75. McDonald, “Growth of Aviation,” 3.
76. Fulbright, Aviation in Tennessee, 22; Paul R. Coppock, “Mid-South Memoirs: Those Daring Young Aviators,” Commercial Appeal, 19 September 1982.
77. After a friend of his was killed in a Ford flying flivver in 1928, Henry Ford stopped manufacturing the small planes. New York Evening Sun, 7 August 1926, as cited in Corn, Winged Gospel, 95.
78. Billy Sunday abandoned the tabernacle to “take up the hallelujah trail” so Don Luscombe and Clayton Folkerts “liberated” it for their purposes. John W. Underwood, Of Monocoupes and Men: The Don Luscombe, Clayton Folkerts Story (Glendale, CA: Heritage Press, 1973), 4–8; annotated outline for The Omlie Story.
79. By contrast, restored Monocoupes now sell for about $150,000 up to $225,000; see for example, Pietsch Aircraft Sales on the web: pietschaircraft.com. Underwood, Monocoupes and Men, 7. Advertisement in Moline—The Quad City Airport, circa 1927, Quad Cities Airport archives.
80. Velie’s mother was John Deere’s daughter.
81. Underwood, Monocoupes and Men, 8–11.
82. Altogether 350 Velie Monocoupes were built between 1927 and 1931. Underwood, Monocoupes and Men, 11, 14.
Chapter 3
1. In the 1930s, airplane manufacturers often hired female salespeople to demonstrate that flying was easy and safe. Phoebe was one of the earliest women to take on this role. See Corn, The Winged Gospel, 76–77. “Ambassadoress” used in promotional ad copy for Velie Monocoupe, Quad Cities Airport archives.
2. Promotional ad copy, Quad Cities.
3. Hours listed in Memphis Press-Scimitar, 2 July 1928; Velie Long Life pamphlet, Quad Cities.
4. Official rules booklet, Commercial Airplane Reliability Tour Collection, Ford Research Center.
5. Forden, Ford Air Tours, 63–65.
6. Scharlau, Phoebe, 61; Aero Digest, September 1928, 82.
7. Map in Forden, Ford Air Tours, 66.
8. The first air navigational charts were published in June 1927, but they were “Strip Airway Maps,” covering only the main air routes. Sectional charts did not arrive until the 1930s. www.avn.faa.gov.
9. Quoted in Gene Nora Jessen, The Powder Puff Derby of 1929 (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2002), 146.
10. Moline Dispatch, 30 June 1928.
11. Rules indicated that the first entry registered would be first ship to take off, but this rule was apparently ignored in this instance. Official rules booklet, Commercial Airplane Reliability Tour Collection, Ford Research Center.
12. Standard instruments listed on Velie application for airworthiness certificate, Department of Commerce. Copy in Quad Cities; enameled ring described in Scharlau, Phoebe, 64; the ring is in the collection of the International Women’s Air and Space Museum, Cleveland.
13. In all there were twenty-seven planes on the tour including the pathfinder ship and the army’s twelve-passenger plane, which brought up the rear. Several other planes joined the caravan for short legs. Forden, Ford Air Tours, 84–85.
14. Telegram, 6 July 1928, Phoebe Omlie file, Ninety-Nines Museum.
15. Minneapolis Morning Tribune, 25 July 1928.
16. Crash description and analysis in Senate Doc. 319, Department of Commerce, 17 February 1931, 80.
17. New York Times, 10 July 1928.
18. Telegram quoted in Memphis Press-Scimitar, 10 July 1928.
19. St. Paul Pioneer Press, 10 July 1928; Moline Dispatch, 6 August 1928.
20. Moline Dispatch, 6 August 1928.
21. Underwood, Monocoupes and Men, 12.
22. Ford News, 15 August 1928.
23. Ford News, 16 July 1928; Washington Post, 1 July 1928.
24. Tour events described by Forden, Ford Air Tours, 63–68; photograph showing Phoebe and Estelle in the front row at MGM Studios in Forden, Ford Air Tours, 83.
25. St. Paul Daily News, 24 July 1928.
26. Scharlau, Phoebe, 65.
27. Forden, Ford Air Tours, 68.
28. Minneapolis Morning Tribune, 25 July 1928.
29. Ford News, 15 August 1928; Forden, Ford Air Tours, 68.
30. Forden, Ford Air Tours, 201; Detroit News, 29 July 1928.
31. She was the first woman to fly a light plane over the Great American Desert and the Rocky Mountains. Reprint from Detroit News in Moline Dispatch, 6 August 1928.
32. Memphis Press-Scimitar, 6 August 1928.
33. Ibid.
34. “Given up for gone, but recovered,” annotated outline, The Omlie Story.
35. Atlanta Constitution, 15 October 1928; telephone interview with pilot Donis B. Hamilton, Paragould, 6 January 2009.
36. Many Monocoupes did not survive. In 2009, two Monocoupes, including a 1928 Velie Monocoupe 70 similar to Chiggers, were owned by Golden Age Air Museum in Bethel, Pennsylvania. One of them had been restored by a Berks County, Pennsylvania, aviation pioneer, R. Harding Breithaupt, and hung from the ceiling of his Antique Airplane Restaurant at his Dutch Colony Inn in Exeter Township. There it remained for forty years until the inn and restaurant closed in 2007 when Breithaupt donated the Monocoupe to the Golden Age Air Museum. In the spring of 2009, stunt pilot Andrew King of Virginia “portray[ed] famed female aviatrix Phoebe Omlie behind the stick of the 1928 Monocoupe 70 at the annual Flying Circus Air Show.” http://readingeagle.com.
37. Memphis Evening Appeal, 28 February 1929. Official cause of the crash listed as a jammed aileron control wire in Senate Doc. 319, Department of Commerce, 17 February 1931, 25.
38. NR8917, Miss Moline, exists today as a stripped fuselage awaiting restoration in a facility outside Wichita, Kansas. It was salvaged from a farmer’s field in 1987.
39. Commercial Appeal, 6 April 1928; announcement also in Moline Dispatch, 24 April 1929.
40. Memphis Press-Scimitar, 1 July 1929. Louise Thaden set her record in a Travel Air with “souped up” Hisso engine. Louise McPhetridge Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2004 [reprint of 1938]), 15–24.
41. Memphis Press-Scimitar, 27 May 1929.
42. Annotated outline, The Omlie Story; Commercial Appeal, 30 June 1929.
43. Coppock, Memphis Sketches, 126; Commercial Appeal, 19 June 1934.
44. Ad for Curtiss Flying Service, Commercial Appeal, 14 June 1929.
45. Memphis Press-Scimitar, 15 June 1929.
46. Michael Finger, “Flying a Steady Course,” Taking Flight (a supplement to Memphis magazine), 2005, 10–11.
47. Moline Dispatch, 1 July 1929.
48. New York Times, 30 June 1929; Commercial Appeal, 30 June 1929.
49. Moline Dispatch, 1 July 1929.
50. Commercial Appeal, 30 June 1929.
51. Memphis Press-Scimitar, 1 July 1929.
52. Moline Dispatch, 24 July 1929.
53. Ibid., 23 July 1929. Such a discrepancy was apparently not that unusual. When Louise Thaden set her record, she carried two altimeters. One indicated 27,000 feet and the other nearly 29,000 feet, yet the official barograph recorded a maximum of 20,200 feet. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 22–24.
54. Moline Dispatch, 24 July 1929.
55. Ibid., 19 July 1929.
56. Ibid. Des Moines to Hastings is roughly 300 miles, to Manhattan 300 miles, to Dodge City 550 miles, to Albany about 1,200 miles. She flew the distance in less than twelve hours. Moline Dispatch, 22 July 1929.
57. The other Monocoupe pilots took first, second, and third against “the Middlewest’s foremost fliers” in the light plane races. Moline Dispatch, 22 July 1929.
58. A meet in Los Angeles in 1928, attended by an estimated 300,000 people, launched the era of the National Air Races and established their format: a ten-day program of races, exhibits, and stunts. In 1929, the races moved to the newly completed Municipal Airport at Cleveland. Over the next ten years, most of the National Air Races were hosted by Cleveland, except for 1930 in Chicago and 1933 and 1936 in Los Angeles. “The National Air Races and Aeronautical Exposition,” Aero Digest, September 1929, 55�
�56, 120; Henderson Collection, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland.
59. Quoted in Susan Butler, East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997), 228.
60. Louise Thaden quoted in Corn, Winged Gospel, 75.
61. Ruth Elder quoted in Cleveland Plain Dealer, 18 August 1929.
62. Rasche quoted in Valerie Moolman, Women Aloft (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1981), 13.
63. New York Times, 12 July 1929, quoted in Butler, East to the Dawn, 229; Earhart quote in “Flying Clubs,” Time, 24 June 1929.
64. Lap prizes were usually between $200 and $250 each. “The complete purse involved in this race is one of the richest in the history of aviation,” noted “The National Air Races and Aeronautical Exposition,” Aero Digest, September 1929, 56; Planck, Women with Wings, 81.
65. There were also five other shorter races set to converge on Cleveland: the All-Ohio Derby, Rim-of-Ohio Derby, races from Philadelphia, Oakland, California, and the Canadian Derby from Toronto. “The National Air Races and Aeronautical Exposition,” Aero Digest, September 1929, 56.
66. In 1929, the 776-foot-long Zeppelin traveled around the world at an average speed of 70 miles per hour. R. G. Grant, Flight: The Complete History (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 2007), 121.
67. Total pilots’ licenses issued and renewed by the Department of Commerce in 1929 was 9,824. United States Department of Commerce, Aeronautics Branch, Annual Report of the Director of Aeronautics to the Secretary of Commerce for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1929 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1929), 8; Kathleen Brooks-Pazmany, United States Women in Aviation 1919–1929 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 34; Komons, Bonfires to Beacons, 26.
68. Brooks-Pazmany, Women in Aviation, 38.
69. Jessen, Powder Puff Derby, 26.
70. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 132.
71. Earhart, The Fun of It, 154.
72. Thaden held the altitude record for less than six months; Marvel Crossen topped 23,996 feet on 28 May 1929. Margaret Whitman Blair, The Roaring 20: The First Cross-Country Air Race for Women (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2006), 29.
73. Brooks-Pazmany, Women in Aviation, 37–39.
74. Jessen, Powder Puff Derby, 44–47; Brooks-Pazmany, Women in Aviation, 39–44.
75. Brooks-Pazmany, Women in Aviation, 35.
76. Elinor Smith, Aviatrix (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 100–101.
77. Phoebe’s Monocoupe had a closed cockpit. So did Amelia Earhart’s Vega and Edith Foltz’s Eagle Rock Bullet.
78. CW class in order of takeoff: Phoebe Omlie in Warner Monocoupe; “Chubby” Keith-Miller, New Zealand, Fleet-Kinner 5; Claire Fahy, Los Angeles, Travel Air (with OX-5 engine); Thea Rasche, Germany, Gypsy Moth; Bobbie Trout, Los Angeles, Golden Eagle; Edith Folz, Portland, Oregon, Alexander Eagle Rock Bullet. New York Times, 19 August 1929.
79. DW class in order of takeoff: Marvel Crosson, San Diego, Travel Air; Florence “Pancho” Barnes, San Marino, Travel Air; Blanche Noyes, Cleveland, Travel Air; Louise Thaden, Pittsburgh, Travel Air; Mary Von Mach, Detroit, Travel Air; Amelia Earhart, New York, Lockheed Vega; Margaret Perry, Beverly Hills, Spartan; Ruth Nichols, Rye, New York, Rearwin Curtiss Challenger; Opal Kunz, New York, Travel Air; Neva Paris, Great Neck, New York, Curtiss Robin; Ruth Elder, Beverly Hills, Swallow; Gladys O’Donnell, Long Beach, Waco; Vera Dawn Walker, Los Angeles, Curtiss Robin. New York Times, 19 August 1929.
80. Rules for 1929 Women’s Air Derby, Henderson Collection, Western Reserve Historical Society.
81. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 132–133; Planck, Women with Wings, 81; Jessen, Powder Puff Derby, 25.
82. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 25 August 1929.
83. Jessen, Powder Puff Derby, 59, 66.
84. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 18 and 19 August 1929.
85. Rules for the 1929 Women’s Air Derby, Henderson Collection.
86. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 54.
87. Scharlau, Phoebe, 75.
88. Elapsed times for the various legs of the Women’s Air Derby found in Herbert F. Powell, “The 1929 National Air Races Get Underway,” Aviation, 31 August 1929, 466.
89. Jessen, Powder Puff Derby, 84.
90. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 48; Jessen, Powder Puff Derby, 94.
91. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 20 August 1929.
92. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 48.
93. Jessen, Powder Puff Derby, 101; Brooks-Pazmany, Women in Aviation, 46.
94. Jessen, Powder Puff Derby, 113.
95. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 46; Cleveland Plain Dealer, 20 August 1929.
96. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 22 August 1929; Brooks-Pazmany, Women in Aviation, 46.
97. Thaden, “The Women’s Air Derby,” Aero Digest, October 1929, 62.
98. Jessen, Powder Puff Derby, 106.
99. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 49–50.
100. Blair, The Roaring 20, 91.
101. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 51.
102. Ogden City (Utah) Standard Examiner, 20 August 1929.
103. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 22 August 1929. Rasche would be plagued with dirty gas throughout the race.
104. San Antonio Express, 22 August 1929. Thaden thought Crosson might have succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning, a problem with the Travel Air design with which Thaden had struggled. Before the race, Thaden had installed a four-inch pipe through which she could breathe fresh air. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 43–45. Jessen wrote that Beech’s factory crew agreed, noting that there was evidence that Crosson had vomited over the side of the plane. Jessen, Powder Puff Derby, 153.
105. Quoted in Blair, The Roaring 20, 12.
106. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 51.
107. Earhart, The Fun of It, 138. In all, five people were killed in accidents associated with the 1929 National Air Races: Marvel Crosson, Thomas G. “Jack” Reid (making a solo endurance record), Edward “Red” Devereaux, Mrs. Devereaux and Edward Reiss (killed at Boston racing from Philadelphia); five others were seriously injured. “Cleveland Races and Show,” Time, 9 September 1929.
108. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 51; also quoted in Jessen, Powder Puff Derby, 129; Brooks-Pazmany, Women in Aviation, 46.
109. Memphis Press-Scimitar, 21 August 1929.
110. Ibid.
111. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 22 August 1929.
112. Ibid.; Louise Thaden, “The Women’s Air Derby,” Aero Digest, October 1929, 299.
113. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 23 August 1929.
114. Jessen, Powder Puff Derby, 151–152.
115. Blair, The Roaring 20, 85.
116. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 25 August 1929.
117. Blair, The Roaring 20, 96.
118. Ibid.
119. Jessen, Powder Puff Derby, 186.
120. Crowd estimate in Cleveland Plain Dealer, 29 August 1929. “The National Air Races and Aeronautical Exposition,” Aero Digest, September 1929, 55–56, 120; Russell C. Johns, “Observations at the National Air Races and Exposition,” Aero Digest, October 1929, 66–70.
121. “Cleveland Races and Show,” Time, 9 September 1929.
122. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 26 August 1929.
123. Blair, The Roaring 20, 94–95.
124. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 26 August 1929.
125. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 56.
126. Ibid., 57.
127. Photo in Brooks-Pazmany, Women in Aviation, 48.
128. Thaden, High, Wide and Frightened, 59.
129. Ibid.
130. Fourteen women finished the race 26 August; Bobbi Trout arrived the following day to also finish. Blair, The Roaring 20, 108.
131. Thaden won $3,600 for first place in the DW class. Official Standings of the Contestants in the 1929 National Air Races, Henderson Collection.
132. Final standings in DW class: Louise Thaden, Gladys O�
��Donnell, Amelia Earhart, Blanche Noyes, Ruth Elder, Neva Paris, Mary Haizlip, Opal Kunz, Mary Von Mach, and Vera Dawn Walker. Light plane finishers: Phoebe Omlie, Edith Foltz, Chubby Keith-Miller, and Thea Rasche. The remaining six in the field did not finish: Pancho Barnes (crashed), Claire Fahy (broken wires), Ruth Nichols (crashed), Margaret Perry (typhoid fever), Bobbi Trout (finished untimed), and Marvel Crosson (killed).
133. In 1929, the National Air Races adopted the “race-horse start” (all entrants starting at once) for closed course races over the previous method of starting entrants at intervals and having them race against the clock. “The National Air Races and Aeronautical Exposition,” Aero Digest, 56.
134. John T. Nevill, “The National Air Races, Day by Day and in Summary,” Aviation, 7 September 1929, 525.
135. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 28 August 1929.
136. Johns, “Observations,” 68.
137. Brooks-Pazmany, Women in Aviation, 54.
138. Phoebe was still in braces from her crash in Paragould. Phoebe described breaking her ankle to the Minneapolis Tribune, 2 September 1931, and in The Omlie Story.
139. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 28 August 1929; Moline Dispatch, 14 September 1929; Smith, Aviatrix, 142.
140. Nevill, “The National Air Races,” 525.
141. The trophy was delivered to the chapter of the National Aeronautic Association to which the entrant belonged, to be held for one year. The Aerol Trophy was awarded only twice for a cross-country women’s derby: 1929 and 1930 when Gladys O’Donnell won it. Beginning in 1931, the trophy was awarded to the winner of the women’s free-for-all closed-course race. News Release, National Air Races, August 1932, Henderson Collection.
142. Booklet, 1929 Women’s Air Derby, Henderson Collection.
143. National Air Race Briefs, microfilm, Western Reserve Historical Society.
144. Dallas Morning News, 22 September 1929.
145. Several sources say Amelia wrote a letter to Ruth Nichols in 1927 discussing the need for a female pilots’ association. Phoebe is credited in the official history of The Ninety-Nines; Lu Hollander, Gene Nora Jessen and Verna West, The Ninety-Nines: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing Company, 1996), 11. Phoebe passed credit to Peggy Rex, who suggested the idea at a breakfast held at the “Hostess House” the day after the races. Letter, Phoebe to Pancho Barnes, 29 December 1968, William E. Barnes Collection (private).
Walking on Air Page 22