Chapter VII 1931 - The Last Tour

The Seventh Annual National Air Tour attractedonly fourteen contestants. For in July of 1931 thebusiness of buying and selling and operatingairplanes was all but paralyzed in the businessdepression, which afflicted every industry in thecountry. Banks failed and closed their doors,factories declared bankruptcy, once prosperousinvestors stood in bread lines. United Aircraft stock,which had sold for $160.00 in 1929, was now worth$6.00, while Curtiss-Wright tumbled from $30.00 to 88 cents.

Detroit’s mighty Ford Tri-Motor was doomed, ifnot by the depression then by a new generation oflow-wing speedsters, the Northrop Alpha, theLockheed Orion and the Boeing 247. The TravelAir, the Bird, the Buhl and dozens of others wouldbe finished; even the popular Great Lakes could notbe saved by its spectacular record for outside loops:Tex Rankin, 78 loops, and his protégée DorothyHester, 62 loops.

Record flights did continue. Post and Gatty wentaround the world in nine days; the Graf Zeppelincarried passengers on three round-trips fromGermany to Brazil and eleven Italian Army flyingboats also crossed the South Atlantic. Boardmanand Polando flew a Bellanca from New Yorknonstop to Istanbul, 5000 miles in 49 hours, andPangborn and Herndon flew another Bellanca fromTokyo to Wenatchee, Washington. The country’sscheduled airlines carried a record half millionpassengers in 1931 and Federal officials concededthe airplane might now be safe enough thatgovernment employees could be authorized to travelby air.

But there was little support for an Air Tour, evenamong old time Detroiters; none of them talkedmuch any more, of their city becoming the aircapital of the world. But the tour committeepersisted, and nine manufacturers rallied ’round andthe tour was scheduled, with fourteen contestants.

Old stand-bys were conspicuously absent. For thefirst time in tour history, there were no Wacoshopping up and down to set their unbelievable stick

and unstick records. And no Curtiss or CurtissWright ships, with a carefree Casey Jones stowinghis golf clubs or a calculating Walter Beechstudying the rulebook. There was only one airplanefrom Wichita, a venerable Cessna, and there wereno lady pilots. And for the second year, noaccompanying Army planes.

There was at last one Autogiro, going along justfor the ride, and three flivver airplanes, one ofwhich jolted the old timers by setting the highestFigure of Merit for any ship in the tour. And just toremind everyone of the good old glory days, theBuhl people entered their Spokane Sun God, stillresplendent in its Texaco red paint of 1929. The shipwas flown by a showman and circus barker typenamed Jack Story and as the 1931 tour made therounds, Jack made the most of it, telling andretelling of the Buhl’s triumph of two years before,a happier time when everybody everywhere wassetting records….

The Sun God’s endurance flight of 1929 wasmade by Nick Mamer and Art Walker, of Spokane,Washington. Mamer planned his flight to show howa transport, or bomber, might be refueled during auseful long distance mission. And while he wentahead with his plans, another similar andcompetitive effort was in preparation by a largergroup: Boeing, Pratt and Whitney, Boeing AirTransport, the Post Office, and the Army Air Corps.This other flight was designed to speed up the AirMail, was called the Boeing Hornet Shuttle and wasdirected by Captain Ira Eaker, capable and well-known Army pilot.

There was no avowed rivalry between theMamers and the Eakers, but nonetheless the coffeeshop hangers-on at Boeing Field, Seattle, where theMamer passenger planes stopped over on a dailypassenger run, had great fun reminding the Spokaneunderdogs of the more promising preparations bythe Boeing-Air Corps group.

And the Mamer activity, for all that he had thebacking of Texaco and Buhl, did leave much to be

Chapter VII1931 - The Last Tour

135Copies of this book may be ordered at www.NationalAirTour.org or by calling 800-225-5575

© 1972, Lesley Forden; 2003 Edition © 2002 Aviation Foundation of America

desired. The plan for coast-to-coast deployment ofrefueling planes was somewhat vague, one of themother ships was fitted with a battered gasoline tanksalvaged from a wrecked Ford Tri-Motor andanother refueler was a quite elderly Ryan. None ofthem had radio: the pilots would communicate bynotes dropped in flight, by messages chalked onblackboards and held up in cockpit windows, and byplain arm waving and obscene gestures.

The crew restroom facility in the endurance shipconsisted of a round, life-preserver shaped cushionlaid over a trapdoor in the cabin floor, a primitivearrangement that turned out to be “mighty cold onthe bottom,” and which led to obvious referencesabout placards seen in railroad coaches: “Do not usewhile train is standing in station — or plane is over cities.”

A delegation of real Spokane Indians christenedthe Buhl, offered prayers to their own Sun God, andon August 15, 1929 Mamer and Walker were offinto the night; south along the Columbia and downthe coast to San Francisco. They refueled there nextmorning, then headed for Wyoming, and trouble.

The next appointed refueling ship was trackeddown only after prolonged searching and circlingand anguished cries, “Goddamn it, we talked thisover at least a hundred times in the goddamnoffice.” And when the two airplanes finally werelined up, the refueler managed to drag his hoseneatly into the Sun God’s prop and have it snippedin two. And the old Ryan could barely struggle aloftin the thin air over Rock Springs and bring upenough gasoline to make it worth the trip.

Deliveries improved next day over Cleveland, by experienced crewmen of the St. Louis Robingang and on Sunday afternoon the Buhl appearedover Armonk, New York, circled WestchesterAirport and dropped a note, “Which way toRoosevelt Field?”

An airplane flown by Leon Allen came up to lead

the way, and then scores of other planes appearedlike migrating birds, to convoy the Sun God in agrand procession as it took on gasoline over LongIsland and dropped an “air mail” letter from SanFrancisco’s Mayor “Sunny Jim” Rolph, to NewYork’s Jimmie Walker. Then the Buhl headed westagain, with Texaco’s own Frank Hawks leading theway across the Alleghenies to Cleveland.

Monday evening found the plane grinding alongover South Dakota, almost home. But Mamer andWalker were ready to give up; their motor wasshaking itself to pieces, the scheduled refueling shipwas lost somewhere behind them, the visibility wasnear zero in heavy smoke from a thousand forestfires in the mountains ahead of them. But they lastedthe night, and at dawn on Tuesday old friends fromMiles City came roaring alongside in a WhirlwindEaglerock, its front cockpit crammed with five-gallon milk cans full of gasoline — and a Montanacowboy who calmly and expertly lowered themwith his rope. The Indians’ prayers had not been in vain….

Home safe over Spokane, Mamer and Walkerkept the Buhl circling while they shaved, changedclothes, and watched their own company Ford Tri-Motor bring sight-seers up to have a look: twelvepassengers per trip, at five dollars each, cash. TheSun God landed as the sun went down; just short of116 hours aloft, with eleven refuelings and adistance record of 7,200 miles — much more, if allthe circling were counted.

Two weeks later, the Boeing Hornet Shuttle wasready. Ira Eaker fired up his big biplane and took offfrom Oakland Airport, eastbound. He got as far asCleveland, and there the refueling crew dropped afive-gallon can of oil squarely through the center-section of his upper wing.

“Oil? Good Lord you never saw so much damned oil….”

Eaker tried again, accomplished one non-stop



The Buhl Spokane Sun God, #3 in 1931 tour, at Spokane just before the 1929 endurance flight. At left, refueling pilot R. M. Wilson stands by Buhl tankerNC1451, at right, Art Walker crouches over Sun God’s windshield, assisted by unidentified helper.

(A. W. Walker)

westbound, and then near Salt Lake City his enginequit; suddenly and completely; starved for gasolineby dirt in a fuel line. Eaker brought the Boeingdown in a crash landing on the side of a cliff,miraculously ground-looping to a stop just short ofa sheer thousand-foot drop into a canyon. And thatended that.

Mamer and Walker meanwhile, returned to thehumdrum Spokane, Portland, and Seattle passengerrun. But now they could swagger just a bit, stoppingin for coffee with the gang at Boeing Field.

“That Boeing endurance flight — somethingabout a ‘shuttle’ — what was it you guys weretelling us?”

Now, in 1931, the old Buhl Spokane Sun God wasoff with the other tour planes, heading east throughWindsor and along Lake Erie to Le Roy, New York.

The tour route crossed New York State, and thenled back across the mountains to Wheeling in thegreat valley of the Ohio. And here, for the first timein any tour, a pilot was killed: Charles Sugg took offfrom the Yorkville, Ohio airport, turned his littleBuhl “up the hill” as he climbed out, and crashedinto the hillside.

There’d been accidents before, and at Wichita,Kansas a tour spectator lost his life when he walked

too close to a whirling propeller. But this was thefirst pilot death. And when the others talked of thislater, they remembered too the accidents that befellother planes, the hazards of flying in the narrowvalleys and jumbled up mountains in this country,the arguments between contestants and tour officials— as though the fear and uncertainty of thosedepression times were reflected in needless angrywords and bickering.

There were only nine planes left in the running asthey went on through rain and thunderstorms furthersouth. Fort Worth was remembered as “two days torest up and dry out;” Kansas City, “anothercloudburst;” Omaha, “almost cancelled because thelocal committee ran out of money and volunteers.”

But Iowa and Illinois were easy flying again,rolling hills and meandering rivers, red barns andwhite farmhouses and silvery windmills shining inthe sun.

A writer-flyer named Wolfgang Langewieschewrote of this farm country. He flew one day along asection line, one of those checkerboard divisions ofthe land surveyed and marked off by governmentmen a long time ago, and still apparent from a lowflying plane….

“First it (the line) was a dirt road, narrow betweentwo hedges, with a car crawling along it dragging atail of dust. Then the road turned off, but the linewent straight ahead, now as a barbed wire fencethrough a large pasture, with a thin footpath trod outon each side by each neighbor as he went, weekafter week, year after year, to inspect his fence.Then the fence stopped, but now there was corn onone side of the line and something green on theother. Next it was a narrow dirt road again withfarms on either side, and then suddenly, a broadhighway came curving in, followed the line for awhile, and curved away again. For a short stretch itdidn’t consist of anything, but the grass, for somereason, was a little greener on one side and a littlemore yellow on the other. Was it because one ownerwas in the grace and the other was not? Again it wasa hedge until it broadened and became a road,dignified itself and became for a few blocks themain street of a small town, filled with parked cars;people stepped out of stores to look up at me. Thenit thinned out again. When I climbed away andresumed my course, I left it as a fence, which hadcows on one side, and no cows on the other. That’sa section line.”

The tour flyers sailed on across the section linesof Illinois and Michigan and Ohio with HarryRussell holding an easy lead of ten thousand points



Boeing 95, modified as NR397E forthe endurance try. Lt. BernardThompson in cockpit.

(The Boeing Company)



THE

SEV

ENTH

TO

UR

1931

to win the trophy for the second time.But two other underdogs were given a great hand

at the last banquet: George Dickson, for havingfinished at all in his tiny Aeronca and HarveyMummert, who had been down and out way back inWest Virginia somewhere, then patched up his air-plane and rejoined in time for the last lap, around thelake from Akron to Dearborn. It was the same lastlap where Mummert had gone down in the rain anddarkness back in 1925 - surely an appropriate finishin this final competition with the giant Ford Tri-Motors for a game sportsman who had flown in fiveof the seven air tours.



ITINERARY1931

Date City and Airport Name Miles

Saturday, Dearborn, FordJuly 4 Windsor; Walkerville Air Harbour 15

Le Roy, Woodward 260

July 5 Binghamton, Aero Club 123

July 6 Bradford; Airport Club, Emery 145

July 7 Pittsburgh, Butler 123Wheeling; Scott, Yorkville, Ohio 49

July 8 Columbus, Norton 120Huntington; City, Chesapeake, Ohio 110

July 9 Middlesboro, Colson 145Knoxville, McGhee-Tyson 45

July-10 Nashville; Sky Harbor, Murfreesboro 138Memphis, Armstrong 225

July-11 Birmingham, Municipal 215

July-12 Montgomery, Maxwell 84

July-13 Gulfport, City 213New Orleans, Wedell Williams 67

July-14 Shreveport, Municipal 279

July-15 Houston, Municipal 214

July-16 Corpus Christi, Municipal 186San Antonio, Winburn 132

July-17 Fort Worth, Meacham 238

July-19 Oklahoma City, Municipal Aviation Park 190Ponca City, Taylor 89

July-20 Chanute, Municipal 112Kansas City, Fairfax 107

July-21 Lincoln; Union, Havelock 163

July-22 Omaha, Municipal 50

July-23 St. Joseph, Rosecrans 118Davenport, Cram 253

July-24 Joliet, Municipal 128Kalamazoo, Municipal 137

Saturday, Akron, Municipal 225July-25 Dearborn, Ford 118

Total 4,816

American Eagle Factory and Porterfield Flying School, Fairfax Airport,Kansas City. (NASM)

Omaha Legion Airport, October, 1929. Curtiss Robin at left, Travel Air at right. (NASM)

Harry Russell running up NC433H. (Ford/Hudek)

Ford NC8485, flying its third tour in 1931, and, left to right, Charles Bunchof Pratt & Whitney, pilot James Hudson Smart, his mother, Mrs. Ann O. Smart, mechanic Tony Wallach.

(Mrs. Ann 0. Smart)



Tom Colby’s Laird. Bird #10 at right, Pratt & Whitney Stearman in background. (S. J. Hudek)



The Ford flown by Vernon Johns for Reid Murdock Wholesale GroceryCompany. Nose is placarded “Monarch Foods, Leadership for 75years,” “Independence” on side refers to independent grocerymenwho sold Monarch foods.

(S. J. Hudek)

Z. D. “Granny” Granville, and Gee Bee NR21O1. (S. J. Hudek)

Gee Bee YW, accompanying as far as Wheeling. (NASM)

Lowell Bayles and Gee Bee. (Ford/Hudek)



Bob Dake (Western Flying)

Jack Story (University of California)

Bert Kinner (University of California)

Lee Gehlbach (NASM)

The Bird Cabin model, shown in much marked advertising paste-upphotograph. The plane does not appear in various pictures of the tourdeparting Ford Airport, indicating that it may have started late. And itwent down with engine failure on the second day out, near Ceres, NewYork, just short of the Bradford stop.

(NASM)

Lee Gehlbach’s Bird. (S. J. Hudek)



This Pitcairn PCA-2 Autogiro advertising Pure Oil Company’s Tiolene, was similar to the Champion Spark Plug Company ship flown by Lon Yancey. (J. Victor Dallin)

Pitcairn and Bird compete in takeoff contest at Roosevelt Field. Pilots are not identified. (NASM)



BuhI Flying Bull Pup NC387Y. Charles Sugg crashed in this ship; WalterHenderson dropped out of tour in the other Bull Pup.

(S. J. Hudek)

George Dickson (Kenneth Boedecker)

Buhl Bull Pup posed with Shell Lockheed. Man standing in cockpit of Buhl is believed to be Charles Sugg. (NASM)

The 1931 tour pilots heard of Louie Meister’s death as they passed through Oklahoma City on July 19. Meister was killed in a Verville trainer, similarto this one shown in tests of special landing gear for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

(The National Archives)



A 1933 magazine ad featured Dickson’s Aeronca.(Antique Airplane Association)

An Aeronca C-2, NC568V flown by F. M. Johnston to a record 14,400feet over Oakland, California, July 29, 1930.

(Mrs. Carl Bigelow)

Jean Roche, left, was an engineer at McCook Field when he built themonoplane which became the Aeronca. He worked in his garage,assisted by a friend and fellow hobbyist, J. H. Quentin Dohse, right.

(H. E. Morehouse)



Stinson NC4O3Y may have been the one flown in 1931 tour by Eddie Stinson.

(John W. Underwood)

Jimmie Doolittle (NASM)

Peter Altman (L. S. Srnauey)

Great Lakes Sport Trainers atClaude Ryan’s school in SanDiego. Air tour arrivals oftenlooked like this, as friendlyenemies ganged up in finaldash across finish line.

(NASM)

Great Lakes #13. Sandbag ballast and scales for weighing load can be seen on ground aft of left wing. (Ford/Hudek)



Bellanca Miss Fidelity, owned by Fred M. King’s Fidelity Investment Company of Wheeling, West Virginia, and flown by George Haldeman.(NASM)

Another majestic AirCruiser, NC785W, taxiingon the Delaware River,near the factory.

(NASM)

The Packard Diesel Waco, a Taper Wing in 1930, now become a Straight Wing. Walter Lees at right, back to camera. (Ford/Hudek)



Despite the tour rulesbeing written to en-courage competition bymulti-engine cabin planesand amphibians, only afew did compete. Theseare examples of six whichdid not.

The Loening Amphibian. HR42served in the Navy at HamptonRoads, Virginia.

(Keystone Aircraft Corporation)

The Stinson U. Consolidated Airlines served various California cities from home base at Alameda, on San Francisco Bay. (M. L. Cohen/University of California)

The Keystone Patrician, seen at Ford Airport April 12, 1929. (William T. Larkins)



The majestic Boeing Model226, in the service of StandardOil of California. Note copilotrests his arm on sill of big open cockpit window.(Standard Oil Company of California)

The Bach Air Yacht, built in Van Nuys, California. This one has a Hornet in the nose, two Comets outboard.(American Aviation Historical Society)

The four-engine Fokker F-32, seen at Mills Field, San Francisco, January 9, 1931. The English Bluebird G-ABDS was passing through on a round-the-worldtrip, flown by a Mrs. Bruce.

(M. L. Cohen/University of California)



Unusual Ford on floats, being lowered into River Rouge at Ford factory on May 12, 1929, for tests and subsequent delivery to Royal Canadian Air Force. The man standing on top the wing appears to be Harry Russell.

(Mrs. S. L. Manning)

And four low-wing speedsters which within a very few years would make the Ford Tri-Motor obsolete for service on themajor air lines….

The Northrop Alpha, carrying the Indian head insignia of Transcontinental and Western Air. (Edward Peck)



The Lockheed Orion. These two are the North Wind, and South Wind, of Varney Speed Lines, at Alameda, California. (M. L. Cohen/University of California)

The Boeing 247, in service with United Air Lines in 1933. (United Air Lines)

And the Douglas DC-2. NC14285 was owned by Standard Oil Company.(Standard Oil Company of California)



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Bye

rly)



Chapter VII 1931 - The Last Tour

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Transcript of Chapter VII 1931 - The Last Tour