by Carol Baxter
Each woman was flying a flimsy machine driven by an erratic engine and would inevitably encounter trouble. Each stage would test her proficiency as a pilot, her mathematical skill as she calculated routes, her spatial aptitude as she read maps, and her ability to sense trouble and calmly deal with it. Each stage would also test her emotional resilience and determination, not only because of the stress associated with racing and dangling prize money, but because of the inevitable lack of sleep and the difficult flying conditions. As the race start drew closer, each woman was asking herself how she would be judged—indeed how she would judge herself—when she arrived at Cleveland. If, of course, she made it.
Chapter Seventeen
As 2 pm neared on Sunday, 18 August 1929, more than 20,000 people crowded the edges of the Clover Field aerodrome and swarmed over a neighbouring hill, eager to watch the start of this world-first air race. Most of the derbyists’ planes had been hangared elsewhere overnight so the spectators saw the planes flying in from different directions. One by one they glided down and took their places in two horizontal rows. The spectators saw Chubbie and the other women climb out and inspect their planes one last time: fuel valves, stabiliser adjustments, flying wires, ailerons. Some gave their machines an affectionate pat—almost a ‘touch wood’ caress—before heading over to register their arrival.
Microphones installed on the landing field allowed the derbyists to speak to the crowds before the race began. The pilot everyone wanted to hear was Amelia Earhart. Similarly to Charles ‘Lucky Lindy’ Lindbergh, she was worshipped by the public—although she hated the adulation. Humble and self-effacing, she believed she hadn’t earned it. ‘I was just baggage, a sack of potatoes,’ she had told the press after spending the entire Atlantic flight in the passenger seat. She also knew that the Earhart mystique that entranced the world was merely the product of a clever publicity campaign. She was determined to achieve success through her own aviation skills, so she would know—in her heart at least—that she was worthy of the public’s adoration. Her success, or otherwise, in the derby would answer many questions that had long troubled her.
An ardent feminist, Amelia regularly used her pre-eminent position to advocate for the equality of women and for the welfare of her sister aviators. As the Santa Monica spectators hung on her every word, she told the world, ‘I believe it will mean more for all of us to get through to Cleveland safely than to break records.’
Although the female derbyists were competing against each other for the prizes and accolades, there were significant differences between them and male air race competitors. Not only did the women have a deep concern for each other’s wellbeing, each of them was determined to prove that she was as skilled and capable as any male pilot and deserved equal consideration in employment opportunities.
Marvel Crosson, with the optimistic number 1 painted on her new Travel Air (she was the first to register for the derby), had long talked about the problems facing female aviators. The raven-haired twenty-five-year-old ran an aviation business in San Diego, acting as a purchasing agent for her brother, a commercial aviator in Alaska. Not only had she piloted planes across the hazardous expanses of the frozen north, she had recently set the women’s altitude record at 23,996 feet. Yet, despite the considerable acclaim for her business sense and aviation abilities, she still encountered prejudice from male pilots. ‘These good fellows never forgot I was a girl!’ she said of the other San Diego pilots. ‘There was a shade of condescension in their pal-ship. They acted as though it was a pleasant thing for a girl to be interested in flying, but “just among us men” it was of no importance. I could feel the sex line drawn against me, in spite of the fact that they were splendid fellows and pals of my brother Joe.’
She and the other derbyists wanted to be paid to fly, not to be a token distraction. Not only would the derby be a personal quest for success, the women hoped that they as a group—as a gender—would show the aviation world how capable female aviators truly were.
The women standing behind the microphones at Clover Field were dressed in a range of styles and colours: coveralls, knickerbockers and puttees, moleskin coats, the occasional skirt. Chubbie wore white coveralls with a pair of black-strapped, high-heeled shoes peeping out from underneath them. She wasn’t trying to be feminine: the heels helped increase her reach, both on the ground and in the cockpit, where they provided leverage.
After the ceremonies were completed, they headed back to their motley collection of aircraft, which ranged in size from Amelia’s big five-passenger Lockheed Vega monoplane to Chubbie’s tiny Fleet biplane.
Edith Foltz’s Eaglerock Bullet monoplane, one of the light planes in Chubbie’s division, was attracting considerable attention from the spectators and other derbyists. A revolutionary design, it was the first aircraft to be built with retractable landing gear. It hadn’t yet gained its nickname, the ‘Killer Bullet’.
Edith, Amelia, Chubbie and the other female pilots climbed into their cockpits. Some carried so many bouquets and good luck charms that they joked that their planes would be too heavy to take off.
Chubbie sat there scanning her instrument panel and glancing at her map, wondering if she had missed anything. As the hot Californian sun beat down on her, she licked parched lips and wiped sweaty hands on her coveralls. She wriggled to get a comfortable perch on the compulsory parachute under her bottom—it felt as hard as a rock—and wished that the derby officials would hurry up and start the race.
The light planes were in the front row, with Phoebe Omlie scheduled to take off first and Chubbie second, the order in which their registration papers had been received. The other planes would follow at one-minute intervals. Only nineteen of the twenty registered planes were lined up. Mary Haizlip’s plane hadn’t yet arrived in Santa Monica, although she hoped to join the race the following day.
Humourist Will Rogers was at the airfield to farewell the derbyists. As he looked at the planes squatting on the landing field and thought about their female pilots, he mused out loud, ‘It looks like a Powder Puff Derby to me.’ The remark wasn’t intentionally sexist, just one of his witty word images, but the name stuck. Thereafter, the women’s air derby would be known colloquially as the Powder Puff Derby.
As the engines throbbed, a hush settled over the crowd. At 2 pm the crack of the starting pistol—fired in Cleveland and relayed by radio across the country—echoed across the aerodrome, the signal the race authorities were waiting for. The starter official began his countdown by dropping, or swiping downwards, the red flag nine times. Phoebe’s engine throttled to a crescendo. When the red and white flags dropped together—the go signal—her plane zoomed down the runway and soared into the air, accompanied by a bellow of elation from the watching crowds.
Chubbie’s eyes focused on the starter official. One red flag, two . . . When both flags dropped together, she too hurtled down the runway.
Over the following seventeen minutes, the remaining planes took to the air. Like a swarm of dragonflies, they darted across the narrow coastal plain and headed towards the ranges, their tiny forms soon lost in the distant haze.
Except for one plane. Amelia’s orange Vega had taken off and then banked back so she could return to the landing field. Her starter mechanism had shortcircuited and fumes from burning rubber filled her cabin.
Mechanics dashed to her plane and made hasty repairs. When she took off again, her supporters could only hope that the lost thirteen minutes would not prove critical in determining her final race result.
San Bernardino, a mere seventy miles away, was their first stop. The California sun baked them every mile of their journey. But visibility was good, so it was easy flying.
Phoebe Omlie, in her red-and-yellow closed-cockpit Monocoupe, was first over the finishing line, making it clear she was a strong contender for line honours in Chubbie’s division. Although some of the press had snidely dismissed all the female pilots as ‘Atlantic fliers or housewives’, Phoebe was one of the derbyists w
ho made their living from the aviation industry.
The twenty-six-year-old had been the first woman to obtain both an American transport licence and an airplane mechanic’s licence. She was a daredevil at heart. While still in her teens, she had danced the Charleston on the wings of airborne planes and hung from a trapeze secured only by her teeth. She had earned a Hollywood stunt movie deal after taking out the record for the highest female parachute jump. She had also set the world’s female altitude record in 1928, although fellow derbyist Marvel Crosson had afterwards beaten it. Recent crashes had left her body badly broken, forcing her to walk with a cane, however she refused to give up flying. She had almost been eliminated from the race in the days before its commencement when nightfall and an empty fuel tank forced her down in a Santa Monica hayfield. An officious sheriff dismissed her explanation and arrested her for suspected drug smuggling. It took Amelia Earhart’s intervention—and a threat to call President Hoover—before Phoebe was released.
The fastest time in the heavy division was flown by Florence Barnes, nicknamed ‘Pancho’ after a life-altering trip to Mexico. Pancho was flying a new Travel Air, rated by the company as the third fastest behind Marvel Crosson’s and Louise Thaden’s. The twenty-eight-year-old was the most outrageous of the group, a cigar-chomping, cussing barnstormer and stunt pilot whose wealthy family had married her off to a clergyman in a desperate attempt to curb her wild ways. An affair introduced her to the joys of sex. Later in life, she would run a private club for air force men, naming it with saucy directness as the Happy Bottom Riding Club.
Landing at San Bernardino was easiest for Phoebe and Pancho and the other early arrivals. While the authorities there had assured the race committee that the landing field would be sprinkled with water just before the derbyists arrived to prevent a dust cloud arising, they hadn’t realised that cars and trucks would converge on the landing field and park around its perimeters, generating their own dust cloud.
Opal Kunz was the first to experience trouble. Blinded by the dust, she was ten feet out in her altitude calculations and landed heavily, damaging her undercarriage. Neva Paris, following Opal in, saw the blue-and-orange plane stranded in the middle of the landing strip. Swerving her own plane, she came in diagonally at a high speed, yet managed to execute a perfect landing. Amelia, coming in behind them, overshot the strip and looked like she might plunge into the crowd. As the spectators scattered, a path opened for her plane. She brought it to a halt just before reaching the perimeter.
One of the nineteen pilots failed to reach San Bernardino. Mary von Mach, a less experienced pilot than most of the others, had the ill luck to be targeted by a bunch of male redneck aviators who wanted to ‘escort’ her to her destination. When one buzzed her plane as if to start a dogfight, she turned tail and fled. The other derbyists signed a petition allowing her to start again from Santa Monica the next day.
Chubbie, the second to take off, was the second last to arrive. Despite the best efforts of San Bernardino’s Exchange Club, she had lost her way. The men had climbed onto the flat top of a theatre and painted ‘San Bernardino’ in twelve-foot-high aluminium letters. Nearby they had painted two arrows, one pointing towards the airport and the other to magnetic north. In the words of one proud painter, ‘Even an aviator with the blind staggers couldn’t miss it.’
Tired, nervous, stressed, Chubbie wandered in the afternoon heat as far as Redland, five miles beyond San Bernardino, before realising her error. By the time she found her way back, she had been flying for well over an hour and was the last in the time-elapsed rankings by twenty minutes. One pressman sniggered, ‘She could have made it as quickly in an automobile.’
That night they were treated to a banquet. Marvel, Amelia and some of the other pilots gave short speeches. Later, they watched the film The Flying Fool starring their own Pancho Barnes. Although delighted to see their friend on the silver screen, they would have appreciated a quieter night as they had a 4 am wake-up call. So they were especially annoyed when they returned to their hotel and discovered that they would have oversee their planes’ servicing before they could get any sleep.
Then came more bad news. They were locked in a battle with the race organisers.
The derbyists had only received their final race itinerary the day before the race began. When they saw that Calexico, California, was one of their landing places, they complained to the Santa Monica race authorities that its runway was too short for the heavier planes. Recognising the merit of their complaint, the Santa Monica officials agreed that they could bypass Calexico and stop instead at Yuma, Arizona. Accordingly, some of the derbyists organised to have deliveries of oil, fuel and spare parts sent to the Yuma airfield.
However, when the Cleveland authorities were informed of the itinerary change, the race committee chairman, Floyd J. Logan, wired the San Bernardino race authorities to say that the derbyists must stick to the original route. If they didn’t, they would be disqualified.
The women couldn’t understand Logan’s obduracy. Surely anyone with even a smidgeon of flying experience would understand their concern. Heavy planes. Short runway. Dangerous combination.
Hot-blooded Pancho would have none of it. At midnight, she roused the women from their beds so they could sign a petition. It began: ‘We, the undersigned pilots in the women’s air derby, hereby declare we will go no farther than this point unless routed by or through Yuma instead of Calexico.’ Chubbie was the sixth to add her signature.
This battle could easily have fractured the rapport developing between the women. Instead, it unified them under a powerful leader. To an outsider, Amelia might have seemed the group’s obvious leader because of her international reputation, her calm measured authority, and her extremely heavy Vega. However, an explosive implacable force is sometimes required to make authority figures take notice of dissatisfaction in the ranks. Rich and spirited Pancho, who had nothing to lose either financially or socially, was a natural for the role. Her passion and righteous anger united the women against their common foe.
A mass walk-out wasn’t what the race committee wanted. Dr Fred Ayers, chairman of the San Bernardino race committee, telephoned Logan to inform him of the petition and strike ultimatum. Logan refused to budge. He claimed that the route had been chosen three weeks earlier and that, while he was vitally concerned for the pilots’ welfare, he would accept no itinerary changes. Then he snapped a goodbye and left his telephone off the hook.
It was 2 am by this time and Ayers was desperate. He phoned Clifford Henderson and explained the seriousness of the situation. Henderson agreed to go at once to Logan’s house and negotiate a compromise. At 2.30 am, word came through that the derbyists would be permitted to bypass Calexico so long as they flew low enough over the checkpoint to allow the race authorities to read their numbers.
Some of the derbyists had already had an hour or two of sleep, others none at all. They would get little more because of their early wake-up call. Logan’s intransigence meant that these female pilots, who hadn’t benefitted from the intense military training given to most of the world’s elite male pilots, would have to fly over rugged mountain ranges and hot desert floors while suffering from sleep deprivation. It was a recipe for trouble if ever there was one.
Chapter Eighteen
Grumbling about their lack of sleep and muttering imprecations at the slumbering race committee chairman, the derbyists headed to the airport early the following morning. As they concentrated on their critical pre-flight checks, Ruth Elder noticed she had a serious problem. A mechanic had poured fuel into her oil tank. She wasn’t looking as glamorous as usual when she vented her anger and frustration. She didn’t know if there would be enough time to clean and refill the tank before she was scheduled to take off.
The departure schedule was in the reverse order to their arrival, an advantage for Chubbie because of her late landing. She felt sorry for the pilots who were scheduled to take off last. As the ground was still ankle-deep in dust, the
first few planes would churn it up so badly that the swirling particles would reduce visibility for those at the tail end. Even more dangerously, dust could be sucked into the filters and intakes, clogging and damaging an engine’s internals to the point that it could fail.
The women’s machines soon squatted one behind the other in an orderly row with their propellers ticking over. White-coated officials scuttled around the field carrying flags and stopwatches and official paperwork. At 6.45 am, the starter stood near the first plane and lifted his flag. One by one the women zoomed down the runway and took off. Ruth Elder was so eager to get going she made a false start. Blanche Noyes’ attendant forgot to remove her plane’s wheel chocks until a boy said, ‘Say, mister, you better pull those big blocks out or she’ll never get to Cleveland.’
Fuelled by adrenaline, Chubbie and the other pilots flew off into the haze of the eastern sunrise. For the light-plane pilots, it was better to head towards the Banning Pass, a wide windswept cutting between the San Gorgonio and San Jacinto mountain ranges that served as the gateway to the Imperial Valley on the eastern slopes. From there they would travel south-east to Calexico, which lay on the Mexican border.
Others like Louise and Marvel and Amelia, who were flying aircraft with more powerful engines, decided to save time by climbing above the Santa Rosa Mountains on a more direct route. Amelia was leading the derbyists as she buzzed the checkpoint at Calexico airport at 7.28 am and then headed east across the desert towards Yuma, Arizona.
Claire Fahy was coming third of the six light planes in Chubbie’s division when she set off from San Bernardino in her Travel Air biplane. She was just about to fly over the Calexico landing field when she heard an alarming noise: the twang of a bracing wire snapping in two. Her biplane’s upper and lower wings were joined together by struts and multi-strand metal bracing wires. If one strand frayed, the others would hold the wings together and maintain the plane’s structural integrity until it could be landed and repaired. But when Claire heard the bracing wire snapping, she knew that her plane had just been transformed from an airborne wonder into a potentially deadly coffin. She had no time to wonder how a stranded-metal wire could snap in two before she heard that distinctive twang for a second time. She pushed her plane’s nose towards the ground for an emergency landing. ‘I must have had a horseshoe about me somewhere,’ she would later tell reporters, ‘for the fact that I was over the field surely saved my life.’
