AIR HEADS Part Ten

I wonder how many people worked in the advertising department at the Cole Motor Company in  1911?  They only built 860 luxury cars that year. But then J. J.  Cole had always been more interested in sales than in engineering. 

Besides supporting Bob Fowler’s “Cole Flyer” transcontinental flight that year, the Indianapolis based company also had a squadron of racing cars which toured the country, and a big balloon that made appearances at county fairs. "Joe" Cole even invested in the founding of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  As their company slogan went, “There’s a Touch of Tomorrow in All Cole Does Today”. Well, maybe. But the touch was not to last forever. 

Joseph Jarrett Cole had built a fortune in horse buggies before he borrowed enough cash from Harvey Firestone to start his auto company in 1909. He believed in the "Standardized Car" principle.  

The Cole plant built nothing, but rather assembled what J.J. considered the best parts from other manufacturers and put them together in the Cole building. “A man’s car any woman can drive.”

In 1911 Joe used an "L" head 4 cylander engine from the Northway Engine Works in Detroit.  And his cars featured such innovations as balloon tires, “adjustable door glasses” (i.e., removable windows),  a 15 foot long dashboard light and a speedometer that read up to 75 mph; unfortunately the Norway engine only produced 30 horse power, and flat out the Cole Model 30 and model 40's  could only reach 45 mph.  Bigwigs at General Motors wanted to buy out Cole, and when Joe wouldn’t sell they just bought up his suppliers - including Northway -  and gradually cut him off. 

With the post war recession of 1920-21 Joe realized the jig was up and began a careful liquidation of his company.  Ten months later, on 7 August, 1925, at the age of 56, he unexpectedly died of a heart attack.   His family kept the name on The Cole Building  and rented it out  into the 1970’s. Thus fared the man who sponsored Bob Fowler's flight. 

After he finally reached El Paso in 1911, it took Bob Fowler(above, right) a month just to escape Texas. But he made a lot of money there. On Christmas Eve he  crash landed in a rice field outside of Seixas, Louisiana.   Having lost the race to Rodgers, and prefeering to spend the winter in warmer climes, Bob took a couple of days to film floods in the east Texas and southern Louisiana carry. He carried a cameraman aloft (above) and made movie history.  He landed in New Orleans at about 3 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. 

It took Bob Fowler until February of 1912 to reach Florida. He landed on the sand at Jacksonville Beach on 12 February 1912 -  becoming the second man to cross the nation by airplane. Not that very many people noticed. 

Bob would later observe with understatement, “I was the first to start and the last to finish.” It had taken him 116 days and 72 hours of actual flight time to cover the 2,800 miles across America. The very next year Bob Fowler made the first non-stop transcontinental flight – and the shortest. Just 36 miles across the Isthmus of Panama. 

He filmed it, of course. Bob Fowler was a pretty crafty fellow. Except he was immediately arrested. The defense department wanted him charged with espionage, for filming the Panama Canal. But eventually cooler heads prevailed.

Bob sold The “Cole Flyer” in 1912, and after being used in the movie business for a few years, it was sold again, this time for scrap wood. The engine was the only part saved, But after his flight Bob traded the Cole 4 engine for a new model Wright engine, and that is still on display at the Exposition Museum in Los Angles. So nothing remains of the Cole Flyer.

In 1916 Bob started the “Fowler Airplane Corporation” in his home town of San Francisco. He modified and sold 125 Curtis JN-4’s (“Jennys”) to the U.S. Army as trainers, and after WWI he started Bluebird Airways, a passenger service around the bay area. He retired to San Jose and died in 1966, at the healthy old age of 82.

Jimmy Ward (above), the ex-jockey who had the good sense to drop out of the Hearst race, suffered a great tragedy.  His wife Maude Mae died in a hotel fire,  and Jimmy was so devastated he lost his mind and never got it back.  Eventually Glenn Curtiss helped him get admitted to a Florida mental hospital. He died there in 1923, at the age of 37.  He was buried in an unmarked paupers grave. Some of his fellow aviation pioneers collected money to give him a more respectful funeral, but I can find no record of that ever happening.

The confident Cal Rodgers was testing a new airplane on Wednesday  3 April, 1912, just off shore of Long Beach, California, when he ran into a flock of sea gulls. The plane banked sharply 45 degrees and slid into the surf,.

Cal had crashed just feet from where he had posed grinning in the surf with the “Vin Fiz” the previous December.

The engine broke loose from its mounts and crushed Cal, breaking his neck. He was still breathing when swimmers pulled him from the water, but he died soon after. Cal Rodgers was the 127th pilot's death since the Wright Brothers flight in 1903, and the 22nd American aviator killed. Considering the number of people flying in 1912, those were still terrible odds.

Cal's mother, Maria (Rodgers) Sweitzer, took procession of her son’s body and had it shipped back to Pittsburgh. There Calbraith Perry Rodgers was buried in Allegheny Cemetery under an elaborate tombstone (above), marked with the words “I Endure, I Conquer.”

Cal’s brother John took procession of the “Vin Fiz Flyer” and had it shipped back to Ohio, to the Wright Brother's shops, to be repaired. He offered the Flyer to the Smithsonian, but they already had a Wright B, so instead, in 1917, the Flyer was donated to the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. In 1934 the Smithsonian changed their minds and bought the “Vin Fiz Flyer”.  Refurbished and rebuilt, that is the plane that hangs from the ceiling in the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

And little Maude was determined to endure and conquer as well. After lengthy court battles with her ex-mother-in-law in California, Maude was awarded legal possession of the “Vin Fiz Flyer”. How could this be? Wasn’t the Flyer back in Ohio, being rebuilt? It was. But the contents of the “Vin Fiz Special” hanger car contained enough spare parts, many of which had actually flown sections of the transcontinental  odyssey, to construct a second “Vin Fiz Flyer” and still claim it as the “original.”

Two years after Cal’s death, Maude married Charlie “Wiggie” Wiggin, who had shown such faith and devotion to her Cal; two lonely souls who shared an adoration of another man. “Wiggie”, had, by this time, acquired his own pilot’s license. And Maude and Wiggie made a living for a few years barnstorming their “Vin Fiz Flyer” around the country. And then they quietly faded out of history.

It would be ten years later when U.S. Army Air Force pilot Jimmy Doolittle (above) would cross the continent in less than a day - 21 hours 19 minutes, with just one stop for fuel

And as you sit in your tiny passenger seat, crammed four to an aisle, held prisoner on the tarmac for endless hours, forced to use a toilet designed for a diminutive Marquise de Sade, charged extra for a micro-waved “snack”, a pillow, a blanket, a soda or a thimble full of peanuts, even the privilege of using the rest room...

...consider the sacrifices of those who suffered before you; landing in chicken coops, landing in tree tops, landing in barbed wire fences, landing in Texas for day after day. And remember the immortal words of Cal Rodgers; “I am not in this business because I like it, but because of what I can make out of it.” It has become the mantra of every airline passenger world wide.

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AIR HEADS Part One

 

I don't think anybody stood a chance of winning the $50,000 first place prize money.  It was 1911. Flying was still brand new and the world’s first two pilots - Wilbur and Orville Wright - were still learning how to fly.

The world's third pilot was U.S. Army Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge. He died (above) in an air plane crash on 17 September, 1908. 

In that same crash Orville Wright was also badly injured. He would never fly again.

The second famous pilot to die in that first generation of pilots, in 1910, was Charles Stewart Rolls (of Rolls-Royce fame) (above).  Considering there were only about 100 men (and one woman) with flying licenses in America in 1911, two percent was an appalling death rate, bad enough to make you wonder why anybody even wanted to even try flying -  let alone try flying from coast to coast across the United States.

The world’s 49th licensed pilot was a shy, cocky, 6’4” thirty-something, cigar smoking, playboy and adrenaline junkie with a hearing loss and a speech impediment named Calbraith Perry Rogers (above -right). He was a romantic who favored action over words, as proven by the way he met his wife, 20 something Mabel Groves (above, left).  He saw her slip off a dock and fall into the water.  So assuming she was drowning,  he jumped in and pulled her to safety. Within a few months he married her, despite the hat.   Cal approached flying with the same spontaneity as his love life,  but it was a passion which quickly developed into a mission..

Having seen his first airplane on a visit to Dayton, Ohio, in June of 1911,  Cal took the full Wright Brother’s flight course (above),  all 90 minutes of it.  Mabel explained that flying filled the hole in his life left by his deafness which had excluded a military career.  It was, she said "the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle". 

Then Cal talked his mother, Maria, into loaning him $5,000 so he could buy a Wright Model B Flyer “E-X”. The "X" was for experimental – which was a joke because in 1911 every “airplane” was experimental.  But Cal may also have been the origin of the phrase to “take a flyer”,  because just two months later, in August, he entered his new Wright Flyer in an air show in Chicago and took home third prize, worth $11, 285.   Not bad: Cal had been a pilot for 60 days and already he had made six grand profit.  He suspected there might be money in this flying thing.

And this was confirmed in October of 1910 when the Hearst newspaper chain had offered $50,000 to the first pilot to make it across the continent in 30 days or less.  The offer was set to expire on 10 October, 1911.  Orville Wright tried to warn Cal. "There isn't a machine in existence that can be relied upon for 1,000 miles,  and here you want to go over 4,000.  It will vibrate itself to death before you get to Chicago."   But Cal refused to give up the idea.  He explained, "It's important because everything else I've done was unimportant."  Faced with that level of stubbornness,  Orville tried to look at the bright side. At least the Wright B Flyer was so light, said Orville "six good men could carry it across the country."

 What Cal needed, as any NASCAR driver can tell you, was a sponsor.  He found his ‘sticker sucker’ in  Mr. J. Odgen Armour, owner of Armour Meat Packing Company, and his new soft drink called “VIN FIZ”.   Allegedly it was grape favored soda water, but one critic thought it tasted more like  “a fine blend of river sludge and horse slop”   With a product like that Mr. Amour was going to need a heck of an advertising campaign. Enter Cal and his flying bill board.

With a guarantee of $23,000 from Amour, and a bonus of $5 per mile east of the Mississippi River, and $4 per mile to the west of the "big muddy",  and a corporate three rail car support train complete with a reservoir of spare parts, fuel and mechanics, and sleeping car accommodations for Mable, Cal’s mother Maria,  his cousin, his head mechanic Charlie Taylor, two other mechanics, two general assistants and assorted reporters from the Hearst news service, the flight was starting to look possible.

Armour even threw in an automobile (above) to track down Cal whenever he crash landed . With that much corporate funding behind him, Cal figured he had it all figured out. The first problem was that, before Cal even got airborne, his "Vin Fiz" was already in third place.

First off, from Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, was motorcycle racer Bob Fowler (above). 

There were 10,000 cheering people there at 1:35 P.M., on Monday, 11 September,  1911 to see Bob take off (above).  

Like Cal, Bob was piloting a Wright “B” Flyer, except his sponsor was Joseph J. Cole (above, middle, with mustache) , founder and owner of the Cole Motor Company, of Indianapolis, Indiana.  Cole supplied Bob with his automobile engines and $7,500 in financial support.  

The Cole engine was more powerful than the Wright engine, but it was also 200 lbs heavier. J.J. also gave Bob a support train, with spare parts. His mother, Ethel Fowler (above), went along and repaired the fabric of his plane during the flight.  But "The Cole Flyer" lacked the publicity Hearst supplied to support the "Vin Fizz  Flyer".

Making an average speed of about 55 miles an hour, Bob Fowler reached Sacramento in just under 2 hours, and after schmoozing with California Governor Hiram Johnson, Bob flew on to the foothill town of Auburn, for a total distance on the first day of 126 miles. Impressive. And on a Monday.

On Tuesday, 12 September,  Bob had reached Alta, California, where he crashed into some trees.  Bob was now out of the race until repairs could be made.

Second to start was James J. (Jimmy) Ward (above),  pilot's license #52, and previously a jockey, and another motorcycle racer.

Jimmy was flying a Curtis Model D. and he had the full support of designer Glenn Curtiss, including the de rigueur train with a hanger car filled with spare parts, 

Traveling with Jimmy was his second wife, Maude May Mauger - seen here strapped in for her first (and only) flight, with her husband at the controls. 

 Jimmy took off from Governor’s Island in New York harbor on Wednesday, 13 September, 1911. He preformed a loop around the Statue of Liberty (above left, BG) and then immediately got lost over New Jersey.  

He made only twenty miles before crash landing (above). Then he too had to wait for repairs. The basic tempo of the race had thus been set right from the start; take off, crash, wait for repairs, take off, crash, wait for repairs, and repeat as necessary for 4,000 miles. It was going to be very hard to finish this race, let alone win it.

Before starting himself, Cal Rogers tied a bottle Vin Fiz to one of his wing struts (white circle on the left), “for luck”.  For reality, he tied a pair of crutches to another strut, in case he needed them later. He would.

Before a paying crowd of 2,000, a chorus girl poured a bottle of grape soda over the landing skids and proclaimed, “I dub thee “Vin Fiz Flyer””. Cal actually called his plane “Betsy” but he recognized the value of naming fees even back then.

Cal took off from the race course at Sheepshead Bay, Long Island at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, 17 September. And if anybody noticed that it was the third anniversary of the crash that had killed Lieutenant Selfridge, they were polite enough to keep it to themselves.

After take off, Cal buzzed Coney Island and dropped coupons for free Vin Fiz soda (above). Then as the breathless reporters breathlessly reported, he flew over Manhattan “…with its death-trap of tall buildings, ragged roofs and narrow streets”.  Cal landed safely in Middleton, New York that night to a cheering crowd reported as 10,000 – not to be bettered by San Francisco. He had made all of 84 miles that first day. His plan was to average 250 miles a day.

That night the reporters wrote that Cal claimed he would be in Chicago in four days. But Cal  rarely talked to reporters because he barely heard their questions, the byproduct of a scarlet fever attack in his childhood.  And he spoke in the clumsy monotone of someone who never clearly heard a human voice.   So it was easier if the the reporters just made up heroic quotes for Cal. And they did.

They invented more heroic quotes for him the next morning when, on take off,  the "Vin Fiz" hit a tree and ended up in a chicken coop (above).  The bottle of Vin Fiz was "miraculously" undamaged, as proved because it would have been impossible to find another bottle of Vin Fizz aboard a train car named "The Vin Fiz Special".   But now it was Cal’s turn to wait for repairs.  The race was on!  It just wasn't going anywhere very quickly.

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