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277

RUDOLPH W. "SHORTY" SCHROEDER
Pioneer Aviation Mechanic - World War I Aviator

Rudolph W. Schroeder was born in Chicago, Illinois, August 4, 1886, where he attended a city grade and Crane Technical High School. 

Mechanically inclined, his interest turned to early to early automobiles and he later worked as an auto mechanic, becoming an expert with engines. An interest in aviation followed and he built and experimented with gliders during 1908 and 1909. 

During 1910 Schroeder joined a fellow auto mechanic and aero enthusiast, Otto Brodie, and that fall they became associated with Chicago financier James E. Plew, who wanted to get into aviation. Plew, Chicago distributor of White automobiles and trucks, had purchased a Curtiss pusher plane and was negotiating with John Montgomery of California to promote his glider projects. That fall Brodie was sent to Hammondsport, New York, for some instruction on the Plew-Curtiss plane, making him one of Chicago's first aviators. When he returned to Chicago with the plane Schroeder became his mechanic and later they also experimented with a Montgomery-type monoplane.

Plew withdrew from aviation in early 1911, then in February Brodie organized the Franco-American Aviation Company, bought a used French-built Farman biplane powered by a 7-cylinder, 50 h.p. Gnome rotary engine, and started operations with Schroeder as his mechanic, housing the plane in a tent hangar. When Cicero Field opened in June they moved their operations there and booked exhibition flights. Brodie carried passengers and operated a flying school.

During the winter of 1911-1912 they moved the school and passenger operations to St. Augustine, Flordia [[Florida]]. While associated with Brodie, Schroeder took some of his pay in flying lessons and reportedly did some brief flying on the Brodie-Farman plane.