Category Archives: Aviation history

Minnesota State Fair

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Minnesota State Fair, 1915.

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Today, we offer these images of the Minnesota State Fair as it appeared a hundred years ago in 1915. The scene above is the bandstand. Visible in the background is the dome of the Agriculture Building. A closer images of this building is also shown here, from the fair’s 1915 annual report.

1922 Aeronautical Wedding

Bride, groom, and pilot at 1922 aeronautical wedding at grandstand.

The grandstand, in the 1915 postcard shown below, is immediately recognizable to a modern visitor. As previously reported here, in 1922, the grandstand served as the wedding venue of Edwin Moline and Zelma Olson, who were married aboard an airplane flying above the grandstand. The presiding minister, Rev. E.A. Jordan, at 220 pounds, was too heavy to fit inside the airplane along with the pilot, bride, and groom. Therefore, he officiated from a pagoda within the grandstand, receiving the couple’s vows by a radio which was carried aboard the plane.

Ye Old Mill at 100 Years

Ye Old Mill, 2008. Photo, placeography.org, Licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike License v. 3.0.

This year, the “Ye Old Mill” attraction at the Minnesota State Fair celebrates its 100th Anniversary. Many visitors are surprised to learn the nearly identical attractions with the same name at the Iowa State Fair (dating to 1921) and Kansas State Fair (also dating to 1915).

Radio at the Minnesota State Fair

Radio has a long tradition at the Minnesota State Fair. Indeed, the photo of the grandstand shows on the field what certainly appears to be a wireless antenna of some sort, although I don’t have any details of the old image. In 1914, the fair’s governing board considered a proposition made by one Philip Edelman of St. Paul for the installation of a wireless station at an esimated cost of $200. The board decided to continue discussions with Edelman as to whether such an exhibit could be made in a future year at less cost.

The Minneapolis sign of Sterling Electric Company, 1920 state fair exhibitor. Google books.

One of the earliest references I could find to radio at the State Fair was the December 1920 issue of Electrical Contractor Dealer, which detailed the experiences of the Sterling Electric Company of Minneapolis. At the 1920 Fair, the company had a large booth in the Electrical Building which included a wireless station that sent and received messages daily. The company followed up with a Saturday morning class in wireless telegraphy, in which there was considerable interest.

Shortly thereafter, the company, along with the Journal Printing Company, was the licensee of one of the area’s first broadcast stations, WBAD. That license was issued on April 25, 1922, according to the May 1922 issue of Radio World. It is likely, therefore, that the honors for being the first radio station at the fair go to WBAD. Since then, of course, local broadcasters have a long history of broadcasting from the fair. The image below from a WCCO promotional item shows the station’s then location in the Agriculture-Horticulture building.

Aero Spacelines Super Guppy, 1965

Wikipedia photo.

The unusual aircraft shown here first flew 50 years ago today, August 31, 1965.

It is tail number N940NS (formerly N1038V), the first of seven Aero Spacelines Super Guppy aircraft. It was built from the fuselage of a C-97J Turbo Stratocruiser, the military version of the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser. The fuselage had a length of 141 feet, with a maximum load of 52,500 pounds.

Today, six of the seven planes are mothballed or in static displays. A single one is still in service, with tail number N941NA. It is used by NASA as a transport aircraft and is based in El Paso, Texas. It was acquired by NASA from the European Space Agency, where it bore tail number F-GEAI.

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Japanese Fu-Go Fire Balloons of WW2: Part 4

US Army photo, via Wikipedia.

In part 3 of this series, we looked at some of the remarkable distances covered by the Japanese Fu-Go fire balloons of World War II. Some of these balloons were found far inland in North America, including balloons found in Iowa, South Dakota, Manitoba, and Michigan. There’s no record of any of these balloons making it to Minnesota (although there’s the possibility that somewhere in Minnesota lies the rusting wreckage of one). But one of them played an interesting role in Minnesota postwar aviation.

As we covered in part 3, one of the balloons landed near Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was largely intact, and quickly whisked away by the FBI. It ultimately found its way to Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey, where it remained until the end of the war. In 1946, a young sailor named Don Piccard was stationed there, and was tasked with taking the craft to the dump. (The balloon was labeled as having come from Flint, Michigan, but it’s believed that it was actually the Grand Rapids balloon.)

Lakehurst is famous for lighter-than-air flying, and Piccard was undoubtedly stationed there for a reason. His family had long been active in ligher-than-air flight. His father was Swiss-born Jean Felix Piccard, then a professor of aeronautical engineering at the University of Minnesota. His mother was Jeanette Piccard. Jean Felix and Jeanette in 1933 had piloted a balloon 57,579 feet into the stratosphere. This constituted the world record altitude for flight by a woman, a record held for 29 years until Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. If Wikipedia is to believed, Gene Roddenberry named the character Jean-Luc Picard after Jean Felix Piccard or his brother Auguste, another aviation pioneer. In fact, Jean-Luc is supposed to be a descendant of one of the men.

(Jeanette also became, in 1974, the first woman ordained as an Episcopal priest. At the age of 11, in response to the question of what she wanted to be when she grew up, she answered “a priest.” Her mother reportedly ran out of the room in tears. But after her long career in aviation, at the age of 79, she was ordained as one of the “Philadelphia Eleven.”)

Rather than taking the balloon to the dump as directed, the younger Piccard obtained a property pass to keep possession of the war trophy. Upon his discharge, he became a student at the University of Minnesota where his father taught. And he set out figuring out how to fly the balloon.

The Civil Aviation Agency had, at that time, the category of free balloon pilot, but no such license had been issued. A license for an airship pilot carried privileges for free balloons, and Piccard had accomplished most of his flight requirements in balloons with airship pilots. But he had not yet soloed, and he saw the war souvenir as an opportunity to do just that.

While the balloon was apparently in relatively good condition, it did have tears and was in need of repair. A glue adequate to do the job had to be procured. In addition, he needed funds to purchase the hydrogen, as well as kiln-dried sand to serve as ballast. (Sand with moisture would freeze, making for a lethal projectile when dropped.)

Piccard preparing for the 1947 flight. Image courtesy of Michigan Aviation Archaelogy.

To get the necessary funding, he sought the sponsorship of the Minneapolis Daily Times, which was granted, and the craft bore the paper’s name, above its N number, NX79598. Piccard was also a member of the Army Air Corps ROTC, which became the U.S. Air Force days before the flight. It was also sponsored by the ROTC, and Piccard wore a hastily assembled U.S. Air Force uniform during the flight. He later recounted that not only was his the first U.S. Air Force flight to take place in Minnesota, but also that his was quite possibly the first U.S. Air Force uniform ever worn.

The flight took place on February 16, 1947, from Minneapolis to White Bear Lake. After launch, apparently from South Minneapolis, Piccard had to maintain his altitude by venting the balloon and dropping ballast. He had originally intended to climb to the calculated maximum altitude of 12,000 feet and then begin his descent. But an overcast required him to control the altitude throughout the flight. The winds carried him to White Bear Lake, during which time Piccard had remained aloft for more than the two hours necessary to qualify for his solo flight, and he the CAA subsequently issued him the first ever free balloon pilot license. (This was the balloon’s last flight. Since Piccard didn’t have a bill of sale for the Japanese balloon, he was unable to register the craft.)

The flight received media attention nationwide, and also caused quite a commotion as it landed in White Bear Lake. Apparently, nobody had told the White Bear Lake Police Department that the flight was headed their way, and they were unprepared for the resulting commotion as hundreds of curiosity seekers flooded the area, trespassing on private property. At one point, the officers threatened to arrest the army personnel in the chase vehicle, who they determined must be responsible for the breach of the peace.

Scene of the landing in White Bear Lake. Image courtesy of Michigan Aviation Archaeology.

The last flight of a Fu-Go balloon. Image courtesy of Michigan Aviation Archaeology.

Since the Daily Times was actually an afternoon newspaper, the morning papers all managed to scoop the sponsor of the flight, although they didn’t refer to it in print as being the Daily Times Flight. Piccard later wrote a detailed account of his flight for Air & Space Smithsonian.

Don Piccard. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Piccard is regarded as the driving force behind the sport of ballooning, and is still active with his company, Piccard Balloons. When I looked at Piccard’s personal web page, www.N6US.com, I mistakenly assumed that he was a ham. While the URL looks like an Amateur Radio call sign, it should be remembered that aircraft tail numbers (or whatever they’re called on balloons) also use the same international prefixes as radio call signs. In this case, N6US is not a radio call sign issued by the FCC, but an aircraft registered to Mr. Piccard.

In 2008, Piccard was inducted into the Minnesota Aviation Hall of Fame. (The other member of the Minnesota Aviation Hall of Fame who has been mentioned in this blog was Sherman Booen, about whom we wrote in connection with the 1940 Armistice Day Blizzard.)

The balloon after launch. Image courtesy of Michigan Aviation Archaeology.

Image courtesy of Michigan Aviation Archaeology.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Jeffrey Benya of Michigan Aviation Archaelogy for giving permission to use the images of the newspaper clippings shown here.

References

Read More at Amazon

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Miss Miami Aviation, 1940

Seventy five years ago, Scout Felton Fineannon of Troop 26, Miami, assists 19-year-old Miss Ruth Shelley as she hoists Old Glory to mark the opening of the All-American Air Maneouvers held in Miami. Miss Shelly had been named Miss Miami Aviation in a beauty contest in which she took a challenge to earn her pilot license and learn to fly a sea plane solo within a week.

She held the title for two years, during which time her photo frequently appeared in the papers. Years later, a schoolmate wrote to her and told her that one of those newspaper clippings kept him alive during World War II. In a letter written to her a half century later, he told her that the picture kept his faith alive during the darkest moments of the war. She died Mrs. Ruth Chenoweth in 2009 at the age of 89.

Referernces

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Bombing of Tokyo, March 9-10, 1945

Chicago Tribune, March 10, 1945

Seventy years ago, the U.S. conducted its most destructive air raid of the Second World War. On the night of March 9-10, 279 American B-29s operating from Guam, Tinian, and Saipan dropped 1,665 tons of bombs on Tokyo. Fourteen of the planes were lost, but the incendiary bombs created a general conflagration that overwhelmed the city’s fire defenses and destoyed 16 square miles of the city. Over 100,000 were killed in the raid, and over a million Tokyo residents lost their homes.

Wikipedia photo.

References

Wikipedia, Bombing of Tokyo

WCCO and the Solar Eclipse of 1925

Ninety years ago today, the March 7, 1925, issue of Radio Digest carried this photo of an airplane used by WCCO radio in Minneapolis to carry “the only successful airplane broadcast of the recent solar eclipse.”

The plane was equipped with the 5-watt transmitter shown here.

The eclipse, which took place on January 24, 1925, had been visible in Northern Minnesota, and then moved over the Northeastern United States and then the North Atlantic. Its shadow had passed over Manhattan, where the path of totality was above 96th Street. Those below 96th street experience only a partial eclipse.

The film below shows film of the eclipse as seen from a Navy dirigible.

As I reported in an earlier post, the station had recently adopted the WCCO call sign, having previously been known as WLAG. Another photo of the event can be found in WCCO’s 40th Anniversary album.

American-Made Plane En Route to England, 1939

Life Magazine 75 years ago, December 11, 1939, shows this photo of an aircraft being exported from the United States en route to its new owner, the British Royal Air Force. American neutrality prevented either American or Canadian pilots from flying military aircraft across the border. To remedy this difficulty, the planes were flown from the factory in California to Sweetgrass, Montana. From the airstrip near the border, the planes were towed by automobile over the border. The line running up the picture is the international boundary. The plane’s nose is in Canada, and its tail is in the United States.

The airport in question is truly an international airport. Coutts/Ross Sweetgrass International Airport‘s current runway, 07-26, is a 2900 foot grass strip that runs East-West along the international border. It can currently be used to clear customs entering either the United States or Canada.

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The LFR: 1920’s-1960’s Air Navigation

From the late 1920’s until the 1960’s, an important tool for air navigation was the Low Frequency Radio Range (LFR).

At its peak, there were about 400 LFR beacons in the United States, and many more worldwide. Each station consisted of a transmitter being fed into two directional antennas. One antenna was sending the Morse letter “A”, dot dash. The other antenna was sending the letter “N”, dash dot. The two signals were synchronized so that the two signals alternated. At four directions from the station, the two signals blended to produce a constant tone. If a plane was off this course in one direction, the pilot would hear the “A” start to get stronger. Off course in the other direction, the “N” would get stronger.

Wikipedia Photo.

Aeronautical charts such as the one shown here would show the letter that would be heard in each of the four quadrants. Here, in the quadrants south and north of the station, the pilot would hear the letter “N”. In the east and west quadrants, he would hear the letter “A”. On the shaded lines, the pilot would hear the continuous signal. These “beams” would be about a half block wide near the station, and as much as several miles wide far from the station. Most air navigation followed routes along these beams. The course a pilot followed would be along airways connecting the stations, and flying cross country would be a game of “connect the dots” as the pilot flew from one station to the other.

Every thirty seconds, the “A-N” signal would be replaced with the call letters of the station, in this case, RL, which would also be transmitted in Morse.

Despite the simplicity of the system, the accuracy was enough to use for instrument landings, and instrument approaches using the LFR beacons were published for many airports.

For the pilot, only a normal radio receiver was required. In later years, more sophisticated receivers were employed, which would show the pilot visually whether he was on the “A” side or the “N” side of the beam. But in most cases, the pilot navigated by listening to the signal in his headphones.

LFR station using Adcock antenna (Wikipedia photo).

Most of the stations operated between 190 and 535 kHz, with powers of up to 1500 watts. Early stations used crossed loop antennas, but Adcock antennas (phased verticals) were used in most later stations.

Directly above the station, there was an inverted “cone of silence” where the directional signal disappeared. Even in times of no visibility, the pilot would know that he had passed over the beacon when the signal disappeared.

Starting in the late 1940’s, the LFR began to be replaced by the VHF Omni Range (VOR). While the VOR required a special receiver in the aircraft, it was superior in that it could be used to “fly a beam” in any direction from the VOR station, rather than just the four possible with the LFR.

Photo courtesy of Ian O’Toole, VK2ZIO, Kurrajong Radio Museum. Used by permission.

Shown here is a BC-1206C Range Receiver, which would have been installed in the aircraft for the purpose of receiving the beacons. This radio, manufactured by Setchell Carlson, Inc., of St. Paul, Minnesota, is a five-tube superheterodyne. As you can see from the schematic, it’s not much different from a standard broadcast receiver.

REFERENCES

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Americans Enlist in Canadian Air Force, 1939

Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1939

Seventy-five years ago today, December 4, 1939, the Canadian Government announced that U.S. Citizens would be permitted to enlist in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Recruits were required to be of “European descent and resident in Canada.” However, the Canadian government, eager to recruit American aviators, was quite lax on the “residency” requirement. Residency meant only that the applicant must be in Canada at the time he filed his papers.

This, of course, would have been a violation of American law and American neutrality. But even though 9000 Americans eventually enlisted, I’m not aware of a single case of an American being prosecuted for service with the Allies.

The Canadians had even been quietly recruiting in the United States, even though this was clearly a violation of U.S. law. Americans were initially required to pledge his allegiance to the British monarch, which could potentially lead to loss of U.S. citizenship. At some point, however, this was relaxed, and American recruits were required to merely obey RCAF rules and discipline for the duration of the war.

Some Americans had already enlisted. For example, De Peyster Brown, an American pilot who served in the Battle of Britain, had enlisted in the RCAF on September 9, by claiming to be Canadian.

References

The Americans in the RCAF

German Bird’s Eye View of Paris, 1914

A hundred years ago today, October 10, 1914, the Arizona Republican carried this aerial photo of Paris, taken from a German aeroplane. The paper notes that the pilot and photographer, one Lieutenant Thin, had received the Iron Cross. Undoubtedly the intended audience for this photo was the French: If the Germans can take a photograph from the air, then they can drop a bomb from the air, which is exactly what they had been doing.

In other war news, the papers were reporting that Antwerp had fallen, and that the Belgian government had reconstituted itself inside France.