The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller

by Carol Baxter

  She didn’t make it to Wichita. Torrential rain between St Louis and Kansas City affected her engine, forcing her to land among startled sheep grazing on a private landing field in the suburbs of Kansas City. The only good news was that she had clipped half-an-hour off Laura Ingalls’ New York to Kansas City flight time.

  Fog-bound the next morning, she told the press that she had no choice but to delay her departure. She also expressed concern that the adverse weather might destroy her chances of beating Laura’s record. She kept a close eye on the weather and, when a window opened in the afternoon, she took to the sky again. Two hours later she reached Wichita, where she stopped for the night. She was forty-four minutes ahead of her rival.

  Meanwhile, Laura—now attempting a west–east record—was grounded by bad weather in Amarillo, Texas, and was unable to continue her own leg to Wichita. If the weather had been better, these two rivals for transcontinental glory would have spent the night in the same town.

  Visibility remained poor when Chubbie took off for Albuquerque, New Mexico. Laura slipped by on a parallel course. After a quick lunch and refuel, Chubbie flew to Winslow, Arizona, where she spent the night. The morning’s forecast reported strong winds along her route and heavy fog on the west coast but again she wouldn’t let it deter her. Fighting headwinds most of the way, she reached Los Angeles on 16 October in a total flight time of twenty-five hours and forty-four minutes. She had beaten Laura’s record by nearly five hours.

  ‘I’ve been up at 4.30 every morning for a week,’ the worn-out aviator told the press. ‘Now I’m going to have the luxury of sleeping in a few mornings.’

  As she rested in Los Angeles, she heard that Laura had reached New York on 18 October in twenty-five hours and thirty-five minutes, nine minutes faster than Chubbie’s east–west time. Laura’s first transcontinental record had lasted only eight days. Now Chubbie’s had been beaten in two.

  A low cloud ceiling hung over much of southern California on Sunday, 19 October, delaying Chubbie’s departure on her west–east flight. The sun was nearing its apex by the time the fog lifted enough for her to take off for Winslow. As the afternoon progressed, as the sun drifted towards the horizon, she checked her cockpit clock and her maps and calculations with increasing concern. Simple maths provided the answer to the question she didn’t want answered. She had no chance of reaching Winslow by nightfall.

  She had never made a night-time landing before. She wondered if she should try to find a closer landing field. The terrain below was dangerously rugged, with few spots to land safely in the event of trouble. If she was unable to reach a town before dusk and was forced to bail out, she might be marooned in the mountains or forests—if she survived the landing. Better to stay the course, she decided. Having landed at Winslow a few days before, she at least knew the location of the airfield.

  The sun set at 5.45 pm. She kept flying as its last lingering glow disappeared and darkness wrapped itself around her. She relied solely on her compass calculations, hoping that wind-drift hadn’t blown her off course. As the minutes passed, her fear grew.

  It was nearing 6.30 pm by the time she saw the lights of Winslow. Her intense relief soon dissipated when she flew over the town and failed to see the distinctive stretch of parallel lights. When darkness fell, the airfield officials must have concluded that she had landed elsewhere. She would have to land without any lights at all.

  During flight training, pilots were given simple instructions about night-time landings. Don’t. Not without the relevant instruments, that is. Night-time’s gloom made it frighteningly difficult to see objects—or abysses—and to judge distances. Many an aviator hadn’t lived to tell his hangar tale about an attempted landing after nightfall.

  At least her familiarity with Winslow allowed her to find the airfield, despite the darkness. A runway landing minimised her chances of smashing into unseen objects or collapsing into cavities. Nonetheless, her ability to judge the distance between her landing gear and the ground’s surface was seriously impaired. She made her assessment then braced for the impact.

  Her plane slammed into the runway and threw itself into a ground-loop, a sure sign of landing-gear damage. She hung on as it looped, waiting tensely to see if its momentum would hurl it over. Gradually, it slowed down and came to a halt. The plane was in one piece and so was she.

  When the mechanics examined her plane the next day, they said that the damaged tailskid and bent propeller could be fixed that day; however, they would have to fly in a new wheel from Los Angeles. Two days later, when the repairs were completed, she was on her way again.

  The weather refused to help her. At Albuquerque, when she mentioned her plan for a 6 am departure the next day, the officials told her to forget it. Thick fog covered Amarillo and its vicinity. It was Friday before she could continue her journey.

  Her propeller, not properly aligned after the Winslow landing, slowed her down on her flight to Wichita so she employed the aviation capital’s mechanics to straighten it. A tailwind at 5000 feet blew her to Columbus, nearly freezing her along the way. She decided to thaw out overnight and complete the final leg the following morning, Sunday, 26 October.

  Over the next few days, the country’s newspapers published photos of her standing on the wing of her plane and waving, with a delighted smile on her sunburned face. Her flight time from Los Angeles to New York was twenty-one hours and forty-seven minutes, beating Laura’s record by a decisive four hours.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  At last, a job of sorts.

  A Pittsburgh organisation, Aerial Enterprises Incorporated, wanted her to fly from Pittsburgh to Havana and back again, carrying an illuminated scroll from Pittsburgh’s mayor to Cuba’s president, General Gerardo Machado y Morales. The purpose of her trip would be to promote Pittsburgh’s potential as an air centre. America was a heavy investor in Cuba’s sugar industry; accordingly, an air route between these two cities could prove a worthwhile business venture.

  Aerial Enterprises was to pay her $1000 for the return flight, the first half to be paid when she took off from Pittsburgh—hopefully on 10 or 11 November 1930—and the second half after she reached her destination. Additionally, she was provided with an upfront payment of $250 to cover costs associated with the flight. It wasn’t enough to finance blind-flying instruments or other extras; however, she had managed without them on her transcontinental flight and hoped they wouldn’t prove necessary this time.

  She flew to Pittsburgh a few days beforehand, with Bill accompanying her, and on Sunday, 9 November, they thrilled 3000 spectators at the Butler airfield by performing spectacular aerobatics. But on Monday she advised the press that her next day’s departure had been cancelled because of poor weather. On Tuesday, when she was told that low clouds and rain covered the eastern seaboard down to the Gulf of Mexico, she grumbled, ‘I’ll be here the whole winter.’ On Wednesday, when there was no improvement, she groaned, ‘I’ll be here for the rest of my life.’

  The fog wasn’t the only problem. The smoke belching from the Steel City’s factories, forges and steam mills was being trapped by the hunkering cloud layer, compounding the visibility issues.

  Thursday was the 13th. A Pittsburgh Press journalist decided to find out if she would risk such a trip on the 13th. Before he could pose the question though, Chubbie laid down some interview ground-rules. ‘Please, don’t ask me the bunk.’ At his blank look, she explained what ‘the bunk’ was: ‘Do you like babies? Do you cook? Do you admire the American housewife? What do you think of aviation’s future?’

  Suspecting she would consider his own question bunk, he asked it anyway.

  She responded dismissively, ‘The number thirteen means absolutely nothing to me.’

  He thought it a surprisingly disdainful response from a 100-pound, five-foot bit of femininity who was about to fly over the Appalachians with only a compass to guide her.

  She explained that in her mind thirteen was not a bad number. She had been born on th
e 13th.

  He slipped in a question about women’s employment in the aviation industry. She replied, ‘Women are seriously handicapped by the fact that transport companies refuse them jobs as pilots on the theory that scared passengers will not ride with them.’

  It was even worse than that. Many American companies rejected female applicants on the grounds that female passengers wouldn’t trust them, as if that said it all. But the derby’s Edith Foltz, a one-time co-pilot for a charter air-transport company, had made a point of asking her female passengers how they felt about flying in a plane piloted by a woman. Far from being concerned, she reported, they were delighted.

  Chubbie told the journalist that women pilots were also more cautious than men, which was safer for plane and passenger alike, yet work opportunities were few. ‘Women’s best bet in aviation is promotional work,’ she summed up. ‘But that’s off now because of the general depression.’

  The journalist asked about her Cuban flight plans. She said that she would refuel at Jacksonville, Florida, then fly to Miami to clear customs. ‘If I have good tail winds, it will take me eleven to twelve hours. If not, it’s in the lap of the gods.’

  How would she know when it was time to head off?

  She told him that when the night weather charts indicated favourable weather she would be called at 4 am and taken to the airfield. ‘Will you be there?’ she asked disingenuously. Her eyes twinkled at his look of horror.

  As it happened, neither of them were at the airfield on Thursday or Friday or Saturday. On Sunday, the Pittsburgh Press began its update: ‘Mrs J.M. Keith Miller, who came to Pittsburgh to fly to Cuba, stayed to learn about fog.’

  Each day she waited at the airport. Each afternoon she returned to her accommodation at the Hotel Schenley—the ‘Waldorf of Pittsburgh’—the type of hotel she could only have dreamed about when she was a Melbourne journalist’s wife.

  Her reluctance to fly through bad weather led the hovering pressmen to nickname her ‘The Cautious Lady’. However, pilots understood the problem. They had a simple expression to describe it: cumulo-granite. Cloud-covered rock. It was deadly.

  One morning, when the reporters arrived at the airport, they called out to her, ‘Is the Cautious Lady getting off today?’

  ‘Not if the birds are walking on the ground,’ she replied with a laugh. ‘You boys may think I am an old woman, but my neck is not going to be broken by any fool stunt!’

  One journalist admitted that they didn’t really mind the early starts and delays because she was such a good sport.

  Meanwhile, the American press was reporting daily on Cuba’s deteriorating political situation. Elections there were generally corrupt and the losing party often revolted. General Machado y Morales, who had won the 1924 election, took control at a time of collapsing sugar prices and financial turmoil. His solution was to establish an authoritarian dictatorship. On 11 November, the day Chubbie was originally due to fly to Havana, the press advised that student riots were spreading rapidly over Cuba. Machado declared martial law on the 13th. He sent out heavily armed soldiers to patrol Havana’s streets, with orders to shoot any civilians who disobeyed them.

  She couldn’t have picked a worse time to be flying to Cuba.

  Finally, a good weather forecast. As she headed to her plane early on Wednesday, 19 November, the pressmen asked if she had any worries about her trip. She expressed continuing concern about bad weather over the mountains.

  What about the dangers of a forced water landing while crossing from Florida to Cuba?

  She pointed towards her rubber boat and said with a grin, ‘It’s for getting away from sharks.’

  At 7.42 am, her red Bullet rocketed down the runway and climbed into the Pittsburgh clouds. Just before 10 am, it landed again, forced back by a wall of fog over the Alleghenies. ‘I never saw such fog in my life,’ she grumbled. ‘It was just too much of a gamble.’ She added feelingly, ‘If it were not for the nuisance I am making of myself to these newspaper boys, I would not have minded coming back.’

  Naturally, the pressmen teased her. She was delighted to turn the tables on them the following morning, telling them that their own newspapers had reported that the same fog had thwarted the round-the-world flier Lieutenant Eric Nelson—a man!—along with passenger and mail planes.

  The treacherous fog covered the city the next morning and the next. She waited at the airport for hours before returning to her hotel for the fourteenth night. This was not the publicity she had been hoping for—the positive publicity she needed to finance her aviation career. If she remained grounded in Pittsburgh for much longer, she risked becoming the country’s laughing stock.

  On Saturday, 22 November, the weather forecasters announced that conditions along her route were the best since she had reached Pittsburgh. Considering how dreadful they had been, it wasn’t a decisive vote of confidence, but it propelled her from Pittsburgh’s clutches at 10.17 am.

  ‘The best’ proved only to be fog’s absence from the arrow heads of the Alleghenies. Instead, turbulent air over the mountains tossed her plane around as if it were as insubstantial as a cotton ball. As the ranges gentled into soft slopes, clouds the colour of cigarette ash amassed. Soon rain pounded at her cockpit, as if the Furies were demanding entry. Then a headwind tried to drive her back to Pittsburgh, back to the merciless teasing of the journalists.

  As her clock’s hour-hand inexorably progressed, she calculated that she had no chance of reaching Jacksonville by nightfall. Unwilling to tempt fate with a second night-time landing, she set down at the naval airport near Savannah, Georgia. She had so many checks and preparations to undertake that she delayed telephoning Pittsburgh until she reached her hotel at 10.30 pm.

  Her surprise at the relief in her backers’ voices changed to mortification when she discovered that they had feared the worst and had activated a search. The major air operators had asked their pilots to keep a lookout while the airports along the Atlantic seaboard had turned on their lights to guide her in.

  The last thing she had intended was for others to worry unnecessarily or to risk their lives searching for her. She vowed to make sure it never happened again.

  Bad weather plagued her again during her five-hour flight to Miami the next day. Customs held her up for another ninety minutes. When she stepped from the customs office with her clearance papers, it was as if she had finally passed all the tests and the gods had waved their magic wand. Bright sunshine. A slight breeze. Heavenly weather for flying.

  It was hard not to feel a twinge of anxiety as she ventured out alone over the Straits of Florida. As it happened, it was the easiest stretch of her journey. She landed at Havana’s airport at 4.47 pm, having taken two hours and seventeen minutes to fly from Miami. She had also set two records: the first person to fly from Pittsburgh to Cuba and the first woman to fly from Florida to Cuba.

  As she climbed from the top of her cabin, she could hear cheers and cries of ‘Bravo!’ from the waiting crowd. An airport official brought her a special welcoming cocktail. As she accepted it, she said with a laugh, ‘I’ve come a long way for this!’ Then she offered a toast to Havana and its people.

  Many American newspapers published pictures of her waving to the crowd and accepting the welcoming cocktail. Many also mentioned that another record-breaking attempt had commenced. Ruth Nichols had set off from New York for Los Angeles with the goal of breaking Chubbie’s hard-won transcontinental record.

  Chubbie’s plan to return to Pittsburgh two days later had to be abandoned, not because of the weather or the political situation, which had quietened down to some extent, but because American customs was being obstructive. Its officials pointed out that she had originally entered America on a six-month visitor’s permit and it had been extended six times. Why should they do so a seventh time? She finally managed to convince them to reissue her entry visa.

  Meanwhile, she remained apprehensive about the sea crossing, having had so many bad experiences over water. Sh
e mentioned to a journalist that she’d had a premonition her plane would go down. She couldn’t reassure herself that her plane was sound, particularly as it didn’t have all the necessary instruments to deal with difficult weather or to alert searchers in the event of trouble. Frankly, she said in a moment of exasperation, it was an un-airworthy crate that no one else would fly.

  Still, she wasn’t going to let the premonition deter her. She didn’t want to seem like a coward.

  When other aviators asked why she was so determined to complete her flight, she explained, ‘I am trying to put myself over as a commercial pilot. If I can make a flight like this in an old ship without any of the usual equipment, it ought to be an easy matter to get some company interested in using me as a regular pilot.’

  People told her she was brave, but she disagreed. ‘Everyone gives me credit for being brave and for making a go of it and I never let them think otherwise. But, really, I am afraid, desperately afraid when I’m over water or mountains or rough country. I got lost in the Alleghenies not long ago and the fog seemed to hang over me like a death shroud. I have felt many times like giving it up because I know it’s eventually going to get me. But I can’t. People would think me a coward. I guess I’ve just got to keep on until it does get me. Life at its best is short anyway so I guess I have no complaint coming.’

  During her customs-enforced delay, the window of fine weather closed. Wednesday’s planned departure had to be cancelled, Thursday’s as well. Instead of spending Thanksgiving in Pittsburgh, she was invited to the home of W.D. Pawley, president of Cuba’s primary airline, the Compañía Nacional Cubana de Aviación.

  During the afternoon, she admitted to Pawley and another aviator that she didn’t relish the thought of the next day’s water crossing. They had heard the same concern expressed by other pilots of single-engine planes and proposed that she wait until later in the day and follow a Pan American plane across the strait. She demurred. ‘I will feel alright when the sun shines tomorrow,’ she told them optimistically, ‘and will make the trip safely.’