Viewing page 59 of 105

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

wings. A strained center section resulted. The part tore loose from its moorings in the air. Diving abruptly to the ground Beachey crashed into a fence before the forward motion of his machine could be checked."

Beachey is the brother of Lincoln Beachey the noted Curtiss aviator. He began his aeronautical career in 1907, as a rigger for his brother, who was at that time a designer, builder and pilot of small dirigible balloons.

Associated with Howard Gill, in Indianapolis, in the winter of 1909, the injured airman built and flew his first aeroplane, a Curtiss-type machine. The machine which he was flying today was a Hamilton biplane.

BROOKINS STAR FLIES UP HIGH AT AIR MEETING

INDIANAPOLIS, June 17 1911 (E.B.) — The Wright exhibition team, composed of the four aviators trained by Orville Wright, at Montgomery, Alabama, last winter, concluded a six-day engagement, unmarred by serious mishap, here today.

The fliers were Arch Hoxsey, Walter Brookins, La Chappelle, and Ralph Johnstone.

Orville Wright, who had accompanied his pupils to Indianapolis, opened the meet, held at the local speedway, with a flight in which he circled the track several times, giving a pretty exhibition of dipping and banking. Brookins was the next member of the team to get into the air. Making four circles of the field at a rate of speed timed at 55 1/3 miles and hour, Brookins landed, then took off on a second flight, lasing a half hour, in which he set a new American altitude mark of 4,384 1/2 feet.

Brookins continued to star throughout the engagement. On June 14 he flew for nearly one hour in a stiff wind. On June 16 he made a new world's record for a quick turn in the air, getting his machine around the circle in 6 1/5 seconds.

On June 17 Brookins bested his previous altitude record by ascending to 4,5-3 feet.

On this day, Hoxsey, in flight became confused in his direction and landed on a farm 2 1/2 miles from the speedway. 
Besides the Wright aviators five novice aeroplane pilots undertook to make flights during the meet. They were Capt. G. L. Bumbaugh, J. W. Curzon, Lincoln Beachey, (Continued on Page 3)

from a higher elevation when something went wrong with his machine causing it to nose over into a steeper angle, and enter a plummet-like plunge towards the earth.

With the echo of the ensuing crash still hanging in the air, Hoxsey's faithful mechanic seized a broken piece of strut and began a tearful patrol of the wreckage in which his master's body was entangled.

"They won't treat Arch like the crowd did Johnstone at Denver," he cried. "Just let anybody try to come near."

The mechanic referred to the morbid rush for souvenirs by spectators at Denver, Now. 17 last, following a crash in which Ralph Johnstone was killed. One member of the throng, during the frantic struggle for mementos which ensued, is said to have borne away in triumph a bloody sliver of wood which had impaled Johnstone's body, and another to have stripped the gloves from the aviator's hands. 

Walter Brookins, a team-mate of Hoxsey, and of Johnstone, witnessed the accident today from a press box. Weeping he sought seclusion from the crowd.

Hoxsey's 62-year-old, widowed mother, resides in Pasadena.

Moisant Falls

NEW ORLEANS. December, 1931, 1910 (E.B.)—John B. Moisant, the American airman, who in the course of six months had achieved international fame, plunged to his death in a pasture ten miles from this city this morning.

Moisant was engaged in making a flight for the Michelin award on the last day allowed for competition. His crash was witnessed by the officials of the Federation Aeronautique International, who had come the the field to observe the flight.

The aviator, in a Bleriot-type monoplane, had flown to the site selected for the Michelin trial from New Orleans, where he had been engaged in giving a series of exhibitions. Arriving at the field at 9 a.m. he had landed, then, after a brief stop for refueling and inspection, had again ascended.

Moisant made several circuits of the pasture at an altitude of about about 200 feet when apparently something wrong with the machine caused him to start a descent. As he turned in the face of a stiff wind, at about 75 feet above the ground, the monoplane began a headlong plunge to earth which the aviator could not check.

As the monoplane struck the earth Mosiant was hurled a dis- (Continued on Page 3)

Wright flying school received $10,785, and W. G. Beatty and A. L. Welsh, Wright fliers, received $6,625 and $5,621 respectively.

Rodger's spend the most time in the air of any aviator who participated in the meet. Flying a total of 29 out of a possible 33 hours, his earnings in the daily duration events totaled at the rate of $5 per minute, $8,700.

Following his successful Chicago appearance Rodgers plans to have a special type biplane built by the Wright brothers, and will attempt to win the $50,00 prize offered by William Randolph Hearst for the first coast to coast flight.

Rodgers is a great grandson of Commodore Calbraith Perry, who in 1854 opened the ports of Japan to the world, and a grand nephew of Oliver Hazard Perry.

JOHNSTONE UPS WORLD'S RECORD FOR ALTITUDE.

BELMONT PARK, N. Y., Oct. 31, 1910 (E.B.)— On this, the concluding day of a ten-day International Aviation Meeting, held here Ralph Johnstone, the Wright aviator, rose to 9,714 feet to set a new world's altitude mark for aeroplanes.

In today's flight Johnstone climbed to 8,000 feet in 35 minutes, but a full hour was required to gain an additional hour of altitude. During that hour his goggles became covered with frost, and he had some trouble securing a clear vision; his motor stopped and he had to resort to a short earthward glide to start it again. A twine string tied to a strut served as a wind indicator. A recording barograph was the only instrument carried.

"It was like an icy plunge after a warm bath," the airman described his venture into the upper atmosphere, after he had descended.

Having reached the world record height Johnstone swooped down the earth in a long dive lasting only five or six minutes. He was numbered by the extreme cold of the upper levels, and had to be lifted from his machine.

Johnstone was instructed in flying at the Write aviation school at Montgomery, Alabama, earlier this year. Before taking up flying he was a world renowned trick cyclist, two of his stunts being a loop-the-loop, and a thrilling down-the-stairs ride. One of his cycling engagements was an appearance at the New York Hippodrome. 

During the progress of the meet (Continued on Page 3)

[[image]]
Beachey's New "Headless" Curtiss Biplane

DIVES OVER CREST OF FALLS INTO RISING CLOUDS OF MIST FLIES UNDER STEEL BRIDGE

NIAGARA FALLS, N. Y., June 27, 1911 (E.B.)—While 150,000 persons watched in spellbound amazement from the shore Lincoln Beachy, the intrepid Curtiss aviator, today rose in his fragile biplane from the local baseball park, circled shortly over the rushing waters below, then dived suddenly over the crest of the falls and disappeared in the spray below.

The gorge into which the daring airman descended is only one hundred feet wide. Piloting his swift-moving craft with almost superhuman skill, never rising to a height of more than thirty feet above the cataract, enshrouded in the mist, Beachey steered a course through the arches of a steel bridge, an almost unbelievable feat, then landed his tiny plane safely on the Canadian side.

The gorge through which Beachey steered a course through the arches of a steel bridge, an almost unbelievable feat, then landed his tiny plane safely on the Canadian side.

The gorge thought which Beachey mande his miraculous flight is one hundred and sixty-eight feet deep and four hundred yards long. The aviator is 24 years old. He began his aerial career as the pilot of a Heaton dirigible baloon, at Idora Park, Oakland, in a flight made in February, 1905, when he was 17 years of age.

Beachey's success with the Heaton dirigible attracted the attention of Captain Thomas Scott Baldwin, the noted California aeronaut, who engaged him to fill an engagement at the Lewis and Clark exposition, at Portland, Ore., that fall.

Piloting a Baldwin dirigible the youth is said to have made 21 voyages in the craft, returning successfully to his starting point at the end of each trip. In 1906 he became associated with Chas. C. Stroble and Roy Knabenshue in the construction of a dirigible, which he designed. A brother, Hillery Beachey, joined the enterprise as a rigger.

This craft having flown successfully, young Beachey devoted the next several years to the design, construction and flying of the elongated type of lighter-than-air craft. During this period he was aided in the construction of his airships by Hillery, now himself an aviator.

Some of the noted journeys made by Beachey in dirigibles, prior to joining the ranks of operators of heavier-than-air craft, include a flight of four miles in which he circled the Washington Monument and landed on the White House lawn with a message for President Roosevelt; one of the first aerial voyages ever made over New York City; and scores of exhibition flights at celebrations in St. Louis, Philadelphia, Jamestown, Cincinnatti, Los Angeles and elsewhere.

Though today's flight has definitely placed him in the first ranks, to stand shoulder to shoulder with such noted American aviators as Wilbur and Orville Wright, Glenn H. Curtiss, Walter Brookins, Eugene Ely and Chas. K. Hamilton, Beachey's transition from a pilot of the lighter-than-air type of craft to a flier of the heavier-than-air machine, which he now uses, was difficult.

"Flying did not come readily to me at firs," he said recently. "But  when it did come, it came big—and all of a sudden.