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MORTIMER F. BATES

Early Moisant Monoplane Pilot

Mortimer F. Bates was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota August 24, 1883. He attended local schools, then Beloit, Wisconsin Academy of Mechanical Engineering. He entered Alexander Hamilton Institute in Business Management, then Brooklyn College of Commerce in Industrial Management. 

Becoming interested in aviation, in 1909 he started to help assemble and test aircraft engines for the Wright Brothers in Dayton. Later, he was determined to learn to fly, and joined the Moisant Flying School at Garden City, Long Island, New York, about September 1, 1911. At the school, instructor Andre Haupert taught him to fly a Moisant Bleriot-type monoplane with a 35 h.p. Anzani engine. Bates flew his tests for pilot license on October 15th and obtained F.A.I. Certificate No. 66, dated October 18, 1911. 

He continued his flying practice and remained with the Moisant Company through 1912. That year he was the chief instructor at their school and reportedly flew some exhibition dates. 

In the spring of 1913 Bates joint the Curtiss School at Hammondsport, New York, where he took a course of flying boat instruction from instructor Wildman. 

In 1914 Bates designed, built, and flew an experimental parasol monoplane for Alex Laughlin of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

In early 1915 he was employed by the Sperry Gyroscope Company of Brooklyn, New York, as Installation Engineer and Company Pilot. In February he installed an automatic pilot in a United States Navy plane at Pensacola, Florida. In June the Sperry Company sent Bates to Italy to conduct automatic stabilizer tests on Italian Navy planes with Sperry equipment. He was then sent to France and England to do similar work through 1916 and into 1917. When he returned to the United States in July, 1917, he was assigned to the Sperry aerial torpedo experimental development project and remained on this work through World War I.