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St. Croix Johnstone was an exhibition flyer who drowned, after his Moisant monoplane crashed into Lake Michigan, on Saturday, August 12, 1911, during the 1911 Chicago International Aviation Meet, in Chicago, Illinois. He had learned to fly at the Bleriot flying school in Hendon, England, in 1910. |
Johnstone in his Moisant monoplane, during the 1911 Chicago International Aviation Meet. |
The Moisant monoplane that broke apart on Johnstone, during the 1911 Chicago International Aviation Meet. |
The remains of Johnstone's Moisant monoplane, after it was recovered from Lake Michigan. |
Horace Kearney, who was an exhibition flyer, in a 1910 Pfitzner monoplane. He flew air mail in several aviation meets and died in an airplane crash, in the Pacific Ocean, in 1912. |
A 1912 newspaper
article about the death of Horace Kearney can be read on this web site
at
CALIFORNIA
AVIATORS PROBABLY LOST AT SEA
HORACE
KEARNEY
KEARNEY
AND THE MAIL
American Army Air Corps test pilot Lieutenant Benjamin S. Kelsey was the first aviator to fly the Bell XFM-1 Airacuda escort fighter-bomber, with serial number 36-351, at the Buffalo Municipal Airport, in New York, on August 28, 1937. The aircraft was designed as a pusher type, in order to give the gunners in the wing blisters a free field of fire that was unhindered by propeller wash, and was produced in several versions. Though Lieutenant Kelsey reported being pleased with the aircraft's performance, on its initial flight, the wing blisters were later found to create too much drag and the aircraft's lack of maneuverability proved that it was not a practical design for combat. The aircraft were then used for flight training and this photo shows a Bell FM-1 (Fighter Multi-place) that was based at the West Coast Air Corps Training Center, at Moffett Field, in Sunnyvale, California, around 1940. Born in 1906, Benjamin Kelsey later became a Colonel, in 1948, a temporary Brigadier General, in 1952, and retired from the United States Air Force on December 31, 1955. He was also a test pilot for the Lockheed P-38, served during World War II, received the Distinguished Flying Cross, and died on March 3, 1981. |
BRIGADIER GENERAL
BENJAMIN S. KELSEY
FROM
THE ARCHIVES
FLYING
THE PROTOTYPES
MOFFETT
FIELD HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Daniel Kiser and his biplane in 1915. He was a United States Mail pilot from January 11, 1921 to February 18, 1923, and later flew air mail, for Charles Dickinson, on one of the inaugural flights of Contract Air Mail Route 9, from Chicago, Illinois, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on June 7, 1926. |
DANIEL
KISER
AIR
MAIL PIONEERS