Sky Girls

by Gene Nora Jessen

  Even so, Thaden suspected she didn’t have the fastest of the Travel Airs. Marvel Crosson had the special narrow fuselage model 2000, built specifically for racing. Her brother Joe had added some weight in the tail for a more favorable center of gravity. Insecurity mounted. No question, it had to be faster than Thaden’s.

  Pancho Barnes’s Travel Air 4000 had some hastily made changes for speed; it too had a full cowling. The Travel Air factory had rated for speed: Crosson number one, Thaden number two, Barnes number three, and Noyes number four The rest of the Travel Airs, new or old, were mostly standard.

  Nevertheless, Amelia Earhart’s beautiful, red, five-passenger Lockheed Vega monoplane was the most feared competition. She and Edith Foltz were firing up their enclosed cabin jobs, Foltz in an Alexander Eaglerock Bullet with a Kinner 5 engine. Al Mooney’s Eaglerock design had encountered some problems, but its configuration was the precursor to many later popular aircraft. Mooney was soon designing airplanes in his own name.

  Earhart was competing in the higher-powered DW class too, and Foltz was in the alternate lighter CW. They had the luxury of flying inside, out of the constant wind. Since the pilots couldn’t hear the engine sounds and the wind in the wires, skeptics said there would be a danger of missing developing mechanical problems. Others viewed enclosed cockpits as just an aberration. Foltz said to the press, “Just watch; all airplanes will be enclosed someday, and the landing gear will go up and down for flight efficiency and speed, just like my Bullet.”

  Crosson, now first for a takeoff to the west, headed into the afternoon breeze off the ocean as she taxied into position. She wiped her hands on her coveralls, carefully pushing her charts under her left leg. Her heart pounded as she consciously breathed deeply and slowly. She peered around the nose cowling, since it was impossible to see over. As the flag dropped, Marvel applied full power smoothly, and the engine roared in response. She fed in right rudder with her right foot to compensate for the torque of the revolving propeller that made the airplane want to turn left. As she gathered speed down the dusty field, the tail lifted and she was able to see ahead. It looked as if the throng was all in front of her. Crosson said a quick prayer to the engine god, for if it quit now there was no place to go except into all those onlookers. Suddenly, she was over the fence and the crowd, building climb speed, and making a 180-degree turn back toward an easterly course.

  Since Mary Haizlip didn’t arrive in time for the start, only nineteen aircraft were flagged off in one-minute intervals—two minutes sometimes, to let the dust settle. A small coterie accompanied them in the air. Wiley Post flew escort in his Lockheed Vega named Winnie Mae, and Carl Lienesch flew along in the Union Oil Company’s Travel Air.

  Both carried extra luggage for the racers. All heads were turned skyward, watching the racers fly out of sight, imagining what they were seeing and feeling. The big, round engines had the roar of a group of motorcycles—powerful, resolute, brave. Will Rogers shook his head in admiration as the courageous pilots lifted off for Cleveland, each intent on being the first one to the finish line.

  “It looks like a Powder Puff Derby to me,” he exclaimed. The reporters wrote down Rogers’s words, and, from that moment, the 1929 Women’s Air Derby became forever the Powder Puff Derby. Despite his seemingly sexist remark, Will Rogers’s admiration was sincere. The women knew it and were grateful for his support. His newspaper and radio coverage—and gift for expression—helped immortalize their race and brought worldwide esteem for their efforts.

  Thus, the Powder Puff Derby racers climbed free from the swirling dust, challenged the constraints of gravity, and with irrational confidence in their fragile aircraft and fickle engines, embarked on their great adventure.

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 1929

  Race Day 1

  SANTA MONICA TO SAN BERNARDINO

  68 MILES

  They are aviators, but they are still women. They had only been out sixty miles when they all struck and wanted to have it their way.

  Yours, Will Rogers

  Syndicated newspaper column

  The first leg was purposely kept short to leave time for all the media hysterics that preceded takeoff—all those rides to give, interviews, sponsor stroking, and airplane tinkering in the early morning. The first overnight stop, San Bernardino, was only sixty-six miles east. Marvel Crosson noted her takeoff time, made her turnaround, and took up a heading of zero seven zero degrees. There wasn’t much reason to climb looking for a tail wind, since the distance was so short. She’d probably just get up into a helping tail wind when it would be time to descend. Crosson poked her head up outside the cockpit to locate the road that, according to Messieurs Rand and McNally, should take her to the foothills town of San Bernardino. “Look sharp,” she admonished herself. “Get the right road. The basin is getting so crowded and confusing with orange groves turning into towns.” Crosson, now accustomed to Alaska, would be more comfortable out over open terrain, always watching for a good field for landing in case of engine trouble. She slouched back down again, mostly out of the hot wind. As for the glaring California sun, there was just no way to avoid it. The current heat wave had their destination at 105 degrees.

  Crosson could see a road and a railroad. She juggled the standard road map and new aeronautical chart, keeping them out of the wind while holding the control stick between her knees. The new government flying chart even indicated terrain, with the mountains off to the north. The sea-level departure point showed green, then the chart turned brown with increased elevation. The color white, which designated below sea level, extended clear from the Salton Sea all the way down to Calexico/Mexicali on the southern border. But there would be some high country to fly over first. Distinct navigational checkpoints such as lakes, rivers, towns, and railroads were noted on the new flying charts, along with compass variation lines, making navigating over unfamiliar terrain easier than it had been with only a road map. The visibility was pretty good, and if she headed right for that mountain notch up ahead she ought to stay right on course.

  It was amazing that nineteen airplanes could be headed from Santa Monica to San Bernardino only one or two minutes apart, and she could see only a couple of them in the closest proximity. Barnes’s position was worrisome. Should Crosson be farther north where Barnes was? Was she not compensating for drift from a northerly wind? “C’mon, Marvel. Why do you jump to the conclusion right away that Pancho’s on course and you’re not? Let’s have some self-confidence here. Poor ol’ Pancho is losing time by being a mile north of the course. That’s it. I’m right on.”

  Pancho Barnes, who had taken off right behind Crosson, was easing past her, then Louise Thaden did the same thing. Numbers two and four were passing her by. Those Travel Airs! Crosson was suddenly worried that she wasn’t getting full power out of her engine. At least Blanche Noyes, in number three and also a Travel Air, had failed to gain on her. As Crosson looked back to see who might be coming up, she saw a Vega with number six on the side turning around. Amelia Earhart was headed back. “I wonder what her problem is,” Crosson mused. She was holding altitude, so Crosson knew the engine must be okay. “I’d best pay attention to what I’m doing, and let Earhart take care of herself.” She was slowly gaining on Thaden.

  The light aircraft had taken off first, and with such a short distance there wasn’t a lot of jockeying for position. The excited waiting crowd cheered as the light plane division’s Phoebe Omlie arrived first at 2:32:15. The pack was pushing her.

  Louise Thaden started descending smoothly for San Bernardino, speed increasing. She knew the swirling dust ahead had to mark the landing area. Her greatest fear was that someone else’s mistake might cause her to lose time getting out of their way and going around. Everyone’s nerves were as tight as a new corset. So far so good.

  The men of the San Bernardino Exchange Club had gone so far as to paint an air marker for their important guests. After a noon luncheon at the California Hotel to plot and plan, the men had donned painters’ c
aps, gathered up brushes, and with the help of the fire department, ascended to the roof of the Fox Court Street Theater. There, the men (whom the newspaper branded “alleged” painters) drew in twelve-foot-high aluminum-colored letters the name SAN BERNARDINO, which would really put them on the map. The names of air-marked towns were underlined on the new aeronautical charts. Included in the air-mark sign was an arrow pointing to the airport, another arrow pointing to magnetic north, and a circle, indicating an airport at the end of the rainbow, or in this case, in the direction of the arrow. A satisfied painter affirmed that even “an aviator with the blind staggers couldn’t miss it.”

  Aviators appreciated air-marked roofs for verifying their position, along with towns that identified their water towers—except the ones painted in the dark of night by teenagers glorifying their graduating class and said only “Senior Class of ’27.” Many an aviator had dropped down to read a town’s name on its water tower only to be disappointed at high schoolers’ handiwork.

  The San Bernardino airport supporters took pride in Federal Airport. Mr. R. H. Mack of the chamber of commerce pointed out that the airfield was planted in grass, which would be sprinkled immediately prior to the first airplane’s arrival. An on-site well flowing one hundred inches of water was promised to ensure the absence of dust.

  Had the challenge to the sunbaked August turf been only nineteen airplanes, Mr. Mack’s promise could have been borne out. However, excited citizens from town and adjacent communities flocked to see the women aviators, driving onto the landing field and overwhelming the fragile new sod. As a result, swirling dust marked the landing area better than any air marker.

  Thaden could see that the uncontrolled crowds had left little room for landing, driving their cars right up onto the field. The airplanes were so close together that by the time someone landed and rolled out and off the center of the landing strip, the next plane that arrived had to maneuver to avoid overtaking the ship on the ground. Since no one wanted to pick up and go around in conflicting traffic with those being timed, there were some landings that were dangerously close. Pilots on the ground watching the show were impressed. These women knew what they were doing. They landed and got out of the way as fast as possible, both for their own safety and out of concern for their sister pilots. It was a dramatically staged ballet—until Opal Kunz arrived.

  Kunz, the press always pointed out, was the socialite wife of Dr. George Frederick Kunz, a famous gemologist and vice president of Tiffany & Co. in New York City. She was also an outspoken feminist determined to work for equality within the pilot ranks. Though Kunz didn’t favor war, she believed that “all women should learn to fly as a patriotic duty.”

  Within two weeks of receiving her pilot’s license, Kunz suffered an engine failure, totaling her airplane in the ensuing emergency landing. She and her passenger, Verne Moon, emerged unscathed. The newspaper reporter could almost be heard to snicker in his description of Moon as “twenty-three, ex-sailor, who married a wealthy forty-six-year-old widow two years ago.” As was so often the case in aviation, Moon was an “airport bum” who hung around the airport and who liked to ride in the airplanes. Quickly replacing her wrecked Travel Air, Kunz threw a formal affair at her hangar at which Mrs. Thomas Edison christened the new airplane.

  Opal Kunz and Mrs. Thomas Edison

  By the time Kunz landed at San Bernardino with Amelia Earhart right behind her, the visibility—due to the people, cars, and airplanes chewing up the sod—was terrible, despite the gallons of water poured on it. Opal couldn’t see the exact landing area until she was right on top of it. She landed the airplane about ten feet above where she thought the ground to be and pancaked in, damaging the plane’s undercarriage. If she could have laughed at that moment, she’d have remembered the old saying about botched landings: “It’s the pilot’s responsibility to periodically check the integrity of the landing gear.” Later, Earhart overshot the appropriate touchdown spot, but the crowds parted at the end of the landing area, giving her adequate room to stop the airplane short of the fence. As it turned out, the damage to Kunz’s Travel Air was confined to the shock absorbers, and the ship was repaired in time for the next morning’s takeoff.

  Bobbi Trout

  Farther back in the pack, Bobbi Trout concentrated on her navigation—holding a heading, keeping the notch in the mountains beyond San Bernardino in the same perspective, and staying exactly parallel to the mountains to the north.

  Trout had inaugurated 1929 by flying R. O. Bone’s Golden Eagle monoplane into the record books. She had been demonstrating the airplane for the factory when Mr. Bone asked if she could fly it for twelve hours to beat Viola Gentry’s eight-hour endurance record. Of course she could. Trout beat the sun up on January 2, 1929, staying aloft for twelve hours and eleven minutes. That meant landing after dark, her first night landing, giving Trout the longest night flight by a woman to that date as well. Trout was eighteen.

  The spunky aviator was a media dream, always cheerful and had the gift of gab. The May Company department store in the Los Angeles area had lifted Trout’s airplane to their roof for an aviation exhibit. The exposure for Trout and the store was immense. Reporters loved it that Trout operated a filling station to finance her flying, and they knew that she was always a good story.

  The weather to San Bernardino was hot and clear with good visibility. As Trout passed over the little town of Montebello, she saw an airplane on the ground—it seemed to be taxiing back to the end of the pasture for takeoff. She wondered who had a mechanical problem.

  Trout knew from her time, speed, and distance computations that she was coming up on San Bernardino. Everyone would be making a fly-by at the time clock, then fly a traffic pattern for landing. The racers were excited, but they would still have to stay alert to any nearby airplanes. Trout could see a field of dust dead ahead, and knew it must be the airport. Two dry lightning-set forest fires added to the lowered visibility. She opted for a powered descent so she’d lose no time in a glide. “Come on, sweet and steady. Keep the air speed up until we’re past the time clock,” she said to herself.

  Bobbi knew the popular saying that a good pilot has a skinny neck, and she kept her head swiveling, looking for other aircraft. Even in that great big sky, two airplanes had been known to try to occupy the same space at the same time, and there were nineteen competing airplanes of fairly similar speed that seemed to form clusters and did not have the time to spread out.

  It was still “each pilot for herself.” The era of help from the ground in the form of another pair of eyes on radar was far in the future. Each pilot was responsible for everything—navigating, separating from other aircraft, keeping an eye out for emergency landing fields, and even resolving her own mechanical problems. There was no Little Miss Helpless to be found among this pilot corps.

  “Well, nice of them to mark the airfield with a dust cloud so we can find it,” mused Trout. She saw an airplane directly in front of her and hoped that made her second in line, since she couldn’t see much else. The time clock was supposed to be at the approach end of the runway, and she dove for it to get as much speed as she could. In fact, the timers were positioned as advertised. The instant the propeller crossed the finish line, the first official signaled the second one with the watch, who noted the official arrival time to be forwarded to the chief timer. After crossing the line, Trout pulled up into a sweeping, climbing turn to come around and land, tracing a delicate curve in the sky.

  Mary Von Mach was a Travel Air pilot, serene and cautious. Her mother’s name, Mary Ann, was painted on the fuselage beneath the cockpit so that she could be with her daughter in spirit across the entire country.

  Von Mach was the pilot Trout had seen on the ground near the little town of Montebello. The start of the race had drawn a few immature male show-offs who departed immediately prior to the women then lingered in the air ready to “escort” the racers on their way. Von Mach, one of the least experienced of the racers, had been a chance selecti
on for the harassment. When a curious and reckless stunt pilot nearly hit Von Mach while buzzing her Travel Air, no way would she fight, but instead ran. The fellow decided that a little dog fight was in order, but Von Mach would have none of it. She chose to land the airplane, reasoning rightly that her tormentor would lose interest. It was a shame to lose time on the clock over such nonsense, but Von Mach was flying the race for experience and the joy of flying, never really counting on being in contention.

  Von Mach was last to land at San Bernardino, along with Amelia Earhart, who had returned to Clover Field for a second start after a quick repair. The pilots gathered, giddy with relief to have the first leg safely behind them, then disappointed to learn that they couldn’t supervise their aircraft refueling. For some reason, the fuel trucks wouldn’t be out until midnight.

  Edith Foltz models her famous Folzup suit.

  The four thousand San Bernardino spectators couldn’t get enough of the female racers—their airplanes, their hairstyles, their clothing. Edith Foltz was the clotheshorse of the group. She had designed and trademarked her lavender Folzup suit, a flying outfit that quickly converted to streetwear. The skirt pulled up and became a jacket, and knickers were worn beneath for climbing into the cockpit. Her unusual airplane and garb attracted a lot of attention. That is, until Barnes upstaged Foltz by lighting up her overpowering black cigar.

  Many of the racers carried their own stopwatch and compared numbers with the official timers and each other. Several pilots had to admit that they’d been so excited that they’d forgotten to punch time on at the start. Unofficially, it looked like Phoebe Omlie was heading up the light plane class at thirty-two minutes, with Bobbi Trout about four minutes behind her. Chubbie Keith-Miller had wandered around for over an hour before landing at San Bernardino. Pancho Barnes and Louise Thaden were neck-in-neck in the heavies, within less than a minute between each other. Gladys O’Donnell and Marvel Crosson were just two minutes behind, and could easily move on up in the standings another day. All four were under thirty minutes. The leaders were happy, but they were quite aware that anything could still happen.