Grace's Mystery Ryan

Here’s one that has stumped me. This is a 1920s press photo (the back has a file date of July 14, 1927), and the caption pasted to the back (a common practice for press photos) consists of two words: “Grace’s plane.”

So who was “Grace?” During that era, it would not have been proper to use a woman’s first name in this manner, so presumably it is a last name. There is no one by that name in the Who’s Who in Aviation History, there is no one by that name listed in the Early Birds of Aviation. However, in the list of early movie stunt pilots, one name stands out at the top: Dick Grace.

Grace had been a combat pilot during WWI, and following the war, hit the barnstorming circuit. From there he found his way into the movies, and carved out a niche for himself as the go-to person for airplane crashes. Grace approach crashes with more science than bravado, learning to understand how a plane comes apart in a crash, and thus how to add safety features so that a crash can look devastating on-camera and yet be survivable for the stunt pilot. He invented his own safety equipment, including a chest harness that was designed to break away at a certain point in order to absorb some of the energy.

Through his career, he managed to crash upwards of 50 planes, although he didn’t always walk away. During the filming of the 1927 Gary Cooper film Wings, Graces safety equipment failed him, and his head smashed into the instrument panel. Although he didn’t realize it at the time, he had broken his neck and crushed four vertebrae. The doctors told him to expect to stay in a neck brace in the hospital for a year, but he checked himself out six weeks later, and returned to crashing planes. In all, Grace claimed to have broken over 80 bones during his career.

Grace was an active member of the Associated Motion Picture Pilots guild, and was involved in the 1932 film Sky Bride in which stunt pilot and AMPP president Leo Nomis was killed. During WWII, he re-enlisted and flew combat missions as a B-17 co-pilot (one has to wonder what the rest of the crew thought about flying with a guy who’d deliberately crashed so many planes!).

Not satisfied with merely being a stunt pilot, Grace also tried his hand at acting, with his first lead role in The Flying Fool (1925; not to be confused with 1929 flick of the same name). In the July 1930 issue of Modern Mechanix, Grace wrote an extensive article, which can be read online, on how he accomplished the movie crashes (it’s well-worth the read!). He also wrote a number of books on his exploits, including Squadron of Death and Crash Pilot. Unlike most movie stunt pilots of his era, Grace didn’t die in a plane crash, but rather of emphysema at the age of 67 (possibly suggesting that smoking is more dangerous than being on board a crashing airplane!).

So what’s the plane? It’s hard to identify it because there’s no registration number: such numbers weren’t required until after 1927. But by configuration, it appears to be a Ryan M-1 mailplane with some unusual modifications. In comparing this photo to the M-1, there are many striking similarities, including the engine cowling (and lack of top cowling), engine bracing, landing gear, wing struts, horizontal stab braces, and tail shape. But there are two unusual aspects to this plane. The first is that the wings and the horizontal stab fabric skin appear to be translucent.

The second is the cockpit: the standard M-1 had an open, two-person cockpit, with the wing being a parasol configuration, so that the pilot had visibility underneath it. It appears that the fuselage has been built up to the bottom of the wing, and the cockpit has been enclosed. This same configuration was used on Lindbergh’s NYP, which was based on the M-1 and M-2, and on the NYP, the space was used to house the extra-large fuel tank required for the trans-Atlantic trip. It’s entirely possible, then that this plane was similarly modified, possibly for an endurance flight attempt, although I have found no record of such an event.

I can find no indication that Dick Grace owned an M-1 (his name doesn’t show up in the old registration lists, but then again it wouldn’t if this plane crashed and didn’t make it into the age of aircraft N numbers). One possibility for the mods, of course, was movie work. As mentioned above, Grace was famous for carefully modifying aircraft so that the drama of the crash would be enhanced on-camera, while he would be protected during the shoot. Could this have been a plane modified to look like a different one for a movie shoot?

But maybe this plane has nothing to do with Dick Grace at all. If so, whose was it? And why was it so modified?

Ryan's Brougham

Back in early 2012, when we looked at T. Claude Ryan's airline, we noted that before Claude had sold out his interest in the company to his business partner B. F. "Frank" Mahoney in November, 1926, he had helped design the M-1 mail plane, which was well received by the blossoming airmail industry. That design, and the improved M-2, had helped attract a young airmail pilot named Charles Lindbergh, who was looking for a plane that would be capable of crossing the Atlantic and winning the Orteig prize. Lindbergh had initially wanted to modify a stock M-2, but eventually the modifications resulted in the Spirit of St. Louis having little in common with the M-2, other than its basic lines.

The last B-3, which became the prototype B-5

Shortly before the contract to build Linbergh's plane was signed, Mahoney and the Ryan engineers started building the prototype of their next, follow-on aircraft, the B-1 Brougham. Designed to carry four passengers plus the pilot, the Brougham was intended to be the next-generation of small airliner. Although the lines were similar, there was very little in common between the M-2 and B-1 (except for the tail feathers on the earliest B-1s). While the M-1/M-2 design sold a combined total of 34 airframes, the Brougham (in all its variants) sold over 220 copies, making it wildly successful for its time.

The initial B-1 model, which first flew in early 1927, was powered by a Wright J-5 engine, and sold well. Frank Hawks bought the prototype, named it Gold Bug and went barnstorming. After Lindbergh's flight, Hawks renamed the plane Spirit of San Diego and sold rides in the plane "like the one Lindy flew". Mahoney subsequently hired him to be an official company representative. The company built a special one-off version, the B-2, for Lindbergh to use as his personal aircraft, which he took on tour across the U.S. during 1928.

After building about 150 of the B-1s, Mahoney decided it was time to update the design, and the 1928 B-3 included a larger cabin, larger tail surfaces and swiveling tailwheel. The last few were built with 300 hp J-6 engines, but retained the B-3's 1,590 pound useful load. To take advantage of the bigger engine, the last B-3 was built as the prototype B-5 in 1929, which had a 1,749 pound useful load. This prototype, initially NX-8321, is shown in the first of our two photos, which appear to be offical factory prints.

A Parks College B-5 in flight

Also in 1929, the company changed its name to Mahoney-Ryan Aircraft Co. But as production got undeway, Frank Mahoney started having serious health issues, and so in 1930 sold his controlling interest in the company to Detroit Aircraft Corp., a company that was rabidly buying up the shares of numerous aviation-related companies, including the likes of Aircraft Development Corp, Aviation Tool Co., Eastman Aircraft, Blackburn Airplane, Parks Air College, and held almost all of the stock of Lockheed. They dropped the "Mahoney" part of the name and the company became the Ryan Aircraft Division (althought "Corp" was also used), and was moved to St. Louis.

Since Detroit Aircraft owned Parks, it was natural that the college's fleet would include aircraft built by other divisions of the company, and the aircraft shown in our second photo, NC728M, was one of Park's acquisitions.

Compare the tails of our two subject planes: the first B-5 was built by Mahoney-
Ryan in San Diego, the Parks College plane was built by Ryan in St. Louis MO.

The size of Detroit, though, was not able to save the conglomerate from the effects of the Great Depression, and on October 27, 1931, the company went into receivership. Several divisions, such as Lockheed and Parks, were bought out of receivership by other entities, but the Ryan Division was one that did not survive.

In 1934, T. Claude tried again, and it was this later version of Ryan Aeronautical that succeeded in the long term, and today is a part of Northrop Grumman Corp.

First Recruit

When Claude Ryan started his second aircraft manufacturing company (his first, the builder of the Spirit of St. Louis had been sold to his business partner), the first plane he and his team built was the Sport Trainer, or ST, followed by an aerobatic version, the STA.

With military aviation advancing at a blinding pace, the Army Air Corps recognized the need for a new modern, monoplane trainer. So, in 1939 the USAAC bought a single civilian STA-1, NC18907, and redesignated it as the XPT-16 (39-717; c/n 306, it is sometimes listed as a YPT-16) and set about evaluating it.

While the plane in our two photos has no visible markings, my research indicates that this is 39-717, the XPT-17. These were Ryan factory photos, taken over the San Diego area. In the photo on right, note the cross-controled side-slip configuration (ailerons to the left, rudder to the right) and the pilot presents a planform view to the photographer. Another blog, Replica in Scale, has an entry (here) that includes a photo that must have been taken a fraction of a second later, as the tail has dropped just slightly.

What the USAAC found in the little two-seater pretty well met their needs, and so they ordered an additional 15 aircraft as YPT-16s. Only five of these were delivered (40-040 - 40-044) before the USAAC knew they had a winner, the order was converted and the rest were delivered as production PT-16s (40-045 - 40-054). These were operated by Ryan Aeronautical in San Diego under contract, training Army Air Corps pilots.

It soon became evident, though, that the one weak link in the design was the use of the 125-hp Menasco L-365 inline engine. To try to correct the problem, 39-717 was re-engined with a Kinner B-54 five-cylinder radial engine, redesignated the XPT-16A and shipped off to Wright Field for evaluations. This was followed by two Ryan-built, Kinner-powered prototypes (c/n 1000 and 1001) which carried the Ryan model STK; testing clearly showed that the Kinner engine significanly improved the aircraft's reliability and performance. Further aircraft were built under the PT-20 and PT-21 designation before the final PT-22 Recruit version, with which Ryan hit the jackpot, building over a thousand of them.

Sadly, 39-717 was scrapped in March, 1945.

For comparison, here is an amateur snapshot of a generic production PT-22.

Spirit of St. Louis on Tour

During one of the stops on the Guggenheim tour. Anyone want to take
a stab at figuring out the lettering on the ground?

Today's post is in honor of the 85th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's crossing of the Atlantic in the Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis, which took place May 20-21, 1927. In the years since, Lindbergh's feat is credited with the popularization of air travel and the launching of the Golden Age of Aviation. But it wasn't just the record-setting flight that accomplished all of this, it is what was done after the flight, the way in which Lindbergh's accomplishment - and by virtue of that the viability of aviation - was brought to the doorsteps of much of America.

After landing in Paris at the end of his historic flight, Lindbergh went on to fly the Ryan NYP to Belgium and then England. There, it was loaded onto the Navy cruiser USS Memphis, dispatched by President Coolidge for this purpose, for the return trip to the U.S. On June 11, the ship with its cargo arrived in Washington, and was triumphantly escorted up the Potomac by a fleet of Navy ships and, overhead, squadrons of military aircraft.

Over the subsequent ten months, from July 20 to October 23, 1927, Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis went on a national goodwill tour, known as the "Guggenheim Tour" because it was sponsored by a fund established by Chicago multimillionaire Harry Guggenheim and his father Daniel. Lindbergh made a grand counter-clockwise tour around the continent, making 92 stops and visiting all 48 states (click here for a map). The tour also reached down into Latin America, with Lindbergh and the Spirit making the first non-stop flight between Washington D.C. and Mexico City.

It was on this tour that some excited amateur photographer snapped the above image, though I don't know where it was (sadly he or she mistakenly focused on the barbed wire instead of the plane, but that doesn't matter to me, though, it's still a magical moment in time).

After the tour, Spirit of St. Louis was retired in April 1928 and donated to the Smithsonian. Lindbergh took off in the plane one last time on April 30, flying from Lambert Field in St. Louis to Bolling Field in Washington D.C. To get the plane to its new home, it once again took to the waters of the Potomac, this time on a barge. The Archive is privileged to own both a print and the original large-format negative of this second photo. Hand-written on the back of it is the inscription, "Lindberg's 'Spirit of St. Louis' on the barge at 'Haines Point', Washington D.C. Spring, 1927." (Yes, the writer was off a year!) Hains Point is just north, across the Potomac from Bolling Field, so it was a fairly short trip.

The Spirit originally hung in the "Castle", the old Smithsonian building, before the Air & Space Museum was built, at which point it was moved and hung in the new museum's main gallery, where it remains today.

(As a small side note, which I can indulge in since this is my blog...the top photo is the one that started my passion for collecting vintage aviation images, when I found and bought it at an antique auction house in Sacramento in the late 1970s, where, while a teenager, I worked on the weekends. Little did I understand, when I shelled out the princely sum of $25, representing my entire evening's wages, what an adventure these photos would lead me on, and and that I would later go on to take history-recording photos myself as a flight test photographer. It's been quite a ride!)

The First Airline in America

Claude Ryan's first converted Standard J-1, the Oneota, over the San Diego waterfront
flown by Dick Bowman (note the lack of a registration number...this was two years
before they were required).

The title of "First Scheduled Airline in America" has been claimed by two different companies, and far be it for this blog to attempt to settle the dispute. One of the claimants is Chalk's, which traces its roots back to Chalk's Flying Service, which established scheduled airline service between Miami and Bimini in February, 1919.

The other is the Los Angeles-San Diego Air Line (not exactly the most imaginative airline name in history...and rather limiting of route expansion!), which is the subject of today's gorgeous glossy 8x10 press and publicity photo.

Long before he was known as an aircraft designer, T Claude set up shop as a flight school and charter operator at a little field known as Dutch Flats in the early 1920s.He used a variety of aircraft, including U.S. Army surplus Standard J-1 trainers. Some of Ryan’s most lucrative charters were flights up to Los Angeles, and one day, one of his flight students, Benjamin Franklin Mahoney (B.F. or Frank, to his friends), who suggested that there might be some money to be made in establishing scheduled airline service between San Diego and Los Angeles. Mahoney offered to help fund the venture, if Ryan would provide the planes.

Ryan looked around for a relatively inexpensive, passenger-capable plane, and found none. On the other hand, there were plenty of Standard J-1s lying about. The type was, by all accounts, a terrible airplane. In the midst of WWI, the Army had desperately needed training aircraft, and simply couldn’t get all the Curtiss JN-4 “Jennys” that they wanted, so they bought the J-1 from Standard Aero Corporation of Plainfield, New Jersey.

A major part of the shortcomings of the J-1 can be attributed to the highly unreliable Hall-Scott A7a engine, which was underpowered, vibrated terribly and had a nasty habit of catching fire while in the air. The J-1 had been developed by Standard from the Sloan H-series trainers, originally designed by Charles Day. To meet the production demands by the huge Army orders, three additional companies, Wright-Martin, Dayton-Wright and Fischer Body also began to build J-1s, with over 1,600 being produced. Because of the technical and safety issues (the J-1 had a much higher accident rate than the JN-4), and with sufficient quantities of Jennies now on hand, the Army grounded them in 1918, and many were never even unpacked. An additional 2,700 aircraft were on order when the Armistice was signed, and the Army promptly cancelled these and began dumping the ones they still had.

Thus, after the war, Standards could be picked up for a song, many still in their original shipping crates. When re-engined with an OX-5 or even a more powerful Hispano Suiza, the reliability of the J-1 increased dramatically, and they became popular on the barnstorming circuit and with the private flight schools that were springing up all over the country, like Ryan’s.

Ryan found three “new” J-1s in Texas, bought them for a few hundred dollars, and brought them out to California. When the crates were opened, however what he had was really nothing more than a collection of pieces. Undaunted, he had his mechanics build up the machines, and then began to modify them. In Army service, the J-1 was a two-seater, instructor and student. For the new airline, Ryan re-engineered the fuselage, eliminating the forward open cockpit, and building an enclosed four-place passenger cabin, with large windows for sightseeing, in the fuselage forward of the aft cockpit. He replaced the troublesome 90hp Hall-Scott engine with a 180hp Hispano-Suiza, and suddenly he had a dynamic performer on his hands.

Calling the new variant the “Ryan Standard”, he christened the first ship Oneota after a friend’s ranch. The second was the Miramar and the third, which was further modified with a wider, two-person cockpit, the Palomar. Our featured photo shows the Oneota in flight over San Diego’s waterfront area, and was likely taken very early in the operation - or possibly before it officially started. This photo was used in both news releases about the Line, as well as on the cover of its time table, as can be seen in this sample.

Daily round-trip service commenced on March 1, 1925. (And that is where the claims for the "first airline" differ - Chalk's offered scheduled service, but it wasn't daily. Thus, the Ryan/Mahoney operation could justly claim to be America's first daily-scheduled, year-round airline.) The one-way fare was $14.50, and a round trip cost the princely sum of $22.50, calculated on breakeven costs if only one passenger was on board. The fares also included to/from hotel transportation.

Understanding that a regular airline was going to need a lot of publicity to draw passengers, Ryan invited Hollywood celebrities out to the inaugural round-trip flights, which would start from Los Angeles, flying from a small airfield at 99th Street and Western Ave. All three of the Ryan Standards – one of which would be flown by Ryan himself – would together make the first flight. Other celebs, including Robert Vignola, Hedda Hopper and Vera Reynolds, came down to witness the flight, drawing crowds to see them as much as to see his planes. As a part of the first-flight festivities, three military aircraft, representing both the Army and Navy, were tapped to “escort” the three passenger planes to San Diego.

With the military aircraft orbiting the airfield overhead, the three Ryans climbed skyward at 10am, heading south at 1,500 feet (ideal for sightseeing) for the 90-minute journey. At the same time, two Navy carrier pigeons were also released, a stunt that backfired on the airline, as one of the feathered birds arrived “home” at San Diego’s North Island before the formation of six airplanes landed at their destination just across the narrow harbor.

Naturally, large crowds greeted the arriving stars, complete with the mayor and civic presentations. After lunch at the Grant Hotel and a tour of the city, the stars returned to Dutch Flat for the return trip to LA. The following day, March 2, the regular schedule of 9am L.A. departure and 4pm return flight from San Diego commenced.

A month and a half after service started, on April 19, Mahoney bought half of all of Ryan's business interests, and the two formally became partners, under the name Ryan Airlines. Besides offering travel, Ryan Airlines soon started building and selling airplanes to other carriers as well, the first being the Ryan M-1, six of which were bought by Pacific Air Transport, an early forerunner of United Airlines. Despite its glamorous start, traffic - and revenue - from the San Diego to Los Angeles service started to drop off. To compensate, fares were increased to $17.40 and $26.50, and to further garner publicity and passenger interest, Ryan Airlines bought a larger Douglas Cloudster, which was converted to carry 10 people in carpeted luxury.

It was to no avail, there just wasn’t the needed demand. Even when no pax showed up, they kept the schedule with empty airplanes. In September 1926, the airline service was cancelled. Ryan and Mahoney's partnership was terminated two months later, with Mahoney buying out Claude's interest, but keeping the Ryan Airlines name, and continuing to build airplanes. And five months after that, a young air mail pilot by the name of Charles Lindbergh, who had been impressed with Pacific Air Transport's M-1s, contacted Ryan Airlines to inquire whether they could build a version of the aircraft capable of flying across the Atlantic.

The Palomar was sold to Lewis Hawaiian Tours, who re-christened it the Malolo and flew inter-island and sightseeing tours with it. One of the Lewis pilots was Martin Jensen who later won 2nd place in the tragic 1927 Dole Mainland-to-Hawaii race. The Miramar was sold to the Byerly Brothers in Mexico. It is not known what ended up happening to the Oneota.

The San Diego Air & Space Museum's Flickr stream has a large collection of the airline's Ryan Standards, starting at this image.

(Tip o' the hat to my bro Eric for giving me the photo for Christmas. And credit were credit's due: part of this article was based on information from the article “First Regular Daily Airline Service Was From L.A. to S.D.” by Richard Crawford, San Diego Union-Tribune, March 10, 2011.)