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

Ivan's first race!

I have some questions regarding how I should proceed with the project when it comes to the subject of newspaper clippings.  There are quite a few of them, and not everything in them is completely pertinent to Ivan's career.  They are very interesting to me for two reasons.  1) Since the whole story paints a picture of the day and age, and 2) I love to read.  But, not everyone loves to read, and sometimes the newspaper clipping is pretty much the whole focus of a blog post. My comments on the story would hinge on you having read the story.  Problem is, some of them are long stories!

I suppose that I'll try doing this in the best way I can, and let you get me some feedback either plus or minus.  The comments are moderated and anyone may post.  I'm pretty close by the computer all day.  And, yes, thank-you, I do have a life.  Here we go!

Here's another photo of Ivan in his 30-whopping-horsepower Chalmers.  Ivan has written in one of the clippings, correcting the paper which assumed it was a 40 hp engine.  As we saw in the last post, Ivan and Van B. may have sold a number of Chalmers, so it's easy to understand his decision to use this automobile.  But why, if there were larger motors available, would he use a four cylinder?

I did a little research into this first article to see if I could find any supporting historical references, and found that the speedway actually still exists in this village!  I'm not certain whether this is the exact location that it always has been, but the Fonda Speedway is still operating at the Fonda Fairgrounds or perhaps vice versa.  The horse racing track that was used for many decades in this little town gave way to automobile racing as the automobile gained in popularity.  Fonda was, and is still, an agricultural area, and these races brought contestants from nearby villages, drawing 1,500 folks!  Quite a crowd!

I'm uncertain of the date of these articles, but next article in the scrapbooks is dated September 14, 1914, and the one following is in October.  I think it's okay to assume this was sometime in 1914.  I'm falling back on two facts from the article(s); 1) the weather was perfect, and 2) he's in a Chalmers.

Ivan did not win, but came in third out of three in the first race of five miles, and third out of four in the second.  If my math is correct, they were averaging around 40 mph in these races!

click 'Show Original' to view full size image

This photo is pasted on the same spread as these two newspaper clippings, but I don't think it's Ivan.  The radiator is squared across the top, and photo of his Chalmers doesn't match it.  There isn't a load of dust in the air, so perhaps this is Stewart.  I think it's reasonable to conclude that it is at the Fonda fairgrounds.

More racing at Fonda in the next few posts!  Will Wheaton recover from his early loss?

-kpw
 

Introduction

My grandfather, Ivan P. Wheaton, was a WWI aviator, race car driver, photographer, and contributed to many books covering the early years of Marine Corps and civilian aviation. Ivan was born in 1896 in Schenectady, New York - the son of a portrait photographer, Van B. Wheaton.


Van and Ivan shared a love for automobiles, and Ivan began racing at a pretty early age, perhaps around sixteen.  He did well in local races and began to think about racing at Indianapolis. Family history has it that Van didn't like the sound of that, due to the danger in the early years of the race.  The story goes that Van offered Ivan flying lessons, rather than going on to race at Indy.  I wonder if that sounded anywhere near as ironic then as it does now.


In any case, Ivan started flying lessons in Florida.  Being the son of a photographer, Ivan captured his career in flying, and began a series of scrapbooks which document - in photos, newspaper clippings, letters, journals, medals and memorabilia - his life as a race car driver and flyer, between about 1913 to 1920.


For the longest time, I've wondered what I should do with this collection, which is, frankly unbelievable, and unique.  My wife has wanted me to do a coffee table book, but I'm fairly sure that about a hundred aviation nuts would be interested in it as a book.  I do feel like I should keep a digital record of them for my extended family, since Ivan's history is pretty special.  I've asked friends and acquaintances involved in flying for opinions, and I think I've settled, at least in part, on blogging the life of my grandfather through his amazing scrapbooks.


I've always resisted the urge to blog, since I have so little that's very interesting to share about me.  However, now that I think about being able to blog on a unique collection, and the potential to get it into the hands of anyone who's interested, it's sounding like a fun project.

So, I'll work my way through as many scrapbook items as seem interesting to me, and try my best to do it chronologically.  I suppose I should mention that there are many hundreds of photos in five scrapbooks, from Ivan's racing career, (including over 300 from three Indy 500 races he attended) through his flight instruction in Curtiss flying boats and JN-4s, to his service in WWI with the First Expeditionary Force in Calais, France flying DH-4's.  There are dozens of letters home from France, some of which paint a stark picture of their time, and I'm sure contain some historical information that's never been published.  I'll also try and include certifications, commendations and logbook entries.

 

I've learned a lot about my grandfather through this collection, but I've never taken the time to go through it in this kind of depth before.  I'm looking forward to sharing this portion of my grandfather's life with you, and I hope you'll find it interesting.

- kpw