The Great Air Race
Glory, Tragedy, and the dawn of American Aviation
John Lancaster
270 pages 344 w/notes

We should note at the start that the book jacket says in two places that the race was significant but “has until now been all but forgotten” and that “the book brings a long over looked episode in the history of American aviation to vibrant life.” The book does that and is an interesting read. We should also note that the Heirloom addressed the race in the may’18 issue in “Flyers Cross Continent” (pg 7). We should further note that there’s a map of the race at the very beginning and the route goes right over Donner Summit. That was because the racers mostly followed the transcontinental railroad, but also shows the good taste of the race planners.

There were many contestants, some leaving from San Francisco and heading for New York and some doing the opposite. Both sets of pilots, who finished the race, went in both directions. The race had pilots leaving San Francisco and New York vying for the least elapsed and fastest flying times. This was an endurance run, with the being officially named the “reliability and endurance test,” for pilots and planes. This was much like auto runs and races that the auto industry was sponsoring at the same time and which the Heirloom has covered when they related to Donner Summit. In this case it was not industry doing the sponsoring, but the Federal Government with advocates of the Army air corps and the Postal Service using the publicity to advance their causes in the public’s and then Congress' minds. The race would prove the usefulness of airplanes.

With all those pilots there are a lot of stories and backgrounds and John Lancaster, the author, tells lots of stories. He must have spent days in the newspaper archives pulling out the stories. The public's attention had been captured by the race and the new technology and so the newspapers covered the race well. Airplanes were not all that reliable in 1919 and that sets up many stories too and people like that kind of thing.

The books starts by setting up the background of the race with descriptions of 1919 New York’s Aeronautical exposition. Then it goes into Billy Mitchell, World War I and aviation, the aftermath of World War I, aviation’s effect on air mail, and then separate chapters of pilots’ race experiences. All of that is told with stories that personalize the subjects and personalities, for example Billy Mitchell who had the audacious idea that submarines and airplanes were the weapons of the future. He was an outspoken and sometimes obnoxious advocate for aeronautics. Towards the end of the book that future envisioned by Billy Mitchell is illustrated with the bombing of a captured “unsinkable” German war ship by bombs dropped from airplanes. The naysayers are proved wrong and Mitchell flies off in triumph.

Chapter 7 brings us to the Great Air Race in the summer of 1919. Given the state of aeronautics the race was “bold, attention getting, and borderline reckless.” As a “reliability” test it “would reveal both the limits and capabilities of aviation technology as it existed in 1919.” The race would also serve as a “maneuver problem” challenging the air service as it would be in war to maneuver men and equipment.” It would be a “field exercise on a country wide scale.” Then, above all, “it was a competition among men – a test of skill, courage, and endurance that was sure to be greeted as such by the press and public."

An anonymous author said, “the reports of these early exploration flights will make quaint and almost incredible reading.”
Indeed, reading about the early days of flying; the lack of air fields; bad gas; surging crowds trying to get close to the heroic pilots and their machines; and government, both local and Federal, not wanting to spend money on facilities the need for which was a classical “chicken and egg” puzzle is kind of quaint. Imagine a time when airplanes were not central to our economy and some people couldn’t ever envisage a change. So the job of the early pioneers and advocates was hard and the race was supposed to help solve the problem. In the telling of the many stories there is “quaintness” but also amazement that people actually did those things.

For example, the only American made plane in the race was the DH-4 which had an interesting nickname, the “flaming coffin.” It had some good qualities and some bad. It was a bit nose heavy so sometimes the occupant of the rear cockpit would pull himself out of the cockpit and straddling the fuselage, work his way back to the tail while in flight. This would be a good counterbalance during landing. In that same vein if something went wrong with the engine someone might work his way out of the cockpit and up to the engine, straddling the fuselage and then walking on the wing, while in flight, to do what needed doing. Lancaster relates one of a couple of stories of a mechanic in the rear cockpit climbing out and onto the fuselage to counter balance during landing. His weight was not enough and the plane tipped anyway, nose down, stopping the plane. The abrupt stop catapulted the mechanic into the air so he landed in front of the plane. The mechanic survived. He offered the advice for others that they wear spurs so they could remain attached to the plane while straddling the fuselage. A paragraph later, another mechanic was not so lucky.

The book is full of little stories like that which show the courage and sometimes foolhardiness of the aviators as they dealt with the state of 1919 aeronautics. These stories provide good advice in case you are ever piloting a DH-4. If the engine catches fire, go into a steep dive hoping the increased wind will put out the fire. In the DH-4 the pilot sat between the engine and the fuel tank. To prevent being crushed by the fuel tank in a crash landing, the advice was to push the rudder left or right so the plane would strike the ground at an angle which might deflect the fuel tank.

Along with those stories, some from the race and most from other sources given as background, there are many discussions such as the fact that pilots did not have parachutes, even though they were available and why some pilots carried guns. Then there are stories about accidents, lost pilots, crashes, mechanical problems, equipment malfunctions, souvenir hunters (the public’s quest to steal pieces of the planes), the lack of maps, the lack and quality of airfields, route finding, weather information, and mountains. One point of discussion was the characteristics needed by flyers: athleticism, particularly as horsemen; well educated; young; and single. In terms of personality the ideal pilot should be alert, cheerful, optimistic, happy-go-lucky, generally a good fellow, and lacking in imagination.

All of that would help the pilot deal with things like snow hurricanes. One pilot ran into a snow hurricane “which reduced visibility to 200 or 300 yards. Spaatz [Carl Spaatz, one of the pilots] feared that he might lose sight of the ground and descended to just fifty feet above the tracks, swerving to avoid water towers that appeared suddenly out of the swirling snow… he had no choice but to thread his way through the treacherous maze, banking sharply with every twist and turn of the rails.” That ought to add to the list of characteristics pilots needed.

In addition to the general stories there are the back stories of many of the contestants. John Donaldson, for example, escaped from the Germans twice after crashing during World War I.

Then there are little facts. For example the propellers were made of wood but their high rotating speed could have the tips going 400 miles an hour. At that speed even rain drops could eat away the wood and reduce flying capability. So the leading edges were coated in metal. One pilot, John O. Donaldson, arrived in Cleveland ,in the rain having lost two inches from the propeller tips and one inch from the leading edges.

The little stories are a strength of the book but also a weakness. There are so many that they can be tedious and they get in the way of the overall narrative. What’s going on in the race might have been interjected rather than just moving from one flyer’s experience at one point to another’s. Nevertheless there is a lot of research here and a lot of stories about early aviation. So, overall, it’s a good story.

The race was good publicity for the flying service. It also developed a 35 page report advocating the adoption of technology, design changes, radio direction finders, more and a safer landing fields, better weather forecasting, etc. Most or all were eventually enacted. Another outcome was an expanded postal air mail service eventually spanning coast to coast. It paved the way for the airplane to become “a practical feature of every day life.”

The cost was great too: nine dead pilots and 54 crashes.