Walking on Air (7 page)

In July, while floodwaters remained over many areas along the Mississippi River, the National Air Tour landed at Armstrong Field. The National Air Tour for the Edsel B. Ford Reliability Trophy was an annual event, a kind of traveling industrial show designed to promote aviation advancements and to demonstrate the safety and reliability of air travel.
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The tour also had the effect of spurring municipalities to improve landing fields in order to be chosen as hosts. These facilities gradually established a nationwide airway system.
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The first tour, in 1925, visited twelve cities in the Midwest, and covered 1,775 air miles over six days.
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In 1926, pilots flew a 2,585-mile circuit over fourteen days. In 1927, the tour was extended to sixteen days and 4,121 miles.
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Like much of America, Memphians had been avidly following news of the tour. In May of that year, Charles Lindbergh had become the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Coming on the heels of Lindbergh's magnificent achievement, fascination with aviation was at a fever pitch. Thousands turned out to greet the arrival at Armstrong Field of biplanes and monoplanes, single engines and huge Ford Tri-Motors, open cockpit and closed, fourteen pilots, thirty-nine passengers, and one monkey named “Honko.” Along with the excitement of the tour itself, the local newspapers freighted the visit with introducing commercial aviation to the region and assured readers that Memphis had taken her place in the grand sweep of the air age in recognizing “the value of commercial aviation on the broad scale that it is practiced in the east and north.”
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With so much interest in aviation, business boomed at Mid-South Airways, particularly in flying lessons and aircraft sales. Vernon was
increasingly occupied with commercial work like crop-dusting and aerial surveys; Phoebe devoted much of her time to working with students, flight instruction, and check rides. On 28 August 1927, she had her first serious crack-up since blowing out her foot on the high-tension line in 1921. She had taken a passenger, Leo Speltz, for a ride in a Waco biplane from Armstrong Field. As Phoebe banked the plane, at an altitude of 800 feet, to turn into the field for a landing, Speltz braced himself, unwittingly pressing his feet against the rudder pedals and throwing the ship out of control. Because she could not manipulate the rudder, and could not dislodge Speltz, Phoebe could not bring the ship out of the turn. It spun into the ground demolishing the front of the fuselage and both wings.
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Vernon rushed to his wife's side and spirited the two to the hospital. Phoebe had a severe gash on her forehead, a fractured skull, a broken left arm, and two broken legs; Speltz had broken his foot.
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Phoebe was laid up for some weeks, but still found ways to keep working. She and Vernon had a big job doing aerial mapping for a pipeline from Monroe, Louisiana, to Memphis, Tennessee, and West Memphis, Arkansas. She rode along, took photographs and spent many hours developing film while on crutches.
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Phoebe was still hobbling with a cane when America's most famous aviator arrived. Charles A. Lindbergh landed at Armstrong on 5 October 1927, just five months after his epic nonstop solo flight from New York to Paris. Lindbergh's visit to Memphis was the sixty-second stop in his eighty-two-city tour promoting public acceptance of the airplane as reliable transportation.
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“To the blast of whistles and the chiming of bells, the first flier to conquer the Atlantic” circled the city several times.
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Some 10,000 spectators at Armstrong Field gazed skyward, cheering as Lindbergh

pulled back his stick and the
Spirit of St. Louis
reared like a thoroughbred horse. Around the field he circled, the sunlight glinting on the silver sheen like a sparkling jewel in a sea of blue …. A couple of zigzags of the rudder and the silver ship with its heroic cargo dropped to the ground as lightly as a dead leaf in an autumn breeze. It was a masterful demonstration of the flyer's absolute control over his ship.
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Lindbergh was rushed to Overton Park where some 30,000 Memphians, many of whom had been waiting in the hot sun for two hours or more, jostled to see their hero. The ceremony began with the mayor of Memphis
presenting a fifty-seven-piece silver service to Capt. H. B. Lackey, commanding officer of the U.S. Navy Cruiser
Memphis
, which had been sent by President Calvin Coolidge to fetch Lindbergh and his plane, the
Spirit of St. Louis
, back to the United States after his epochal flight. As Lindbergh stepped forward, thunderous bursts of applause, accompanied by auto horns, and chants of “Lindy! Lindy!” produced a cacophony that stalled the aviator's speech for some time. “All Memphis fawned at his feet, but the boyish conqueror of the Atlantic [showed] a distinct dislike for pomp and pageantry,” wrote one reporter. Lindbergh made it clear that he was there solely to promote aviation. Declining to exalt his recent achievement, “he tried to convey the impression that his epochal flight was merely a trip which can be accomplished by any healthy flier properly equipped.”
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Lindbergh gave a short outline of the history of aviation and its progress in the previous two years, saying that he believed the next two years would witness even greater advancement. But he cautioned that “aviation cannot be developed without support from the public. And aviation cannot be developed without airports, so it is important that the country awake to the necessity of constructing more airports. The nation, Tennessee, and the city of Memphis need your cooperation.”
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After his speech, the parade began. Seated on the folded top of a flag-draped convertible, Lindbergh led the parade to the Peabody Hotel where a dinner and reception hosted by the Memphis Aero Club were held in his honor. The newspaper reported that “One hundred thousand people cheered him as he rode through Memphis streets.”
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At the dinner that evening, “fully 500 men and women broke bread with the noted aviator” who reiterated his basic message calling for support for civil aviation. He announced that he would not be visiting Nashville the next day as planned, in deference to the sorrow occasioned by the recent death of Governor Austin Peay. Instead, Lindbergh enjoyed an unaccustomed day of privacy and rest while his ship,
The Spirit of St. Louis
, posed in majestic display at Armstrong Field. The newspaper summed up the success of Lindbergh's visit: “He had a message and he delivered it. And with that deed accomplished, his work in Memphis was over. But his mere presence brought more stimulus to aviation interest in this city than all the work done in that direction heretofore.”
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The clamor that accompanied Lindbergh's visit apparently had its desired effect of convincing city fathers of the importance of ushering in the air age with a new municipal airport. Memphis boss E. H. Crump's hand-picked candidate, Watkins Overton, made the construction of a Memphis airport a major issue in his mayoral campaign.
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Once in office, Overton
quickly appointed five men to the Airport Planning Commission, at least three of whom were Aero Club members: Col. J. Walter Canada, chairman; Edmund Williams, secretary; W. Percy McDonald, Memphis attorney and later head of the Tennessee Aeronautics Commission; R. Brinkley Snowden; and Claude J. Tulley.
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In the meantime, Omlie expanded his business. On 7 May 1928, Mid-South Airways began regular passenger service to Chicago, three round trips per week with Captain Omlie flying a six-place Stinson Detroiter. The first ticket was sold to W. Percy McDonald. Depending on the winds, it sometimes took five hours to reach Chicago (a flight distance of 488 miles); the fare was $60.
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Phoebe, too, looked for ways to expand Mid-South Airways. After hearing about an exciting new small aircraft being manufactured in Iowa, Phoebe flew up to check it out. The mid-1920s were a time of great experimentation in design and manufacture of postwar planes for civilian use. The war-surplus Jennys then dominating the air were unsuited for the development of aviation as a personal transportation system. They required two men to move them in and out of hangars; controls were sluggish and they were slow and drafty with their cockpits open to the elements. The goal was to build a cheap, reliable, easy-to-fly personal-type airplane that people would enjoy owning and flying. When Henry Ford, builder of the original “flivver” (his Model-T), came up with a prototype “Ford flying flivver” in the summer of 1926, the public was entranced. People said that private planes would one day replace cars, but would clearly be more heavenly to “drive.” A columnist for the
New York Evening Sun
described flivver ownership this way:

I dreamed I was an angel
And with the angels soared
But I was simply touring
The heavens in a Ford.
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In the fall of 1926, Don Luscombe, a promoter and advertising man who fell in love with flying during the war and spent many hours tinkering with aircraft design, and Clayton Folkerts, a mechanic who had been designing and building airplanes in his basement since 1918, teamed up to begin building their “aerial coupe” in an old clapboard tabernacle built by evangelist Billy Sunday in Bettendorf, Iowa. They called themselves the Central States Aero Company and their plane the Monocoupe.
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The Monocoupe was a two-place, high-wing monoplane fitted with side-by-side dual controls in a velour-upholstered, fully enclosed cabin. It cruised at eighty-five miles per hour and sold for $2,285.
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As word spread about the Monocoupe's closed-cabin comfort, responsive controls, speed, and economy, the company could not build them fast enough, largely owing to the difficulty of obtaining reliable engines. Don Luscombe contacted Moline automaker Willard L. Velie as a potential source of engines. Velie, maternal grandson of farm implements maker John Deere, owned the Velie Carriage Company, an innovator in engine design, which built the first six-cylinder valve-in-head motor in 1908.
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Velie subsequently bought out Luscombe's Central States Aero Company to form Mono Aircraft, Inc., a subsidiary of the Velie Motor Corporation in January 1928, providing the new 55 hp Velie M5 radial engine and much-needed capital for the company.
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The Velie Monocoupe was enormously successful. The company produced 275 planes during 1928, and by 1929, fully 10 percent of all registered aircraft in the United States were Velie Monocoupes.
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This was attributable in no small measure to the amount of positive publicity Phoebe Omlie would attract for the company.

Phoebe had gone to Bettendorf hoping to convince the company to allow her to market the Monocoupe in Memphis
. She got the franchise and a lot more. Phoebe became a consultant for the company and ultimately the plane's “ambassadoress,” as she demonstrated the Monocoupe in a variety of activities over the next few years.
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Monocoupes had a “pixie-like” quality, described in ad copy as “pert … an airplane [with] wholesome charm … a jolly, friendly sort of airplane,” not unlike that of Phoebe herself.
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Although Phoebe was a highly skilled pilot with at least 1,000 hours of accumulated flight time in a host of different aircraft by the time she joined the company, she built her career with the company on proving that “the Monocoupe is made so well and is so easy to fly that a girl can pilot it.”
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In the summer of 1928, Phoebe, flying her black and orange Monocoupe 70, affectionately dubbed
Chiggers
, joined the fourth annual Ford Reliability Air Tour. Her “flivver” had just barely enough power to compete; rules indicated that entries must be capable of speeds in excess of 80 miles per hour.
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She was the only woman competitor in the race and she flew alone. Given the uncertain reliability of many of the planes and their engines, there was no question that mechanical problems would arise along the way. Indeed, the tour featured a litany of broken wing-bracing wires, punctured oil pans and fuel lines, overheated engines, and broken propellers. One participant,
Dan Beard, in anticipation of difficulties, shipped eleven propellers around the country ahead of time.
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While many of her fellow competitors carried mechanics to help keep their planes flying, Phoebe resolutely declined. “Why would I need a mechanic? I have an aircraft mechanic's license. Besides if I did take one, people would say he flew the ship over the worst parts. No, I'll go it alone.”
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The 1928 National Air Tour was the third annual tour and the longest one yet: thirty-two cities in nineteen states and 6,304 miles over desert, plain, and mountain range. The circuit headed south out of Dearborn, to Indianapolis, St. Louis, Wichita, Tulsa, down into Texas, turning west at San Antonio, through New Mexico, Arizona, north at San Diego, up the west coast all the way to Tacoma, Washington, then headed east across Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and back to Dearborn.
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The circuit was demanding enough to test the planes and the pilots in every kind of condition. Though the planes departed at one-minute intervals, they soon dispersed across the sky and each was essentially alone.

Navigation along the route was a challenge. Over familiar territory in nice weather, plotting a course was simple. Pilots used road maps and depended upon visual references like highways, rivers, and railroad tracks (sometimes referred to as the iron compass). Unfortunately, often several sets of railroad tracks radiate out from a town making it all too easy to choose the wrong set. This method (known as pilotage) has some obvious disadvantages in remote areas with few landmarks or in inclement weather when limited visibility could be disorienting. In the days before the widespread use of radio or other navigational aids, pilots used “dead reckoning,” an unfortunate term for mathematical calculations based on airspeed, compass heading, elapsed time, and distance, to plot their course to a destination. If the route was flown at the planned airspeed, when the elapsed time was up, the destination should be visible. Wind is the critical element in the calculation; its speed and direction directly affect the aircraft and its progress over the ground. So if wind velocity and direction are unknown, the plane could be blown off course. Weather reporting was rudimentary at best along the route, so it was very easy to get lost, particularly in areas where landmarks were few.
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