Class Clowns?

Ivan (on the right) is posing here with three aviators who came to the Curtiss school together, from Nebraska.  I believe the first fellow (from left to right) is Ralph McMillen, and I'm certain the others are Capt. Ralph Taylor and Lt. Edgar "Happy" Bagnell.  There are a lot of photos of Mr. Bagnell in the coming photos, and you'll see that his nickname suited him well, as I've already mentioned.  I don't think we saw McMillen at the Curtiss school, and it may be because he was already a pilot.

I particularly love this photo because it brings to mind any number of places I've worked where I have fond memories of the people I was blessed to have known and had fun with.  Ivan spent just shy of a year at Mineola with these guys, clowning, flying, drinking, playing and perhaps weeping together.  Ralph Taylor would die in an a crash a few months after this photo was taken.  McMillen died in September of the same year when his plane abruptly dived into the ground from 200 feet.  Ivan and Edgar lived long enough to see grandchildren.

While I hate to even write about the deaths of these carefree looking gentlemen, it is something that was a regular part of early aviation, and can't be avoided without revising the story.  It may have been the reason Ivan left aviation in 1920.  Early aviation was pock-marked by the deaths of many of the best pilots of the time.  At the same time, Ivan's logbook is filled with the names of students who would go on to fly for decades with nary a scratch.

Here is a newspaper article regarding Ivan's change of address, and a mention at the end that gives a clue that he and Captain Taylor may have been friends off the airfield as well.

 

Another old photo of the early aviators at Mineola.  Ivan is standing directly in front of the flag, with Edgar Bagnell to the left in the photo. Happy apparently didn't get the dress code memo.  Captain Taylor is seated on the far left.  Directly in front of Ivan is Major Hysop, of the New York National Guard, as Ivan has marked him in another photo.  Right of Ivan is a fellow marked Carolyn in another photo, and on the far right is a fellow marked Osborne.  As we work through the scrapbook, I'll attempt to discover more about these fliers, and as always, you're welcome to add any input via the comments at the bottom of the blog, if you know the identity of any of these men.

 

We're very close to the end of the first scrapbook, but there are some fascinating photos of an airplane I'm unable to identify which I hope will amaze you as much as it does me.  I'll post those photos next.

-kpw

Ivan P Wheaton at the Curtiss School

There aren't a ton of photos of Ivan at the Curtiss School, but here are a couple of the better ones. Once again, I'm afraid there isn't much to add to these photos, textually. You may (if I did this correctly) see a difference in the display mode for photos.  It should take you to the Smugmug gallery, where you'll be able to view the photos in a full screen slideshow.

And finally, here is a scan of the logbook entry for the first portion of Ivan's instruction at the Curtiss School.  He transcribed this from his original books toward the end of his flying career.  Unfortunately the original is lost.

Next up will be some photos of the Curtiss Twin JN.  

-kpw

Curtiss & Newport News aerial photos

I know, I promised aerial photos, and they're here, but I like to start off with a nice photo to kind of "set the hook", so to speak.  The Jenny guys here will notice this right off, but this appears to be a really early JN, to me.  If I'm correctly reading a great article sent to me by Brian Karli, it combines the undercarriage of the J and the vertical stabilizer of the N.  It doesn't have equal span wings as a JN-2 is described, so could this be a JN-1?  In any case, I love this photo.  I always loved the looks of the Avro 501, and this retains just enough of that look.

I believe I own the camera that this photo was taken with, and I have to say it's amazing that any of these photos came out in focus.  This is not your basic image-stabilizing, auto-focus camera!  You figure way ahead of time what your exposure needs to be, and about how far away you think the plane will be at the moment you decide to trip the shutter.  I don't think you could physically focus while shooting. When your subject is coming at you at fifty mph, or whatever the approach speed is in a Jenny, you have a very short window of opportunity to get it right.

So, Ivan or someone at the school took a few aerial shots of the school and of Newport News and I noticed a few interesting things in them.  First, the school.  I know it's difficult to tell by this photo, but if you look at this photo at the Smugmug.com site, you should be able to see that the building is smaller in this photo than in the next one. (you can view the photos there in a higher resolution)  You can also see in this photo that they are in the middle of construction on the expansion.  There's another fun airplane in that photo.  A model N!  The Jenny came from two distinct lines, the J and the N, and I've never ever seen a photo of the N.  Look to the right of the hangar, and you'll see what looks like a JN, but with inter-plane ailerons.  Fun, huh?

So, in the span of time that Ivan was here (three or four months) they've expanded the hangar by about double, or maybe more.  I noticed a couple of other things while examining these photos.  In the first photo, follow the road that parallels the body of water, and look at the field directly in the center of the photo.  You can make out the runway!  You pilots probably noticed that right off the bat - it dawned on me much later.  They obviously would taxi along the beach to (or from) the hangar.

I also got a kick out of the ferry, heading in to nose into that structure behind the hangar.  The square-rigger at the pier was a real bonus.  A scene right out of another time.

These next photos give us a little more modern perspective.  In Newport News at the time, the big industry was shipbuilding at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company.  Some very impressive ships were constructed here, including some which were later instrumental in the Pacific Theater during WW2.  Another large operation was the coal port, and while I don't have any real bearings on where everything was located, I assume that the coal port came first, then the shipyards.  The first photo was marked #2, and the coal cars can be seen on a series of sidings at the very bottom right of the photo, to the right of the coal pier.

This photo of the shipyards will wrap up the post.  There's a lot going on down there!  The thing that impressed me most about this photo is how everything inside the shipyards is black!  Can you imagine working on those greasy docks?  At first, I thought the photo was underexposed, but seriously, look at everything around the buildings in the yards, even the ships... they are grey or white.  The place is all black!

Before I finish, I just keep finding all this interesting stuff, tonight!  The "FJC", that you see on many of these photographs were the initials of a photographer that Glenn Curtiss hired to photograph all the goings on at the school.  His name was Frank J. Conway, and he took some great photos!  We have him to thank for what looks like about 30-40% of the photos in Ivan's collection at Newport News.  I'm guessing Ivan bought them from Frank.  Frank did a portrait of Ivan in the Model F which is classic.

More people and airplanes in the next few posts.  May I ask you to do me a favor, and +1 this site on Google, or share it on your Facebook page?  'Like' is nice, but a 'Share' is the best way to reach a wider audience for the collection.  Thanks very much!

-kpw

Meet your new flight instructor.

Meet Ivan's instructor at Newport News, Virginia - Mr Walter Lees.  Ralph Cooper has dedicated a site to this man, who happens to have been Ralph's father-in-law, and was also an Early Bird.  I hope he was less intimidating than this photo of him!  I think this photo also contains the world's smallest prop spinner.

This photo seems a fitting way to open up the blog on Ivan's time spent in Newport News, Virginia: The instructor, and the flying field.  If you're able to see them in the photo, there are some very interesting planes outside of the factory.  The one outside the main opening has interplane ailerons similar to a Model F.  I make out a Model F at the end of the ramp at the water's edge, and another closer to the factory.  The tail of on JN has the number 2 with a circle around it.  Anyone have info on these planes? (edit: I discovered that one of them is probably a Model R with a single cockpit, and behind it I can make out the fuselage of a S-1.  An R-2 is to the far right)

By the way, I don't mention this very often, but all of these photos are available in my galleries at Smugmug.com. You can view the photos at full resolution there.  I'll put a link up somewhere more conspicuous before too long...

Ralph Cooper also created the site dedicated to the Early Birds, and I found this snippet on one of Ralph's pages that my grandfather wrote in the publication they called "Chirps".  Unfortunately, the page dedicated to Ivan on the Early Bird site has been blank for some time now, and it contained some great info.  I'm not sure if Ralph is still maintaining the site.

As I had very little experience on landings, I decided to go to the Curtiss School of Newport News, Virginia. Capt. Thomas Scott Baldwin, manager and friend of Glenn Curtiss, made me a proposition. --- be Walter Lee's mechanic and give him $150 and they would make me into a real pilot. So from early April until early June 1, I did hundreds of landings to a buoy and figure eights galore in another F boat with Glenn Curtiss' original control wheel to rudder, and shoulder yoke for ailerons. Also the boat had a foot throttle. They gave me a letter of recommendation as a careful pilot and a mechanic who could take care of his plane as well, signed by Walter Lees and Capt. Baldwin; also a beautiful diploma from the Curtiss School of Aviation.

If you look closely at the photo of the factory, you'll see the buoy that Ivan mentions just offshore.  I also have the letter he mentions and the proof that they made him into a real pilot - the diploma, signed by Walter.

We have a plethora of photos of JNs and various Curtiss models in the coming posts!

-kpw

Celebrities and Sun Dances

Okay, this guy just looks like he should be famous, right?  Unfortunately there are quite a few photos that I just have no clue regarding the identity of the people.  Of course, if you've been following along, Frederick C. G. Eden is on the right, but until some internet magic happens (someone sees the photo and tells me), he'll have to remain anonymous.

Now, in the next photo we have Ivan, and a group containing one gentleman marked, 'Gannett'.  I couldn't get out to research this one as much as I'd like, but I'm betting it's the newspaper mogul, Frank Gannett.  He would be around 40 in 1916, and this guy looks like he could be 40. Why would Ivan write in, 'Gannett', if it wasn't significant in some way?  Any Gannett experts out there?  My apologies to the lady on the right, I couldn't fix her nose.

Finally, these next few photos will wrap up Ivan's flying lessons in Palm Beach.  Beginning in 1916, some area businessmen came up with the idea to hire "real live Indians" to come to Palm Beach and perform "The Sun Dance".  Apparently it was a week long festival with dances, parades and floats.  The first photo shows a few of the dancers gathered, but I posted it since you can see fragments of the words "Seminole" and "Dance" over the woman's shoulder in the upper right.  That ties the event firmly in the history book.  I have my doubts about the last photo.  I looked at some actual photos of "war bonnets" and this one comes up a bit lacking.  Perhaps they just made a simple one for the show.

In my next post, Ivan heads out for the Curtiss factory in Newport News, Virginia.  This is pretty exciting stuff for me, since there are so many famous aviators in the coming photos!

-kpw
      

Sunset flight and a low pass

It's been a little while since I've been able to post, but here is another batch of photos from Ivan's short time in Palm Beach.

It's hard for us to imagine a world without flight.  Try to imagine that you very rarely see an airplane, or imagine that a B17 is going to be flying by at low altitude.  I don't know if you feel the same way I do, but I'm going to grab my camera, and get as many shots as I can.  I just can't get enough of airplanes flying by, low.  I love the feeling in these two photos, especially the cloudy sunset above.  You can practically feel the light, warm, evening breeze.

These next two feature Ivan with the Flying Boat, and they show a bit of detail, which is fun.  I'm looking primarily at the make shift extension of the hull down low on the side of the fuselage.  Interesting.

There are a bunch of photos of people around this plane, and a few more of local events which are historically interesting still to come.  After his stay in Palm Beach, Ivan moved on to another instructor, which we'll see in future posts.

-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

Stalling, so to speak...

There are two meanings to the word "stalling" as regards this post.  Since it's going to be aviation related pretty much from here on out, stalling, in that respect, would refer to a loss of lift, at which point the aircraft stops flying. Hopefully briefly.  In terms of this post, I'm stalling for time until I can assemble a bit more research on the photos I have ready to post.  Also, hopefully briefly.

Ivan was taking lessons with another student by the name of Malcolm Humphreys.  He and Eden and Ivan can be seen in a few of the photos, and he's mentioned in an article in the collection.  The article also mentions a gentleman by the name of Dodge, and Ivan writes home that it is one of the Dodge brothers of automobile fame, but it is obvious he's mistaken, unless we have a huge coincidence on our hands.  This text was found in Aerial Age Weekly:

W. EARL DODGE TO ESTABLISH FLYING SCHOOL FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE
Being deeply interested in aviation work and to assist this country in securing aviators for national defense, Mr. W. Earl Dodge of New York, who has had an aviation camp at Newport since early summer and flew from Newport to New York and back recently, will organize an aviation camp at Jacksonville, Fla., next December. He will take 16 college men for a training course of six weeks in water and land flying. These young men are coming from various cities and will be secured by the Aero Club of America for this important purpose. There will be used several land aeroplanes and two Curtiss flying boats.
Part of the winter Mr. Dodge will be at Palm Beach and Miami, where he will make flights. In midwinter he will go to Old Point, where he will use the aviation camp at Norfolk, while making his headquarters at the Chamberlain Hotel.
In May, Mr. Dodge will have one of the three flying machines stationed at Mineola, for instruction of the same young men in land flying. At the conclusion of this they will be ready to enter the army aviation schools if they so elect and thereby make a valuable addition to our aerial defenses.
Hon. Frederick C. Eden, one of the best aviators in this country, who has charge of the flying for Mr. Dodge, will be in charge of the instruction work both at Jacksonville and at Mineola.

There are a couple of photos of this gentleman (perhaps Dodge, or perhaps the friend who assisted with the haul-out in the last post?) with Eden in the scrapbooks.  Another one will also appear in the next post.

And here is a photo of the three happy aviators at the ramp where they launch the plane.  Notice the water lapping the boards, right behind Eden.  By the way, this is Ivan P. Wheaton, Malcolm Humphries, and Frederick Eden, left to right.  Notice Ivan, in many of these photos, is wearing his Chalmers racing jersey under his coveralls.

Here's a great shot of Ivan in front of the plane.  Notice the amazingly filthy beach.  I think of the smell of the port of Long Beach, California when I see this.  To be fair, it's possible Long Beach doesn't smell that bad any more, and this was Palm Beach, Florida, after all.

Here comes Eden and one of the students, possibly Ivan, for a landing.  I'm wondering if that's the bridge that Ivan mentions in the logbook posts.  If so, it certainly means that they were afraid of not becoming airborne before reaching it, and not flying over it.

Next up will be some really great photos around Palm Beach, including a couple of aerial photos of the big hotels.  By the way, all of the photos are now being added to my account at Smugmug.  You can see them in full screen at http://ivanpwheaton.smugmug.com/.  All of them are available for reprinting through a professional photolab.  I'll vouch for them by saying that I've ordered copies up to 10 inches with really good results.  The photos are all from 3x5 contact prints, and keep pretty good detail.  If you go there, you'll see that I've posted the photos for the next blog as well, and you can actually get an RSS feed from the account to let you know as soon as I've posted new photographs.  Any photo purchased will offset the cost of the account, which is about $150 per year.  Thanks!

-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

1915: Ivan Cleans Up

Well, this is it: the last racing-themed post of Ivan's illustrious career behind the wheel... of a car, that is.  Some of the airplanes had steering wheels too, so I thought I'd be clear about that.  These newspaper articles make me happy, too.  When I started posting about Ivan's racing career, he was placing pretty consistently in third, and sometimes second.  Whenever he could tear a wheel off another car, he'd place first.  But, now he's really, truly winning, and in some cases he's winning pretty substantially.  Some of the references in the clips mention him lapping his opponents! 

This next clip contains a paragraph at the end that I really found funny.  You can almost hear the disgust exhibited by the author of the article.  Somebody beat this guy Wheaton, will ya?!  As with most of these articles, I've omitted the motorcycle races.

Here's another photo of the car we saw in the last post, and again, the team is all about the sponsor.  Havoline is a familiar name even today, and it was interesting to learn through a quick Wikipedia check, that this brand is traced back to the mid 1900s.  The Indian Refining Company purchased the Havemeyer Oil company in 1915, and was later purchased by the Texas Oil Company (better known as Texaco) in 1931.  The brand survived under Texaco until 2001 when Texaco merged with Chevron, which still uses the brand today on motor oils, other lubricants and antifreeze.

Somewhere in the post on death and destruction, I had researched the accident involving a Vite which crashed at the state fair.  From that research, I found a photo of a Vite car, which I can no longer seem to find.  The radiator looked very similar to the crash photo, and those both look very much like this car's radiator.  Until I get some more information to confirm or deny this, I'm going to guess that this is the Vite that he did so well in.  Notice the Chalmers logos in the garage doors.

I found one snippet regarding Mr. Gotier (no, Google, I did not mean Goiter) in the book American machinist, vol. 55, 1921.  "Frederick A. Gotier, formerly with the Buick and Cole organizations, has been selected to represent the New Bradford Motor corporation, distributor of Studebaker cars in Albany, N.Y."  I found nothing more about the race, or Mr. Gotier.

This is the most glowing praise of Ivan's racing career I've read to date. 

And here is the last newspaper clipping I have in the collection regarding Ivan's racing career.  I thought that there was much more, but the articles turned out to be mostly regarding his decision to learn flying.  The article covers the same race as above, but the last paragraph gives more coverage to the match race between Ivan and Mr. Gotier.  I'm going to do more searching of the local newspapers to see if I can find any more information about this race.  It's too much build up not to know what the outcome was.

So, we're essentially done with Ivan's auto racing.  He took one of his cars with him on his flying adventures, so we'll see that in later posts.  I have mixed emotions, actually.  I had slogged through some of the racing section, anxious to get on to the flying portion.  However, now that I've seen how big racing was to Ivan during these two years, I wish I had more articles to look through.  I have to say, it's very satisfying to know that he reached a zenith in his racing endeavors.

Next up will be articles and photos of Ivan's first flight, and his instruction begins in Palm Beach, Florida, with a gentleman named "The Honorable Frederick C. G. Eden". 

-kpw