The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller

by Carol Baxter

  She was circling the tracks the next morning when the Comet came into sight. Swooping down, she kept pace with it for a while, but once more it pulled ahead. Again, the fireman and engineer announced their triumph with a taunting wave and toot.

  After her third day of defeat, it was war. She was determined to beat the annoying Comet. Each day she waited until the train came into sight. Down she pounced and the race was on.

  Her vented frustration became the source of much amusement among her fellow pilots. They made bets on her likely success. The look on her face when she landed each day was answer enough. Those who bet in her favour inevitably lost.

  Early in April 1929, she passed all her tests and was granted a United States private pilot’s licence. With her return to New York, the daily battle ended, but she didn’t forget her foes. She wrote to the railway company complimenting them on the train’s operation and the crew’s friendliness. In reply, she received an invitation to ride in the locomotive with the horn-blowing engineer, a charming gentleman who told her how much he had relished their daily skirmishes.

  While Chubbie was gaining her pilot’s licence and Bill was attempting to complete the Caribbean Circle, the Southern Cross disappeared in outback Western Australia. Kingsford Smith and his crew were eventually discovered alive, but decidedly unwell; however, his friends Keith Anderson and Robert Hitchcock died after the Kookaburra crash-landed while searching for them. A newspaper circulation war raged in Australia’s capital cities at this time and a desk-bound editor decided to boost his newspaper’s sales by printing the claim that the Southern Cross’s disappearance had been a publicity stunt. Thus began the Coffee Royal Affair, so named because one of Kingsford Smith’s crew had attempted to make light of their dire situation by joking that at least they had Coffee Royal (coffee and brandy) to drink while they waited to be rescued.

  Chubbie and Bill found themselves caught up in this drama when the press revealed that the Kookaburra had had a faulty compass, and that the compass had originally come from the Red Rose. Reportedly, Bill had asked its purchaser if he could keep the compass because it had saved his life; but Robert Hitchcock, who had been the Red Rose’s Sydney-based mechanic, had instead passed the compass to his solicitor, saying that Bill and Chubbie owed him wages. When he needed a compass for the rescue mission, he had collected it from his solicitor and had taken it on board the Kookaburra.

  When the news reached Chubbie and Bill that Australia thought their compass was largely responsible for the aviators’ deaths, they were devastated. They wrote a letter to the Australian press saying that they had paid Mr Hitchcock a liberal salary and had asked repeatedly for the compass to be sent to them. The compass had worked perfectly for their own travels, so they wondered if the aviators had failed to properly compensate it when they fitted it into the Kookaburra. A newly installed compass required its magnets to be readjusted because of the different amounts of magnetism in each plane. ‘We greatly regret the tragic manner in which the two brave men met their end, but feel strongly on the subject of being held responsible in any way.’

  At the subsequent inquiry, a mechanic testified that the Red Rose’s compass had been working perfectly when the Kookaburra flew from Richmond to Broken Hill. He suspected that the problem began at Broken Hill when a thief stole the steel toolkit and spare parts from the plane, which would have affected the compass’s magnets. The inquiry exonerated the Southern Cross’s crew of instigating a publicity stunt; however, the mud that had already stuck to Kingsford Smith wouldn’t wash away until after his death.

  The baseless attack and its consequences were a warning to Chubbie and Bill of the dangers celebrities faced from a press more interested in sensationalism and sales than fairness, justice and simple honesty. In a strange parallel, Chubbie would face a similar backlash as her own star rose in America.

  Chapter Sixteen

  An air race solely for women? Elizabeth McQueen was intrigued by the idea. Although not a pilot herself, she was founder and president of the Women’s International Association of Aeronautics and had long supported and promoted women in aviation. She knew that male pilots had been racing against each other ever since the Wrights’ ugly duckling had hopped off the ground a quarter century previously. Since women had been piloting planes for nearly as long as men, wasn’t it time that the world’s female aviators had an air race of their own?

  The person to approach was Clifford Henderson, the man charged with reviving the fortunes of the flagging National Air Races. Henderson was both a shrewd automobile salesman and a pilot. When he had a customer on the hook, he would reel them in by taking them up to the heavens and bringing them back down again. Afterwards, he had no need to point out how mundane their earthbound existence was. Instead he would mention that in their new automobile they would also experience the thrum of the engine, the wind caressing their hair, the thrill of speed . . .

  He was a very successful automobile salesman.

  The previous year he had run the National Air Races at Los Angeles and had shown the world that he was also an artistic director of extraordinary talent. Now he was turning those talents towards the 1929 National Air Races at Cleveland.

  Henderson envisioned an aerial circus that would outdo the great P.T. Barnum himself. What were dancing horses and spinning acrobats compared to his own vision of ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’? When he closed his eyes he could hear the growl of aero engines and smell the gasoline fumes. He could see the kaleidoscope of colours as airborne chariots sprinted for the finish line. He could feel the heart-stopping tension as airborne gladiators darted around pylons while locked in mortal combat with their foes. He could even sense the silent, almost menacing, presence of the huge German dirigible, Graf Zeppelin, looming overhead as it paused on its round-the-world trip. He wouldn’t create a show that spectators merely enjoyed; he planned to intoxicate their senses with an aerial extravaganza.

  If he could entice the world’s famous aviators by offering a large enough purse, their names would attract the crowds who paid the entrance fees that financed the show. The elite aviators were the showstoppers whose antics would keep the audience spellbound. Some flew because it was their only source of income. Others were circus artists or show-offs or cowboys. But the best had an intrinsic understanding of the principles of flight and were so attuned to their planes that the relationship almost transcended the physical. And their presence was so magnetic that just being near them both awed and inspired.

  When these aviators registered to participate, the top aviation companies would sponsor them and would be inspired to improve their aircraft designs in the hope of achieving a winning result and a marketing edge. The aviation companies would then purchase display stands in Cleveland’s newly built exhibition hall to market their wares. Hopefully, the crowds drawn to watch the air show would make their way into the 200,000 square-foot hall with its spangle-covered chandeliers and sateen-draped walls. They would gape at the jewel-studded model airplane worth $400,000 and the full-size aircraft suspended from the ceiling. Some would be tempted to exchange the vicarious thrill of watching for the buzz of actually flying and would purchase lessons from the flying schools manning their own stalls in the exhibition hall. Pilots—visitors as well as racers—would head over to the stands of the race-winning aviation companies with a view to upgrading their planes.

  The previous National Air Races had shown that air shows were not merely avenues for financing aviators and thrilling spectators. Rather, the flow-on effect was to provide a bridge between the old days of barnstorming and the serious future of commercial aviation. Critical to any air show’s success, though, were the drawcards that would attract the public. So what better event to add to his aerial extravaganza than the world’s first air race flown solely by women?

  The female air derby was announced in May 1929, a month after Chubbie obtained her licence. It would be held in conjunction with the Cleveland races the following August. The pilots were to fly from San
ta Monica, California, to Cleveland, Ohio, a distance of nearly 3000 miles in nine days. The female derby’s major sponsor was the National Exchange Club, a chain of 800 branches that aimed to promote the ‘exchange of ideas’—among its strictly male membership. The prize pool for the derby winners was an appealing $8000, while cash prizes for different stages of the journey brought the pot of gold at the end of this aviation rainbow to a highly motivating $25,000.

  Fourteen of the country’s top female aviators immediately registered their interest, Amelia Earhart and Ruth Elder among them. Tall willowy Amelia, nicknamed ‘Lady Lindy’ because of her physical resemblance to America’s most famous aviator, was the country’s pre-eminent aviatrix; the ‘first woman to fly the Atlantic’, albeit as a passenger. Ruth Elder—the beauty of the bunch, according to the press—had also attempted to cross the Atlantic as a passenger. Her jaunt had ended in an ignominious ocean ditching that simultaneously launched her Hollywood career.

  The derby wasn’t only open to American aviators. Irish-born Lady Mary Heath, the first British woman to hold a commercial flying licence, and Germany’s Thea Rasche also put up their hands. Lady Mary later cancelled her registration, however Thea, known as Germany’s ‘Flying Fraulein’, would be among the women to line up at Santa Monica on 18 August.

  Chubbie was determined to join the derby. She had arrived in America filled with plans and dreams but none had yet reached fruition. To most in the aviation world, she was just a glory-seeker, one of the many hangers-on who used the industry to gain fame and fortune. She realised that if she wanted to be taken seriously, she needed to prove she was a serious pilot. Winning a place in the air derby would show the aviation world that she was up there with the best.

  She registered for the derby and then put out feelers for a plane. She was introduced to Lawrence Bell, vice president and general sales manager of Reuben Fleet’s Consolidated Aircraft Company. Bell was one of the industry’s best salesmen. He saw the airways as highways and recognised that, if the public could be convinced that ‘even a woman’ could fly, the potential market for aircraft sales would double. He listened with interest to her sales pitch about the marketing value of having a Fleet plane in an air derby that would generate a huge amount of publicity (more than all the male derbies held in 1929 combined, as it happened). He offered her a new open cockpit, two-seat Fleet biplane equipped with a Kinner five-cylinder radial engine. Before she could take possession though, the plane had to be adapted for racing and practically rebuilt around her small frame. Among other things, the factory had to add special extensions to the rudder pedals to enable her to reach them.

  To get to the starting post, she would need to fly from the company’s Buffalo base in New York State all the way to California—alone. She had never flown such a long distance before, not while piloting a plane at least. During the Red Rose flight, Bill had planned the route, Bill had undertaken all the take-offs and landings, Bill had managed the controls during rough weather. He had also been there as a comforting presence during the long, lonely and sometimes terrifying hours in the air. Having to leave him in New York and cross the country by herself was an intimidating thought. She had seen firsthand from the Red Rose flight how much could go wrong. Although she had learnt a lot from Bill and from her flight training about the mechanical side of aviation, she didn’t have enough skills to solve all the problems she might encounter during such an arduous flight.

  Additionally, attempting to navigate unknown territory with only a map on her lap and a compass on the instrument panel was never easy. It was hard for many non-aviators to comprehend the difficulties. Cross-winds would nudge her plane this way and that so she would have to make regular course corrections. Her compass sat in alcohol, so turbulence would make it jump around and it always lagged in registering her plane’s change of direction. Moreover, instead of pointing north towards the plane’s nose when the plane itself was travelling north, it pointed downwards towards the earth’s magnetic pole. Thus, she would rarely be able to navigate by compass alone. Over and over again she would need to glance at the compass to see if she was heading in the right direction then lean over the cockpit—first one side, then the other—to examine the terrain. When she spotted a noteworthy feature, she would have to find it on her map and mark it with her finger then hold her finger there until she found the next feature. This finger-plotting technique would help ensure she was travelling the right way—if there were features to be found and she identified the correct one, of course.

  On Saturday, 10 August, she pushed aside her fears and climbed into her little blue plane with its bright yellow wings to begin the 3000-plus mile journey across continental America. She aimed to fly as much of the derby route as possible—backwards, of course. Airfields were not always easy to spot so she would have an advantage if she had located and circled the landing sites before she had to find them during the pressure of the race. Of course, she could always follow the tongue-in-cheek advice of humourist Will Rogers, an aviation aficionado. He suggested that a pilot in search of an airfield should simply look for a place where two or three deadly high-tension lines intersected.

  She had informed the race authorities that she would arrive at Santa Monica in the middle of the week. The race was due to start the following Sunday so this would allow her a few spare days in case anything went wrong.

  It did. She got lost.

  There was no point cursing herself for her stupidity. Where possible she, like all pilots, endeavoured to use the ‘iron compass’ as a navigational instrument—the railroad tracks that ran as directly as possible from one town to another. However, where two or more tracks left a town, it was surprisingly easy, because of the compass issues, to follow the wrong tracks. That’s how she had become ‘momentarily disoriented’, in the pilot’s vernacular. She had followed the railroad tracks that ended up heading north towards Santa Fe, rather than west to California. Forced to land to get her bearings, she damaged her engine. She managed to take off, though, and nurse it as far as Lordsburg, New Mexico, where she wired Los Angeles for repairs and advised the race authorities that she hoped to resume her flight on Friday. It would be a tight schedule. From Lordsburg, she still had 600 miles to fly to reach the starting line.

  Amelia Earhart, Ruth Elder and some of the other derbyists had parked their planes at Santa Monica’s Clover Field aerodrome long before Chubbie had even set off from Buffalo, giving them plenty of preparation and relaxation time before the big race. By early Saturday, 17 August, sixteen of the twenty registered planes were at the aerodrome. Chubbie’s wasn’t among them. She didn’t arrive until Saturday afternoon. After her arduous transcontinental flight, she had less than twenty-four hours to overhaul her plane and to rest. It wasn’t the best way to commence a gruelling nine-day air race.

  At the aerodrome, her plane was inscribed with the number 43—her own choice—and registered with five other planes in the light division. These were the smaller, sportier planes with engines under a 510 cubic-inch displacement. The other fourteen planes formed the heavy division. Larger, faster planes, they were often used commercially and were generating the most press attention.

  Chubbie’s was the only Fleet aircraft in the derby. In fact, most of the participants’ planes were one-off models because manufacturers recognised the value of sponsoring a single pilot to showcase their company’s wares. The Travel Air Manufacturing Company, however, had seven planes in the race. Most were owned by the derbyists themselves because its light fast planes were popular among racers. Worryingly, though, trouble had already brewed in one of the Travel Air planes, that of twenty-three-year-old, tousle-haired Louise Thaden, who was being sponsored by the company itself.

  Travel Air had been forced to work swiftly to complete five new planes before the big race. Louise’s plane was last off the factory line. By the time it taxied from its Wichita hangar, there was no time for anything but a single test flight. As she started her journey to California, Travel Air co-found
er Walter Beech and his pilot followed her in a second plane to make sure everything went smoothly.

  Halfway between Tulsa and Fort Worth, Louise slipped into a groggy daze. When she finally spotted the airport ahead, she abandoned the usual landing etiquette of entering the circuit as she waited her turn, and instead barrelled straight in, much too fast, as if she were a nervous pilot making her first solo landing. After alighting from the plane, she collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

  It turned out that she was suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. For some reason, her new plane’s exhaust was being channelled back into the open cockpit. If she had remained airborne for much longer, she would have fallen unconscious and dived to her death.

  With four other brand-new Travel Air planes in the derby, Beech worried that it might be a design or manufacturing flaw rather than an idiosyncrasy in Louise’s plane. He had no time, though, to pull the plane apart and locate the problem before the race. Instead, he jury-rigged a breathing tube by running a four-inch pipe into the cockpit.

  Louise refused to be deterred by her close encounter with death. When she took off again for Santa Monica, she kept her mouth glued to the air tube, hoping that her decision to continue with such a serious defect wouldn’t be one her family would later regret.

  Neither Louise nor Chubbie nor any of the other derbyists had flown in an air race before, so they had no real comprehension of the challenges they would face. Yet at some level they were aware that this derby was more than just a race across the country to see who reached Cleveland first. When they reached the finishing line—whatever their position in the race ladder—the person who arrived there would be intrinsically different to the person who had departed from Santa Monica.