Lester Barlow and his bomb

Well, I took a little break from blogging, there.  But there is a lot more material to cover, and I'm back to covering it.

This post highlights Ivan's participation in an event he was very proud of, and one of the events I remember him recalling to me. He worked with Lester Barlow to perfect techniques of aerial bombing.  In the early 1960s Ivan was awarded a commendation for the work which covers an entire page in the scrapbook. Lester wrote Ivan later to let him know of his success in selling the plans to the government on letterhead from the Marlin Rockwell corporation.

Here are Ivan and Lester Barlow holding the test bomb.

It's very difficult to tell exactly the method of mounting, but it looks well engineered.  The history I found on Lester indicates that he was a talented mechanic, and had a background in automobiles.  Perhaps this common ground explains the nature of their pose in the photo above.  

I have yet to find any other photos of these early experiments, but I expect there are more to be found.  I doubt there are many of them showing the airplane taking off with the bomb attached, though!

Finally, the end product.  Obviously no munitions packed in the bomb.  Lester later wrote to Ivan... "No pin-wheels, no junk, just a great big streamline (sic) can in which the load is about 2/3 it's (sic) total weight... The big bomb you are familiar with, we are now making about 13,000 of."

Barlow's bomb never did see use in France.  There is an excellent article on Lester Barlow and his bombs here. The article does say that the bomb being tested here was well regarded, but points out that the contract for the bombs was cancelled by the American Expeditionary Forces.  Interestingly, Ivan served in France under that very command.

I've made a change to the blog.  I've added a link to my photographs on Etsy.com on the right.  Over the last three years, a number of readers have contacted me for photo prints.  There is a book on early racing that will feature many of Ivan's photographs which will be published this year.  I thought that it would make it much easier for folks to get copies of photos this way and hopefully help me defray some of the costs of producing the blog.  I hope you'll have a look and perhaps order a print or two.

kpw

Eden School of Aviation

I made a little find, this afternoon.  While looking ahead a bit, I found the brochure which my grandfather must have ordered from Eden to get this whole aviation ball rolling.  There are some cool little factoids in these pages, especially if you're searching for information about the Curtiss (and I really need to get this correct) Model F flying boat, or Hydro Aeroplane.  There's not much to tell here, except that the cost of the program agrees with the newspaper clippings that Ivan shelled out his $400 as per the brochure.  It's interesting reading, so I'll leave you to it.  Enjoy!

-kpw

Palm Beach attractions

In retrospect, it seems a little funny to have wanted to gather all the facts about these next few photos, but there are some pretty fun stories surrounding a couple of Palm Beach landmarks that I wanted to get right. 

The first landmark is shown above and in the next couple of photos, and was known as the Royal Poinciana Hotel.  At one point in the early 1900s, this was the world’s largest resort hotel.  Built in 1893, a year before Ivan was born, this was an impressive structure, as you can see.  Henry Morrison Flagler, who built the hotel, was no stranger to building resort hotels in Florida.  Having earned his millions with Standard Oil, and an earlier business in salt, Flagler purchased and expanded an existing railroad network to reach Palm Beach, Florida and had built many resort hotels.  His railroad cars travelling the Northeast had beautiful pictures of Florida as advertising, and it paid off, big. 

By the time these photos were taken, the Royal Poinciana employed nearly 1400 people, and boasted over three miles of hallways.  Bell boys delivered mail and packages via bicycles in the hallways to distant rooms.  It had its own bakery, ice cream shop, post office, and (I love this) it’s own power plant!    Lake Worth is in the foreground, and the Atlantic Ocean is in the top background, for your bearings.  Whitehall, (now known as the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum) the building to the south along Lake Worth, was built as a winter home, and is where Flagler died after falling down a flight of stairs, in 1913.  Flagler built a little church and guaranteed its financial needs during his lifetime.  You can see the tower of the church to the south of the hotel, behind Whitehall, in the aerial photo. In the background behind the Royal Poinciana Hotel, you can make out the Breakers Hotel.

If you look carefully, you can see that there was more than one Curtiss flying boat operating at Palm Beach.  One is airborne, and the other is docked in front of the hotel.  If you followed the link about Palm Beach aviation in a previous post, you already know this, of course.

Next is a photo that I had a lot of fun with.  It’s actually two photos which were taken sequentially, and had just enough overlap to turn into a stitched panorama.  This is on the ocean side of Palm Beach, and in the background you can see the Breakers Hotel.  I don't see much in the way of ladies' swimwear in this photo.  Can you imagine hanging out at the beach dressed like this?  Why bother?

The Breakers also has a colorful history and a list of occupants included the richest and most influential patrons of the time.  In the next photo, to the south of the hotel is the Breakers “Bathing Casino”.  The square portion at the center is actually a huge pool.  Further south are what my source site calls a “cottage community” owned by the hotel, where folks like “the playwright Eugene O’Neill, the Vanderbilts, the Munns, and the Stotesburys” stayed.  Cottages, huh?  Notice that the line of beach chairs seen from the air can be seen in the previous photo also.  I thought it was curious that they weren't bathing right in front of the hotel.

A couple more photos of some places of interest, at least interesting enough for Ivan to have photographed.  The first is the Bijou Theatre, and you can see that The Battle Cry of Peace is playing.  I won’t go into detail about the movie, but it warrants a little research if you’re interested.  Basically it was a wake-up call to the U.S. feeling of invincibility.  An interesting commentary since Ivan will be flying in France within 2 years.  I have no clue why there are a bunch of school kids out in front.

Finally, this photo of Alligator Joe’s.  Although “Joe” had died of pneumonia in 1915 (not in Palm Beach, but at the Pan American Exposition in San Francisco), apparently the alligators were still an attraction.  When he was alive, Joe wrestled with alligators to the delight of mostly lady patrons, dragging them out to the beach and subduing them in the surf, then dragging them back to gasping cheers.  Amazing, but true. 

As you may have picked up by now, I like connecting with my grandfather through these photos.  To be honest, he and I weren't close.  By the time I was old enough to have gotten to know him, he was pretty crotchety; and twelve-year-old kids and crotchety old guys don't usually form the closest of bonds.  He did seem to enjoy telling me about flying, and he did tell me some funny stories, but mostly I thought he was a bit full of himself.  I know better, now.  He earned being full of himself, or at least, he was full of himself and he had a right to feel that way.  Here he is, a young man in Palm Beach, Florida rubbing shoulders with some very, very wealthy folks, paying huge dollars to learn what very few people had learned to do, up to that point in history.  The folks who had flown an airplane world-wide could probably number in the low thousands in 1916, and he was one of them.

I don't know about you, but I kind of "thrill" when I hear about people who did something cool early on, like the Wright brothers, or Glen Curtiss.  To be around that energy that was early flight must have been... indescribable.  I have soloed in an aircraft, and I know firsthand the amazing feeling of freedom.  It doesn't matter how many have come before you, it's just exhilarating - even when you grew up around all sorts of aircraft.  I guess that's why I felt it was worth examining what was going on at Palm Beach in the mid-1900s.  I wanted to better understand the... zeitgeist, if that makes sense.

Most of the historical material from this post was gathered at this fabulous website chronicling the history of Palm Beach.  Highly recommended!  

We have some more photos of the Curtiss flying boat, some fancy-pants socialites, and more of Ivan's logbook entries coming up in the next post.

-kpw

Waiting for Ivan's second flight.

Not knowing quite how to start presenting this batch of photos, I'm going to post the first page of Ivan's logbook.  I said in the last post that I wouldn't be photocopying it, so I've set up an Excel spreadsheet to display it.  I'll maintain them as individual xls files, and perhaps post the whole lot of them when I've finished.  Any way, here's the first page...

There are a few fun things that I got out of this first page.  Why, if you can climb to 3000', would you be afraid of a bridge?  The OX was a stronger engine than earlier F-boats with at about 70 hp, and yet there were quite a few entries that stated they couldn't get over the bridge.  The photos I've seen from that area do not show any monumental bridges.  The entire area was built around the availability of the railroad line that lead to the island, but photos of that bridge show it to be quite short. Notice that they eventually give up, and move the whole operation north of the stinking bridge.  Perhaps the bridge interfered with taking off.  Also, I noticed that they started out in West Palm Beach, and wind up in Palm Beach, so they started on the mainland, and wound up on the island.

This probably had something to do with the bridge, and was a peculiarity of the F-boat.  In calm water, the F-boat didn't like to "get off" as Ivan put it.  It was actually better to have a mild chop in the water, which helped in getting the hull "unstuck" from the water.  My guess is that the prevailing wind produced less chop on the leeward side of  lake Worth. In drawings I've seen of the F-boat, I didn't see the extended hull that we'll see in these photos, so I wonder if they needed a bit more hull area to help out on takeoffs.  Perhaps their little OX motor was a bit saggy.  It seems that no two of these planes were alike, so that may just typical of some planes and not others.

The newspaper clippings, which are accompanied by quite a few photos, surround an incident in which Eden and his mother ran into some engine trouble and had to land.  The plane was damaged and had to be disassembled for transport and repair.  This may have happened very soon after Ivan's first flight, since you'll notice a break between the first flight and the second flight of about two and a half weeks.

Eden used this event pretty masterfully, in my opinion.  He successfully showed that the airplane was safe, even in the event of engine trouble.  Another little note in the papers a few days later indicate that Eden found that the "gas pump failed temporarily".  I wonder if this is the same pump that Ivan referred to when he claimed they needed to "pump air".  In some drawings and photos, I've seen a cylindrical fuel tank above and left of the engine, but I can't make one out in any of my photos, so far. It appears that there is a fuel line running from behind the engine, but I'm not sure about that, either.  Perhaps some F-boat historian will fill us in before long.

Some photos of the event...

The next photos will feature more of Ivan, another student, F. C. G. Eden, and some interesting photos of early Palm Beach, Florida!  In the meantime, check out this interesting article on early Palm Beach aviation.

-kpw

First Flight, January 1916

If you’re just joining us, we’ve recently finished up the auto racing career of my grandfather, Ivan. There are twenty posts primarily covering the 1913 - 1915 Indy 500 race photos in his collection of scrapbooks, with a few dozen photos and newspaper articles detailing some of his own career in racing.

Now, we’re transitioning into his flying career. I’ve been away from posting for a little while, and I’ve been looking for a document that my grandfather wrote around 1960, but have been unsuccessful in locating it. Ralph Cooper had a portion of the letter on a page for Ivan at his Early Birds website, but it’s a blank page there, now. I’ve tried to contact Ralph via a couple of emails, to no avail. I’m bummed, because the text mentioned how he transitioned from racing to flying, as I recall it, and it would be an excellent transition for this post. I’ll post what family folklore has been, and continue looking for this letter.

My sisters and I recall the story about Ivan’s father telling him that racing at Indianapolis was too risky, and that was Ivan’s goal with his racing career. At first, I was dubious after his early lack-luster performances at Fonda, in 1914. Maybe you’ve heard the saying “the older I get, the faster I was”? Now, after his reading about his 1915 season, I think this could have been true. If that letter turns up, it may answer the question.

In any event, Ivan was awarded $400 to go take flying lessons. This part sticks pretty clearly in my mind, and the fact that his father put up the money for it. This first newspaper article states that he travelled on the steam ship Apache. A little bit of internet searching found an article advertising the seven day voyage from New York to Jacksonville, Florida, for $43.30.

 A train probably ran the rest of the way, and his journals mention many, many train trips around the country. The last paragraph concludes with a mention of his military involvement as “musician of company H”. Ivan, in letters home from France describe the bugler as “the music”, and he used to play for us whenever we stumbled on his old bugle in the toy closet. Imagine the sound of a seventy-three-year-old man trying to play the bugle, and a small boy wondering if it was really true after hearing it.

I don’t usually include all the newspaper articles Ivan pasted in his scrapbooks, since there’s so much overlap in them, but this one adds some fascinating, and incredible news. Notice in the headline below, the words, “at Rate of Dollar a Minute.” Adjusting for 2010 dollars, that’s the equivalent of nearly $1200 per hour. My friend Simeon is a CFII, and his estimate for my area in Oregon is about $165 per hour. That covers the instruction and the plane, wet (including the fuel). If it took you the full forty hours of instruction to get a private pilot's certificate today, that would average to about $6500. That $400 in 1916 would translate to about $8,000 in 2010. Still a bit pricey, and we’ll learn soon how many hours of instruction Ivan received before obtaining a certificate.

His first logbook entry is on January 18, 1916. The heading across these pages reads “Palm Beach, Florida. - City Park, West Palm Beach, Florida. Under “Type of Machine”, he has written  “Curtiss Flying Boat”. Under “No. of Machine” it reads (this text takes up 2/3 of the page spanning the rows) “ Curtiss F. Boat formerly owned by David McCollough. Curtiss Control”. At the bottom it reads “OX motor & one O motor built into an OX.” I’ll have a great picture showing the Curtiss controls and a description in an upcoming post. He lists “20 minutes” and “1” under “Duration of Flight” and “Landings”. In the column “Height” he has written “neglected to keep record of altitude” over the first dozen or so flights. It’s interesting that Eden let him fly on quite a few trips without giving formal lessons. I’ll put all of these logbook entries in a table so that all the entries are shown. I will probably include a few scans of the logbook as well, but I don’t want to handle them too much, as they’re stitched together.

I’ll touch on what little I could find about Frederick C. G. Eden. His middle initials made me chuckle, as it may some of the pilots or aviation types following this. C.G. is pilot shorthand for Center of Gravity which is a pretty critical point for aircraft weight and balance, but Fred’s middle initials actually stood for Colvin George. He apparently was the 6th Baron Auckland which he succeeded to in 1917, and you’ll see mention of his mother, Lady Auckland in photos and newspaper stories coming up. He gained the rank of Flying Officer in the RAF volunteer reserve, and held the office of Assistant to the Air Attaché to Paris in 1940, according to one genealogy. He was killed in a German air raid on London in 1941 at the age of 46.

Here's a photo of Mr. Eden, a bit later in life I found online at http://www.npgprints.com while researching.

Many more Curtiss Flying Boat photos as well as Eden, another student, and places and people around Palm Beach, Florida in the next post.

-kpw