Snazzy uniforms, planes (P-12s), hangar, etc.

On April 6, 1924, four Douglas “World Cruisers” of the Army Air Service left Seattle and set off on their famous flight around the globe.

175 days later, after 74 stops across 28 countries and 26,000+ miles, two of the aircraft returned to Seattle. Here are a few photos from that great adventure.

The one and only Lockheed Y1C-12 (or just C-12) soldiered on as an Air Corps test bird before winding up as a hack aircraft with the 35th Pursuit Squadron at Langley Field (the name is painted on the nose. 

Meanwhile, a Fokker C-14 (of which they did build more than one) rests alongside a more recognizable machine in the form of a P-26.

Mitchel Field, NY, 5th Observation Squadron, 1930s. Some avionics maintenance for one of the handful of Curtiss O-39s purchased by the Army Air Corps.

With only 10 built, the Curtiss O-39 Falcon was another low-production airplane of the 1930s. Those scant numbers are usually blamed on the lack of Depression-era funding, but two other critical factors also contributed. 

Factor #1. The 1930s saw rapid change in aircraft design and performance. Advances in aviation technology came so fast that production could often not keep up with the latest ideas. It became common for a prototype (or a small number of planes) to be built only to be made obsolete by a new aerial innovation.

Factor #2. The envisaged role for military aircraft kept shifting. As aviation technology leapfrogged ahead, militaries worldwide watched and wondered what might come next. Strategy and tactics fluctuated, changed, or were thrown in the trash as aircraft capabilities kept rising. Therefore – and this brings us back to Factor #1 – it made no sense to spend a fortune on a large fleet of warplanes only to find that its type suddenly had no practical function because its intended role had been eclipsed by an entirely new type of design.

The US Army Air Corps attack planes of the 30s come to mind. Dedicated attack planes were all the rage for a few years, but were soon enough overtaken by the concept of the multi-role fighter-bomber.

The Thomas-Morse MB-6 was a racing ship built for the Army Air Service and was, therefore, built in small quantities – three to be exact. After the one seen here was utterly wrecked, the opportunities for getting any stick time in an MB-6 were sharply diminished.

Thomas-Morse’s racing bird joined the growing ranks of short-lived, low-production aircraft that came quickly and then disappeared forever during the interwar period. 

Photo taken at McCook Field. 

Quaint as they are, these Curtiss B-2s were the epitome of strategic bombing circa 1930. All the apostles of airpower – Douhet, Mitchell, Trenchard, etc. – envisioned great aerial armadas consisting of bombers such as these. But these visionaries had to work fast: advances in aviation came so fast that even the great prophets were often caught off guard by developments. Example: a doctrine or tactic had just been finalized, only to be relegated to the trash can because planes were suddenly twice as fast or could fly three times as far as their immediate predecessor.

The rules were still being made when World War II began. 

51-17076 was flown by the 511th FBS at Langley AFB, VA, for several years before heading out to Luke AFB in sunny Arizona. There, it impacted the desert floor in 1957 and was destroyed.

When these photos were taken, Barksdale Field, officially opened in 1933, was still wearing its first coat of paint. (The photos date 1933-36).  The early date also explains the almost total absence of trees and other features to lessen the bleakness of the setting.

I believe both photos are airmail-related. The pilot in the second photo is Clarence Tinker, namesake of Tinker AFB in Oklahoma. He is flying his personal P-12, nicknamed “Bird-O-Prey”, one of a string of aircraft he applied that moniker to.

Los Angeles’ Griffith Park Aerodrome/Airport/Field, home to the 115th Observation Squadron, California National Guard, was one of countless airfields that dotted the area in the 1920s & 30s (note Glendale Airport in the upper right of the photo). As a military airfield, Griffith Park was host to a variety of different aircraft, such as the ones seen in these photos, Douglas Y10-35/Y1B-7s. Only a dozen of these planes were built, and most of them are seen here, parked along the runway’s edge. The aircraft are visitors from the 88th Observation Squadron, Brooks Field, Texas, the occasion is the “1st Wing Concentration”, an Air Corps exercise that involved numerous airplanes and airfields assigned to that Wing. A close inspection of Glendale Airport in photo #1 shows that they, too, have a line-up of Air Corps planes.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck the next day, June 20th.  On that Thursday, a Y10-35 lost a right engine on takeoff and slewed toward the line of tents seen in the photo. Soldiers in the onrushing plane’s path scattered to safety, but at 70 MPH, the aircraft crashed through a fence and struck a parked car, killing three people. The victims, Daniel Krauss, his wife Freda, and two-year-old daughter Donna, had simply stopped by to watch the goings-on at the airfield. A four-year-old son survived, he being with relatives in Washington State. Congress later approved a bill that provided a princely $60 a month for that orphan’s upbringing.

The death of this family no doubt served to heighten ongoing concerns over Griffith Park Airport location, namely because it was built on the edge of, well, an actual park. The kind with green trees, nature paths, a zoo, etc. The field closed around the outset of World War II; today, it is buried under acres of freeway.

Cruising along in the Depression-era skies of the Northeast United States, an O-17 (28-384) of the Middletown Air Depot, Olmsted Field, Pennsylvania. His tail skid has brought along some of Olmsted’s turf for the flight.

175 Days After Taking Off From Seattle, The Douglas World Cruisers Return