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A former United States Marines aviator and United States air mail pilot, Talbert Abrams and his wife, Leota Abrams, who was also a pilot, formed the ABC Airline Corporation, in Lansing, Michigan, in 1922, which was later renamed the Abrams Aerial Survey Corporation, when its primary work became aerial photography. Its first aircraft was a Curtiss JN-4 Jenny biplane, but the company later obtained the Abrams P-1 Explorer, in 1937, which was the first aircraft that was specifically designed for aerial photography. Designed for the company, by Kenneth Ronan and Edward Kunzl, who had worked for the Stinson aircraft company, the Abrams Explorer, with registration number X19697, first flew in November 1937. Though it was used up until 1948, it was considered to be too slow for military use, during World War II. This photo shows Talbert Abrams in the cockpit of the Abrams Explorer, during the 1938 National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio, which were held from September 3rd to 5th. He also established the Abrams Instrument Corporation, in 1938, to produce camera parts for the United States government, and a aerial photography school for the United States Marines. He was born in 1895, and died on August 26, 1990, while his wife, Leota, died in 1978. The Abrams Explorer was donated to the Smithsonian Institution in 1948 and the Abrams Aerial Survey Corporation is still doing business to this day. |
TALBERT
“TED” ABRAMS
TALBERT
“TED” ABRAMS – FATHER OF AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
Harry N. Atwood was an exhibition flyer who made a 1,256-mile flight from Saint Louis, Missouri, to New York City, from August 14-25, 1911. He attended the 1911 International Aviation Meet at the Nassau Boulevard Aerodrome, in Garden City, New York, from September 23rd to 30th, and the 1911 Brighton Beach Air Meet, held on the Brighton Beach Track, on Long Island, in New York, from September 8th to 10th. This photo may show him before the start of his 1911 Saint Louis to New York flight. He died in Hanging Dog, North Carolina, at the age of 83, in 1967. |
Harry Atwood's Wright biplane on Euclid Beach, in Cleveland, Ohio, on Thursday, August 17th, during his cross-country flight from St. Louis to New York City. Flying in from Sandusky, Ohio, he first landed at Edgewater Park, in Cleveland, by mistake, but took off, right away, for Euclid Beach, which was his scheduled stop. Immediately after landing on Euclid Beach, around 5:00 p.m., his manager, Leo Stevens, was served with a claim, by the Standard Oil Company, for an unpaid oil and gasoline bill, which resulted in his biplane being held by the police. However, Atwood was able to fly his biplane out of Cleveland, the next day, at 4:03 p.m., after a bond was given for the claim. Though his intended stop was Erie, Pennsylvania, he decided to land, in a cornfield, near Swanville, Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Erie, due to approaching darkness and a loose brace on his biplane. |
Another photo of Atwood's Wright biplane on Euclid Beach, in Cleveland, Ohio, on Thursday, August 17th. |
The 1913 Benoist Model 14 flying boat that Harry Atwood flew at Water Works Beach, on the shore of Lake Erie, in Lorain, Ohio, on July 19, 1913. |
Five 1911 newspaper articles about his cross-country
flight can be read, on this web site, at
ATWOOD SAFE
IN CLEVELAND
FOUGHT A SNEEZE
WHILE IN THE AIR
MR. ATWOOD FINDS
TRIP MONOTONOUS
ATWOOD,
DESPITE TROUBLES, FLIES TO FAIRFIELD, PA.
MR. ATWOOD
MAKES JUMP OF 84 MILES
HARRY
N. ATWOOD
HARRY N.
ATWOOD, "KING OF THE AIR"
Aviatrix Erna Bach learned to fly even before she learned how to drive a car and believed that the mechanics of flying was easier to learn than those of driving. She was passionate about flying and though she did not think much of cars, because they couldn't fly, she still became very fond of sports cars, once she learned how to drive. She was a member of the Ninety-Nines, an organization of female pilots, and was married to Leland "Hap" Anderson, a commercial pilot for Chicago and Southern Air Lines, and then Delta, when C&S merged with it, in May 1953. She was affectionately known as "Mamoo" to her two grandchildren, who idolized her and who she showered with love. This photo shows her around 1931, when she was about eighteen years old. She died, from cancer, in 1976. |
Special thanks to her granddaughter Sandi McFarland and her mother, Sue Ellen Quinn, for providing this information about Erna Bach!
New Zealand aviatrix Jean Batten and the Percival Type K.1 Vega Gull monoplane, with registration number G-ADPR, that she set several flight records with. From October 5th to 16th, 1936, she used it to make a 14,224-mile flight from England to New Zealand, in a record-setting time of 11 days and 45 minutes, and from October 19th to 24th, 1937, she used it to make a solo flight from Australia to England, in a record-setting time of 5 days, 18 hours, and 15 minutes, which was a record that was to last until November 1980, when Judith Chisholm broke it, while flying a Cessna T-210 Turbo Centurian, in 3 days and 11 hours, and this flight was also part of a solo around-the-world flight, which set a record for the fastest time for a woman. |
Jean Batten and the de Havilland DH.60 Gipsy Moth biplane, with registration number G-AARB, with which she made a 10,500-mile solo flight from Lympne, England to Darwin, Australia, in 14 days, 22, hours, and 30 minutes, from May 8th to May 23rd, 1934, and set a new flight record for women, beating the one set by British aviatrix Amy Johnson, in 1930, by days. She continued on to Sydney, during this flight, and arrived there on May 30th. |
Jean Batten waving to a crowd, perhaps, during her six-week air tour of New Zealand, in 1937. She was born on September 15, 1909, in Rotorua, New Zealand, and died, from an infection caused by a untreated dog bite, on November 22, 1982, in Palma, on the Spanish island of Majorca. She was awarded the Harmon Trophy three times, for being an outstanding aviatrix of the year, from 1935 to 1937, and her Percival Gull monoplane is now on display at the Auckland International Airport, in New Zealand. |
JEAN
GARDNER BATTEN
STARS: JEAN BATTEN
JEAN
BATTEN
JEAN
BATTEN: THE GARBO OF THE SKIES
JEAN
BATTEN'S PERCIVALL GULL
AUCKLAND INTERNATIONAL
AIRPORT
JUDITH CHISHOLM
BECOMES FASTEST WOMAN TO FLY SOLO ROUND-THE-WORLD