Ambition vs. Storm: The Disappearance of Mrs. Grayson and The Dawn

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned." (spoken by Zara in Act III, Scene VIII,  The Mourning Bride (1697) by William Congreve. The same could be said for a winter's Atlantic storm. So when the two meet, it's not likely much good will come of it.

The year 1927 was a difficult one for aviation, and especially for women in aviation. From the moment Lindbergh landed in Paris, the race was on to see who would become the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air. Princess Anne of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg (who flew predominantly under her maiden name of Lady Anne Savile) and her pilot, WWI ace Leslie Hamilton disappeared in the middle of the Atlantic in their Fokker F.VIIa St. Raphael on August 31, 1927. Just a couple of weeks earlier, 22-year old Mildred Doran, a passenger on the Buhl Air Sedan Miss Doran, had disappeared while trying to cross the Pacific in the Dole Derby.

The Dawn on Old Orchard Beach, Maine, with a large crowd looking on. It has likely landed and just turned around to shut down (if it were about to take off, it is likely that there would be some members of the ground crew near the plane). The date is probably October 10, 1927. The pier had been a lot longer, but was heavily damaged in a storm in 1909. When it was rebuilt, the casino was moved in closer to the beach, to where it is shown here.

The tragedies continued. On September 7, a Fokker F.VIIa named Old Glory, sponsored by William Randolf Hearst, attempted the first flight from America to Rome, Italy; after departing from Old Orchard Beach, Maine, the crew was never seen again. The same day, a Stinson Detroiter named Sir John Carling in the first attempt at a London, Ontairo to London, England flight, took off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, and also disappeared. The Royal Windsor, also a Stinson, was the plane to make the first attempt to fly from Windsor, Ontario to Windsor, England, and made it as far as Harbour Grace on September 7; enroute, it, too, stopped at Old Orchard Beach. The disappearance of Old Glory and Sir John Carling led pilots Phil Wood and Duke Schiller to wisely re-think things and give up the attempt.

It was thus against this backdrop that Mrs. Frances Grayson, a niece of President Woodrow Wilson, announced that she fully intended to become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. A newspaper writer and real estate speculator in New York City, Grayson become somewhat obsessed with the idea after Lindbergh's feat. She convinced her friend Aage Ancker (whose father was Pittsburgh steel magnate Charles Sang) to put up the money so that she could buy a custom-modified S-36 amphibian, NX-1282, from Igor Sikorsky, the thought being that such a plane would give the team an extra measure of safety - if they had mechanical difficulties, they could always just land on the water. Grayson hoped to make the attempt early in October. The caveat to this flight was that, despite all the publicity she sought trumpeting this as being proof that women could do whatever men could, it would still by a man (Wilmer "Wild Bill" Stultz) flying the plane, and a man (Brice Goldsborough) navigating it; Grayson was only flying as a passenger (though she made it clear to the media that she was the flight's "commander").

Grayson had competition, though. Young actress-wannabe Ruth Elder, at 23, also announced an attempt to cross the Atlantic. An unlicensed student pilot, who promoted herself in the media as "Lady Lindy", she'd be making the attempt with pilot Capt. George Haldeman, and would be leaving in her Stinson Detroiter American Girl from Old Orchard Beach. She had even told one reporter, "I wish I were a man! No woman can cross the Atlantic alone! We are not strong enough!"

Both women were staging at Curtiss Field on Long Island. Both ladies repeatedly announced their imminent departures, followed by delays. On October 8, the US Weather Bureau announced that they were discontinuing Atlantic weather reporting for the season, and strongly suggested that the flying season was over for the year. Undeterred, Grayson and crew departed Long Island for Old Orchard Beach on a cold afternoon of Monday, October 10. The location was an ideal jumping-off spot for trans-Atlantic attempts, because when the tide was out, the beach sported a wide, five-mile long swath of hard-packed sand. Grayson told the newspapermen that she and crew would lay over in Maine for a few days getting things ready for the big flight, and waiting for the weather to clear.

Grayson was thus stunned to hear the news the next morning, October 11, that Elder and Haldeman had left Roosevelt Field for Paris, despite the bad weather! When the American Girl failed to show up in Paris, though, everyone feared the worst, though in the presumed tragedy, Grayson saw opportunity to still realize her goal. Word came on October 14, though, that Elder and Haldeman were safe. They had to ditch in the ocean due to a broken oil line, about 320 miles northeast of the Azores, but fortunately were able to do it right next to the Dutch ship Barendrecht, and came away unscathed.

On October 17, Grayson told the assembled reporters, "Nothing can stop me now. Destiny is with me!" She and the crew of The Dawn took off from Old Orchard Beach at 9:33am, and turned east. They only made it to the Cape Elizabeth Lightship, though, and were battling heavy headwinds and were barely able to remain aloft, when Stultz decided to turn back and ordered Goldsborough to dump most of their fuel; they made it back to the beach without further incident.

Grayson decided to try again on the 23rd, six days after her first failure. This time they made it 500 miles east before the weather started closing in and Stultz again turned back to Old Orchard Beach. Grayson was beside herself with fury over the decision, and pushed hard for a third attempt. Stultz would have none of it, though, and quit, flying The Dawn back to Roosevelt Field.

About this time, Hearst Newspapers columnist Arthur Brisban wrote that he hoped "hereafter American girls will stay on the ground or at least do their flying over land," an extremely disingenuous comment seeing as how Old Glory was owned by his boss, had editor Philip Payne on board as a passenger, and was crewed by men...and fared worse than Elder had!

Mrs. Grayson was undaunted by her experienced (and wise) pilot's decision, and decided to try again in December. No Atlantic storms would keep her land-bound! She hired Lt. Oskar Omdal, who'd served in the Norwegian Navy and had once flown with Roald Amundsen, to fly her. Goldsborough declined to follow Stultz out the door, and remained faithful to Grayson. They were joined by Wright engineer Frank Koehler, who would fly with them for the first leg of the journey. At 5:07 pm, December 23, the crew left Roosevelt Field behind and, hoping to make London on Christmas day, and then fly on to Copenhagen, where Aage Ancker waited for them. Their first stop would be Harbour Grace, Newfoundland. They never arrived.

The first leg of The Dawn's journey started at Roosevelt Field, lower left, and was supposed to end at Habour Grace, upper right.

The last time the plane was seen was at 7:10 pm by a French cable station at Orleans, Cape Cod. Off Nauset Beach, Cape Cod, the crew of the schooner Rose Anne Belliveau thought they heard the sound of airplane engines through the roar of a fierce gale, and also thought they heard the sound of a large splash, followed by the fading of the engine noise. The schooner crew spotted nothing, though.

Had Omdal, finding the storm too intense, spotted the schooner and attempted an open water landing? There are some clues that this is what had happened. First, a Canadian radio station on Sable Island picked up several fragmented transmissions which included The Dawn's prefix at about 9:45 pm. The first was a request for a navigational bearing. The second transmission was "Something wrong here." The last was, "Plane down." The radio operators on Sable Island estimated that, based on radio signal strength, the transmitter was about 80 nautical miles from the island (for reference, the closest point on Nova Scotia is about 90 miles from Sable Island). A radio operator north of Harbour Grace also received a broken transmission which included, "Where are we? Can you locate us?"

Despite a large search and rescue effort, no trace was found. (In a tragic twist, after their departure, Goldsborough's wife received an envelope from him inscribed "Do not open until Christmas". Inside was a bank draft for $500, which she donated to the search effort.)

Just over a year later, a boy found a bottle washed up on the beach at Salem Harbor, Mass. Inside was a yellowed note that read, "1928. We are freezing. Gas leaked and we are drifting off Grand Banks. Grayson." If genuine (and there's no reason to think it wasn't), it suggests that The Dawn landed intact and remained afloat for some time.

Mrs. Grayson's last public words, as she climbed into The Dawn for the fateful flight were, "All my life Christmas has been the same. The same friends, the same gifts that didn't mean anything. Telling people things you didn't mean. But this will be different." It certainly was, just not exactly how she expected it to be.

After returning to Old Orchard Beach after her second attempt in October, Grayson had penned a letter, sealed it in an envelope, and later handed it to a New York Times reporter with instructions that it only be opened someday if something "went wrong". In it she wrote, "Who am I? Sometimes I wonder. Am I a little nobody? Or am I a great dynamic force - powerful - in that I have a God-given birthright , and have all the power there is if only I will understand and us it? It is a great, living, breathing power of understanding my heritage ... Sometimes I am torn ... Can it be that I am wrong? Wrong after these many months of hard preparations, these many months of listening to that still small voice ... The sun is ever shining. ... It is now time for me to show my strength. I am who or what I really am, a little nobody or a living, forceful power to carry out part of His great plan: I will win. I must not quit too soon. Success is just ahead and the clouds between must disappear."

Grayson once wrote, "I will prove that woman can compete with man in his own undertakings" (this despite the fact that she was still relying on two men to get the job done). In a sense, she had succeeded: she had proven that a woman can do exactly what a man can do: they both die just as dead when they ignore the realities of Atlantic winter storms.

In an ironic footnote to the story, a woman finally did make it by air across the Atlantic, some six months later, landing on June 19, 1928 at Burry Point, Wales. She was a passenger - tasked with keeping the logbook current - in a plane flown by none other than Wild Bill Stultz, who chose to make his historic crossing in better weather. That passenger was Amelia Earhart.

The First Successful Sikorsky Boat

When I first acquired this 8x10 print, I was a bit puzzled...the configuration was similar to the Sikorsky S-34, but the engines were positioned differently. Most of the information I found on the subsequent S-36-B referred to it as an amphibian with an enclosed cabin, and the plane in our photo clearly has an open cockpit and doesn't have the landing gear that most S-36 photos show. Maybe something in between?

The S-34 was Igor Sikorsky's first attempt at a flying boat, and in early 1927, during a test flight, it suffered an engine failure, crashed and sank. Instead of building another, Igor advanced the design and a few months later unveiled the S-36-B. The breakthrough in the research came with this article in the October 20, 1927 issue of Flight magazine, which reveals that Sikorsky actually offered the S-36-B in open and closed cockpit configurations, and with or without landing gear. The article also includes a photo of our aircraft that appears to have been taken only moments before or after our photo was taken...the propellers are positioned exactly the same, only the pilot has moved slightly.

The S-36-B was offered in three configurations, all cargo, open cockpit and closed cabin, both of the latter which would carry six passengers and two crew. I couldn't find any information stating how many of the open cockpit version were built, but the fact that most photos show the closed-cabin configuration suggests that only one was built; the Flight article indicates that one open-cockpit version, likely that shown in our photo, was sold to Andean National, a Canadian company doing pipeline construction work along the Magdelena River in Columbia, South America, where there were no landing strips available (hence no need for wheels). One of the five production aircraft built was sold to the then-new Pan American Airways, starting a long tradition of Pan Am flying Sikorsky aircraft. A sixth aircraft was sold to the US Navy as the XPS-1 and even had a gunner's position in the nose.

The most famous of the S-36s was one named Dawn, which sold to Frances Grayson, the neice of President Woodrow Wilson, for her attempt to become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic (albeit as a passenger). She and her crew departed on December 23, 1927 and were never seen again.

The Incredible Saga of Igor's Gotha

Sometimes, the process of researching these photos takes me on an amazing journey. When I was offered the snapshot below, it was described as an "unknown" aircraft. As soon as I received it though, I realized that this was an early view of a remarkable plane that was represented, later in its life, in our Glendale negative collection. I had already started researching the latter photo, and now to have two images acting as bookends made the story even more compelling to me. As the research uncovered the details, though, the tale seemed more like an improbable Hollywood saga rather than a real part of aviation history...but then again, it's these fantastic stories that make aviation history so much fun to be a part of! 

Within 24 hours of hearing about the accomplishments of the Wright Brothers, young Igor Sikorsky was convinced that aviation was the future and he wanted to be a part of it, and thus changed his entire life's plans to become an aeronautical engineer. However, in post-WWI Europe, with its cities decimated by war, and especially in his native Russia, the prospects for such engineers looked grim. So, he emigrated to America and began looking for opportunities, and raising funds from fellow Russian emigres to start building planes.

Was there something in the grass that day? Kids on both the extreme left
and right of the photo are lifting their legs in odd ways...

Igor's first design under the auspices of the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation was a twin-engined sixteen-passenger airliner, which he designated S-29-A (the "A" to celebrate that this was his first design in America). Construction was started with meager resources.

According to an article from the November 2002 issue of Air & Space, archived at the Sikorsky corporate web site, Igor set up shop on a "chicken farm owned by his friend Victor Utgoff, a former lieutenant in the Russian navy. The work had to be done by hand, since the farm did not have appropriate machinery. Sikorsky and his workers, mostly Russian immigrants, were raiding junkyards for parts for the airplane, which had to be constantly redesigned depending on the equipment and materials they found. The main structure of the fuselage was built with angle irons from discarded bedsteads. Turnbuckles, which were used to adjust wire tension, were found in a Woolworth’s five-and-dime. The landing gear was installed with the help of Sikorsky’s nephew, Dmitry (Jimmy) Viner, who was a ditch digger. 'Since there was no jack to raise the fuselage,' Frank Delear wrote in Igor Sikorsky: His Three Careers in Aviation, 'Jimmy dug under it to make space for the wheels and landing struts. With the gear installed, the plane was then pulled out of the ditch.'"

The Air & Space article also describes what saved the project: "One Sunday, a chauffeur-driven limousine drove up to the chicken house. A tall, slender figure in a long black coat stepped out of the car and walked up to the airplane. In total silence, he inspected the aircraft. 'Everyone on the farm got greatly excited,' says Sergei Sikorsky, Igor’s son and the retired vice president of Sikorsky Aircraft, who remembers well how his father described the event. 'They all immediately recognized Sergei Rachmaninoff as their guest. My father went up to him and they began to talk. After about a half-hour visit, Rachmaninoff said, "I believe in you and your plane and I want to help you.”' The composer sat down and wrote a check for $5,000. With a smile, he gave the check to the stunned Sikorsky and said, 'Pay me back whenever you can.'" As a return favor, Sikorsky offered Rachmaninoff a VP position in the fledgling company, and the two remained close there after.

The S-29-A had two first flights. The first first took place on May 4, 1924, with the plane equipped with two 220hp Hisso engines, which left it underpowered. Igor himself was at the controls, and after lifting from Roosevelt field, he coaxed the floundering plane to Mitchel Field, where it crash landed. The plane was was not too badly damaged, and was rebuilt, with the engines being replaced by a pair of 400hp Liberty 12s. The second "real" first flight (as recognized today by the Sikorsky company) took place on September 25, 1924. With the larger engines, the S-29-A was the first twin engined aircraft in history that could safely continue flying on only one engine. It was too soon, though...the airline industry was still in its infancy, and America wasn't ready for an airliner of that size yet. While the airplane drew many an onlooker wherever it landed (as can be seen in our first photo of it, above), no customers stepped up and ordered the type.

Instead, it found a number of short-term uses. Sikorsky's first profit with the plane came, ironically, on April 23, 1925 when it was chartered to carry two grand pianos, one of which was delivered to the wife of the President. (Here, by the way, is an interesting conflict in the historical narrative: The official history of Sikorsky Aircraft says that the piano was delivered to President Herbert Hoover's wife, whereas contemporary newspaper accounts at the time said that it was delivered to Mrs. Calvin Coolidge. I'm inclinded to believe the accounts of the day!).  The Davis-Monthan Aviation Field Register web site has an extensive article on the details of the plane's life, which includes some photos from the Library of Congress showing the pianos being unloaded.

A few weeks later, on May 8th, 1925, the airplane received a name, Yorktown, and a christening (with a bottle of water, since it was the era of Prohibition), and then the next day it started airline service between New York and Yorktown, VA, as reported by the Washington Post. What isn't clear, though, is who operated the service, how long it lasted, and how it was received.

The plane is next seen being used as a flying billboard for Curlee Clothing in a business arrangement orchestrated by the flamboyant barnstormer Roscoe Turner. Eventually, when the Department of Commerce began registering aircraft in 1927, the S-29-A was assigned registration number NC-2756. Also in 1927, Turner bought the aircraft and contracted with United Cigar Stores to turn the large plane into, as was emplazoned on the side, the "First Flying United Cigar Store". The plane would fly from town to town, attracting large crowds, who then (everyone involved hoped) would buy cigars from the salesmen onboard.

Anyone recognize the gent standing in front of the plane?

Finally, Roscoe Turner sold the S-29-A on April 3, 1928 to the Caddo Company, of which Howard Hughes was president. He added it to the private air force he was assemblying to be used in filming the epic Hell's Angels. In preparation, the aircraft was heavily modified in order to play the part of a German Gotha bomber. Our second photo is one that comes from the unique collection of Glendale-related negatives which the Archive owns, and shows the modified aircraft on the production set at Glendale.

In the plane's intended final scene, shot above Pacoima, CA on March 22, 1929, it was supposed to appear to have been shot up, giving off fake smoke, and then spin and crash - Hughes himself insisted on the spin, for visual effect. Most of the stunt pilots working the production refused to fly the plane, as they believed that the modifications compromised its safety. Famed stunt pilot Al Wilson volunteered to do the flight - for the handsome sum of $10,000 - but he also recognized the dangers involved, and insisted on flying alone. The scene called for "lamp black" to be released during flight to simulate the smoke, and mechanic Phil Jones convinced the director to overrule Wilson and permit him to fly along to release the smoke.

The fears about the aircraft's safety proved to be true, and as soon as Wilson entered the spin, the plane began to come apart. Wilson yelled to Jones twice to bail out, and then he himself "hit the silk". However, for some unknown reason, Jones failed to exit the plane, and was found dead in the wreckage, still at his station. The impact of the tragedy hit Wilson hard. Although he was eventually exonerated of any culpability, many blamed him for Jones' death, and he gave up movie flying, instead taking a position as an airline pilot with Maddux Airlines.

Korean Dragonfly

In Tuesday's post, we featured an official Navy photo of a Sikorsky HO3S-1, so it seemed natural for today to follow-up with an unofficial snapshot of the Army's version of the same helo, the R-5/H-5 Dragonfly. The small print has no indication of where or when this was taken, but it appears to be at in Korea, likely a field hospital. (Yes, the song Suicide is Painless is indeed running through my head as I write this post.)

I have confess that I'm a bit intrigued by what's going on...the tail rotor is spinning, so chances are that this ship just landed, rather than is getting ready to take off (not to mention the fact that there's a soldier kneeling down near the tailrotor, apparently taking a photo - anyone in that are would be a huge safety violation in today's world). The large crowd is being drawn by something, but what?

The Dragonfly shown is serial 47-484, one of 11 R-5Fs built. The R-5 (known as the H-5 after 1948) was based on Igor Sikorsky's earlier R-4. The prototype first flew in 1943, but development was too slow for practical use during WWII. But in Korea, the idea of a machine that could be used to rescue injured soldiers and downed aviators behind enemy lines blossomed. It became the first helo widely used by the military, and the first to be used as a rescue ship in Korea. By the middle of 1953, Army helicopters rescued 1,273 injured in a single month, according to an article in Aviation History magazine.

For all its successes, though, the H-5 was still a very early helo, and naturally had a lot of limitations. Though powered by a 450-horse Pratt R-985 radial engine buried inside behind the cabin, it was still quite under-powered. It had CG issues as well, and each came equipped from the factory with two iron bars wrapped in canvas that the pilot could move around to balance the ship out, depending the load. Such accessories were frequently lost, of course, so pilots would resort to bags of sand, bottles of water, or even rocks. If nothing was available, the top speed was limited to a pokey 25 knots.

Maj. Richard Kirkland (ret) was an H-5 pilot in Korea, and told The Army Times in 2011, “By today’s standards, it had limited lifting capacity and short range. For its time, though, the H-5 marked a revolution. It enabled us to fly behind enemy lines, land almost anywhere, and pick up a ‘friendly’ who needed rescuing.”

The intense work that the H-5 was subjected to in Korea led to rapid improvements in helicopter design, which were reflected in the H-19 Chickasaw, the next major SAR design used by the military, and the ultimate replacement for the Dragonfly. Production ended in 1951, and by 1957, all the the H-5s had been retired.

Note the external medivac stretcher pod

The Albany's Horse

The Sikorsky HO3S-1, affectionately known as the “Horse” (the S-51 to Sikorsky, and the R-5/H-5 to the Army and Air Force; the Brits license-built it as the Westland Dragonfly), was the first widely successful helicopter used after WWII.

The Navy first tried the HO3S-1 in 1946, and on December 25, 1946, a Horse from Navy squadron VX-3 became the first helicopter to fly in Antarctica. Pleased with its capabilities, the Navy began ordering the type in larger numbers in 1948.
The tail code UR indicates that this was a member of Helicopter Utility Squadron 2, Detachment 3. The Horse saw extensive use as a rescue helo in Korea until being replaced by the larger and more powerful Sikosky H-19/HO4S Chickasaw. By 1957, all the HO3S aircraft had been retired from the fleet.

The USS Albany started life as CA-123, an Oregon City-class heavy cruiser, being launched on June 30, 1945. From 1958-62, she was overhauled and converted to the Navy’s first guided missile cruiser, taking on a very different look. When new, the Albany and the other ships in her class were equipped with four seaplanes, but these and their launch catapults were replaced by four Sikorskys and a helipad (I have not seen a date for Albany’s switchover, but her sister ship, the USS Rochester, had the catapults replaced with a helipad in late 1948, so presumably this work was done to the Albany at about the same time). I have only been able to locate one other photo of an Albany-based HO3S, which can be seen at this link (but you have to manually go to page 31), showing a Horse landing on the Albany's aft gun turret.

Sikorsky's Clipper

No indication is given on our photo of the location, but if I had to guess, I'd
say Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

The Sikorsky S-42 Clipper had a storied beginning. In the early 1930s, Pan Am's Juan Trippe had visions of a flying boat that could span oceans, and Igor Sikorsky came up with an amphibian - the largest of its kind at the time - designated the S-40, and was the first to carry the title "Pan Am Clipper". Sikorsky only built three of these, because despite the advance in the state-of-the-art that these represented, with an 875 mile range, they just didn't meet Trippe's needs.

By the time that the first S-40 flew its maiden flight, on November 19, 1931, Sikorsky was envisioning an even better aircraft. Besides Sikorsky himself, Charles Lindbergh was also on board the S-40 for that first flight. Lindbergh worked for Trippe as a consultant, and as the story goes, the two of them sat in the S-40's lounge and together sketched out the next project, one that would truly be a trans-oceanic airliner.

Close-up of the S-42; this scan has been over-processed in order to bring out details
not easily seen in the faded original image.

What resulted was the S-42, which had the range that Trippe was looking for, 1,930 miles. Ten aircraft were built, and all served with Pan Am and carried Clipper names. The first trans-Pacific flight by an S-42, the Pam Am Clipper, took place in April 1935, which included a stop at Pearl Harbor.

Of the ten built, four were destroyed in accidents, and the remaining six were scrapped.