Aviators

When man makes a major technological leap the rapid innovation that follows is astounding. Consider where we have come in personal computing since Bill Gates and Steve Jobs introduced their first devices. The leaps in aviation are no less remarkable. The Wright brothers flew their Wright Flyer in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903, marking the first successful flight of a heavier-than-air, powered aircraft. They (and others) had previously flown gliders, and man had flown in balloons for years, but with their seconds-long flight the brothers launched a new era in aviation.

One of the pilots in what is considered the pioneer era in aviation was Raymond Perry Birdsall. Born in Nebraska, “Ray,” as he was known, grew up in Algoma, Wisconsin, and eventually enrolled in law school at Georgetown University. With the outbreak of World War I, Ray left law school in December 1917 to enlist in the School of Military Aeronautics, which trained in Princeton, New Jersey. He was transferred to Souther Field in Georgia and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the recently created Air Service.

Ray served as an aviation instructor at Brooks Field in Texas, and was eventually transferred to Bolling Field in Washington, D.C. where, after the war, he was selected to join a group of British, Italian, and American flying aces to tour the country as the Victory Loan Flying Circus. The group flew stunt planes in air shows to promote the sale of Liberty Bonds. Newspaper accounts highlighted the pilots’ extraordinary skills and described how far flying had come in less than twenty years.

From a North Carolina newspaper clipping in from 1919: “Remarkable exhibitions were witnessed by Raleigh people for the first time. Loops and spins appeared perfectly easy to the expert flyers. The new barrel roll in which the machine follows the path of a corkscrew was an unusual sight to spectators. The falling leaf, illustrating a disabled machine, caused consternation for a moment until the flyers straightened out with all ease and rapidly ascended again for other stunts.”

Another contributor to the evolution of aviation was Hannah (Nancy) Lincoln Harkness, better known after her marriage as Nancy Harkness Love. Nancy was born in 1914, about the time that Guy was learning to fly, in Houghton, Michigan, and was in France in 1927 to witness Charles Lindberg landing at Le Bourget Field after being the first to successfully fly across the Atlantic Ocean. Her love of aviation apparently took hold a few years later, when she took a short flight in 1930 with a traveling aviator. On November 30, 1930, at the age of 16, Nancy earned her private pilot’s license.

Nancy entered Vassar College in 1931 and continued to fly while studying. She left Vassar in 1934, but during her three years there she had also managed to earn her commercial pilot’s license. She moved to Boston, taking a job selling airplanes for Inter-City Air Service, and soon married Robert Love, who had left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology two years earlier to found the company. “Miss Harkness,” wrote the Boston Globe, “is barely over 20 and… is little and very pretty, can smile wisely to herself. For now she wears a sizable and very sparkling diamond ring on her left hand and she is now engaged to the president of Inter-City Air Lines, Robert Love, son of a New York banker.”

Nancy was not just the Inter-City president’s wife. She remained an accomplished pilot and worked with the Bureau of Air Commerce, flying experimental aircraft, among them tricycle landing gear, which remains an industry standard. Up until that point, most planes were “tail draggers” with two large wheels beneath the fuselage and a third small wheel beneath the tail.

But Nancy’s proudest accomplishment may have come in the fall of 1942, when, during the Second World War, General Henry Arnold and Secretary of War Henry Stimson named her the Director of a new group called the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS). The WAFS ferried planes from the factories where they were built to the domestic airfields, where pilots serving in the war would fly them to the European or Pacific theatres. Love flew fighter aircraft, (such as the P-51), bombers (including the B-17), and cargo aircraft (the C-54, among others). Women were not permitted to fly missions overseas, but Love is credited with being the first woman to do so after she flew a C-54 cargo plane from Calcutta to Kunming, China. Love retired with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 1945.

During the war, Nancy Love may have ferried planes later flown by Deke Slayton. Donald Kent (Deke) Slayton was born in 1924 in Wisconsin. He grew up in a farming family, attended a two-room schoolhouse, and later attended Sparta High School, where he boxed, played the trombone, and was active in the Future Farmers of America. He graduated from high school in 1942.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Deke joined the U. S. Army Air Forces and moved to Texas, where he learned to fly. In 1943, Deke was assigned to fly B-25 bombers with the 340th Bombardment Group in Europe. Deke flew 56 combat missions, mostly in Italy and the European theatre, and returned stateside in May 1944. Shortly thereafter, he was trained to fly the A-26 Invader, transferred to the Pacific theatre, and flew his last combat mission on August 12, three days after the bombing of Nagasaki.

But Deke’s aviation career was just getting started. After the war, Deke moved around. He enlisted in the Air National Guard, flying several different fighters and bombers, including the P-51 and the Invader he had flown during the war. He also completed his college courses under the G. I. Bill and worked for Boeing as an aircraft designer. By the early 1950s, Deke was back in Europe, helping test British aircraft, including the first supersonic jet.

In 1959, he was selected as a candidate for NASA’s Project Mercury program, the first manned space flight program in the U.S. Initially, Deke was told he could not fly due to health issues, but through regular exercise, abstinence from coffee, intake of regular vitamins and general healthy eating, he was able to regain his credentials as an active flyer in NASA’s programs.

Though Deke was beset with health issues, he persevered. In February 1973, he was assigned to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) as a docking module pilot. He and his crew began a two-year training program, which included learning Russian and visiting the Russian cosmonaut training facilities. The Apollo (manned, with others, by Deke) and Soyuz spacecraft launched on July 15, 1975 and on July 17, 1975, respectively. The two craft joined up in orbit, and the American astronauts conducted crew transfers with the Russian cosmonauts. At 51 years old, Deke was the oldest astronaut to have flown in space at the time.

In the short span of 75 years, Americans went from learning how to fly, to meeting cosmonauts in space. Since that time aviation has continued to innovate, as planes get faster and more efficient. And innovation has not been limited to flight. The world looks much different than it did in the early 1900. It will be interesting to see what it looks like 100 years from now

Afterword: Much has been written about all three of the aviators noted in this Snapshot. Significant portions of this Snapshot come from work completed by others including Alice Slayton Clark’s mother, Edith Birdsall Slayton, and, of course, Wikipedia. Ray Birdsall is Alice’s maternal grandfather. Nancy Harkness Love is Karen Clark Butcher’s first cousin twice removed. She was Georgina Hotchkiss’ first cousin. Deke Slayton is Alice’s fifth cousin, twice removed – at some point it is appropriate to simply say “distant cousin”. But they were all interesting and impressive people.