Aviator portraits, Part II

Continuing with portraits from the collection, I'll begin with a great photo of Victor Carlstrom.  Victor set a number of world's records before and after coming to the Curtiss School, many of them in Curtiss aircraft.  He perished in a horrible accident when a structural failure caused his plane to disintegrate at about 2,000 feet.  Ivan received a letter and photos of the crash which appear later in the collection.  I'll post what I have when we reach that point.

Captain Ralph Taylor was a student along with a couple of others (Edgar "Happy" Bagnell, and Capt. McMillen) from The Aviation Corps of the Nebraska National Guard.  He also went on to the Signal Corps, and died after only three months of instructing at Mineola, New York.

Captain Thomas Scott Baldwin, of whom I've already written. Apparently, you had to sneak up on him to get a picture.

I was unable to find anything conclusive about J. R. Booth, II of Canada.  However a search of his name did  reveal that a wealthy lumberman of Canada by the name of John Rudoluphus Booth had a number of sons, and a grandson named J. R. Booth, Jr. The dates seem reasonable to make this a possible connection.

I'll have a few more portraits coming the the next post.  Thanks for all the +1s and Shares!

-kpw

Curtiss Speed Scout

This post is focused on the obscure little Curtiss Speed Scout, or Baby Scout, model S-1.  There is very little information floating around the Net on this model, so I don't have a lot of narrative, but I do have a few photographic gems.  This first photo is fairly well-distributed on the Net.  It could be that Ivan shared the photo, or that some other collection kept a print of Frank Conway's photo.  I've theorized before that Mr. Conway not only got paid by Glenn Curtiss for his photographic work, but also made prints on the side for students and others at the school, and I don't think I'm far off.

Speaking of Frank Conway prints, you'll see this next photo at the link I placed above as well.  I think this print is several orders of magnitude better, if I may say so, however.  Victor Carlstrom is at the controls.

I don't think I've ever seen another photo of this little bird in flight, so I was particularly happy to find this photo in the collection!

Finally, there is an original photo of some damage to the plane.  I wish I had some information about the nature of the incident, but anything I add would be conjecture beyond noticing that the flying wires are slack,  the prop is broken, and the engine seems to have been shoved to the left.

I have a lot more photos from the Curtiss School, and I'll be organizing them around aircraft type, people and events, so stay tuned!  As usual, I'll continue to ask for +1's and Shares in an effort to widen the reach of the collection, with my thanks in advance!

-kpw