Sky Girls

by Gene Nora Jessen

  “I just grabbed the burning valise with my bare hands and threw desert sand on it to put the fire out. It was hands or the ship. I guess a mechanic must have dropped a cigarette or ash on top of my packed clothing and it smoldered.

  “There I was, out in the middle of nowhere, and I needed to get on to Pecos ’cause the clock was running. I had never cranked my own airplane, but, boy, I could and I did. I turned that crank for four minutes, at least, before it got going.

  “All I could think about on the takeoff was to do as little damage as possible plowing through the mesquite. That old pilots’ saying that any landing you walk away from is a good one applied to my takeoff in the desert. I tore holes in the bottom of the fuselage and wings, and damaged the landing gear, but the blessed machine flew. I headed straight for Pecos. And here I am—both me and the airplane in one piece.”

  Noyes’s adventure captured the front page that day. Everyone, and the racers most of all, were proud of her grit and obvious flying skill.

  Noyes failed to ferret out an airplane mechanic at Pecos, but she did find a man who would weld her landing gear together. Heavy tape was good enough to patch the fabric skin. Noyes crossed her fingers, ready to head on her way, knowing the gear had to hold for only three more landings until she could have a new apparatus installed at the factory during the Wichita stop.

  Noyes had ordered one of the new NACA-enclosed cowlings, and, in the midst of her temporary repairs, the new cowling reached her halfway across the continent. She was sure that little item would give her another twenty miles per hour, and make her competitive with the other Travel Airs. Noyes and all the racers fueled up for free in Pecos, courtesy of the Burford Oil Company, and they were on their way.

  They pressed on to Sloan Field in Midland, Texas, happy to be moving into lower terrain. Navigation was easy on this short leg, with a road and railroad delineating the course. Now, a new spectacle appeared below them: oil wells. Small clusters of oil rigs grew into forests, their vertical arms keeping rhythm up and down, up and down. This worthless-looking land was one of God’s jokes. It was as though He had submerged pools of black gold in nowhere, then patiently awaited the invention of the internal combustion engine.

  Walter Beech’s factory crew—test pilot Pete Hill and his teenage son Pete Jr., along with a mechanic—waited for the Travel Airs at Midland. Led there by concern for the safety of the Travel Air pilots, they were to provide maintenance support for their covey of racers along the rest of the route. The men had their own suspicions about Marvel Crosson’s loss, and Louise Thaden agreed with their conclusions.

  Though numerous theories had been advanced for the cause of Marvel’s accident, the factory crew suspected that she had suffered from the same carbon monoxide poisoning that had affected Thaden before the race began. She was too good a pilot for any other explanation to make sense. There was evidence that Crosson had vomited over the side, and it was likely she was no longer lucid enough to fly the airplane. They rejected the speculation they’d heard that she had bailed out, despite the distance of her body from the airplane wreckage. Her parachute pack probably burst upon impact and tangled around her body because of the force of the collision. Bearing in mind the potential for further calamity, the Beech men would follow the racers to Fort Worth, ready to make any modifications necessary.

  Midland was a quick in and out, even including lunch. If Midland didn’t have its honored guests for a banquet and overnight, they would at least take them to town for a first-class luncheon. The ever-polite racers expressed their appreciation to the locals. However, they were eager to be on their way since as the day wore on, as the sun beat down on the earth and thermals initiated their predictable spirals, turbulence and discomfort grew with the heat.

  The women flew as low as five hundred feet above the ground when they had an iron compass, the railroad tracks, to follow. The penalty of that perspective was sparse topographical checkpoints, so occasionally they’d climb up to a thousand feet, or even higher, for a better view. They had drawn their course line on their Rand McNally road map or aeronautical chart with slash marks every ten miles to facilitate the time and distance computation. As they flew, their index fingers traced along the lines on the charts. This “finger flying” seemed vital to keep track of position and what to look for ahead. When learning to fly, the women had discovered what a dreadful classroom the airplane was. It was hard to think in the noisy, three-dimensional, constantly moving schoolroom. And one couldn’t park for a few minutes of contemplation. In those days, before instruments and electronic navigation, pilots would continually review their charts and computations before taking off.

  Each pilot clamped the control stick between her knees to keep her airplane on course, thus freeing her hands for folding out the chart. In order to view the terrain for a defining town, mountain, or river, each flyer would have to scoot high in the seat and poke her head out the side into the wind, enduring the blast of hot air. Even a “skid,” moving the big cowled engine out of the way to one side with the rudder would occasionally prove necessary so that the pilot could see ahead. The constant thuds as the airplane bounced through the afternoon air’s pounding surf was wearing, and the turbulence made it difficult to read a compass.

  Holding a predetermined heading while applying appropriate correction for the crosswind—flying west to east, most often a tail wind—proved a challenge when relying on the dancing compass that was floating in alcohol and riding the same waves as its host. The compass would respond to every thump. It naturally aimed downward at the ground, because north was in the earth, not up in the air parallel to the nose of the airplane. The compass would lead and lag at turning north and south. The racers had to keep in mind variation corrections from true north to apply to the heading calculations, an exercise that kept them busy.

  Cross-country was any flight from departure point to destination, no matter how far or close. Flying cross-country, pilots were quite used to being “momentarily disoriented.” But part of the fun of flying was the challenge of navigating, not so much a science as the application of experience, wits, and curiosity. Looking over the side and trying to match lakes or towns or railroad tracks with their same relative positions on the chart was a sort of game. There were many fewer towns and roads in those days. It was easy to talk oneself into believing that the town you were seeing with the lake at the north end was really the same as the one on the chart, but they moved the lake. Then the pilot would come to her senses, thinking, “I’m lost, er, momentarily disoriented.” On the other hand, unlike now, there was never anything wrong with landing in some smooth-looking pasture and asking the farmer the location. The farmers loved it, and pilots met someone new. By the Abilene stop, 138 miles short of Fort Worth, the now exhausted racers were clearly hanging onto a vision of the day’s end at Fort Worth. Refreshments were available at Abilene under a large tent, but even better, the thoughtful hosts had placed some cots on which the grateful pilots could rest for a few minutes. No bumps, no noise, no sun. What luxury!

  Vera Dawn Walker had grown up in a town near Abilene, but she hadn’t been there for many years. A flock of relatives had heard of her exploits and came out in force to greet her. In the excitement of Walker’s arrival, they swarmed the airplane. Impossible as it seems, even with the noise, when people couldn’t see the whirling propeller, they forgot that it was there. Pilots were ever alert that if a stranger to airplanes got close to the prop, they might walk into it, a usually fatal accident that occurred often. The man out in front of the group greeting Walker seemed totally oblivious to the danger of the propeller. She frantically shut down the engine, which is not instantaneous, and suddenly realized that it was her father who was about to walk right into her still-spinning propeller. An alert bystander grabbed him back as the propeller slowed to a stop. Walker almost fainted, coming so close to killing her own father.

  Gladys O’Donnell made a rough landing, and she took a little wingtip ding and fabric tear as the w
ing dipped to the ground. There was no serious damage to the airplane, and a patch sufficed to send her on her way. Since the bottom wings were close to the ground and it didn’t take much to drag a wing, ground loops and a little wingtip rash were not uncommon.

  Edith Foltz and Margaret Perry both ended their day at Abilene without continuing on to Fort Worth. Foltz was happy with the mechanics she found there and decided to have her landing gear, which had been damaged at Pecos, repaired. Perry was ill, as she had been for the entire race. She simply ran out of steam and knew she needed some good rest immediately. Both intended to catch up with the main body of racers in Wichita the next night.

  The investigation of sabotage charges overtook the racers in Texas. The newspapers declared that Deputy District Attorney C. O. Thompson of San Bernardino announced that he had issued subpoenas for Mr. and Mrs. Herbert J. Fahy, requiring them to appear in court to explain their assertions that someone had meddled with Mrs. Fahy’s airplane. The district attorney had questioned eleven witnesses and had not been able to find a single instance of sabotage. “We are told the field was guarded adequately and that mechanics of the various oil companies interested in the race were with the planes all night.” Dr. L. W. Ayres, chairman of the San Bernardino race committee, issued a statement denying charges that the planes had been tampered with. “I think Mr. Fahy’s declaration is one of the most unsportsmanlike things I have ever seen,” he said.

  Amelia Earhart’s Vega was more comfortable than the open-cockpit biwing airplanes, since it was heavier and more stable. She was able to fly protected from the weather. Nevertheless, she too had had about enough of the long day from El Paso. The country they were flying over was certainly more interesting than the desert. They could view farms and towns, and could fly even lower now since their destination was less than a thousand feet above sea level. Earhart kept a careful eye out for her fellow racers as she let down approaching Fort Worth.

  Like the rest, she buzzed the timing line fast and low, then came around for a smooth landing, happy to have the long day done.

  Earhart’s shiny red Vega was easily recognized, and the popular aviator was instantly mobbed by the excited spectators as she taxied in at Fort Worth. The thirty policemen who were there were unable to contain the crowd. All the racers were bone tired, dirty, deafened by the engine noise, hungry, and straining to stay awake for the inevitable banquet. Happily, they thought, Fort Worth was beef country.

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 1929

  Race Day 6

  FORTH WORTH TO TULSA TO WICHITA

  253 MILES, 130 MILES

  Claremore, Oklahoma [Will’s hometown], has grabbed off another distinction it being the only town between Santa Monica, California, and Cleveland, Ohio, that those Cleveland race officials haven’t made those poor girl aviators stop at.

  Yours, Will Rogers

  Syndicated newspaper column

  The exhausted racers’ arrival in Fort Worth had been engulfed by some twenty thousand spectators. The pilots did their duty mingling with their kind hosts despite the challenges of the previous days. The women enjoyed each other’s company and that of each local aviation community, but the aviators almost lost their good manners and began to laugh when the evening’s lavish Texas spread turned out to feature, of all things, another chicken evening.

  Their host, Amon G. Carter, was dressed like a dime-store cowboy in silver spurs, bandana, leather chaps, and a pair of pearl-handled pistols, all while sporting an enormous cowboy hat. But he wasn’t all show. A stroll through the ranch house revealed original Remington and Russell paintings hanging on the walls and other beautiful western art. How did Carter’s clownish getup jibe with his tasteful abode?

  The group turned to Vera Dawn Walker who always had an opinion and was a Texan, to boot. “Who is Amon Carter?”

  She explained that he was a newspaper publisher, but not just any publisher. He and his Star newspaper were Fort Worth’s biggest boosters. The slogan above the masthead bragged “Where the West Begins,” which his friend Will Rogers had helped to promote nationwide. Walker related the infamous “elevator incident.”

  “Amon Carter was dressed in his cowboy getup while attending a gathering at a big hotel. While on an upper floor along with a crowd waiting for the elevator, it went on by without stopping. Carter whipped out one of his pearl pistols and fired through the door. Nobody was hurt, but it sure fed the Amon Carter lore,” Walker said.

  In fact, Amon Carter was an extraordinary entrepreneur who started out peddling sandwiches to railroad passengers as a teenager, then he sold picture frames door to door. Upon moving to Fort Worth in 1905, Carter borrowed $250 and started a newspaper, later buying the Star. A lucky oil strike turned Amon Carter into not only a community booster but also a philanthropist, who, as time went along, became instrumental in bringing what was to become American Airlines and General Dynamics to Fort Worth, and he helped establish Texas Tech in Lubbock and Big Bend National Park.

  In typical Amon Carter fashion, on the evening of the derby stop, he made a grand presentation of a colossal cowboy hat to the group’s representative, Amelia Earhart. It was large enough to take over the back seat of her Vega. His guests politely controlled their laughter at the rendition of a schmaltzy song titled, “Sweethearts of the Air.”

  The next morning’s paper followed the lead of Will Rogers’s daily piece, needling their own renowned publisher who had hosted the festivities: “Those race officials have those girl aviators landing at every buffalo wallow that has a chamber of commerce and will put up a hot dog sandwich. They even made ’em eat with Amon Carter.”

  Poultry or bust, another dawn had arrived, and today would be the Tulsa to Wichita leg. Everyone anticipated Wichita as the highlight on the route. Many of the women’s aircraft were built in Wichita. As the “Air Capital of the World,” the city would attempt to prove it when their special guests arrived. Plus, the national publicity had begun to capture the imagination of the American public. Already, each stop drew larger and more excited crowds to the airfield.

  Louise Thaden was hanging onto her lead at Fort Worth by twenty-one minutes, with Gladys O’Donnell, Amelia Earhart, and Ruth Nichols all close behind now that Barnes was out. Everyone knew that anything still could happen. Phoebe Omlie had only one real challenger left in the light airplane class. Elapsed total times from the start in Santa Monica to Fort Worth were:

  HEAVY PLANES

  Louise Thaden 11:04:30

  Gladys O’Donnell 11:25:52

  Amelia Earhart 11:46:52

  Ruth Nichols 11:51:08

  Mary Haizlip 12:24:06

  Ruth Elder 13:35:03

  Mary Von Mach 15:12:32

  Neva Paris 15:55:10

  Opal Kunz 18:44:27

  Vera Dawn Walker 21:30:15

  LIGHT PLANES

  Phoebe Omlie 13:28:30

  Thea Rasche 16:20:31

  Chubbie Keith-Miller 24:56:15

  Blanche Noyes was running behind due to her makeshift landing gear repair in Pecos, but the determined ingénue aviator soon caught up. Margaret Perry buckled to her illness and was out of the race at Fort Worth. The high temperature and general lassitude that had afflicted her since the start of the race was finally diagnosed as typhoid fever, and she was hospitalized.

  Others continued to fly, even though they were hopelessly behind. They had resolved to finish this race in Cleveland. Thaden wanted desperately to be the first into Tulsa, but especially Wichita, where her entire family and her sponsor would be waiting. However, Thaden was not without regard and admiration for her sister pilots. She observed, “Were there a prize for tenacity, Bobbi Trout and Mary Haizlip surely would be in an uncontested tie for the award.”

  Trout had been scheduled to fly a ninety-horsepower Golden Eagle Chief in the derby, but in light of the competition, a one-hundred-horsepower Kinner engine was installed to make hers the fastest airplane in the lower horsepower class. After her mishap, while the others were leaving Fort
Worth, Trout was blistering along in an attempt to catch up.

  Bobbi Trout’s crew had worked feverishly for twenty-four hours in 120-degree temperatures to repair her Golden Eagle in that plowed field south of the border. Kindhearted residents had leveled off a provisional takeoff strip for Trout. Then a mechanic noticed serious undiscovered damage to the underside of a wing. They gave up, removed the wing, and towed the airplane to Yuma to finish the repair inside a hangar. Trout was close enough to home so that her family could join her to lend support. Finally, on Thursday, August 22, the day of the El Paso to Fort Worth leg for the rest of the racers, Trout got into the airplane and flew out of Yuma, intending to catch the racers by Saturday. Since she was now breaking in a new engine, a Kinner representative flew wingman beside her in a Vega. Trout declared the rebuild splendid. She was out but not down.

  In a dispatch the Associated Press gushed:

  Miss Trout has been hailed as the most popular woman flier in the west. She has the appearance and voice of a seventeen-year-old boy, being slender with close-cropped brown hair and a gift of spontaneous and unconscious expression. She is unassuming, and with half a hundred people standing about eager to do something for her she did nearly everything for herself, then thanked everyone present for their assistance. She expressed absolute confidence of making Fort Worth by Friday night and of catching the derby sometime Saturday.

  Another reporter wrote succinctly, “She looks like a boy, flies like a man.”

  Evelyn Trout, her actual name, was always more interested in boys’ things than girls’, even taking manual training in school and becoming an adept mechanic. She was the first girl in her high school to have the trendy new hair bob, acquiring the nickname Bobbi.

  Trout was actually operating her own service station when she discovered flying, and she immediately sold it to pay for flying lessons. She didn’t stop with the private pilot certificate but went on to earn a transport license. The vivacious and talented young pilot was spotted by the Golden Eagle company and hired to demonstrate their product—with the same reasoning as always for women pilots. “After all, Mr. Customer, if this little lady can fly our fine airplane, then you can too.” The company’s motivation was irrelevant to Trout. She got to fly airplanes and was paid for it, while at the same time making record endurance flights. Could life be more perfect?