EAST TO BOSTON
Crashes were frequent enough in these earlier days. I had one myself,
during my instruction period. Owing to carelessness in not refuelling,
the motor cut out on the take-off, when the plane was about 40 or
50 feet in the air. Neta Snook was with me, but she couldn’t help
depositing us in a cabbage patch nearby. The propeller and landing gear
suffered and I bit my tongue.
[Illustration:
description: Photo wide indoor shot of 8 individuals
Stultz, Earhart, Gordon are seated; 5 are standing in
back
caption: FLYERS ALL EIELSON, WILKINS, BYRD, CHAMBERLIN, BALCHEN,
STULTZ, EARHART, GORDON
© _P. & A. Photos_
]
[Illustration:
description: Photo wide overhead shot of crowded street ticker-tape
parade
caption: BOSTON, JUNE 9
]
The crash was an interesting experience. In such a crisis the passage
of time is very slow. I remember it seemed minutes while we were
approaching the inevitable cabbages, although of course it was only a
few seconds. I had leisure to reach over and turn off the switch
before we hit.
More than once I have nosed over. Whenever a plane is compelled to
stop suddenly there is danger of so doing. I have come down in a muddy
field where the wheels stuck. On one occasion I landed in a mattress of
dried weeds five or six feet high which stopped me so suddenly that the
plane went over on its back with enough force to break my safety belt
and throw me out. These are the flat tires of flying and are only as
incidental. But real trouble did come to my plane eventually.
I had decided to leave Los Angeles and to sell it, much as I disliked
the parting. A young man who had done some flying during the war liked
the little sandpiper and eventually purchased it.
After the new owner took possession the first thing he did was to
ask a friend to go up with him. At a few hundred feet he began some
figure eights, banking vertically and working between a gas station
and telegraph pole. All on the field stood rooted to the spot. They
knew what chances he was taking. As I remember it, Kinner sent for an
ambulance. Suddenly, on one vertical bank the plane slipped. That was
the end of it. Both men were killed. It was a sickening sort of thing
because it was so unnecessary.
I lingered on in California, another sunkist victim of inertia—or was
it the siren song of the realtors? I bought a new plane. Or rather I
collected it, because I found I could not buy it all together. At this
time there were few who believed that an air cooled motor for planes
would become practical. Human nature normally condemns anything new.
The complaint of many pilots was that a multiple cylinder radial motor
would be too clumsy to sit on the nose of a plane and would cause too
much “head resistance.” So why bother with one or two cylinder
motors which developed little power comparatively? Kinner had a dream.
He built one of his own. It had been bought by the man who financed one
of the first planes built, in the west, by Donald Douglas, designer of
the Round the World Cruisers. Mr. Davis and Mr. Douglas at the time
were planning a trans-continental non-stop hop, using a big Liberty
engine. But the P.2 flown by Macready and Kelly to San Diego, in the
first coast to coast flight, got across first. I bought the Kinner
engine from Davis, who was not ready to use it just then. It was the
first engine that Kinner turned out.
Of course it was full of “bugs”—no degree of mechanical perfection
is ever attained without successive stages of development. Each
improvement is a result of many practical working tests. Human
intelligence seems to grasp ideas in steps and must work through
complicated details to efficient simplicity. The first automobiles had
whip holders on the dash, remember. The planes and motors which we
see today are the results of evolution. There was a preliminary design
of the now famous Wright Whirlwind motor as early as 1917 and it, in
turn, had grown from models of air-cooled radials begun by Mr. Lawrence
in 1914.
The greatest pleasure I found in my experience with Kinner’s motor was
that of perhaps having a small part in its development. Its many little
ailments had to be diagnosed and cured later. It smoked and spattered
oil. Adjustment of a proper propeller was difficult. One of its
eccentricities was an excessive vibration which tickled the soles of
the feet when they rested on the rudder bar, putting a new meaning into
joy ride. Such was the hilarious beginning of one of a group of motors
which are being developed in the United States.
The idea of returning to the east, and doing it by air, had been
simmering in my mind. Maps and data were all pretty well prepared. Then
the old infection, incurred in the Toronto Hospital work, returned,
and I was forced to abandon the hop, to the satisfaction of my parents.
My health was so precarious that, disappointed in my intention to fly,
I exchanged my plane for a car and drove across the continent. Mother
went with me to remind me I was too ill to fly, and together we covered
more than 7000 miles before we reached Boston.
I enjoyed three days in Boston before entering Massachusetts General
Hospital for a short stay. After convalescing a while I set off for New
York, to re-enter Columbia. The next summer was spent at Harvard and
the following autumn I began to look about for a job. My sister was
teaching, so I indulged in it too. Teaching and settlement work filled
the following years—filled them very full, for both occupations require
much of one’s life. All these other activities allowed little or no
time for aviation.
Inevitably certain contacts had persisted from the California days
so it was no surprise to hear from Mr. Kinner. He asked me whether I
knew anyone in Boston who would take the agency for his planes and
motors. I dropped in on the Chamber of Commerce for information. It was
evident from the facts gathered from Bernard Wiesman, secretary of the
committee on aviation, that the town could struggle along for a while
without the additional luxury of a new plane. The air-mail industry
seemed to be as strong a dose of aviation as Boston could stand at the
time, and Sumner Sewall was having to hold her nose while he spooned
that in.
I joined the Boston chapter of the National Aeronautic Association as
a reawakening of my active interest in aviation. Ultimately I was made
Vice-President (perhaps to get rid of me) serving under Mr. Sewall.
Subsequently his activities took him to New York and when I returned
from the trans-Atlantic flight I found myself the first woman
President of a body of the N. A. A.
Several months later Mr. Kinner wrote again and said he himself had
found an agent, who would communicate with me. The hand of Allah had
thrown Harold T. Dennison, a young architect of Quincy, in Mr. Kinner’s
way in California. Mr. Dennison came home determined to build an
airport. He owned enough land for an emergency field on the marshes
from which Beachey flew to Boston Light in 1910 to win $10,000.
I gathered a few dollars together and became one of five incorporators
of a commercial aeronautical concern. Today Dennison Aircraft
Corporation is working to create a commercial airport adjoining the
naval air base at Squantum.
There is so much to be done in aviation and so much fun to be got
from it, that I had become increasingly involved before the flight of
the Friendship. I was busy, too, with Miss Ruth Nichols of Rye
in trying to work out some means of gathering more women into the
fold. The National Playground Association had asked me to be on their
Boston committee and judge in the model airplane tournament they were
sponsoring in September, 1928. The tournament combined my two greatest
interests, aviation and social work, in an unusual way, and I was very
glad to serve. Unfortunately the social worker became submerged in the
aerial joy-rider and the latter has been too much occupied since her
return to be of any use whatsoever.
[Illustration:
description: Photo medium shot outdoor of Earhart’s mother, Earhart,
and Woolley; Earhart is holding large bouquet of
flowers
caption: AT BOSTON WITH HER MOTHER AND MAJOR WOOLLEY, WHOSE FLYING
COAT MISS EARHART WORE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC
© _Wide World Photos_
]
[Illustration:
description: Photo wide profile shot outdoor of Earhart in car
swarmed by children
caption: “THE YELLOW PERIL” AND HER DRIVER BACK IN BOSTON, BEFORE
DENISON HOUSE
© _International Photos_
]