Ready...Set...Go, Ladies, Go!

Ok, so I got carried away in writing this entry...it's the longest so far, but the story was so compelling!

The scene at Santa Monica's Clover Field for the start of the first Women's

National Air Derby on August 18, 1929. The aircraft in the center surrounded
by onlookers, with NC714N on its right wing, is Margaret Perry's Spartan C-3.
(Trivial sidenote...the truck at far right shows that the spelling "Naborhood"
was evidently acceptable in 1929.)

It all started with Lou Greve. This inventor, engineer and industrialist, who inherited the Cleveland Air Tool Company, was a major advocate of aviation. He invented the oleo-pneumatic landing gear shock absorber (under the name Aerol) that is used by virtually every aircraft flying today. To promote his company and his invention, Greve was a major sponsor of air racing in the late 1920s and 1930s, and was appointed as President of the company that organized the big races of that era, The National Air Races, Inc.

Greve was also a vocal advocate of allowing women (who at the time were largely viewed as inferior and even downright incompetent) to participate in air racing. For the 1929 National Air Races, to be held in Cleveland for the first time, Greve donated the trophy and purse for the first Cleveland Pneumatic Aerol Trophy Race, a two-class cross-country event to be held derby-style. It was to start in Santa Monica, California, at Clover Field, and end in Cleveland, Ohio. Over the years, the race has also become known as the 1929 Women’s Air Derby and the First Women’s National Air Derby.

With Phoebe Omlie's Monocoupe ready to go in the background, humorist 

and aviation promoter Will Rogers (third from right) talks things over with 

Ruth Elder. Could this have been that moment when he uttered his "powder-

puff" comment?

The Derby began on August 18, with a large crowd and a level of hoopla appropriate to such a major event. Our series of unique photos of the start of the race comes from the collection of Mojave Transportation Museum Board member and member of the Ninety-Nines, Cathy Hansen. The event would take place over eight days of stage racing, covering 2,200 miles, and include a lot of accidents and high drama, which was covered breathlessly by the contemporary media.

On the day of the race's start, many Southern California celebrities came out to see the competitors off, and one celebrity in particular was chosen to be the event's Grand Marshal, aviation promoter and nationally-known humorist Will Rogers. As the pilots made their final preparations to climb into their aircraft, he commented that their female “genes” compelled them to take one final look at the mirror in their compacts, and apply one final dab of powder to their noses (some of the racers later would comment that it was Ruth Elder who was especially prone to this habit). With reporters standing around, he quipped, “Looks like a powder puff derby, to me.” The phrase was grabbed and repeated across the continent by the media, to the point that after the Women’s National Air Derbies were resumed in 1947 (they ran through 1977), they were officially known as “The Powder Puff Derby”.

Close-up from the above image, showing Will Rogers
conversing with Ruth Elder.

The race was divided into two classes, based on engine size (women were being allowed to race airplanes with power “appropriate” to their gender, according to the male race organizers; as such, for instance, Opal Kunz was disallowed to fly her own 300hp Travel Air, because it was thought to be too much airplane for a woman, so she had to borrow one with less power) – Class C, which had six competitors, was for aircraft with engines between 275 and 509 cubic inches, and Class D, with 14 entrants, was for 510 to 800 cubic inches.

Twenty women in all started the race, 18 from the U.S. and one each from Australia (Jessie Keith-Miller) and Germany (Thea Rasche); to put it in contrast, there were only 100 women (some sources say 70) who held pilots licenses in America at that time, so nearly a fifth of them participated in this race (at that time, there was no FAA to issue licenses, instead they were issued by the French-based Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, or FAI, the organization that still to this day sactions and authenticates all world aviation records). Among the entrants was Amelia Earhart in her first competitive race, and the flamboyant Pancho Barnes. The rules stated that each entrant had to have at least 100 hours of flying time, including at least 25 hours of cross-country experience. The racers, and their aircraft, were:

Class C		Class D
Edith Foltz (#109) Jessie Keith-Miller (#43) Clair Fahey (#54) Phoebe Omlie (#8) Thea Rasche (#61) Bobbi Trout (#100)	Alexander Eaglerock Fleet Travel Air (OX-5) Monocoupe deHavilland Gypsy Moth Golden Eagle Chief	Pancho Barnes (#2) Marvel Crosson (#1) Amelia Earhart (#6) Ruth Elder (#66) Mary Haizlip (#76) Ruth Nichols (#16) Blanche Noyes (#3) Gladys O'Donnell (#105) Margaret Perry (#11) Louise Thaden (#4) Mary von Mach (#5) Vera Dawn Walker (#113) Neva Paris (#23) Opal Kunz (#18)	Travel Air Travel Air Lockheed Vega Laird Swallow American Eagle Rearwin Ken-Royce Travel Air WACO Spartan C-3 Travel Air Travel Air Curtiss Robin C-1 Curtiss Robin Travel Air

Vera Dawn Walker, a native of Los Angeles, named her Curtiss Robin C-1 Miss 

Los Angeles. Here she gets the start flag.

Of the twenty entrants, only 19 started together on August 18. Nineteen-year-old Mary Haizlip's plane had been damaged on the trip to Santa Monica, and so she had to quickly find a replacement, delaying her departure. And she wasn’t the only one that had trouble just getting to the starting line. Louise Thaden, flying a Wright-powered Travel Air, fought the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning from her engine's exhaust, leading Travel Air president Walter Beech, who was sponsoring her and following her out to California, to order some immediate modifications to her plane in order to provide fresh air in the cockpit.

On her way to Santa Monica, Phoebe Omlie had to make an off-airport landing, and was arrested and jailed by the local cops as a suspected dope smuggler. It was only when Amelia Earhart, Louise Thaden and Marvel Crosson showed up at the sheriff's office to vouch for her that the law decided that they had the wrong person.

The race was started according to class, with the airplanes lined up abreast and individually flagged to take off when the timers were ready. The initial gun-shot starting the race was fired in Cleveland, and transmitted by radio to Santa Monica.

With a wave of the flag, Thea Rasche taxis her deHaviland Gypsy Moth
across the start line. She would finish fourth and last in the light division.

Day 1, August 18, Santa Monica to San Bernardino: A series of minor incidents gave a glimpse of what was to come. Before the start, mechanics had mistakenly filled Ruth Elder’s fuel tanks with oil, which then had to be drained and purged. Earhart had to return to Clover after takeoff for a stuck starter, and at San Bernardino, there was so much dust on the field from the aircraft before her that she landed long and almost ran into the large crowd of spectators. Opal Kunz, also with dust visibility problems, landed hard and damaged her plane’s landing gear. The flyers were treated to a lavish banquet and partied into the night, a habit that was continued throughout the race, leading to sleep deprivation problems.

Day 2, August 19, San Bernardino to Yuma to Phoenix: Claire Fahy, flying a Travel Air, had to make an emergency landing in Calexico because of broken flying wires, the bracings that held the bi-planes wings in shape. Rumors of sabotage had run rife before the race started (Edler’s fuel tank problems didn’t help this, either), and Fahy cried foul, alleging that her wires had been eaten away by acid in a deliberate attempt to cause her to crash. Thea Rasche had to make an off-airport landing when her engine quit, and found contamination throughout her fuel lines. Amelia’s Vega nosed over at Yuma, damaging the prop, and she was stuck there until a new one could be flown out later in the day. Mary Haizlip, Pancho Barnes and Bobbi Trout got lost and ended up in Mexico, but Trout’s problem was more serious than the others: she was out of gas and had landed in a soft dirt field, badly damaging her Golden Eagle. Some friendly locals helped her move the airplane across the border to Yuma’s airport, where it took three days to rebuild, putting her far behind. Sixteen aircraft arrived at Phoenix, and three of the other four were accounted for. Pancho was in first place in the heavy division, with Phoebe in first in the light.

Marvel Crosson, however, was missing. The next morning, her Travel Air was found destroyed in the rough territory of the Gila River Valley, four miles from Wellton, Az. She had crashed only twenty minutes from Yuma. Some of the media reports at the time claimed that she had bailed out and her chute failed to open, while others said that she was thrown from the plane on impact. Her body was found a couple hundred yards from the plane, with her partially deployed chute. There was evidence that she had vomited over the side of the cockpit, a typical symptom of carbon monoxide poisoning. For her to do that, she would have had to unbuckle and raise herself up off her seat in order to lean out over the cockpit rim. It would have been difficult for her to keep her hands on the controls at this point. Whether it was at this moment or whether she lost consciousness a short time later, she clearly lost control of the aircraft. Four witnesses (ranchers, who had no first-hand knowledge of piloting an aircraft) recounted that they had seen the plane spinning and diving at high speed. Virtually every bone in Marvel's body was broken, and she appeared to have died instantly. Her loss stunned the racers and the public who were following in the media. The media frenzy, of course, went into overdrive, with calls for the race to be cancelled, and allegations that this was “proof” that women had no business trying to fly. The racers, though, decided to carry on with the competition, knowing that Marvel would not have wanted her loss to result in the cancellation of the competition. Mary von Mach, in rallying her companions, declared, "Our pain shall become her tribute."

Day 3, August 20, Phoenix to Douglas: The women had to navigate the vast emptiness of the Arizona desert with nothing but a crude map and a bouncy, unreliable compass. Walker attempted to follow the railroad tracks out of Tucson, but picked the wrong set, and ended up far north of course, costing valuable time as she had to backtrack. In doing so, she also got caught up in a potentially fatal thunder storm. Her Monocoupe's enclosed cabin shielded her from the direct effects of the storm, and the altitude which she was at save her from hitting the ground when she became disoriented and lost control in the midst of the storm's violence. She landed in a cow pasture, only to meet up with some local men who were accompanying Jessie Keith-Miller, who had also made a forced landing. Others had to land as well: Opal Kunz ran out of gas, and Blanche Noyes landed near a farm house to try to find out where she was, only to discover that everyone there spoke only Spanish...because she was in Mexico. Pancho did the same thing.

By the time that the racers were in Douglas, Crosson's death was confirmed. Thaden strongly suspected the carbon monoxide poisoning that she herself had experienced in the Travel Air on the way to Santa Monica, and became concerned for the other racers flying that type.

Day 4, August 21, Douglas to El Paso to Midland: Pancho’s south-of-the-border detour the day before resulted in a big “MEXICO OR BUST” painted on the side of her Travel Air.  The racers ended up stopping for the day in El Paso, which had been intended as a fuel stop only, as a dust storm between there and Midland precluded any further flying. The high winds naturally were directly across the runway, exceeding the crosswind limits of some of the planes, and making for very challenging landings. Louise Thaden and Phoebe Omlie were in the lead of their respective divisions. Since this was an unplanned overnight stop, there were no banquets to consume precious sleep time.

Day 5, August 22, El Paso to Pecos, Midland, Abilene and finally to Fort Worth: Blanche Noyes’ troubles continued, with a fire in her small baggage hold. She landed in the desert, pulled the smoldering, wooden floor out and put the fire out with sand. In the process, her landing gear was damaged and she had to stop and have it temporarily welded. Airports weren’t the same back then, and there was so much publicity about the event, that in Pecos, like other places, the crowds just drove out onto the designated landing field to get a closer look. Pancho Barnes’ Travel Air, like most big-engined tail-draggers then and now, had just about zero forward visibility in the landing attitude. As such, she hit a car as she was touching down, destroying her plane. Although Pancho herself was not hurt, there would be no more racing this year for her. Margaret Perry, flying a Spartan C-3, landed at Abilene, unable to go on, and was taken to the hospital with Typhoid fever. Continuing fears of carbon monoxide poisoning plagued the Travel Air pilots, and Walter Beech instructed mechanics from Travel Air to hurry to Fort Worth and modify all the remaining Travel Airs to prevent any further problems. Thaden was in first place in the heavies (by 21 minutes), and Omlie in first in the light division. Though some of the racers were hopelessly behind, the pressed on, if only to prove that they could complete the race.

Claire Fahy in her Travel Air gets the start flag. Because her Travel Air was powered by
a 90-hp in-line OX-5 engine, rather than the larger Wright J-5 radial, she raced in the
light class. She would only make it as far as Calexico before failed flying wires caused
an emergency landing, putting her out of the running. Of note is the fourth airplane in
the lineup, Edith Folitz' Alexander Eaglerock Bullet, the only low wing monoplane in
the field, and the only one with retractable landing gear. Folitz came in second in the
light division.

Day 6, August 23, Fort Worth to Wichita: Mary Haizlip had to land twice due to oil line contamination, and Vera Dawn Walker (who was only 4’11”, and had to use pillows to be able to reach the rudder pedals) had to land her Curtiss Robin for engine overheating. Ruth Elder lost her precious map over the side of the cockpit, and had to guess at her course. Although they were now over a region where property lines and roads followed regular section lines, making navigation a bit easier, smoke from wildfires made visibility difficult, and Elder realized she'd drifted off-course (all towns looked pretty much the same, without a map to provide detail clues). She landed to find out where she was (Muskogee, OK, east of her course) but to make the ensuing takeoff, she first had to single-handedly chase away an uncaring herd of cows. Since Wichita was the home of the Travel Air company, the airplane chosen by a third of the participants, a crowd of at least 10,000 gathered to see the racers land.

Day 7, August 24, Wichita to Kansas City to East St. Louis: Thaden's race-leading performance had garnered much positive publicity for Travel Air, so Walter Beech approached her and offered to let her race their newest aircraft, the Model R - otherwise known as the Mystery Ship - in the Cleveland races. With that to look forward to, Thaden pressed on. Gladys O'Donnell's right main gear sunk into the soft sod on takeoff, causing her to nose over. A quick field repair to the dinged prop got her back in the air in short order, however. The media had a difficult time knowing how to handle the event. Some "news" stories were downright critical of the women and said that the stunt did nothing to further promote aviation in a legitimate way. Other reporters chose to focus on the fashion statements and general appearances of the women, something that they'd never do if it had been a male-only race. The women themselves, though, were unfazed, and started making plans to meet under the bleachers in Cleveland, to cement the relations they had built into a lasting organization to promote women in aviation. The destination, the airfield of Parks Air College in St. Louis, had a difficult approach with wires and trees at both ends, necessitating a sideslip approach on final. Both Blanche Noyes and Neva Paris ended up having to deliberately ground-loop in order to avoid running off the end of the runway, damaging the landing gear on their planes, but once again, field repairs had things in order before the next morning's takeoff.

Day 8, August 25, East St. Louis to Terre Haute, Cincinnati and Columbus: The Cleveland Aeronautical Exposition was opening this Sunday, and the excitement was growing about the arrival of the women, due in on Monday. The thick fog of early morning did nothing to dampen the spirits as the racers prepared for departure. Mary Haizlip's fuel contamination problems had continued, and so far in the race, she had made six emergency landings. Now, she had all the fuel lines completely drained and flushed, revealing quite a bit of foreign debris. To make matters worse, a mechanic working for Travel Air who was assigned to care for that company's planes in the race, reported that someone had tampered with Louise Thaden's magneto points. To forestall any further acts of sabotage to the race leader, he decided to sleep with the aircraft that night in Columbus. Bobbi Trout was catching up, and arrived at Parks just after the other racers had departed. Though she was no longer being officially timed, she quickly refueled and took off again, on her hunt to make up time. As the racers arrived at Lunken Airport in Cincinnati, they were greeted by a crowd twice as large as that which had turned out for Charles Lindbergh only two years before. Edith Foltz couldn't find the field, so pressed on to Columbus untimed. Meanwhile, Trout's problems continued, with engine failure. She barely was able to glide into an almost-too-small field, sideslipping between a line of poplar trees. She ground looped in an attempt to avoid a fence, but ripped open her aileron anyway. A tin can provided handy repair material, while an electrician from a nearby town managed to get her engine running again, and she was quickly back in the air. As an example of the excitement that the general public felt about the race, a local farmer between Cincinnati and Columbus plowed a giant arrow in to his field to help the racers along.

Day 9, August 26, Columbus to Cleveland: The final leg of the race was a mere 120 miles. Columbus had a new concrete runway that was still partially under construction, and the night before, the racers whose airplanes had metal tail skids (useful on sod runways) instead of tail wheels had caused a bit of a stir when the skids kicked up showers of sparks. The edges of the runway hadn't been finished, yet, leading to problems during the takeoff. Ruth Nichols, who sat comfortably in third place, had some work done on her Rearwin overnight, and so got up early to fly a brief test hop. On returning, she did not heed the warning to stay in the center of the new runway, and her plane clipped a tractor parked next to it, crashing. While she "miraculously" survived the wreck, she was out of the race. All the previous race takeoffs had taken place in reverse order of the standings, but from Columbus, the women left at one-minute intervals in the order that they held from the night before. Louise Thaden took off first, and after a 54-minute flight, spotted the Cleveland airfield, diving for the finish line, and crossing it at 170 mph. Her average speed for the race was 135.97 mph, and her total time was 20 hours, 2 minutes. As the winner of the heavy division, she also thus garnered the majority of the media attention. Addressing the crowd, Thaden said, "The sunburn derby is over, and I happen to come in first place. I'm sorry we all couldn't come in first, because they all deserve it as much as I. They're all great flyers." She dedicated her win to Crosson, and told the media that she was going to send the trophy to Marvel's family.

Second place went to Gladys O’Donnell (WACO 10, #105; 127.52mph, 20h:43m), third to Amelia Earhart (122.64mph, 22h:12m), with Blanche Noyes (Travel Air, #3; 110.88mph) in fourth and fifth went to Ruth Elder (Laird Swallow #66; 96.41mph)

In the light aircraft, or C Class, Phoebe Omlie took first place (Monocoupe #8; 108.19mph), Edith Foltz (Alexander Eaglerock Bullet #109; 65.44mph) came in second, followed by Jessie Keith-Miller (Fleet Model 2, #43; 51.98mph) with Thea Rasche (deHavilland Gypsy Moth, #61; 42.17mph) in fourth. Bobbi Trout finished the race technically in fifth place, although her time was not recorded.

Soon after the race, Louise Thaden, Amelia Earhart and Ruth Nichols met under the grandstand and together founded the Ninety-Nines, a women's aviation organization that is still active today.

There’s a tremendous amount of information that has been written about the 1929 race over the years, and this blog entry has really just barely scratched the surface. If you’d like to read more, here are a few sources to check out:

-A very detailed article by Gene Nora Jessen on the Ninety-Nines’ website. Jessen also has written an excellent book about the event, The Powder Puff Derby of 1929, which can be ordered here. This book is a wonderful read, and a big shout-out goes to Gene for taking the time to correspond with me, and for all her help in putting this piece together.
-Coverage on the Pancho Barnes history website, including a lot of contemporary media coverage
-Cleveland State University's web page on the history of Cleveland Airport
-A movie has been made about the race, and is available on DVD, and the movie's website has a wealth of information as well.

Wrigley, Boeing and Douglas' Dolphin

The first production Douglas Dolphin sits at Clover Field in Santa
Monica during its flight test tenure.

It must have been a couple of very good days for Donald Douglas, the days that William Wrigley Jr.'s son and Bill Boeing came to buy airplanes. The latter was something of a coup, I should expect. It helped, to be sure, that the plane had been a pet project of Douglas, who designed it personally. Having experienced a string of successes in building military observation aircraft - especially planes built for the Navy - Donald set about to design something decidedly different, a luxurious commercial flying yacht. He called it the "Sinbad". What resulted was a twin-engined, aluminum-hulled flying boat that seated six to eight passengers, and even had a lavatory in the back.

Problem was, it was a flying boat - stuck in the water. Douglas realized that the utility of the aircraft, and hopefully the sales, would be so much enhanced if it were an amphibian, with retractable land-lubber gear. So Douglas tweaked the design a bit, and the plane entered production as an amphibian called the Dolphin. If you look carefully under the wing of our image of the week above, you'll note the registration number: X-967Y, which indicates that this was the first production Dolphin (Douglas tended to use registration numbers that ended in "Y" for their developmental aircraft), while it was still considered an experimental aircraft.

The aircraft was amazingly quiet and a great performer, everything that Donald had dreamed of. (In 1931, Flight Magazine wrote a glowing pilot report about the Dolphin, which you can read here.) It's just that his timing was wrong. By the time that the Sinbad was under construction, the 1929 stock market crash bankrupted many of the members of the market that Douglas had hoped to sell the planes too. By the time that the first Dolphin flew in 1930, America was deep into the Great Depression.

This is a detail cropping of one of the
photos featured with the Douglas DC-1
article three weeks ago, and shows one of
the Army's Dolphins at Clover Field.

But although Douglas had designed the plane as a commercial venture, it was the military that bought the majority of the Dolphins produced. With the success of X-967Y, the Sinbad was retrofitted with retractable wheels, and was picked up, along with 13 Dolphins, by the U.S. Coast Guard, which designated them variously RD-1, RD-2 and RD-4, during 1931-1934. The U.S. Navy bought nine (three of which were later turned over to the USMC), three RD-2s and six RD-3s. One of the Navy Dolphins was converted into a Presidential aircraft for Franklin Roosevelt, although there is no record of him actually using it (in 1933, Popular Science raved about the new Presidential "Mayflower of the Air").

It was natural to think of these planes serving the in the Navy and Coast Guard, but what's surprising is that the Army Air Corps picked up 24 aircraft - that's one more than the USN and USCG combined! With the USAAC, the Dolphins were designated variously as C-21, C-26A, C-26B and C-29. The Argentinian Navy also bought one.

However, there were still a few civilian folks out there who could afford such a plane, and in the case of the Dolphin, it was chewing gum to the rescue. Or at least the money from chewing gum. William Wrigley Jr. had made millions selling chewing gum to America, sort of by accident. The company he founded actually started out selling things like soap and baking powder, and as a sales incentive, packaged chewing gum in each container. Thing is, the chewing gum turned out to be more popular than the soap and baking power, and a fortune was thus made. Wrigley tended to spend his fortune on things he loved, namely his Chicago Cubs baseball team and his favorite get-away-spot, Santa Catalina Island. In 1919 Wrigley bought the Santa Catalina Island Company, and got the actual island thrown in for free.

NC-967Y is a cover girl, gracing the front of
Arcadia Publishing's Catalina by Air, a
must-have book for anyone who loves flying
boats. Because of the narrowness of the cove
in which the first Catalina Airport was built,
the designers created a wooden turntable,
which our aircraft sits on in this view. The
ocean is just out of the scene to the right.

Wrigley Junior's only son, Philip K. Wrigley, was also heavily involved with is Dad in the development of the island, and he just so happened to have served in the Navy as the head of training for aviation mechanics. Now, Pacific Marine Airways and Western Air Express had already been serving Catalina, but in 1931 he decided he could do it better himself, terminated the contracts with the other carriers, and set up the Wilmington-Catalina Airlines, Ltd.

To serve the island Philip Wrigley selected Douglas' new Dolphin, buying the first two production aircraft, NC-967Y and NC-14204, making the Dolphin the very first Douglas airliner. The website Catalina Goose has a wonderful selection of images of the two Wilmington-Catalina Dolphins in service. With the Dolphin, the 27 mile channel was transited in only 15 minutes. The two aircraft faithfully served until September 1942, when the Coast Guard shut down all civilian transportation between the island and the mainland.

Pan Am was the only other airline to buy Dolphins, purchasing a pair for use by their China National Aviation Corp. subsidiary.

And then there was Bill Boeing. In 1934, while he was still at his namesake Boeing Company, he bought a Dolphin, which he named Rover, from his rival for his own personal use. Later, when he decided he needed something bigger, he traded up to a Douglas DC-5. Rover went through several other owners, including serving with Catalina Channel Air Service in the 1960s. It would become the only surviving Dolphin, now on display at the US National Museum of Naval Aviation.

The Gull-Wing Douglas

Today's photo is another from a collection of vintage Douglas photos that we've been featuring for the last several weeks. Last week's photo showed a DC-2 being looked at by a couple of gentlemen...and if you look closely, you'll recognize the same two in today's photo, walking off into the background. These images were taken on the grounds of Santa Monica's Clover Field, probably sometime in early or mid July, 1934 (TWA took delivery of the DC-2 from last week on July 20, 1934, so these would likely have been taken just shortly before).

The Douglas O-2 biplane observation aircraft had been a relative success with the USAAC, and Douglas wanted to follow up with a more modern monoplane design, the O-31. The USAAC signed a contract with Douglas in January 1930 for two prototype aircraft, which were to be designated XO-31. Powered by a Curtiss V-1570 Conquerer V-12 water-cooled engine, the two-place design utilized a wire-reinforced, fabric-covered gull-wing with an all-aluminum fuselage, the aft portion of which was corrugated for strength.

After the first of the pair flew in December 1930, it was back to the drawing board, as the aircraft was found to have lateral stability issues. Several different vertical stabilizer designs were tried. Instead of delivering the second aircraft as an XO-31, it was redesignated the YO-31, and sported a larger tail and longer cowling. This second aircraft is the one seen in today's photo. Subsequently a number of additional YO-31A and O-31 aircraft were produced (13 in all), before Douglas switched to the O-43 design, which was ordered in 1934, the same year as this photo was taken. It uncertain how long the YO-31 survived, or what became of it, but it clearly was still at Clover field three years after being built.

(A special shout-out this week to Josh Nyhus of APSoCal for his invaluable help in identifying this plane...when I got the photo, I had a Dickens of a time figuring it out. Tip o' the hat to Ian Hall for trying to solve the mystery, as well. Thanks, guys!)

From Santa Monica to South America

With the overwhelming success of the Douglas DC-1 (see last week's post), TWA immediately ordered 25 DC-2s. The subject of our post today is DC-2-112 NC13719 (c/n 1245), which was the nineth DC-2 built. Like the DC-1 photos featured last week, this image came in a stack of vintage Douglas photographs, presumably from the estate of a Douglas employee.

The DC-2 is seen here at Clover Field, in Santa Monica, the home of the Douglas Aircraft Corp. Because she was delivered to TWA on July 20, 1934, this photo of it at Santa Monica was probably taken sometime just before that.
TWA operated NC13719 for about three years, where it wore fin number 309, and then sold it along with several sister aircraft, to Braniff on July 29, 1937, where it was assigned fin number 409.

With WWII in full swing and the need for air transportation assets at an all-time high, NC13719 was one of 24 commercial DC-2s that were "drafted" by the Defense Supply Corp. in June 1942 and almost immediately transferred to the Army Air Corps; there it was designated a C-32A and assigned the serial number 42-61096. A year later, she was back at TWA, since the carrier had contracted with the Army Air Corps to provide pilot training using Army aircraft.

In September 1944, with newer aircraft now available, the DC-2 was considered surplus, and started hopping from one South American airline to another. First, it was sold to Transportes Aéreos Centroamericanos (TACA) in Mexico, and then in August 1945 to Aerovias Brasil S.A. Empresa de Transportes in Rio de Janeiro. In April, '46 it was transfered to its final owner, Aerovias S.A. Belo Horizonte. On February 5, 1947 the venerable DC-2 crashed at Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais, Brazil, although without any fatalities.

Our Lady of the Douglases

A crowd has gathered around TWA's new airliner, the
Douglas DC-1. Note the "X" replacing the normal "NC" on
the tail number, and the Douglas Dolphin in the background.

Stuck in the back of a cabinet in an antique store was a small stack of photos that caught my eye. On the top was what looked like a TWA DC-3. As I thumbed through them, I knew that this stack was something special. In it there were various different Douglas aircraft from the early 1930s, including four of the TWA plane, so I'm guessing these were left over from an estate of a former Douglas employee (the images of the other Douglas aircraft in the lot will be shared in upcoming posts).

But the more I looked at the TWA photographs, the more I realized that this wasn't a DC-3...the tail was all wrong...and then there was the registration number, which started with an "X" rather than an "NC". So I dug into the research, and found that indeed this wasn't a DC-3...it wasn't even the earlier DC-2. This was the one and only DC-1, the plane that started it all. And since Santa Monica's Clover Field was wide open to the public, a lot of local folks appear in the photos, there to watch this new, shiny bird take flight.

If you look closely, you can see small winglets spanning
the gap between the engine nacelles and the fuselage.
These were reportedly removed soon after the first flight,
and don't appear in the last photo, below, when the plane
was operational.

Like so many of the other stories that I'm finding behind these little photographs, this one is truly remarkable. Two weeks ago, this blog featured a Fokker Trimotor photo, and it was the crash of a TWA Fokker F.10 in 1931 that led directly to these DC-1 images even being possible. It certainly wasn't the first Trimotor to crash with loss of life, but the presence of famed Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne on the passenger and casualty list guaranteed a lot of media attention to this accident, and the investigation that followed, and ultimately, it was that high profile attention that led to major changes in the commercial aviation industry, and the governmental bodies that oversaw it.

Gone were the wooden airliners, the age of the shiny metal birds was here. It was still an age of monopolies, however, and with the corporate connections between Boeing and United Airlines, that manufacturer's total initial output of its new all-metal Model 247 was taken by United. Thus did TWA's Jack Frye approach Donald Douglas about a new type of plane, one that would compete - and even beat - Boeing's airliner. Douglas later called the letter he received from Frye requesting a Douglas proposal the “birth certificate of the DC ships". Price for the one prototype Douglas agreed to build: $125,000 (that would be about $2 million in 2011 dollars).

The DC-1 is readied for flight. Presumably, that is Douglas VP
of Sales and Chief Test Pilot Carl Cover who can be seen
through the open cockpit side window.

I'm pretty certain that these photos were taken on July 1, 1933, the day of the DC-1's first flight. The flight almost became a disaster. Carburetor floats that had been installed backwards at the factory in both of the Wright R-1820 engines caused them to quit whenever the pilots pitched the nose up. The first time they quite was just after takeoff, and the plane would have hit the ground except for the fact that the land dropped off just beyond the end of the runway. With the nose down, the engines sputtered back to life, only to quite again. Douglas Chief Test Pilot Carl Cover's expert airmanship saved the day, and he executed an emergency landing on a nearby golf course without further incident. (Note: Some online references note his name as "Carl Clover", but Bill Yenne's authoritative book McDonnell Douglas, as well as several other references, use "Cover".)

But once that was fixed, performance of the DC-1 was phenomenal. Cover is known to have commented "She was born to fly, and she belongs up there with the angels." On September 4, 1933, the final test flight to demonstrate compliance with TWA’s demanding specifications was flown: immediately after X223Y took off from hot and high Winslow, Arizona with TWA pilots Eddie Allen and Tommy Tomlinson at the controls, one engine was shut down and the crew turned the nose towards Albuquerque, the highest airfield that TWA then served. One of the requirements that Frye had listed in the original letter to Douglas demanded the ability for the aircraft to safely operate with an engine out at the airlines highest airport. The DC-1 handled the challenge easily. On September 15, TWA took initial delivery of the aircraft, which carried a restricted airworthiness certificate, and the registration NR223Y.

Two months later, on November 15, with Donald Douglas himself on board, they had to use this capability for real, when one engine failed over the continental divide, Cover turned back and landed at Albuquerque. Douglas is said to have later remarked, "Here was the TWA requirement, for real, but you could hardly tell back in the cabin. It was like nothing happened."

Ground crew personnel meet NC223Y as she taxis to a stop,
Glendale. This appears to have been the first in a series of
images taken that day, and another a few moments later
can be seen on this City of Glendale website. 

Shortly after TWA took initial possession of the aircraft, they returned it to Douglas, which used the DC-1 for a couple of months as a test bed, including replacing the original engines with higher horsepower Wright Hornets for a short time. After a flight test program that encompassed over 200 flights, the plane was finally delivered to TWA in December, 1933, as NC223Y and went into commercial service. It wore the nose number “300” (thus becoming known within the carrier as “Old 300”) and was christened the City of Los Angeles.

On February 18, 1934, two hours before the official end of all air mail contracts, Jack Frye and Eddie Rickenbacker delivered the last commercially-carried sacks of airmail on a flight from Burbank to Newark onboard NC223Y. In doing so, they set a transcontinental speed record for transport-class aircraft of 13 hours and 4 minutes. Just a bit more than a year later, on April 30, 1935, Old 300 set another record, of 11 hours, 5 minutes for a flight from Los Angeles to New York.

Beginning in April, 1934, the plane was operated regularly on TWA's New York-Pittsburgh route until it was withdrawn from service in 1936. Reregistered as NS223Y, it was loaned to the government for a short time for some high altitude research flights.

The records caught the attention of one of the major shareholders in TWA, Howard Hughes, who bought the DC-1 from the airline, with the intention of setting an even more ambitious speed record, a round-the-world one. He had the aircraft modified with extra fuel tanks and larger 875hp Wright Cyclone engines in preparation for the trip. But it was not to be. The maverick millionaire changed his mind, and instead decided to use a Lockheed Lodestar. Old 300 was used a few times by Hughes as a corporate plane, but mostly sat unused at Burbank until it was sold in May , 1938.

The buyer was the English Viscount Forbes, Earl of Granard, who intended to set a transatlantic speed record with it. Again, however, plans fell through. He did take the plane to England, and flew it to the Continent a few times, but didn’t really have a lot of use for the plane.

Some mystery surrounds what happened next, as the venerable DC-1 got involved in the Spanish Civil War. The Earl sold the plane to the French SFTA (the Société Française des Transports Aériens), but a month later, it was in the Spanish Republic wearing the titles of the Spanish carrier LAPE, with camo paint covering her once shiny skin. The plane was operated on the Paris-Toulouse-Barcelona route until March 1939 and the fall of Barcelona to Franco. The DC-1 was even used to carry Republican government officials into exile in France.

After the war ended in April, 1939, the DC-1 was turned over to the new government, and was named Manuel Negron, registered as EC-AAE and placed into commercial service with Iberia Airlines, flying the Seville-Malaga-Tetuan route. One day in December, 1940, the pilot had just rotated and started climbing away from Malaga’s runway, when both engines quit, hauntingly reminiscent of what happened on Old 300’s first flight. But this time, the old girl’s luck had run out, and she overran the runway. No one was hurt, but the plane was far beyond repair. (The Goleta Air and Space Museum's website has a photo of the wrecked aircraft here.)

At this point, legend takes over, as there is no confirmation of the rest of this story, although it is oft-repeated by aviation historians. While the DC-1 was indeed beyond repair, locals claim that part of her aluminum structure was salvaged to construct an andas, a ceremonial throne which is used to carry a statue of the Madonna from Our Lady of Hope in Malaga during the annual Holy Week festivals.