Sky Girls

by Gene Nora Jessen

  Edith Foltz poses with her plane.

  Thaden carefully and contentedly preflighted (inspected) her beautiful blue and gold Travel Air nearby. She confided her euphoria about her splendid airplane to a reporter: “I’m going to get every last bit of speed out of this jewel and navigate with perfect precision over the rough terrain we have ahead. Being here to race with these women is the happiest time of my life.”

  Vera Dawn Walker cranked up to taxi first for takeoff after the six light planes were in the air. As Opal Kunz climbed into the high cockpit and prepared to race, she waved to Ruth Elder in her Swallow, whom she would follow on takeoff. Elder’s engine appeared to be running smoothly in spite of its “oil-down.” Louise Thaden S-turned carefully to see where she was going and joined the line of racers. There was no sense taxiing into a hole and damaging the prop.

  The starter finally flagged Thaden into position, and she concentrated on her course out of San Bernardino. She kept the 120-degree heading in mind and checked her few instruments as she listened attentively to her engine, always attuned to any signal that it was not working well. In takeoff position, Thaden held the brakes while starting to add power, but she did not throttle up to full power, which would stir up rocks and damage the prop. If the timing was right, she would achieve full power just as the flag fell. The flag dropped, and Thaden was on the roll for Calexico.

  At six o’clock in the morning the air was smooth, and Thaden had decided to take the direct route to Calexico rather than fly through Banning Pass and travel on the east side of the San Jacinto range where the valley was lower. Thaden was a good navigator and felt she could hold a steady heading just west of the San Jacinto, then the Santa Rosa mountains until the high valley dropped off. She would then see the large Salton Sea, the now landlocked extension of the Sea of Cortez, to the east. From there she would simply hold a heading to Calexico/Mexicali. She wished they would put a big fence up on the Mexican border just so she could fly to the fence and turn left.

  She started a long climb to seven thousand feet, an altitude necessary to clear the high valley terrain, while ever alert for engine overheating. Achieving altitude was always a struggle with the horsepower they had available, and the racers flew most of the route from five hundred to one thousand feet above the ground. The official schedule showed 144 statute miles to Calexico, then another 204 to Phoenix—which, of course, wasn’t correct. The racers had had to scramble to redo their flight plans with the course change. Thaden’s plan was to fly by the Calexico timing line, then to Yuma for fuel and to be timed. If she didn’t wander, Phoenix should be just about three hours’ flying time from San Bernardino.

  Visibility was good, and Thaden could fly parallel to a road. She lifted her head above the cockpit so that she could see where she was going, then back down to look at the chart and compass to verify her heading. Even perched on the seat parachute beneath her, Thaden needed a cushion to sit high enough to see out without having to unstrap her seat belt every time she needed to observe the terrain beneath her. The road made a left turn off through Banning Pass as expected. She was right on course. She would snuggle up to the mountains on the left, and see the town of Hemet on her right. She had drawn a red course line on her chart, and as the preselected checkpoints, or prominent features on the ground, came along exactly as they appeared on the chart, her correct position was confirmed. After Hemet, the barren desert country wouldn’t provide much to navigate by until the mountains slid into the Salton Sea, then it was downhill to Calexico. There would be one little bump at Superstition Mountains, a 759-foot hill as compared to 10,804-foot San Jacinto.

  Louise Thaden with her plane.

  Gazing down, Thaden was struck at the audacity of pioneers who had found their way through this vast country in covered wagons.

  Imagine taking children on that quest. What brave souls were their mothers. Thaden imagined that if she went down in these tall foothills, it might be a long time before anyone found her. Bad thoughts, she chided herself. Her airplane was running well.

  Even so early in the morning, a slight breeze from the west gave the racers a little lift on the windward side of the mountains. As the moving air encountered the mountain, resistance forced it up and over, just as breakers act on ocean waves. Soaring with the help of the natural lift gave low-powered planes a boost. Thaden barely outclimbed the terrain without having to circle and lose time, and at seven thousand feet, she almost rolled her wheels on the sugar pines below at the high point. In another twenty miles the terrain lowered abruptly, the forest giving way to the rocky decline into the Mohave Desert. She wished she knew more about geology and what forces had made these mountains rise so high above the valley floor—and what caused the ground to tremble sometimes like a terrible miles-long dog shaking his wet fur.

  While Thaden was making good time and staying exactly on course, several of the pilots flying the lower horsepower aircraft elected to fly on east through Banning Pass and head south on the eastern side of the mountains. The climb to clear terrain on the western slope in their underpowered airplanes meant they would have to circle, which would take too much time. Trading off the time to climb for a little extra distance would prove a good gamble. Those kinds of decisions were what racing was all about.

  Claire Fahy was her husband’s student. Learning to fly from a spouse was just as hard as having a relative driving instructor. A man’s wife couldn’t be just an average student pilot; after all, he’d married her, and she was smarter than the average pilot-to-be. The relationship between the student and instructor couldn’t help but be personal rather than detached, putting stress into an already difficult classroom. Lieutenant Herbert Fahy was a Lockheed Aircraft Company test pilot and the holder of altitude and speed records. Claire learned well from her husband, but she couldn’t possibly gain his experience level in the year she’d been flying. Though she loved the challenge of flying alone, Claire was glad that Herb was following close behind.

  Claire Fahy

  Claire Fahy was flying a Travel Air with the OX5 ninety-horsepower engine, putting her into the low horsepower, light aircraft class. Hers was a biwing open-cockpit airplane with a pair of upper and lower wings. The dope-tightened fabric wings were braced for strength with metal struts. Diagonal brace wires ran from the upper-wing outer edge to the lower-wing root, further intensifying the integrity of the wings. Rough air currents, acrobatics (especially when poorly executed), and hard landings all conspired to find the aircraft’s weakness and pull it apart. The designers and manufacturers used all their knowledge to make their products strong, yet compromises were necessary to keep aircraft light enough to lift a load, the pilot, and fuel.

  There was a sensory advantage in these open-cockpit airplanes, a oneness of pilot with wings, like a bird. Fahy had been taught to listen to the wind in the wires. As air flowed over and under the wings, vibration set up a humming in the wires whose voice changed with angle of attack, the relationship of the wing to the relative wind. As the airplane climbed or descended, the wires spoke differently, just as the hammer struck different tones from a piano wire. An experienced pilot used all her senses, including her ears, to know what was going on with the airplane.

  When Fahy heard a sharp “twang,” she knew it was trouble. Her heart thumped as she saw two separated wing wires dangling back sickeningly in the wind. She had no idea how much extra strength had been built into the airplane or if her weakened wings would give up and fold back. Fahy thought of her parachute, but she immediately rejected a jump from such a low altitude—she was only about five hundred feet above ground.

  Fahy brought the power back, thinking to ease the pressure on the struts by slowing down. She started looking for any field on which to land, but with just a few miles to go to Calexico, went on. After her initial scare, anger took over. Wing wires don’t just break. Someone must have sabotaged her airplane. Fahy eased on down for a landing while keeping a sharp eye out for her fellow racers flying the Calexico timing lin
e. The first airplanes had commenced timing by shortly after 8:00 a.m., and Fahy’s day was already bad enough without adding a midair collision if someone were in the vicinity. Instead of flying the timing line at Calexico and going on as the other racers did, Fahy landed.

  She jumped out of the airplane as the engine died, and she was so agitated that she could hardly speak. Not expecting anyone to land, the timers knew something was wrong even before questioning her. Fahy anxiously examined the broken wires, then said, “You can see these wires have been eaten through with acid. My airplane has been sabotaged. Seeing the wires parted in the air made me wonder if I had any chance of landing in one piece. Who could do such a despicable thing?” She was near tears.

  The stunned officials and onlookers couldn’t believe the race planes could have been tampered with at either Santa Monica or San Bernardino. But here was evidence of serious trouble. Claire Fahy declared herself out of the race. When Fahy didn’t show up at Yuma, her husband would come looking for her.

  Mary Von Mach’s Travel Air also made a stop at Calexico, but she went on. Mary Haizlip, who had a late start and was trying to catch up with the other racers, arrived in the Calexico area at dusk. The lights of the American city Calexico and Mexico’s Mexicali ran together as one city, and in the fading light it was impossible to pick out the border from the sky. Haizlip became uneasy as she lost time searching for the airport, having trouble pulling it out of the haze. What a relief to finally spot an open area that had to be the airport. Haizlip made a smooth approach over the end of the landing strip to be timed just at nightfall. She came around and landed, happy to be catching up with her fellow racers.

  Only after landing did Haizlip realize she’d overshot her mark and was on the south side of the border in Mexicali on the Baja Peninsula. The Mexican officials were kind but firm that all the forms dealing with an improper incursion into Mexican airspace, and use of the Mexicali airport without permission, be completed in triplicate and stamped by the government representative. Several hours spent cutting red tape preceded Haizlip’s short flight back across the border after dark, with explicit instructions on the location of the Calexico airport. After a night in Calexico, Mary Haizlip hastened to join her sister aviators who were still nearly a full day ahead of her.

  MONDAY, AUGUST 19, 1929

  Race Day 2

  YUMA TO PHOENIX

  158 MILES

  It was a warm sultry night and Dr. Eckener of the Zeppelin didn’t know if that still air would raise him high enough to get over the mountains, so Los Angeles had a banquet and twenty local townsmen spoke. They rushed from the dinner to the field and the ship raised so fast they had to throw fourteen typewriters and two radio announcers overboard to get it back to a flying level.

  Yours, Will Rogers

  Syndicated newspaper column

  Marvel Crosson, never seen without a huge grin that spread to her luminous dark eyes, was in perfect position to see the Yuma airport. She just couldn’t pick it out of the shadow. She suspected that all the racers were cutting across a tiny corner of Mexico as she was to save a few miles to Yuma. This desolate dune country was like the Sahara, requiring only a little wind to drift a blanket of sand across the fields, hiding any clue of the airport. For Crosson, the lack of differentiating color defining the terrain reminded her of flying in Alaska in the snowy winter. Crosson had learned not to become fixated on where she thought the landing field should be, but to keep her eyes moving, scanning a wider area.

  Searching the ground, she caught what looked like the tail of an airplane rising awkwardly above the wings. Someone had either made a forced landing in a farmer’s field or a troubled arrival at the Yuma Airport. Crosson gambled on the latter and headed for the crippled airplane. As she approached the field, Crosson could see people surrounding the airplane to bring the tail down and pull it out of the landing area. The airfield was low, only two hundred feet above sea level. It was pretty much a 160-acre square. She flew west to east across the field to be timed alongside a small building, then tear-dropped back around to land west, facing the building rather than coming in over it, or alongside, in burbling, difficult wind currents. With the whole field available and not constrained by a runway, Crosson could land directly into the wind.

  Concentrate, she reminded herself. The windsock showed a strong wind shifting between the west and northwest. Crosson could feel the airplane wanting to drift south. She turned the nose into the wind to stop the drift, straightened out, and dropped the right wing to eliminate any side load on the landing gear. At the same time, she endeavored to land well short of the disabled plane. She took a small bounce, then the front wheels wanted to dig into the soft clay, risking the same fate as the wrecked aircraft. Crosson held the stick back into her gut to keep the tail down, wishing she had a load of bricks in the tail end to help. It was easy to see how the other pilot could have dug in and gone up on her nose. Crosson maintained some power to keep the airplane moving and to avoid bogging down. Then the accomplished pilot quickly taxied out of the way for the next aircraft.

  The bent airplane had a number six on the tail—Amelia Earhart again. Earhart must be jinxed, Crosson thought. The man who flew to the West Coast with her was killed on his return east, Earhart had a jammed starter on the race takeoff and now some sort of problem in Yuma.

  It turned out that Earhart had landed long, nosed the plane over, and broken the propeller, but there was no other serious damage to the Vega. She called to have another prop flown in from Los Angeles, and the other pilots, in an unnecessary but quite feminine act, decided to wait with Earhart until her airplane was repaired. Earhart’s accident occurred around 8:00 a.m., and as they arrived, the women lounged in the only shade they could find—under their airplane wings—as the temperature quickly climbed to over one hundred degrees. The kind people of Yuma went home to bring cold drinks, sandwiches, and ice as the women roasted in the intensifying heat. They finally flew out around noon when Earhart’s new prop was on, little suspecting that their act of support for Earhart was to have disastrous consequences.

  Meanwhile, Pancho Barnes was following the pilot’s friend, the iron compass—railroad tracks. The men who laid the tracks naturally ran them from town to town, where the freight and passengers needed to travel.

  Pilots flying over desolate country depended upon the iron compass when nothing else was available to navigate by, or even as a backup to verify position. However, often multiple tracks left a town in several close directions, and it was always possible to take the wrong set of tracks. When the only navigational aid was a highway map—and the next town came up on the wrong side of the tracks or a lake ran north and south instead of east and west—it was easy to convince oneself that the mapmaker had just made a couple of errors. The tracks had to be right. Since self-doubt was not in an aviator’s genes, even the most experienced pilot could fly far down the wrong track before admitting to personal error. The pilots all agreed that they were never lost, simply momentarily disoriented.

  Pancho Barnes

  Sure enough, Barnes was unknowingly following the wrong set of railroad tracks across the desolate country into Mexico. Totally disoriented with nothing but cacti and alkalized desert scrub below, Barnes searched for any kind of definitive landmark. Her compass was bouncing like a rubber ball, but the averaged heading didn’t seem right. Was she north of course or south? Which way should she turn? Should she hold her present course and hope for a water tower with a name on it? When Barnes spotted a homestead, she instantaneously slowed her throttle to descend. The desert would make for a rough landing field, but she needed to find out where she was and not throw away her lead in the race. Later, she related her landing and reception. “When I raised the nose for landing and dropped into a pasture among some disinterested steers, the dust was so thick I could hardly see to dodge the sagebrush. I spotted a homestead and taxied over that way.” Barnes gained the locals’ attention, but she would have had a tough time understanding them
. “When they got close enough that I could hear them, they were yelling, ‘Hola! Hola!’ Hell, that’s Spanish. I wheeled that air machine around, goosed the throttle, and got outta there.”

  As it turned out, Barnes, and Mary Haizlip before her, were not the only visitors to Mexico that day.

  The ladies’ delayed afternoon flight from Yuma to Phoenix combined with all the worst conditions from Mother Nature’s repertory. The extreme heat bred thermals that lifted from the desert floor creating a roiling sea of air, its waves unapparent until they buffeted the airplane. The now 120-degree temperature was debilitating, and the air so rough that Louise Thaden seriously questioned if her airplane could possibly stay together. In clear air, Thaden ran full speed into invisible severe turbulence. She felt like batter in an eggbeater that first churned her then spat her out. Bang, twist, slam, sink. Her plane repeatedly slammed the invisible thermal walls. At that moment, Walter Beech was God, and her fate was in his hands. If the airplane Beech provided was strong enough to withstand the beating it was taking—the sudden wild ride up followed by stomach wrenching descent—it could withstand any maneuver a mere pilot could inflict upon it.