This 1927 Boeing B-40 beauty is also known as Number 285. It was donated to the Museum in 1938 after an amazing career as a mail plane. It flew 6,039 service hours and crashed four times (with no human injuries).
Early in the airmail era, pilots literally flew by the seat of their pants and only during the day, using geography, rail lines and roads to help them get to their destinations since instrumentation was rudimentary at best.
In February 1921, a San Francisco to New York relay was put together to test the feasibility of flying cross-country airmail routes at night. Four teams started out to fly the 2,629 miles, but only one made it through, mostly thanks to one pilot named James “Jack” Knight who took a double shift and flew 830 miles when his relief pilot got snowed in in Chicago. Along the route, postal workers, airfield employees and farmers lit bonfires to help him cross the Great Plains from North Platte, Nebraska to Chicago.
Katherine Stinson was part of an aviation family and the 4th woman to earn her pilot’s license in the U.S. The exhibit refers to her flying in China! I wish I had taken a closeup of “her” face as she’s flying the Laird – it reflects pure joy and excitement.
The exhibit contains bleachers for museum visitors to rest and really take in what’s going on around them and overhead. These two visitors from the barnstorming era never leave and are popular with photographers.
Part of the barnstormers’ schtick was air racing and that entertainment has continued to evolve to this day. This is the Dayton-Wright racer, built for a race in 1920. It was very unique because it had a single wing in the biplane era, it has no windshield – the pilot can only see out the side of the plane – and it had lever-operated retractable wheels. It was very odd to see an airplane with no windshield!
Our last aircraft for today’s blog is the Detroit News autogiro (sometimes spelled “autogyro,”) the first autogiro (a.k.a. a “rotorcraft”) built for commercial use. It’s a 1931 Pitcairn PCA-2 built by the Dayton-Wright Company and powered by the overhead rotary wing with two small wings for stability.
Because of it’s ability to semi-hover, the newspaper used it for aerial photography and promotion, including one involving dropping golf balls onto a golf course! Amelia Earhart attempted to be the first to fly one across the U.S. but was beaten to that milestone. She did set an autogiro altitude record in 1930 that stood for 16 months. Many thought the autogiro would be the next big thing in personal aviation, but fixed wing continued to dominate.
Next week, we’ll talk about record setters including one more bit on Lindbergh (he’s everywhere, he’s everywhere…) and what else can be found in the Henry Ford.
