The Crowd Pleasers
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Copyright © 2018 by Pete Fusco
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Rain Saukas
Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-2818-9
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-2820-2
Printed in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to Madeline Davis, one of many crowd pleasers who took the risks while the rest of us watched.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE: THE BEGINNING
1 ARRIVING ON WINGS
2 VICTIMS OF THEIR OWN COURAGE
3 STARDUST
4 NINE TIMES OUT OF TEN
5 COAST TO COAST
6 NO FLAPPING ENDS
7 POETRY
PART TWO: THE FREE-FOR-ALL
8 ANOTHER SQUADRON
9 RETAKE
10 MAKING DO
11 REACHING
12 OUT OF THE NIGHT SKY
13 FIFTY FEET?
14 A MYSTERY
15 QUEEN BESS
16 THE WRONG PLACE
17 PAGE ONE
18 TO SEE WHAT THEY WILL DO
19 “SPEED”
20 IN-FLIGHT ADVERTISING
21 IMPRUDENT FLYING
PART THREE: THE WAR YEARS
22 THE WEIGH-IN
23 HOME FRONT
24 WAITING ON THE FUTURE
PART FOUR: THE AIRSHOW RETURNS
25 HURRICANE
26 REVIVING THE ACT
27 A BLINDING SMILE
28 FLAGLER
29 ENTER THE JETS
30 IT’S MY JOB
31 OLD SCHOOL
32 BULLDOG
33 HOW TO FLY
34 BEVO
35 KONKORDSKI
36 ELYSIAN FIELD
37 THE SHOW WENT ON
38 BIG ED
39 HEROICS
40 SALLY B.
41 GATHERING OF EAGLES
42 CAUTION LIGHT
43 TOP GUN
44 TAKING OVER
45 BROKEN HEARTS
46 VERTICAL CHARLIE
47 ANALYSES
48 BEHIND THE CANARY
49 CZAR 52
50 LONE STAR FURY
51 CLOSE SHAVE
52 RARE BUTTERFLY
53 INTIMACY
54 VINTAGE WINE
55 THE RECORD
56 SISTERS
57 SHOCKWAVE
58 CRITICAL MASS
59 TOP OF THE WORLD
60 OUTSIDE THE GATE
61 LATE FOR WORK
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF AIR SHOWS HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES IN THIS BOOK
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Life is being on the wire, everything else is just waiting.”
—KARL WALLENDA
INTRODUCTION
BEFORE I could begin writing this book, I had to convince myself that the performers who died over the last hundred years while pleasing a crowd wanted to be remembered. I kept my nerve and listened as I did the research, which was a gloomy walk at night through an old cemetery full of voices. Some of the departed whispered but most screamed at me to tell their stories—not to vindicate nor mourn nor rehash the gruesome details—but simply to acknowledge the humanity. It was all I needed to hear. In return, I promised them that their book would not be a catalog of tragedy; a heavy hand was out of the question. The stories required, no, demanded, a special touch focused on life, not death, although I would have to find meaning in both.
I must confess to the crime of beginning this book with a faulty premise: That the common thread among airshow performers was a need for excitement and income. It soon became clear that motivations ran deeper than kicks and money, far deeper, something akin to that of the scrappy mortals of Greek mythology prone to picking fights with insurmountable forces. When taking chances, the ancient Greeks sought the favor and protection of Tyche, their goddess of risk. She was blindfolded and, as if to accommodate the future, winged.
It helped me understand why someone who could not swim would attempt the first takeoff from a ship with a large crowd present, or jump out of an airplane wearing a parachute over a straightjacket with the ripcord in his mouth, or do handstands on the upper wing of a Curtiss Jenny a thousand feet in the air, or round a pylon at 500 miles per hour fifty feet off the ground, or fly into a building for the movie cameras, or stand a twenty-ton jet fighter on its tail and hover in front of the grandstand, and much, much more.
The Crowd Pleasers is a distillation of many different, oftentimes contradictory, sources. The selected events represent a cross-section of airshow and stunt-flying misfortune spanning a century. Each segment stands alone but, taken together, form a cumulative tale of uncommon men and women whose lives, though in many cases shortened by tragedy, were lived far more fully than most.
Several individuals in the airshow business, however tangentially, suggested that the history of airshow accidents was best left entombed or, at the very least, heavily airbrushed. It’s perhaps why a book such as mine has never been written. Quarantined history, of airshows or anything else, benefits no one. The past begs to be remembered. The future depends on it.
The Crowd Pleasers begins in 1910, when all flights were airshows. Attracting spectators was no problem; getting them to pay was the trick. Crowds, then as now, became easily jaded. Straight and level flight and a simple circuit of the field did not sell tickets. But folks lined up, money in hand, to marvel and cringe at a “dive of death.” Risk is a commodity always in demand and flying was man’s riskiest endeavor since the day sailors first left the sight of land.
From the start, the “exhibition” pilots, as they were then known, stood out from the rest. Everything they did and still do requires exceptional ability, a commitment to practice and a risk threshold unimaginable to most pilots. Those pilots—like this author—who spent much of their flying careers in Boeings drinking coffee, reading newspapers, annoying flight attendants, and watching the world below from a safe distance, find even the most modest Sunday airshow performance not only impressive but, if they’re honest, intimidating. Some of us may have taken an occasional chance for the hell of it but we certainly didn’t do it every weekend.
I learned many curious facts writing this book. For instance, aircraft crashes were not referred to as “crashes” in the early days. Aircraft did not begin to “crash,” in written accounts at least, until well into the 1930s. Early aircraft that did anything other than land or “alight” successfully were typically described as having “fallen” from the sky, with the results left mostly to the imagination.
And though exhibition aircraft fell from the sky with alarming frequency in the early years, the incidents were not overly scrutinized and their causes seldom determined. Blame was almost never assigned. An aircraft fell and the pilot was injured or killed: End of story. Journalists of the day see
med to place the business of exhibition flying in the same category as climbing mountains without a rope. Their euphemistic use of “fell” suggested a randomness, even a blameless unpredictability, almost as if the first reporters of airshow accidents attempted to give dead performers the benefit of the doubt.
That all ended when the federal government took over in the late 1920s. By 1938, the government had institutionalized aviation in the United States and enacted rules that greatly limited the scope of aerial entertainment. The term “crash,” with its implications of ineptness and recklessness, came into wide use about the same time. Laws were passed which, in certain cases, made crashing an airplane illegal, a crime to this day. And, by god, someone would pay, if only with the pitiless and vindictive bureaucratic tagline “PILOT ERROR” stamped on his or her record. Permit me to digress further with a cheap shot at the television network ghouls that pass themselves off as “aviation experts.” Though usually well out of their depth, they eagerly analyze an airshow accident with only a few minutes’ notice, as convinced of their divine infallibility as a fifteenth-century pope.
I was once part of that media. During a lull in a checkered flying career, I worked as a reporter for a major metropolitan daily newspaper and know the first rule: Most news is only news for a day, usually just a few hours. The Crowd Pleasers picks up where the scant media coverage of airshow accidents ends. With full disclosure of my limitations as a pilot who loves to watch but not do snap rolls, I placed a thumb on the pulse of airshow history and recorded my findings as intelligently and compassionately as possible. I resisted opinions, even though at times my senses were numbed by what seemed to be unwarranted risk and preventable death. I made no effort, however, to hide my awe and envy of the performers who took and still take those risks.
Performers are not the only persons who take chances at airshows. Innocent spectators have been lost. As aircraft became faster, bigger, heavier and jet-powered, their potential for destruction expanded disproportionately. The people that performers were attempting to please sometimes died along with them. Those victims are not left out of the book.
Airline, charter, flight instruction, military, even crop spraying have significantly improved safety over the years while airshow safety has lagged a little behind. Is it because modern performers, flying much better and more reliable aircraft than ever before, attempt to outdo past generations? Do the crowds expect it? Considering that not one spectator in a thousand is able to distinguish between one hundred and three hundred feet, is there any reason to fly at the lower altitude? Would the crowds be disappointed if the acts were performed at a higher—and presumably—safer altitude? Are more advanced and riskier aerobatic maneuvers necessary? The answers are not in this book, just the circumstances.
Though not intended as such, The Crowd Pleasers is also something of a textbook. Even the “fall” of a 1911 Wright Model B can be instructive. An airplane is an airplane. They haven’t so much changed over the years as they have evolved, adapting to an unforgiving environment one perilous step at a time. A strong argument can be made that airshow flying has added to that progress. To this day, if one really wants to know what an airplane can do, give it to a competent aerobatic pilot and gather an audience.
Above all, my book honors the work and the memories of lost airshow performers, the famous and unknown, the recent and long gone, the beginners, journeymen, and masters. I was acutely aware that their legacies rested in my hands. I tried not to disturb anyone’s eternal rest by exploiting or sensationalizing his or her last day on Earth. I made no judgments. Nor did I have the right. Only those who died doing something they alone could fully comprehend know whether pleasing the crowd was worth the price.
PART ONE:
THE BEGINNING
THERE were three ways to pursue flying in the years immediately following the Wright brothers’ thunderous achievement in 1903. If you had the resources, you could simply purchase an airplane and the flying lessons to go with it. Or, since it was your airplane and there were no rules, you could teach yourself to fly it, with the added benefit of learning how to rebuild it a few times. If you lacked resources but had managed to acquire some basic piloting skills—or could convince someone you had—you might become a member of a factory demonstration team. Some experience was required but nothing beyond the ability to take off and land successfully a dozen times between mishaps. For the bolder aspirant, a third option was the flying circus, a spectacle that exploited the entertainment value of aviation rather than the practical. The public was fascinated with airplanes and the flying circus was there to cash in, a mating of new technology and old entrepreneurship.
Many new recruits to the business of flying had sharpened their reflexes and proven their mettle racing motorcycles and automobiles, both very dicey occupations at the time. When flying machines arrived, the risk takers saw them as yet another vehicle to distance themselves from mortals, who were now literally below.
No matter how they got there, the pioneer airmen, without asking too many questions, climbed into a thorny new invention not far removed from the drawing board and looked straight ahead at an adventure that promised greasy hands, long hard days, bloodied faces, broken bones, and better than average odds of an early death. They could hardly believe their good fortune.
1
ARRIVING ON WINGS
THE bronze statue of Charles Stewart Rolls in Monmouth’s Agincourt Square in Wales might cause someone to wonder why the co-founder of the Rolls-Royce automobile company is holding a model airplane in his hand. Not just any airplane, but a Wright Flyer, the same type in which he was killed at a flying exhibition in Bournemouth, England, on July 12, 1910.
While thousands of spectators watched, the popular “Charlie” Rolls competed against other aircraft in an “alighting contest.” The object was to land, or “alight,” engine at idle, as close as possible to a twelve-foot circle marked on the ground, not the easiest feat in a modern aircraft and difficult to imagine in a Wright Flyer. The winner won 250 pounds, a sizable sum in 1910 and a measure of the risk involved. Rolls, who came from wealth, was not after the money; his chauffer had driven him to the meet.
Rolls turned into the wind and targeted the circle. At this point, according to eyewitness accounts, he was too high and wide to the right. Rolls turned to the left, descended steeply and aimed at the target. As he maneuvered, perhaps too abruptly, there was a loud snapping of wood in the tail structure, which separated from the ship. The front-mounted elevator was next to fail. The Wright fell straight to the ground. Rolls was thrown clear but died from injuries a short while later. He was thirty-two years old.
The statue in Agincourt Square captures Rolls studying his aircraft, as if forever conjecturing what might have been done to prevent the tragedy. Probably very little. Historians refer to aircraft of the day as powered gliders. Genetically they were closer to powered box kites. As is the case with aircraft design to this day, every effort was made to reduce weight. But with only bamboo, spruce, lacquered linen or flax, and bulky primitive motors, the result was a heavy, comparatively frail, and often underpowered aircraft. Inefficient propellers and drag from the maze of brace wires and struts also worked against the first aircraft designers and pilots.
More powerful engines would have helped and were available but the insubstantial airframes of the time were not able to handle the increased power. There were instances of too-powerful engines causing disastrous airframe failures. An oversized after-market power plant literally tore apart a Bleriot XI flown by the French aviation pioneer Ferdinand Delagrange during an exhibition at Bordeaux in 1910, resulting in his death.
Wilbur Wright gave Rolls his first airplane ride in the autumn of 1908 and later taught him to fly. By the end of 1909, Rolls had resigned his position as technical manager of Rolls-Royce to devote full time to aviation. Had the world not lost his vision, enthusiasm, and mechanical prowess, Rolls intended to start his own aircraft manufacturing business, the Rolls Aerop
lane Company. He likely would have contributed to the development of more reliable, durable and safer aircraft, the same qualities for which the automobile marque that bore his name was already famous.
Rolls was serious about everything he did, which included successful auto and cycle racing careers, and 170 balloon ascents. By the standards of 1910, he was an accomplished airplane pilot. Six weeks before his fatal flight, Rolls became the first person to fly a “double-crossing,” or round trip, of the English Channel without landing in France. Over French soil, he dropped a note addressed to the French Aero Club. He had written on the note, “Dropped from a Wright Aeroplane.” Rolls had every right to be proud of the ship that would soon fail him, for he had flown his Flyer a remarkable two hundred times.
The Wright Flyer that Rolls flew had been built under license in France and may not have been up to Wright U.S. factory standards. Rolls had, in fact, almost rejected delivery due to inadequate workmanship. He decided to keep it and made the necessary corrections. Aircraft of the period, by any measure, were works in progress from the day of their first flight, constantly being modified, although not always necessarily improved.
In preparation for the Bournemouth competition, Rolls and his crew had replaced the Wright fixed-tail section with a movable tail section, an adaptation to allow easier pitch changes that was not sanctioned by the Wrights. The question will always be whether the work compromised the structural integrity of the tail, causing it to break away. Another thought at the time was that, since the French-built Flyer had less spacing between the propellers and the tail brace wires, the propeller blades might have vibrated enough to cut the wires that supported the elevators.
Rolls may also have been trying to prevent harm to spectators. Some eyewitnesses said that Rolls, when he realized he was too near the grandstands, made a hurried and excessive movement of the controls, which may have caused the structural failure. It would not have been the first time an airframe of the period failed due to over-control.