Aviation In Florida By Kevin M. Mccarthy

the jumbo jets and space shuttles of today, author Kevin McCarthy covers all

aspects of Florida’s varied and colorful flying history. Paintings by famed artist William Trotter capture its most spectacular moments.

• Floridian Jackie Cochran, born in poverty but born to fly, became the first woman to pilot a bomber across the Atlantic Ocean (1941) and to break the sound barrier (1953). At her death she held more aviation records for speed, altitude, and distance than any other pilot—male or female—in history.

• The world’s first scheduled airplane flight took place in 1914 as Tony Jannus flew across the bay from St. Petersburg to Tampa.

• Amelia Earhart took off from Curtiss Field in Miami for her fatal round-theworld flight in 1937. The field was later renamed in her honor.

• Navy blimps searched the Florida coasts for German U-boats during World War II.

Kevin M. McCarthy is a professor of English at the University of Florida. He and William L. Trotter have collaborated on a number of Pineapple Press books, including Lighthouses of Ireland, Georgia’s Lighthouses and Historic Coastal Sites, Thirty Florida Shipwrecks, and Twenty Florida Pirates.

Pineapple Press, Inc. Sarasota, Florida Cover paintings by William L. Trotter Jacket design by Shé Heaton

McCarthy

Pineapple Press, Inc. Sarasota, Florida

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rom the open-cockpit bi-wing planes used by the barnstormers of the 1920s to

Aviation in Florida

A V I AT I O N / F L O R I D A DH-4 Army biplane down Jacksonville Beach, he hit some soft sand. The plane somersaulted into the ocean, dumping Doolittle into the water. For several minutes he thrashed about in the waves until he realized the water was only knee-deep. The thousand spectators who turned out for what they thought would be a record-breaking trip burst out laughing. It took a month for Doolittle’s plane—and his ego—to recover. In 1933, Eastern Airlines inaugurated one-day service between New York and Miami, allowing passengers to fly “From Frost to Flowers in Just 8 Hours,” as the company’s slogan promised. Eastern was also one of the first airlines to employ female cabin attendants, called “hostesses.” The strangest incident in Florida’s aviation history was the disappearance of fourteen airmen from Flight 19. On December 5, 1945, five Avenger torpedo bombers took off from the Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station on a routine training exercise. Suddenly, flight instructor Lt. Charles Taylor’s compass seemed to malfunction. All of the men and their planes vanished. A Martin Mariner flying boat with thirteen men aboard was launched to find the aviators, but the boat and its crew also disappeared without a trace.

ISBN 1-56164-281-9

lorida—land of perpetual sunshine, open spaces, and endless blue skies perfect for flying. Blimps, hot air balloons, bi-wings, jets, space shuttles—you name it: if you can fly it, you can fly it here, and many aviators have. There’s even a university here, called the “Harvard of the Sky,” that will teach you how to fly the plane of your choice. Florida’s colorful aviation history unfolds in this book. In 1909, after the Wright Brothers turned down a request from Miami’s mayor to set up a school of aeronautics there, Glenn Hammond Curtiss stepped in and established America’s fourth landing field and the first in the South. New Year’s Day in 1914 was a day of firsts in more ways than one: Tony Jannus guided his two-seater Benoist seaplane from St. Petersburg to Tampa on the world’s first scheduled airplane flight. His passenger that day, former St. Petersburg mayor Abe Pheil, had won his seat by bidding $400 in an auction for the honor. Established in 1919, Chalk’s Flying Service adapted well to the changing times of the early twentieth century, carrying bootleggers, their customers, and even customs agents during Prohibition. Aviator Jimmy Doolittle wanted to be the first to fly a plane from coast to coast, but his first attempt on August 6, 1922, was slightly off the mark. As Doolittle raced his modified DeHaviland

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Aviation in Florida Kevin M. McCarthy Illustrations by William L. Trotter

$18.95

Aviation in Florida

Aviation in Florida

Kevin M. McCarthy Illustrations by William L. Trotter

Pineapple Press, Inc. Sarasota, Florida

Copyright © 2003 by Kevin M. McCarthy Illustrations copyright © 2003 by William L. Trotter All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to: Pineapple Press, Inc. P.O. Box 3889 Sarasota, Florida 34230 www.pineapplepress.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McCarthy, Kevin. Aviation in Florida / Kevin M. McCarthy ; illustrations by William L. Trotter.— 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-56164-281-9 (alk. paper) 1. Aeronautics—Florida—History. I. Title. TL522.F6 M38 2003 629.13’009759—dc21 2003006310 First Edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Design by Shé Heaton Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgments I particularly want to thank Douglas Baker II, Warren Brown, Carolyn Fennell, Steve Glassman, Tom Hambright, James Hawkins, Kirk Howard, David Nolan, Anthony Restaino, Ralph Savarese, and Gerry Witoshynsky for their help with this book.

Contents Introduction

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Airlines 1. 2. 3. 4.

Eastern Airlines 3 National Airlines 7 Pan American World Airways 13 Small Commercial Airlines 19

Operations 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Air Force Bases in Florida 27 Air Shows and Airpark Communities 32 Aviation Companies 35 Dirigibles 40 Disasters 46 Embry-Riddle University 51 The Civil Air Patrol and the Air National Guard Hot-air Ballooning 62 Hurricane Hunters 67 NASA 71

People 15. 16. 17. 18.

Jacqueline Cochran 79 Other Female Aviators 84 Jimmy Doolittle 92 Other Male Aviators 97

19. 20.

Central Florida Daytona Beach

Cities 105 113

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21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

Index

Fort Lauderdale 118 Jacksonville 122 Key West 129 Miami 135 Palm Beaches 143 Pensacola 146 St. Augustine 153 St. Petersburg 159 Southwest Florida 165 Tampa 169

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Introduction Florida has long been known for its beautiful beaches and sparkling waters, whether Gulf, sea, rivers, lakes, or springs. But it also has blue skies above it most of the year, skies that have seen many aviation firsts, from a Jules Verne novel set here to a shuttle launch at Cape Kennedy. It was in Florida where a radio was first used on an aircraft, where a record-setting transcontinental flight began, and where the first commercial airline flight took place—all within two decades of the first powered flights by the Wright Brothers. “Wright Brothers Launch First Plane from Pine Island, Florida” the headlines could have read if the Wrights had taken the advice of engineer and glider expert Octave Chanute. Chanute considered Pine Island to be a good place from which the Wrights could launch a glider, a necessary step before they moved to a manned plane. Florida is a big state that stretches from Pensacola in the northwest to Miami in the southeast. Its airport facilities have had a major impact on its development. For most of the twentieth century, Florida’s airport system developed to connect all parts of the state. Today, half of the seventy-five million annual visitors to Florida come by plane. Thousands of aircraft use the airspace over Florida every day, including small private planes, jets bringing in passengers and cargo, and the space shuttle. Florida has offered aviation many advantages: a flat terrain, water on three sides for seaplanes and rocket discards, a mild climate all year long, and a geographical location that appeals to millions of people. Because of those advantages, many aviation firsts took place here. For example, on December 17, 1913, ten years to the day after the Wrights’ first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, officials in St. Petersburg

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signed a contract to establish the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line, the world’s first scheduled, commercial, heavier-than-air flight to transport passengers. Many important aviators have had links to Florida, including Jacqueline Cochran, Jimmy Doolittle, Amelia Earhart, Chappie James, and Tony Jannus. This, then, is also the story of some of the people who made lasting contributions to aviation. While their stories could fill several volumes, this book touches on only a few highlights and points to further reading in the bibliography at the end of each chapter. On a personal level, aviation has been an important part of my own life. I have traveled on most of the airlines that service Florida. I helped pilot a small plane during a storm over Cedar Key; parachuted out of an airplane over Palatka; flew in a hot-air balloon near Archer; and piloted a glider near Clermont. This book is dedicated to the members of the Florida Aviation Historical Society, who are keeping alive the traditions and history of a fascinating part of our state’s heritage. Members of this society, which was established in 1978, have built and flown a replica of the plane that made the world’s first scheduled flight (see Chapter 28), as well as a reproduction of the 1928 Ford Flivver plane (see Chapter 9); helped research and write Florida’s Aviation History: The First 100 Years; and raised more than $80,000 for the aviation wing of the St. Petersburg Museum of History. They also produce a regular newsletter about the state’s aviation history. (For more information, write to P.O. Box 127, Indian Rocks Beach, FL 33785-0127.)

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Airlines

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Eastern Airlines “Aviation is proof that, given the will, we have the capacity to achieve the impossible.” —Captain Edward “Eddie” Rickenbacker

From its early days under Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, through the administration of astronaut Frank Borman, to labor-management strife under Frank Lorenzo, Eastern went from success to bankruptcy, from being an important link in Florida’s aviation history to sliding into oblivion. As so often happened in the early history of aviation in America, Eastern began under a different name in the business of carrying mail. Its origin was Pitcairn Aviation, a company that used a tiny biplane in 1928 to carry the mail from Miami to Jacksonville. Young Harold Pitcairn had soloed in his first airplane in 1916, just two years after Tony Jannus had begun the St. Petersburg–Tampa scheduled service (see Chapter 28). Pitcairn soon joined forces with aeronautical engineer Agnew Larson to found Pitcairn Aviation and build a biplane, which the men successfully raced against other aircraft. They then toured European aviation centers and found that Europeans were far ahead of Americans in developing commercial air service. When the Contract Air Mail Act, or Kelly Act, became law in 1925, federal officials entrusted to private contractors the job of flying the mail. Pitcairn Aviation won some of the bids put up for contract and within three years was flying almost one-third of the nation’s airmail mileage. But in 1928, Pitcairn, reluctant to transport passengers as well as mail, sold the airline to Clement Keys, former editor of The Wall Street Journal and organizer of another airline, National Air Transport. 3

Keys changed the name of the airline to Eastern Air Transport in 1930, moved its headquarters to Brooklyn, and began carrying passengers. In 1933, the airline inaugurated one-day service between New York and Miami, allowing passengers to fly between the two cities without spending the night in Jacksonville. One of Eastern’s effective mottoes then was “From Frost to Flowers in Just 8 Hours.” Keys was also one of the first airline owners to employ female cabin attendants, called “hostesses.” A hostess was an unmarried woman under the age of twenty-eight who was five feet four inches tall or shorter, weighed less than 123 pounds, and was either a registered nurse or a college graduate. The Great Depression took its financial toll on the airline, and Keys was forced to resign. In 1935, Captain Edward “Eddie” Rickenbacker became general manager of what was then called Eastern Air Lines. Rickenbacker turned Eastern into one of the first profitable carriers in the industry and the first airline to operate without a federal subsidy, something other airlines would not be able to do for many more years. The former World War I flying ace ran the company for the next twenty-five years, earning good profits every year and extending service to many parts of the East Coast. In 1935, Rickenbacker relocated Eastern’s operating headquarters to Miami, a move that greatly benefited Dade County as Eastern became the area’s largest private-sector employer. Right after World War II, Rickenbacker and Eastern joined Miami hotels in promoting summer travel to the Sunshine State. Rickenbacker convinced hotel owners to keep their hotels open during the usually slow summer season in return for increased advertising by the airline, which helped Miami and Miami Beach become year-round tourist attractions. New Yorkers looking across the Jersey Palisades on cold, wintry days could see a large Eastern Airlines sign flashing the temperature in Miami Beach each day. Tourists received off-season discounts, Eastern carried more passengers, and Dade County prospered. Today, Miami’s Rickenbacker Causeway to Key Biscayne commemorates the man who 4

Aviation in Florida

greatly helped the economy of the region in the 1940s and ’50s. Executives of Eastern and other airlines thought the postwar era would be a boom time for them, especially if returning soldiers who had experienced the speed and comfort of planes chose air travel once wartime travel restrictions were lifted. The airlines ordered larger planes and hired many more employees, but the boom did not occur for another decade. Many Americans were reluctant to give up the comfort and punctuality of travel by train and ship for the uncertainty of air travel, especially as deadly air crashes were well publicized. Eastern Airlines was one of the few companies to make a profit in the postwar years, primarily because of Rickenbacker’s tight management. Yet when it came time to acquire jet planes, Rickenbacker hesitated. He forecast the crash of the English jet Comet. But his hesitation put Eastern at a disadvantage in its competition with other airlines eager to use the new jets. Rickenbacker was succeeded in 1959 by Malcolm MacIntyre, who introduced the highly successful shuttle service between New York, Washington, and Boston. Other administrators helped Eastern prosper by making it the official airline of Disney World and the first airline to use Spanish-speaking agents in its Miami reservations center as it tapped into the rich Latin American market. Many hijackings to Cuba in the late 1960s hurt Eastern, however. The airline limped along in the late 1960s and early ’70s until former astronaut Frank Borman became president and chief executive officer in 1975, raising hopes that the high-profile pilot would return Eastern to its former prominence. But labor strikes and a huge debt from buying new airplanes brought the company to the edge of bankruptcy. In 1986, when Eastern was America’s third-largest airline, Frank Lorenzo, head of the Texas Air Corporation (TAC), bought the airline, thus ending its fifty-eight-year run as an independent company. Lorenzo, whose TAC also owned Continental Airlines, People’s Express, and New York Air, battled with Eastern’s unions until 1989. After the Airlines

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airline’s machinists called a strike, Eastern filed for bankruptcy. At a time when airline deregulation was lowering prices and increasing the number of passengers to almost half a billion, the interminable squabbling between Lorenzo and the unions hurt Eastern’s competitive edge. The following year, a bankruptcy court judge ruled that Lorenzo was unfit to run the company after determining that, in just four years, Eastern had gone from being the number three airline in the nation to number nine. An interim trustee failed to halt the company’s slide, and on January 18, 1991, Eastern closed for good. Adding to Eastern’s problem were a deep, country-wide recession, high fuel costs, negative publicity, and the fear of many Americans to fly during Desert Storm in Kuwait. The cost of ridding the airline industry of Frank Lorenzo was very high: some forty-two thousand Eastern employees lost their jobs when the airline folded. One can only wonder how a kinder, more people-oriented manager might have been able to save Eastern. Despite its tragic, unnecessary demise, Eastern carried thousands of people to and from Florida and thus deserves a prominent place in the state’s development in the twentieth century.

Further Reading Bernstein, Aaron. Grounded: Frank Lorenzo and the Destruction of Eastern Airlines. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990. Richards, Rose Connett. “Coffee, Tea or Milk—The Early Years.” Update: The Historical Association of Southern Florida, vol. 15, no. 4 (November 1988): 9–12. (This article is about stewardesses.) Rickenbacker, Edward V. Rickenbacker. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1967. Saunders, Martha Dunagin. Eastern’s Armageddon: Labor Conflict and the Destruction of Eastern Airlines. Westport, CT: Greenwood

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Aviation in Florida

Press, 1992. Scammell, Henry. “Life After Eastern.” Air & Space, vol. 8, no. 5 (January 1994): 28–39. Serling, Robert J. From the Captain to the Colonel: An Informal History of Eastern Airlines. New York: The Dial Press, 1980. Smith, Frank Kingston. Legacy of Wings: The Story of Harold F. Pitcairn. New York: Jason Aronson, 1981. Solberg, Carl. Conquest of the Skies: A History of Commercial Aviation in America. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979. Thomas, Don. “The Rise and Fall of Eastern Airlines.” Newsletter of the Florida Aviation Historical Society, vol. 21, no. 4, ed. 152 (July 2000): 3, 10.

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National Airlines Aviation cliché: “It’s easy to make a small fortune in aviation. You start with a large fortune.”

As so often happened in the early days of aviation, securing a mail contract was the real start of an airline. In 1934, when the U.S. Postal Service solicited bids to carry the mail for the St. Petersburg–Daytona Beach route, the winner of the bid was a new company, National Airlines, which bid seventeen cents a mile for the 146-mile route. The company’s name reflected the aspirations of its owner, G. T. “Ted” Baker: to become a significant airline that served the whole country. If Eastern Airlines, which was growing bigger by the year at that

Airlines

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Aviation in Florida by Kevin M. McCarthy

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