The Crowd Pleasers
Page 6
Lt. Wallace M. Striker, a friend of Logan’s, described the fatal maneuver as a flat spin and insisted that an elevator cable must have broken, making spin recovery impossible. He had high regard for his friend, especially for his inverted flight skills. “In my estimation, he (Logan) was the premier upside-down flier of the Army,” said Striker. He further characterized Logan, who had fought in the air in France, as fatalistic. “He had a premonition of impending doom.”
An ancient nine-page Air Service report provides almost no specific details of the accident. Typical of the era, it begins and ends with little more than an eyewitness account: “Following a climbing turn, Nieuport A.S. #6506 was seen to go into a tailspin. The spin started at about 2,000 feet, was a slow flat spin and the plane crashed into the ground while spinning.”
The report makes no mention of eyewitness accounts that claimed the Nieuport’s motor had quit or whether investigators believed the flat spin was accidental or a part of Logan’s act from which he failed to recover. Only one piece of evidence from the wreckage gave a glimpse into a possible cause: An elevator control horn jammed in the down position, although investigators allowed that it might have been from impact with the ground. The report lacks Lt. Striker’s comment to a newspaper reporter that the unrecoverable spin may have been due to a broken elevator wire.
No one will ever know for certain what caused the Nieuport, a French-built fighter left over from the first global conflict, to crash in the middle of Logan’s routine. But other information easily overlooked in the report sheds more light, not on the crash but on the pilot and the Air Service in 1920.
Wreckage of the Red Devil, in which Lt. Patrick Logan was killed.
The report states that Lt. Logan had a total of only thirty hours’ solo flying time, including wartime service. Today, a private pilot hopeful with only thirty hours solo would barely be allowed to leave the airport traffic pattern. In 1920, it was enough experience to be a featured performer. Time in the air doesn’t necessarily equate to improved skill, but it helps.
There was another contributing factor best understood through a discussion of the aircraft Logan flew. The Red Devil was one of eighty-eight Nieuport 28’s the Air Service brought back from France, mostly because the United States had already paid for them. The little Nieuport, which traced its origin back to 1914, was among the first true fighter aircraft ever built. They were light, agile, and comparatively easy to fly but were built at a time when aircraft, not to mention pilots, were considered expendable. Life expectancy in air combat over the Western Front—for both aircraft and pilots—was measured in minutes.
The Nieuport 28’s Gnome rotary engine was a wartime expedience that had no throttle and spewed vaporized castor oil into the slipstream and onto the pilot’s face, the real reason for the scarves. On a rotary engine, the propeller is attached to the crankcase. They spin together, creating an enormous amount of gyroscopic effect, which made turning to the right after takeoff a sporting proposition.
The Nieuports also had a documented habit of shedding the fabric from the top of the top wing in a high-speed dive, an experience few pilots survived. Designers ran the fabric seam parallel with the span of the wing, rather than with the chord as was common practice. It saved time but if a seam opened at high speed, the fabric could tear away. A shortage of aircraft kept the near-obsolete Nieuports in active service throughout the war and well into the 1920s.
On that unfortunate day at Dundalk Flying Field, the Nieuport 28, war-weary and outdated, would have been the very best aircraft the Air Service could offer for Logan’s airshow work. Yet the plucky young lieutenant with minimum flying time didn’t hesitate to put on a show with it. Logan reinforced an unassailable aviation truth: pilots worth the title get the job done in what they have, not what they want. The adage applies to all aircraft, even airliners, then and today.
During closing ceremonies, the new Dundalk Flying Field was renamed Logan Flying Field to honor the dead Air Service officer. The airport was active as both a civilian and military facility until 1943 when it was converted to a camp for Axis prisoners of war. It was closed after hostilities ended. Today a shopping center sits on the site.
Logan Flying Field was not associated in any way with Boston’s Logan International Airport, which was named after a politician, a different kind of crowd pleaser who never takes chances and seldom pleases anyone.
11
REACHING
MADELINE Davis, to whom this book is dedicated, was a wing walker, though not a famous one. Almost nothing is known about her except that she was from Fort Pierce, Florida. Research recovers not a single photograph. Davis’s short life ended on October 4, 1921 in Monmouth, New Jersey in an attempt to become the first woman to transfer from an automobile to an airplane.
While women wing walkers took as many risks in the air as men, the automobile to airplane transfer stunt had eluded them. Men were considered better suited for the stunt due to the strength required to grip and hold the rope ladder swaying from the aircraft wing or landing gear. Though pilots lifted the person from the automobile as smoothly as possible, there was always the chance a sudden jolt would pull the ladder out of the performer’s hands, male or female.
Davis was an experienced wing walker and parachutist but had not yet made a name for herself. Her ill-fated transfer effort was an audition of sorts for a job with the Ruth Law Flying Circus. A successful ladder transfer would have gotten her hired with the celebrated Law, which in 1921 was as good as it got for a wing walker. Davis wanted to prove to Law—and the air circus world—that she could accomplish the difficult transfer stunt and contribute to the show.
Law agreed to provide the equipment and the opportunity; she drove her own open automobile with Davis in the rear seat. Law arranged for an aircraft, most likely a Curtiss Jenny, dangling a rope ladder from its landing gear, to fly over the automobile down a stretch of nearby road. After several practice runs, the aircraft lined up with Law’s automobile on a long road and slowed to about 40 mph until it was directly over Davis.
Darkness was approaching but, according to a statement given by Law afterward, Davis insisted on going through with the stunt. Law said that Davis stood up on the automobile seat and gripped the bottom rung of the ladder on the first try. But, as the aircraft pulled up to lift Davis into the air, she lost her grip and fell to the ground in front of the many spectators that had gathered along the road. Davis died later that day in a Monmouth, New Jersey hospital from head injuries. She was twenty-three years old.
The New York Times sent a reporter to cover the accident, perhaps only because the renowned Ruth Law was involved. Law repeated to the reporter something Davis had said earlier that day. It amounted to an oral résumé and reveals much about the gutsy young wing walker.
“There is nothing on land or in the air that I am afraid of,” Davis had told Law. “I have been flying for the last two years and doing all sorts of stunts in the air and parachute jumping. Now I want to do something different, something that nobody else does, at least that no other woman does. If I can learn to take the leap from an automobile to an airplane I ought to be a big attraction to your (Law’s) company.”
The Times story covering Davis’s brave attempt and death was soon forgotten. The clipping remained buried in the Times file morgue for almost a century until this author discovered it and was inspired to write The Crowd Pleasers.
At a time when women were reminded that their place was the kitchen or operating a sewing machine in a garment factory, Davis told that repressive world to go to hell. Wing walking beckoned to her, most likely because walking on wings was a path to money and fame. The only requirements were willingness and nerve. There was no school or license required. One learned to walk on wings by walking on wings! Frank Clarke, noted silent movie aerial daredevil and the first person to step from one aircraft to another in flight, believed that no one knew exactly where wing walkers came from. He said many times, “They just appear.”
In 1922, one year after Madeline Davis was killed, a wing walker named Lillian Amelia Boyer became the first woman to successfully perform the automobile to airplane transfer. She repeated it hundreds of times between 1921 and 1929 and lived to be eighty-eight years old.
Ruth Law retired from flying quite unexpectedly in March 1922, though exactly why is unclear. One explanation is that her husband Charles Oliver, who managed Law’s thriving air circus, grew so concerned for her safety that he called the newspapers and announced her retirement—without her knowledge or consent. Another version is that Law made the decision herself. She had been distraught over the death of her friend and fellow stunt pilot Laura Bromwell at an airshow in June 1921. It’s just conjecture, but perhaps being a part of and witnessing Davis’s death four months later was the final bit of incentive Law needed to give up the flying circus business. Law died in 1970 at the age of eighty-three.
12
OUT OF THE NIGHT SKY
IT’S not likely to do so ever again, but the United States military once turned night war games into a spectator sport. Parachute flares lit up the “battle area” for an estimated twenty-five thousand spectators. Vendors sold hot dogs. No carnival promoter could have staged it better.
In September 1922, the U.S. Army Air Service held night-bombing maneuvers at Mitchel Field on the Hempstead Plains of Long Island, New York. The games were open to the public, part of a campaign to draw support for military aviation, which had been cut to the bone by the demobilization of the military following World War One.
People came from all over to watch the “Red Army” engage the “Blue Army” in a battle fought with aircraft dropping fake bombs that landed on fake fortifications defended by fake anti-aircraft and machine guns. The Red Army’s mission was to bomb and destroy the Mitchel Field fortifications of the Blue Army, after which the Red Army would land fifty thousand make-believe troops on Long Island.
Searchlight beams scoured the sky, attempting to target attacking bombers and fighters, most of which were World War One surplus planes. If a searchlight zeroed in on an enemy aircraft, it was considered “shot down.” Vanquished flyers were on an honor system. The games experimented with and tested some of the latest military gadgets, including, “a new and unique method of transmitting observation data from aeroplane to firing battery,” typical ponderous military jargon for “two-way radio.”
Minutes after the war games ended late in the evening and while the military hosts were complimenting themselves on a job well done, a large multi-engine Martin NBS-1 biplane bomber dove out of the night sky under full power. It crashed and burned just south of Mitchel Field. The pilot, Lt. Raymond E. Davis, and five others were killed. Davis’s passengers were not crew members, but military personnel taking advantage of a recently-issued order that allowed them to ride on Air Service aircraft. Miraculously, no one on the ground was injured.
Martin NBS-1 Bomber similar to the one that crashed at Mitchel Field.
The New York Times was on hand to cover the exercise, probably intended as a feature story. In an instant, feature story turned to news; the reporter found himself sorting out an airplane crash. He scrambled around in the dark and confusion to learn as much as he could, hoping to find someone who had witnessed the fiery end of the six-ton bomber.
The first sign that there might have been more to the accident than first appeared came from a civilian, who told the reporter that the doomed bomber was seen performing “figure eights” just before it fell out of the sky. Another civilian witness claimed that after the war games ended but prior to the crash, some of the Air Service pilots “were taking up passengers and performing stunts in a ‘flying circus’ atmosphere for the entertainment of the crowd.”
Mitchel Field Adjutant Captain Ira C. Eaker—destined to become a famous general in the next world war—did his job, namely, a public relations tap dance for the Times reporter. Eaker insisted the Martin had gone down during the war games while flying an observation mission. He said Davis had taken off only five minutes before the crash and that something must have gone wrong with the aircraft. Davis and his passengers were unfortunate victims of night war games. End of interview.
Captain Eaker’s efforts to control the information flow that night were in vain. The spectators knew a flying circus when they saw one and would not be silenced, certainly not with a newspaper reporter on the scene.
Had Lt. Davis, who shot down a German aircraft in World War One and was later shot down over the battlefields of France and taken prisoner, become bored with the silly war games? If so, who could blame him? His “observation mission” in a cumbersome bomber barely able to get out of its own way would not have offered much excitement. Davis was not part of the attacking enemy force, so he had no reason to dodge the searchlight beams with “figure eights” or the “steep turns” observed by eyewitnesses. Had he simply got caught up in the “flying circus” and asked a bit too much of his aircraft? Did he try to put on a show for his passengers, some of whom had likely never flown before?
Air Service investigators—military flying accidents, unlike civilian accidents of the day, were investigated—called a number of witnesses in the days following the accident. All were military men. Their testimony survives in an official report of the investigation. A pilot with time in the Martin bomber testified that it was a “mean machine to fly.” Furthermore, he said, it was difficult to see a physical horizon from the cockpit, especially at night, and that the Martin’s artificial horizon was “very sluggish” responding to changes in attitude. Worse, the instruments were not illuminated.
The possibility that the crash may have been the result of a “flying circus atmosphere,” as per quotes in the Times story, was never mentioned in the course of the investigation. In fact, no civilian spectators were invited to testify. The only non-military input was a letter from the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce of America, which submitted a theory of a member present that night. The theory attributed the crash to fog that may have confused Davis.
Investigators concluded that Davis had lost altitude with each turn until he struck the ground, an apparently common and forgivable blunder in a Martin NBS-1 bomber at night, given the poor visibility from the cockpit and unlighted, primitive attitude instruments. Davis was cleared of any misconduct and the accident was declared to have occurred “in the line of duty and through no willful neglect of the pilot.”
The Mitchel Field investigation may have been a cover-up, but a defensible cover-up, at least from the distance of a hundred years. The last thing the young Air Service needed at the time was to give government anti-aviation forces a reason to cut funding further. The officers and investigators involved were far-sighted enough to believe that America might someday have a great need for its Air Service and its bombers.
If a modern-day print or television reporter sniffed even a whiff that a military aircraft crashed because of undisciplined piloting, he or she would blow it out of all proportion; the piece would run full-width above the fold on Page One in large type and lead the evening newscasts for a week. But once, long ago in a different age, both the New York Times and the Army Air Service gave war veteran Lt. Raymond E. Davis the benefit of the doubt.
The Martin NBS-1 enjoyed brief fame as the aircraft General Billy Mitchell called upon in 1921 to sink the war-prize German battleship SMS Ostfriesland, proving that nothing on the sea was safe from air attack. The Martin also knew humiliation when it was ignominiously disguised as a World War One German bomber in the 1927 silent movie Wings. Even though the Martin was an 85 mph gentle giant, it served a noble purpose, fathering a line of not-so-gentle American bombers soon to follow.
; 13
FIFTY FEET?
EARLY pilots stayed close to their home airfields, much as early mariners were reluctant to leave the comfort of the shoreline. But when the first pioneer airman took off from one place and landed in another—whether by chance or design—there was no turning back. The airplane proved it could travel; a shrinking world beckoned.
The first air-to-air refueling to suggest that someday it might come in handy—for instance, allowing B-52s to reach Russia in nuclear retaliation—took place in July 1923, when the U.S. Army Air Service equipped a war-weary de Havilland DH-4 biplane with extra fuel and a refueling hose. It successfully fed gasoline to another DH-4 flying below it, resulting in a seven-hour flight. That same year, several long-distance flights were made possible through the use of aerial refueling.
The novel technique became something of an air circus attraction. On November 18, 1923, at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas, the Air Service staged an air refueling demonstration for the public. As was the case in the disastrous war games on Long Island the year before, the refueling demo was an effort to gain support for military aviation.
De Havilland DH-4s were again employed, chiefly because the fuel tank was located, conveniently as well as disturbingly, between the tandem open cockpits, an arrangement not seen before or since and tantamount to an automobile gas tank placed in the glove compartment. The fuel tank placement had a lot to do with the DH-4’s reputation as “The Flaming Coffin.” Fire hazard aside, the DH-4’s fuel tank location between the two cockpits made it ideally suited for pioneering attempts at aerial refueling. A crewman in the back cockpit of both the higher and lower aircraft manipulated the refueling hose.