway, the women from Santa Monica, plus two men’s derbies from Portland, Oregon, and Miami Beach, Florida. Captain Roscoe Turner with his flying companion, a lion named Gilmore, was still attempting, despite some delays, to set a new record for a one-day east-west transcontinental flight. An outstanding pilot, Turner also knew how to exploit publicity to support his racing activities. When Turner noticed that the Gilmore Oil Company used a mascot lion to advertise their product, he acquired a lion cub that flew with him. He named him Gilmore, and it drew attention like a magnet.

  At that late date, the racers’ standings were solidifying. With only 536 miles left, it would be hard for anyone to make up enough time to overtake another racer. Any changes in standing now might be dependent upon forced landings or pilot mistakes in the next two days.

  In the DW class, Louise Thaden was ahead with 16:27:57 elapsed time, Gladys O’Donnell was next, Ruth Nichols was third, and Amelia Earhart was fourth. The slower CW class had tightened some, but Phoebe Omlie was undoubtedly the winner, unless she ran into trouble. Omlie’s elapsed time at St. Louis was 20:23:32. Edith Foltz was two hours behind her, Chubbie Keith-Miller another hour, and Thea Rasche yet another. This race was Omlie’s to lose.

  Phoebe Omlie

  Blowhard Erle P. Haliburton continued to offer his opinions, which the newspapers continued to report:

  All the pilots should have been forced to fly over the course at least four or five times. One plane was not even licensed. The death of Marvel Crosson, one of the best women pilots today, was needless. If it hadn’t been for her fear and confusion regarding the course, she would have been leading now.

  The women were outraged by Haliburton’s remarks. Marvel Crosson was one of the most experienced pilots and had practice-flown the entire course prior to the race. The man’s blatant prejudice was appalling.

  The women completed their preflights in the gray, damp morning air. Mary Haizlip had suffered six emergency landings so far, and her fuel lines were drained, with all sorts of foreign debris removed.

  The pilots had time on their hands while they waited for the fog to burn off. Travel Air mechanic John Burke passed the hours doing additional engine inspections. He was stunned to discover that Thaden’s magneto points seemed to have been tampered with. Though Thaden doubted someone had done that, he thought it was an act of sabotage. That night in Columbus, he slept with the ship.

  The rising sun quickly consumed the fog, and the racers were impatient to get on toward Cleveland. It was a beautiful day for flying, with a nice road and railroad tracks to follow all the way to Terre Haute, Indiana. Thaden had fuel siphoning out through her fuel cap, but she still had enough left to reach her destination. The siphoning fuel stained the wing due to a missing washer necessary to keep the cap tight.

  Bobbi Trout was catching up, arriving at Parks Airport just a few hours after the main body of racers departed. She fueled quickly and was on her way. She was no longer being officially timed, and when she had landed at Wichita, three newspapermen were the only people on hand to greet her. Determination itself, she was entered in several racing events at Cleveland and was intent on finishing the race, timed or not. The Wichita Eagle wrote, “Bobbi Trout is considered one of the greatest fliers of her sex. It is plain that there are a lot of men who are determined that women shall be barred from the air. If anything was needed to put them into planes that would do it.”

  Thaden got a kick out of flying along a major road and seeing how many cars and trucks she could pass. It was tempting to drop down and buzz a car to scare the driver and thrill the kids. But that wouldn’t be a smart thing to do because she would lose a few minutes climbing back up to cruise altitude. She thought the farmers in southern Illinois appeared to be prospering with healthy-looking crops. The corn was in. “Oh my gosh, there’s a train,” she observed. “Let’s count the cars. I’m overtaking a train.” Thaden kept an eye out for a good emergency landing field. The eventuality of engine trouble was always in the back of any pilot’s mind.

  The Terre Haute Airfield was not hard to pick out just south of town. It was only 485 feet mean sea level and not of generous size. The field met Will Rogers’s criteria for a modern airport with obstacles scattered around the perimeter. There were pole lines and radio masts along with high stacks a thousand feet northeast of the field. The racers who had preflown the route in reverse shared the notes they had made describing the airfield, obstacles, and the general condition of the landing area. They were competing for speed, but supported each other for safety.

  Unlike Wichita, the crowds at Terre Haute were poorly controlled. Consequently, the pilots stayed close to their airplanes to protect them from the throng. It turned out the fuelers were an equal hazard. They must have been recruited right off the street, and they had little idea what to do with a fuel nozzle. One fueler unscrewed Thaden’s oil drain plug. Refreshment tables were laden with cheese and chicken sandwiches. The hosts were puzzled why only the cheese disappeared.

  Following a quick radio interview, the racers headed out.

  Since the next stop, Cincinnati, had been a last-m
inute add-on; even those who reverse-flew the course hadn’t been there. The owners of the airfield, the Lunken family, had less than a year before incorporated the Aeronautical Corporation of America (Aeronca). Influential and well-respected community leader Robert A. Taft was a director of the company, ensuring both financial and political stability as aviation, and the country, headed into the Depression. Their Aeronca C-2 model, called the “Bathtub” because of its bulbous fuselage, was powered by a small, inexpensive, two-cylinder engine. Priced at a reasonable $1,495, the airplane became a popular trainer, with subsequent models in production for decades. The name is still respected as a trainer and is popular today.

  The racers struggled to find the airfield, since not many prominent checkpoints along the route aided them. A road and the wandering Ohio River funneled into Lunken Airport, just barely in Ohio—across the river from Kentucky. Lunken was hard to see down in the river bottom. In fact, it was called “Sunken Lunken” because it was down in a hole, protected from the river water by dikes. Thousands of people swarmed the airport to see the women racers, about double the crowd that had gathered for Lindbergh just two years before. The Cincinnati Enquirer described Louise Thaden as “America’s Queen of the Air.” Well, there are worse things to be called, Thaden decided.

  Edith Foltz never found Lunken and went on to Columbus, untimed. Poor Bobbi Trout was down again, making a dead-stick landing in a little field near Greensburg, Indiana. Without even partial power to stretch her glide to a better field, Trout had to put it in a fenced field with her approach between tall poplars. She side-slipped to squeeze in, but knew there wasn’t enough stopping room, so she purposely ground-looped to halt before she tore into the fence. Trout’s right aileron dragged over the fence and suffered a large hole. She used a piece of tin can and some bailing wire for a patch. An electrician from town did the engine repair, and she was on her way.