Aviation in Early Emeryville
The old Emeryville horse racetrack, known as the California Jockey Club, closed in 1911 because of an anti-betting bill passed by the state legislature. Fortunately, the facility, with its one-mile track and splendid grandstand, could be easily adapted for other purposes. In 1912, the Third International Aviation Meet was held at the Emeryville track, attracting attention in the Bay Area and all over the country.
The old track proved a perfect venue for an aviation show. The grandstand could accommodate several thousand spectators. The track was converted to a landing strip, and a crew of workmen rolled and leveled the grounds so that airplanes could take off and land safely. The tall flagpole which stood in the middle of the track remained in place because aviator Lincoln Beachey, “the daredevil of the sky,” planned to circle it in his biplane at an angle of 65 degrees. The horse stables served as hangars for the biplanes participating in the show.
“In the sheds where once were famous horses whose names were by-words throughout the land repose the strange creatures that dart and fly through the air; machines handled with as loving care as was ever accorded the sleek sides of a world-renowned racer.”
“No Scientific Demonstrations”
The Aero Club of America, which sponsored aviation shows all over the United States, offered to sanction the Emeryville meet. Its officials believed that aviation shows should promote scientific research and operate under strict guidelines. However, Frank K. Leavett, chairman of the contest committee, opposed Aero Club’s sponsorship because he thought the purpose of the show should be to entertain the spectators with an exhibition of stunt flying. Leavett declared:
“This is an aerial three-ring circus, one mile high and three miles wide that we are going to hold. There will be none of the so-called scientific demonstrations. The spectators demand sensational flying and real nerve racing thrills. The people who pay the admissions will no longer be satisfied with tame flying and ordinary air stunts.”
The aviators participating in the meet supported Leavett, and the contest committee voted to hold the meet without the Aero Club’s sanction. The Third International Aviation Meet featured stunt flying as promised, although contrary to Leavett’s statement, the show also included demonstrations of scientific aviation. Airplanes flying overhead received wireless messages from the ground, and also delivered mail in a practical demonstration of functional flight.
The Early Heroes of Aviation
The meet began on Saturday, February 17, 1912, and for the occasion the old Emeryville track was renamed Oakland Aviation Field in recognition of Oakland’s sponsorship and promotion. Famous aviators arrived from around the country to participate in the meet, including Phil O. Parmalee, “greatest of the Wright flyers”; Lincoln Beachey, “the dare devil aviator”; Hilliard Beachey, “brother of the intrepid Lincoln”; Miss Blanche Scott, “the tomboy of the air”; Weldon Cooke, “the Oakland boy aviator”; Farnum Fish, “the Los Angeles school boy aviator”; Horace Kearney, “the aerial messenger boy”; and Tom Gunn, “the Chinese flyer”. Thousands of spectators filled the grandstand on the first day of the meet, excited by the prospect of seeing “the conquerors of the air,” the early heroes of aviation.
The first day’s program consisted of a fifteen-mile relay race between two teams representing San Francisco and Oakland. In the second event, Farnum Fish, “the schoolboy aviator”, carried a high school girl aloft in his biplane, a flight that was featured on the front page of the Oakland Tribune. Next, aviator Horace Kearney received wireless messages sent from the ground by two high school students, Archie McDonald and Leo Scott. In the fourth event, two aviators competed against each other, flying in a figure 8 pattern around two posts. Following this, Farnum Fish picked up mail from a substation situated on the field and dropped the mail on San Pablo Avenue.
The sixth event consisted of an international race of five miles. Three airplanes competed in each trial heat, and the winners of each heat competed in the final race. In the next event, Miss Blanche Scott, the “premiere aviatrix of the world,” made an exhibition flight in her Martin-Curtiss biplane. For the eighth event, Lincoln Beachey, “the most skillful aviator in the world,” made an exhibition flight that thrilled the audience.
In the ninth and final event, the aviators ascended for 30 minutes, and Lincoln Beachey, having turned off his engine at the apex of his flight, glided back to the field. The same day aviator Horace Kearney flew across the bay, landed on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco, and delivered an invitation for San Francisco Mayor James Rolph Jr. to attend the Emeryville air meet.
The “Flying Fish Glide”
Farnum Fish, “the youngest licensed aviator in the world,” was a l7-year old-high school student from Los Angeles when he performed at the Third International Aviation Meet. Fish entertained the spectators by performing dangerous sweeps and spirals in his biplane.
Like many other aviators of the era, Fish resorted to gimmicks in order to attract publicity. He strapped a monkey in his passenger seat on one flight, and a local newspaper ran a front-page photo of him and his simian mascot sitting in the airplane. In another bizarre stunt, Fish invited a duck hunter, Commodore Warren Wood, to accompany him on an aerial hunting expedition. Commodore Wood wore hunting attire for the occasion and armed himself with the same shotgun he used while hunting ducks in the field.
Monkeys and hunters were not Fish’s only passengers. The young pilot invited the most popular high school students in the Bay Area, selected by a contest, to fly with him at the meet. Fish also flew a bridal couple on an aerial honeymoon. Shortly before takeoff, they had been married while standing on the running gear of his biplane.
When Fish flew alone, he performed dangerous stunts long remembered by the spectators at the meet. He demonstrated what had become known as the “flying fish glide.”
“In this spiral,” according to a newspaper account, “the aviator tilts his plane to an angle of 4 degrees and sweeps downward to his left. Suddenly warping his plane until it is inclined to an angle of 4 degrees to his right, he sweeps upwards and to his left. The trick is a dangerous one but Fish has completely mastered it.”
Air Mail Delivery
Fish’s place in aviation history is not based on his antics as a stunt pilot, however, but on his pioneer flight as an airmail pilot. At the Emeryville aviation meet, Fish picked up mail from an army tent that had been set up on the field to serve as a temporary substation. Having been sworn into the mail service, he took off from the field with a load of mail and dropped it off on San Pablo Avenue, a short distance away. A newspaper article on this historic air mail flight recounts:
“Fish, who is the youngest licensed aviator in America, rose with a bag containing several thousand postals and letters, and ascending to 1,000 feet, swept out into Oakland from Emeryville and dropped his freight in San Pablo Avenue. The bag was picked up by Ralph J. Faneuf of the post office and rushed in an automobile to the Oakland post office. Between the time of sealing the bag by Postmaster Paul Schafer on the aviation field and its being received at the post office only eight minutes elapsed.”
This was only the third air mail delivery in U.S. history, and the first in Northern California. Fish, having better luck than many of the other aviators, completed the meet without wrecking his biplane.
Tomboy of the Air
Blanche Stuart Scott, “the tomboy of the air,” had the distinction of being the only female pilot to fly at the 1912 aviation meet in Emeryville. Born in 1884 in Rochester, New York, Scott achieved instant fame in 1910 when she drove an Overland automobile across the country from New York to San Francisco, a hazardous trip that proved a woman could master the sport of cross-country driving.
Glenn Curtiss, the manager of the Curtiss Exhibition Company, encouraged Scott to take flying lessons so she could perform with the famous Curtiss flyers. Scott, a large, corpulent woman, made her first solo flight on September 2, 1910 in a 35 horsepower Curtiss pusher-type biplane, becoming the “first American woman to make a solo flight.” She became the first female pilot to fly in the west when she participated in the Emeryville aviation show and attracted considerable attention because of her sex and youth (22 years) as well as her “rare nerve and skill” as an aviatrix.
In a pre-meet interview, Scott revealed that, although she had no fear of flying, she did not like to fly above 1,000 feet.
“Yes, I am awfully nervous when it comes time for me to fly, but as soon as the machine leaves the ground, I lose my fear. I suppose I am too busy in the air to think of anything but attending to my aeroplane. I derive a great deal of pleasure from my mastery of the air. It is simply thrilling to float about so easily and to sail up into the clouds where it is quiet. I do not go in for altitudes. One thousand feet is sufficient for me. I love to go up several hundred feet and then just fly around,”
An Ill Wind for Hoff
On the first day of the aviation meet, the inexperienced “birdman” William Hoff had a tragic accident. A 27-year-old resident of San Francisco, Hoff had formerly worked as a mechanic for Eugene Ely, an aviator who had recently died in an airplane crash. Hoff was nervous this day because unfavorable wind conditions made flying dangerous.
At the start of the aviation meet, three airplanes in a row took off from the field in front of the racetrack grandstand. Lincoln Beachey went first, followed closely by Phil Parmelee. William Hoff was last. He took off right behind Parmelee, piloting an 80 horsepower Curtiss biplane. Hoff’s machine began to gain altitude, but suddenly pitched forward and veered off to the right. Hoff attempted to right the airplane, but the engine shut down and the craft dropped vertically from a height of 50 feet and crashed to the ground.
A dramatic account of this wreck appeared in the Oakland Tribune.
“Like some pterygoid monster of primeval ages, suddenly wounded in air, the biplane. when about fifty feet high, slanted down clumsily to the ground, the right wing striking first and causing Hoff to be thrown from his seat. The heavy engine was thrown some fifteen feet from its place, and although when he was found Hoff was clear of the engine, it is the theory of the surgeons who attended him that the bones of the pelvis must have been crushed by the weight of the engine striking and pinning him for a moment between it and the earth.”
“The young aviator was picked up a crumpled mass of bleeding flesh and broken bones and hurried from the field in the official automobile to the field emergency hospital. Later he was moved to East Bay Sanitarium, and he is now under the care of Dr. George G. Reinle and other physicians. His condition is considered critical, as there would be little hope of saving his life should complications from his internal injuries ensue.”
Some observers speculated that Hoff’s biplane had been buffeted by a strong wind that swept down the roof of the grandstand, causing him to lose control, while others surmised that the craft may have been thrown off course by the air turbulence created by the airplane in front of him. Although Hoff survived the crash, he and his airplane remained out of commission for the rest of the meet.
After Hoff wrecked his biplane, Blanche Scott’s manager would not give her permission to fly. Displeased with this decision, Scott, according to a newspaper account, “assumed the role of a prima donna.” In a fury “she donned her aviation costume and drove about the field in her racing car delivering her opinion in glowing terms of those who refused her permission to fly.” The next day weather conditions improved, and Scott made an extended flight over the racetrack. She received a loud applause from the crowd, having convinced everyone that she could pilot a biplane as well as any man.
“Gunn is Down”
Tom Gunn, a young aviator from the Chinese Republic, a star attraction at the 1912 Emeryville Air Meet, also managed to wreck his airplane. The local Chinese community considered him a hero, and a group of female admirers surrounded the pilot when he assembled his airplane, oiled the engine, and adjusted the guy-wires. When Gunn made his first flight, he flew the flag of the Chinese Republic from his biplane, while on the field a 35-piece band of Chinese musicians played “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean.”
On February 23, 1912, the sixth day of the meet, Gunn took off from the field and flew west towards the bay. According to a local newspaper, Gunn did not realize that Death sat next to him “as an unseen passenger.” A few hundred yards from the runway, the biplane encountered a strong wind, causing it to dip and struggle. Suddenly the engine died in mid-flight, and the fragile craft veered to a 45-degree angle and plunged downward. In a desperate attempt to find an open place to land, Gunn guided his airplane toward Powell Street. A gust of wind blew the airplane out of control, and it crashed through a ten-foot fence and smashed into a small building owned by the Parrafin Paint Company.
Several spectators saw the plane crash, and they shouted, “Gunn is down.” Rushing to the scene of the accident, they found Gunn unconscious, and the biplane completely destroyed. His body was bloody and battered, and he showed no signs of life when spectators dragged him from the wreckage. He was first treated at the field hospital and later carried to the Oakland Center Hospital. According to a newspaper account, Gunn suffered numerous injuries. including “a broken jaw, a deep cut over the right eye, an ugly wound on the left cheek, lacerations of both legs, besides numerous other cuts and bruises.” Gunn survived this crash, and he later returned to his country, where he trained other Chinese aviators.
Lincoln Beachey
Lincoln Beachey’s performance at the meet proved he was “the most daring aviator in the world.” Beachey demonstrated his expertise by flying in strong winds, with his eyes closed and hands removed from the controls, low to the ground, at high altitudes, and by flying between two towers that were so close together that they almost clipped his wings.
Beachey took risks that not only endangered himself, but the crowd as well. He had contempt for the spectators because he believed they only came to see him crash. He once stated. “They call me the master birdman… but they come to see me die.” Several times at the Emeryville meet, Beachey swooped down out of the sky and buzzed the grandstand so low that the spectators scrambled in terror:
“Tearing through the air at the rate of seventy miles an hour Beachey would plunge downward from the edge of a cloud in one wild swoop. The crowd would sway and scramble to clear the path of the oncoming machine, and when it seemed as though he was about to plow through the mass of people he would swerve upwards again and there would be a sigh of relief from those who had faced death, none the less imminent but not so spectacular, as the aviator returned to the element of which he proved himself the master.”
Beachey’s Stunts
The same day Beachey performed another stunt that amazed the crowd. One newspaper account recalled:
“His pretties flight of all was late in the afternoon, when shooting down from an elevation of several hundred feet he circled the big flagpole in the center of the field. The Stars and Stripes were standing out in the light breeze and Beachey made several turns about the flagpole, his machine standing on end and the edges of the planes almost paralleling the upright pole. Turning away from the pole when he was about six feet from the ground—one more spiral would have brought him smashing into the ground-he tore upwards in an almost straight line.”
Beachey took tremendous risks when flying, hence his reputation of being the “most daring aviator in the world.” The stunts he executed at the Emeryville meet were so dangerous that the spectators expected him to crash his airplane at any moment, a precedent already set by Tom Gunn and William Hoff. According to the Oakland Enquirer:
“The crowds gasped and swayed as he shot down the blue vault above only to turn and climb again to even greater heights…Never once while he was in the air were the spectators entirely at ease. They feared for his safety and it seemed as though the next second would be his last in air. With a machine that seemed scarcely larger than a toy, his seat hanging over the edge of the lower plane, he did “stunts” that every moment it looked as though they would upset his craft, and send both biplane and aviator crashing to earth, a mass of tom wings and twisted wire with the limp form, which had but a fraction of time before been a human being, lying beneath.”
Mme. Cozette de Trouse
Although Beachey performed many feats and stunts at the Emeryville air meet, his most bizarre act occurred on Saturday, February 24, when he disguised himself as a female aviator. The San Francisco Chronicle recounted:
“The feature of yesterday’s events was the flight made by “Mme. Cozette de Trouse,” the mysterious bird woman, who was billed to make a number of daring and sensational flights. The aviatrix was brought to the field in an automobile by Mrs. Florence Stone Ferris, wife of Dick Ferris. Upon descending from the auto, it was seen that Mme. de Trouse was a striking blonde. with a rather stern countenance and dressed in ordinary costume. After posing for a few photographs and receiving a bouquet of flowers from Mrs. Ferris, the bird woman took a seat in Lincoln Beachey’s aeroplane and made a quick ascent. After circling above the heads of the crowd for some time and performing a number of dips and curves, which caused the audience to gasp, Mme. de Trouse descended to the field.”
“There she was met by Miss Scott, who demonstrated the fact that she was the only woman aviator of the meet by stepping up to the supposed aviatrix and tearing from her head the golden wig and veil, disclosing the features of Lincoln Beachey. The exposure was greeted with shouts of laughter by the crowd, and on getting into the automobile in order to return to the dressing-room where he had assumed the disguise, Lincoln Beachey was the recipient of applause. He looked the part in the machine, but he made the mistake of trying to walk while in skirts.”
“The Race of All Nations”
The last day of the meet, Sunday February 25, 1912, proved to be very windy, and several events had to be canceled from the program. Blanche Scott’s manager once again would not let her fly. The crowd was disappointed, and so was the “world’s greatest aviatrix.” However, Beachey took to the skies and performed several perfunctory stunts. On one occasion he dipped behind the horse stables and disappeared from view. Officials and spectators feared that he had crashed to the ground, but after a breathtaking moment, he reappeared from behind the buildings and waved to the crowd.
Farnum Fish attempted an exhibition flight, but he experienced engine trouble and had to land. Phil O. Parmelee also performed on the last day. He executed a number of stunts, including a “Dutch Roll”—”dipping and swerving until the crowd expected him to overbalance.” He also performed figure-B maneuvers, and at the conclusion of his flight, having turned off his engine, glided down from a high altitude and landed on the field.
The last event of the day consisted of a “Race of All Nations,” where each contestant represented a country based on his nationality. The flyers engaged in a “battle royal of the air” to determine the winner. In mock combat, the competing airplanes soared over the racetrack, and at times the battle raged westward over the bay. Phil O. Parmelee won the “Race of All Nations”, although the nation he represented remains unclear.
The explosion of a loud bomb signaled the end of the Third International Aviation Meet. Although the meet had realized a profit and had attracted a large audience, the management did not consider it a financial success. Nevertheless, the show traveled to Sacramento the following week and featured the same aviators.
“The Mecca of American Aviators”
The 1912 meet proved a significant one in aviation history, having been the first air show featuring engine powered airplanes. The eight-day event attracted as many as 30,000 spectators a day and introduced a large number of people to the world of aviation. The participation of Blanche Scott, “California’s first female aviator,” encouraged other women to learn the art of flying.
The meet also made a contribution to scientific aviation. The successful transmission of wireless messages from the ground to airplanes in flight demonstrated the practicability of in-flight radio communication, and the air mail delivery flight of Farnum Fish demonstrated the feasibility of transporting mail by air.
Oakland, the city that sponsored the aviation meet, emerged as a center of aviation, according to the Oakland Enquirer.
“Oakland is on the aviation map and from now on the most renowned birdmen of the world will look upon this city as the Mecca of the American aviators. The present meet at the Oakland aviation meet has been one of the most successful ever conducted in this or any other country and in years to come people will refer to the Oakland aviation meet as one of the epochs of history.”
“The flying game is still a new sport to California people, but they are rapidly acquiring an interest in it and the present attendance at the Oakland aviation meet is a demonstration of how California people will patronize any legitimate sport. Of course, a certain percentage of the attendance come there with the expectation of seeing one or more of the aviators meet their death by falling to the ground, but the big majority of them are interested in the new sport from a sportsman’s point of view and delight in the keen competition which has marked the various contests.
”To date the meet has been a great success both from a sporting and financial point of view. The people of Alameda county have flocked to the grounds by the thousands.”
Although Oakland took credit for the success of the air show, the Third International Air Meet further enhanced Emeryville’s reputation as the entertainment center of the East Bay.
This story originally published in 1996 for the Emeryville Centennial Celebration and compiled into the ‘Early Emeryville Remembered’ historical essays book.
