Friday, September 28

     Welcome to the Wannaskan Almanac for Friday.

      On this day in 1924, three U.S. Army Air Service planes landed in Seattle, completing the first aerial circumnavigation of the world. Four planes, named after the cities of Seattle, Chicago, Boston and New Orleans, had left Seattle the previous April 6, headed for Alaska.
     The plane Seattle needed some final repairs and took off late. While trying to catch up, it crashed in the fog onto a mountain in Alaska. The crew survived, but now they were down to three aircraft. These three were attempting to travel over 27,000 miles. For reference, the Wright Brothers' first flight, 21 years earlier, had travelled just 120 feet.
     These were biplanes, modified DT-2 torpedo bombers, designed and built by Davis-Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica, California. They were fitted with wheels or pontoons for landing. Instead of bombs, they had fuel tanks. Spare engines, replacement wings, and fuel were cached along the proposed route. Crew consisted of a pilot and co-pilot/mechanic.
     After the loss of the Seattle, the three remaining planes flew along the Aleutians, down to Japan. The new Soviet Union had refused passage across its territory. Chicago developed engine trouble and landed in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam. It was towed 25 miles by three hand paddle-powered sampans to the city of Huê, where its engine was switched out.
    The flight continued across Burma, India, the Middle East, and on to Europe without incident except for a broken rib (human) in Calcutta.  After stops in Paris and London, the planes proceeded to northern England for the flight across the Atlantic. On August 3, Boston was forced down. The other planes alerted a U.S. destroyer which picked up the crew. While being towed by the destroyer, the Boston swamped and sank. Now they were down to two.
     Chicago and New Orleans continued on, landing in Iceland, Greenland and Canada. Lindberg's non-stop, solo crossing of the Atlantic was still three years in the future. A prototype of the planes, christened Boston II, joined Chicago and New Orleans in Nova Scotia and the three continued on to a hero's welcome in Washington, D.C.
     There was obviously a lot of lollygagging on this trip, especially once they got back to the U.S. Everyone wanted to see the planes, and they stopped in 14 U.S.cities before they got back to Seattle, 175 days after they left. As another point of reference, the current record for global circumnavigation was set on August 15-16, 1995 by an Air France Concorde in 31 hours, 27 minutes and 49 seconds. No sampans were involved.
     The Chicago is on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. New Orleans is in the Museum of Flight in Santa Monica. Seattle, the plane wrecked in Alaska, is in a museum in Anchorage. Poor Boston is at the bottom of the Atlantic. And as befits it's supplementary role, all that remains of Boston II is a scrap of fuselage skin, presently on display at the Vintage Wings and Wheels Museum in Poplar Grove, IL.

President Coolidge inspecting Chicago. He did not choose to fly.