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Cornelia Fort, born on February 5, 1919, was one of the first pilots of the United States Army's Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), which ferried aircraft to military air bases, during World War II. As a flight instructor for the Andrew Flying Service, she was in the sky, over Hawaii, with a student, in an Interstate Cadet high-wing monoplane, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. While in the air, during the attack, their airplane almost collided with a Japanese fighter and was fired upon, by Japanese airplanes, as she attempted to land at John Rodgers Airport, in Honolulu. This flight is depicted in the 1970 movie Tora, Tora, Tora, about the attack on Pearl Harbor, but she is shown, in this film, flying a biplane rather than the monoplane that she flew, during the attack. This photo shows an airplane from the Andrew Flying Service, which she may have also flown, while employed, as a flight instructor, with this company. She was killed, at the age of 24, on March 21, 1943, near Merkel, Texas, after the left wing of the BT-13A trainer that she was flying, to an air base, hit the landing gear of another BT-13 in the formation. So great was the impact of the resulting crash that her aircraft's engine was imbedded several feet into the ground and her body smashed into so many parts that most of it was never found. She stood 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighed 140 pounds, and had over 1,000 hours of flight time when she crashed. She was the first female American military aviator to be killed on active duty and she is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville, Tennessee with a gravestone that has the words "Killed in the service of her country." The Cornelia Fort Airpark airport, in Tennessee, is named after her. |
CORNELIA
FORT
CORNELIA
CLARK FORT (1919 - 1943)
CORNELIA FORT AIRPARK
Robert Grant Fowler was an early aviator and manufacturer of airplanes. He made a transcontinental flight from Santa Monica, California to Miami, Florida in 1911, which took 49 days and he flew, from east to west, across the Isthmus of Panama, on April 27, 1913, making the 40 mile nonstop flight in 57 minutes. He would have flown in the 1927 Dole Air Race from California to Hawaii, had he not crashed his Wasp monoplane, before the air race. This photo shows him in his Wright Model B Cole Flyer, which he used for his transcontinental flight and during this trip he became the first person to land a airplane in Arizona, which he did in Yuma, on October 25, 1911, and there is now a monument in Yuma honoring him for this achievement. |
ROBERT
G. FOWLER
THE
"OTHER" TRANSCONTINENTAL FLIGHT
YUMA
LANDING
FOWLER-GAGE
TRACTOR
Roy Noel Francis was an aviator and aircraft designer, who formed the Patterson-Francis Aviation Company with Charles Patterson. In 1913, they built a two-engine tractor flying boat, which Roy Francis flew in the 1913 Great Lakes Reliability Tour, and the Patterson-Francis Twin-Tractor biplane, which crashed on a test flight. This photo, from a post card postmarked 1913, shows Roy Francis and his biplane, after it crashed, at the Wyoming State Fair, in Douglas. |
This photo shows the experimental Andermat biplane bomber, with double interplane ailerons, which was built, by the Andermat Aeroplane Company, for the United States Army, in 1916, and which Roy Francis was a test pilot for. |
ROY N. FRANCIS
ROY NOEL FRANCIS
Charles Gatschet with his biplane, which says, on its side, "Take a buggy ride with Charlie". He was a barnstormer and flew airplanes for the Des Moines Register and Tribune newspapers, and was killed in the crash of a C-46 cargo plane in 1945, during World War II. The Iowa Aviation Museum inducted him into their Hall of Fame in 1999. |
CHARLES
W. GATSCHET
REGISTER
STARTED TRUMPETING IOWA AVIATION IN 1920S
IOWA
AVIATION MUSEUM HALL OF FAME
Claude Grahame-White was an British exhibition flyer, who learned to fly in 1909. He flew in the 1910 Los Angeles air meet, the 1911 Brighton Beach air meet, and won the Gordon Bennett Trophy at the Belmont air meet in October of 1910. In 1909, he had lost the London to Manchester air race, to the Frenchman Louis Paulhan, both of whom were flying Farman biplanes with Gnome rotary engines. This air race was sponsored by the London Daily Mail, which had offered, in 1906, a 10,000 Pound prize to the first aviator to fly from London to Manchester in twenty-four hours. Grahame-White had to abandon his first attempt, on April 23, 1910, due to strong winds, and before he could start his second attempt, Paulhan had, already, started to fly to Manchester, on April 17th. With Paulhan 117 miles outside of London, in Lichfield, and 57 miles ahead of him, Grahame-White decided to continue flying during the night, from Roade, in an attempt to overtake him and, at 2:45 a.m., he made the first night flight in England. However, he was forced to land his Farman biplane 10 miles behind Paulhan, in Polesworth, at 4:13 a.m., because of engine trouble, which was four minutes after Paulhan had taken off for Manchester. This vintage post card shows him in a Bleriot-type monoplane, at the 1910 Boston Aero Meet. |
A vintage post card showing one of Grahame-White's biplanes |
Claude Grahame-White flying his Grahame-White Burgess Baby biplane at the 1911 Brighton Beach air meet, in New York, where he flew it for the first time in America. He flew this biplane, at the air meet, on September 16th and 17th, and had, earlier, flown a Nieuport monoplane, at the air meet, which was held from September 8-17, 1911. |
Another photo of Grahame-White at the 1911 Brighton Beach air meet. |
CLAUDE
GRAHAME-WHITE
LONDON
TO MANCHESTER AIR RACE
THE
BELMONT MEET 1910