Walking on Air (8 page)

Takeoffs and landings were very demanding. Most airfields were called fields, and that is mostly what they were: a relatively level pasture with the grass cut to demark the “runway.” A windsock, a tube of bright-colored fabric at the top of a tall pole, indicated wind direction. Most had no facilities for fueling or servicing airplanes. Pilots and tour coordinators had to make
prior arrangements to be certain fuel, parts, and mechanics would be available to them. Short fields at high elevations or on hot days were hazardous, much easier to get into than out of. Municipal airports were sometimes in a bit better shape, some having cinder runways or access to water with which to periodically settle the dust. But since airports were often located in or near urban areas, countless obstacles encircled the fields—buildings, trees, chimneys, power lines. Pilot and humorist Will Rogers described the best way a pilot could find an unfamiliar field:

Locate a high tension line, follow it till it crosses another higher tension one. There is almost sure to be a field there. If not, follow it till it comes to an intersection of three or more lines and there will be located the city's municipal field.
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A crowd estimated at an astonishing 175,000 people watched as Phoebe took off at 10:15
AM
on 30 June.
¹⁰
She was allowed to take off first ahead of her twenty-four competitors out of deference to her sex and perhaps to her plane.
¹¹
Most of the other planes were equipped with motors four to ten times more powerful than hers. Her tiny Monocoupe was small enough to hide under the wings of the giant tri-motors. Like her larger competitors, her plane was equipped with the basic instruments: tachometer, altimeter, compass, oil temperature gauge, and clock. Phoebe wore a blue enameled ring with a tiny compass set in it, in case she made an emergency landing and had to find her way across alien terrain on foot.
¹²

Flying the slowest plane, Phoebe was the last to arrive at the first stop in St. Louis.
¹³
The tour resumed, crossing Missouri into Kansas. A patchwork of farms stitched together with hedgerows gave way to prairie, vast as an ocean. Wichita to Tulsa, then down into Fort Worth and San Antonio, the terrain gradually turned more barren and brown, covered with sagebrush and scrub pine. In the scorching heat, the planes became more sluggish and unruly. The hot air had less density, thus less lift, so planes required longer runways in order to get airborne. For a low performance plane like Phoebe's, summer temperatures severely impaired its ability to clear obstacles at the end of short runways.

Phoebe was thrilled when Estelle (Mrs. Eddie) Stinson climbed into her Monocoupe at Fort Worth for the next two legs of the tour. Eddie Stinson, pioneer pilot and manufacturer, had won the 1927 National Air Tour and was a competitor in this one. Phoebe wired her hometown newspaper, the
Press-Scimitar
, to relay the news: “Think Eddie told her to go. That is one of the
greatest compliments I've had on the tour.”
¹⁴
Off they went, across the open Texas hill country to San Antonio. Low clouds forced them to fly sometimes only 50 feet above the ground as they skirted the west Texas mountains, following the railroad tracks to Marfa.
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Located on a Chihuahuan Desert plateau, Marfa was the highest city in Texas at nearly 5,000 feet. At such a high altitude the planes would land fast. Phoebe, coming in hot, overshot the runway and ground looped (a sudden sideways rotation of the aircraft on the ground caused by excessive speed and/or side winds). A wheel collapsed, the wing went down, and the airplane nosed over.
¹⁶

Beginning with her initial takeoff, Phoebe's tour was extensively covered by an eager press who found the diminutive female pilot fascinating. Following her accident, the
New York Times
reported that she had “escaped death, but was forced out” of the tour and that her “plane was completely demolished.”
¹⁷
This was not quite true. She and her passenger were shaken up but uninjured. The same could not be said for
Chiggers.
One wing and the landing gear were smashed. Jack Atkinson, a Monocoupe dealer from Gary, Indiana, who had joined the circuit at the last moment, offered her the use of his plane while he remained behind to get hers repaired. She hurriedly wired Vernon that she was unhurt: “Damage not serious. I am all right and am going on as pilot of other Monocoupe.”
¹⁸
Phoebe and Estelle swapped ships with Atkinson and headed on to El Paso where Estelle rejoined her husband, Eddie, for the next leg. Atkinson was later able to catch up with the tour at San Francisco by flying 1,100 miles in fifteen hours so they could swap back.
¹⁹

Phoebe took off alone from El Paso, headed across the desert southwest to Tucson. Scorching hot in July, the air shimmered as if aflame. Dust devils—vertical columns of hot air that rotate and travel along the ground like miniature tornados made visible by dust sucked into the vortex—danced across the flat barren earth. This was alien terrain to a midwestern flier: no landmarks, no water towers, all dry creek beds, canyons and ravines, cactus and chaparral. It was unforgiving country if one went down very far from a road. As she made scheduled stops in Tucson, Yuma, then San Diego, in her tiny plane, Phoebe was often the last to arrive but grateful for another successful leg. To the press, she reiterated what she had said from the first: that she did not join the race to win it, but to finish. “To finish and prove that the light plane is practicable and that the average man or woman can operate one the same as an automobile.”
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Estelle rejoined Phoebe at San Diego for their trip up the Pacific Coast to Los Angeles. The view was spectacular as the curvy white beach, nipped
and tucked with inlets and sloughs, met the vivid blue Pacific. Near Laguna, Phoebe ran out of gas and had to set down on a strip of beach. By the time the wheels stopped rolling, the women had to climb out and wade in shallow water to the shore. While a team of horses towed the Monocoupe back to solid sand, Phoebe and Estelle were whisked away dripping wet to a formal banquet at the Ambassador Hotel.
²¹

At every stop, capacity crowds greeted the tour, hundreds of planes joined the competitors, including military squadrons and stunt pilots, gliders, auto-gyros (early helicopters), and balloons, to put on exhibitions and take locals for rides. Some estimated as many as a million Americans witnessed some phase of the tour.
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Aero clubs, chambers of commerce, and events coordinators planned myriad opportunities to meet and honor the pilots: luncheons, banquets, receptions with dignitaries, tours of the local area.
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The pilots and their passengers gamely attended air rodeos in Texas, a Fourth of July extravaganza at Tulsa. They crossed the border at Juarez for a glimpse of Mexico, attended a fish fry in Montana, and toured the Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios in Los Angeles.
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One of the more unusual events they attended was in St. Paul, where air tour participants were invited to the all-Minnesota dance marathon, which had already been going on for 134 hours by the time they arrived. Tour guests occupied special boxes to witness “makeup applied to every girl in the marathon during the evening. Since the dance began, the dancers had been given 389 marcels (finger waves), 191 hair washes, and 64 trims, all using the 15-minute rest periods allowed.” Another feature was “a fishing party, in which contestants [fished] on the floor for ice cream molded in the form of fish.”
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All the activities along the route meant that the pilots had little time to rest, plan the next day's journey, or spend maintaining their aircraft. It was party until late, then up at dawn and take off.

At Los Angeles, perhaps believing she was the cause of Phoebe's bad luck, Estelle ended her stint as Phoebe's passenger. Phoebe went on alone to San Francisco, with a dogleg over the verdant Imperial Valley for a luncheon stop at Fresno. Getting into San Francisco was uneventful, but getting out was another story. Fog in the bay, always worst in the summer months, had begun rolling in as the pilots rolled out. By the time Phoebe lifted off, after being reunited with the repaired
Chiggers
, she was in thick soup at 100 feet. All she could do was maintain her controls in the same position, scanning her brain for any obstructions in her way. Holding steady, she climbed to nearly 900 feet before she broke out in the clear and began to breathe again.
²⁶

More poor visibility greeted the pilots on the way to Portland. Dense smoke from burning forests obscured their vision as they made their way up the Pacific Coast. Several pilots altered their course to fly out over the ocean to escape the smoke and to be certain that they cleared the mountains. Then on to Tacoma, Washington, with its picturesque setting on Commencement Bay in Puget Sound for more banquets and receptions. The monotony of the menus and entertainment for these soirees was reflected in the wild applause that greeted the host at the closing banquet in Detroit when he promised the menu would not include chicken. “Not hot nor cold, nor roasted, boiled, fried or fricasseed. Nor in soup or salad or sandwiches. Furthermore, you will not be forced to listen to any rendition, in any form: orchestra or trio, solo or chorus or quartet, of that familiar song, ‘Romona.'”
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The tour turned back south so that it could cross the Cascade Range, one of the most beautiful mountain barriers in the United States, through the Columbia River Gorge, a spectacular river canyon that forms the boundary between Washington and Oregon. The silver thread of the river wound between black basalt cliffs and mountains rising steeply on both sides punctuated by Mount Hood, and off in the distance the majestic Mount Rainer and Mount St. Helens.

After a brief stop at Spokane, the planes crossed over the Rockies, range after range broken by sunless valleys and topped with snow, heading for a big trout fry on the banks of the Blackfoot River at Missoula. Then on 21 July, the air tour crossed the Continental Divide and landed at Great Falls, Montana. Back in the flatlands of the Great Plains, the terrain was beginning to look like home. Across the wheat belt of North Dakota to St. Paul, where Phoebe got even more than her share of press attention because of her history in that city. The paper reported approvingly that one race participant called her “a game little girl and not a cry-baby,” one who had earned the respect of the men on the trip. She told the press, “I'm not in the race to win, but I want this buggy to finish.”
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After Milwaukee and Chicago, it was finally time to turn home to Dearborn, four weeks and six thousand miles after they departed.
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Phoebe was hoisted on the shoulders of Edsel Ford and Michigan governor Fred W. Green at the finish line.
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The
Detroit Press
extolled her accomplishment and its impact on the aviation industry:

The contest has revealed an unparalleled development in the small plane for individuals of modest means through the performance of Mrs. Phoebe Fairgrave Omlie and her little 47-hp Monocoupe …. Mrs. Omlie's little
plane carried her through the contest at an average speed of seventy miles an hour, weathered sweltering heat over the desert in the southwest, soared over some of the highest peaks in the Rocky Mountains, maintained a more precise schedule than some of the higher powered and more expensive planes and completed the flight with an average of about fifteen miles on a gallon of gasoline.
³¹

John Wood, in his 225 hp Waco Ten, was declared the winner; Phoebe finished last but with a perfect score for navigation. Mono Aircraft was so pleased with her performance that they presented her with
Chiggers
, which she proudly flew back to Memphis.
³²

A large crowd was waiting for her as she circled the field twice in salute before touching down on her home field. The tour had been a success, she said, and had clearly “helped to make many more people air-minded …. When 23 out of 24 airplanes carrying 85 people can travel over the most hazardous parts of the United States in all kinds of weather without serious mishap, it is proof air transportation is here to stay.”
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Yet, on the heels of her triumph came a devastating crash, one that nearly proved fatal.
³⁴
It was a lovely autumn day in October; Phoebe was the star attraction at the air circus for the dedication of the new airport at Paragould, Arkansas, a tiny town about ninety miles northwest of Memphis. It was midmorning, before her scheduled afternoon performance. Aboard
Chiggers
, her passenger, E. Z. Newsom Jr., was a pilot for West-Nash Airlines of Paragould. As they made a pass over the airport, the plane suddenly veered right, flipped over, then righted again as Phoebe struggled for control. It seemed as though she would succeed in bringing it in for an emergency landing, but then, at about 250 feet off the ground,
Chiggers
dived nose first into a fence. Both aboard were severely injured. First reports indicated that Mr. Newsom had internal injuries and was not expected to live and that Phoebe had broken both her legs so severely that amputation might be necessary to save her life.
³⁵
When Vernon came for her, he'd rigged the Stinson like an ambulance. This was the second time in as many years that he had rushed to the side of his seriously injured wife. If he had words with her about it, no record survives. Likely as not he knew Phoebe lived to fly and that was that.

After both pilots had been transferred to Memphis' Baptist Hospital, the extent of their injuries was clearer. Newsom had a broken leg as well as internal injuries of an unspecified nature. Phoebe had broken her left leg near the ankle and the right near the knee. She had also reopened the long scar
over her left eye from her crash at Armstrong the previous year.
Chiggers
did not survive.
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