UPDATE! *

I do not know the identity of the lovely “Healthiest Girl in America”*, but I do know that “Miss America” was a young beauty named Margaret Ekdahl. It should be mentioned that the quotation marks bracketing her title are not solely for the purpose of appellation: Miss Ekdahl was not the Miss America but rather Miss Florida. However, when this photo was taken in 1930, the Miss America Pageant had been dormant for several years. This lapse provided an opportunity for the City of Miami to create its own contest of the same name. After conveniently disqualifying all out-of-state frontrunners, such as Miss Texas and Miss California, Florida girl Margaret Ekdahl took the prize.

The be-goggled fellow on the left is indeed the pilot, Mr. Jerome Waterhouse (He was also president of Maas Bros. Department Stores). His aircraft of choice looks to be a Brunner-Winkle Bird with a Kinner B5 engine.

Pity the poor sash-less woman next to Mr. Waterhouse – she is the only female in the photo who does not wear a title.

*Update! “Miss Healthiest Girl in America” has been identified by a distinguished visitor to this site, and an impeccable source: Her own proud granddaughter.  Grandma’s name: Miss Florence Irene Smock of Eustis, Florida.

At the time she was awarded the “Healthiest Girl” title, she was still a high school student. Young she may have been, but she had already figured out what was good and bad for one’s body. This is evidenced by a New York Times article dated July 23, 1930,  where it was declared that “Physicians, nerve specialists and experts in mental and social poise” had proclaimed Miss Smock’s health to be “98.7 per cent perfect.”

Florence Smock lived to be nearly 100 years old. 

Two aircraft about to embark on Admiral Richard Byrd’s 1929 Antarctic Exploration are seen at NAS Norfolk. Prominent, of course, is the unmistakable Ford Trimotor. Peeking out behind its tail is a Fokker Super Universal. The latter airplane crashed on the Antarctic ice cap and is presumed still buried there today. The Trimotor, NX 4542, (Nicknamed “Floyd Bennett”) can be seen today at the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan.

The autographed photo was taken in Savannah, Georgia. Byrd is seen on the balcony addressing an admiring crowd.

NR869E was used by Mattern in his ’round the world attempt in 1933.

NR869E being readied for its globe-trotting flight. The markings are still being applied.

The irrepressible Jimmie Mattern.

What started as a great airplane – the Lockheed Vega – became famous due to its usage in various aerial exploits in the 1930s. One such act of aviation derring-do came from Jimmie Mattern, who used the Vega in his attempts to circumnavigate the globe in 1932 and 1933. Alas, Mattern flew great distances and even set records, but he never made it around the globe; both of his attempts ended with a wrecked Vega in the Soviet Union.

Despite these setbacks, Mattern was one of the great contributors to aviation progress. This is reflected by the fact that when Apollo 11 went to the moon, Jimmie Mattern’s pilot license was carried aboard.

Weldon B. Cooke, seen in the cockpit of his 1913 Tractor Biplane, readies for what will prove to be a successful flight from the lengthy runway of a (conveniently) frozen Lake Erie near Sandusky, Ohio.
Mr. Cooke’s machine was of an advanced design. In the 1913 world, where pilots and passengers perched on the wing of pusher aircraft such as those built by Wright or Curtiss, Cooke’s airplane had two real cockpits and an engine up front. In addition to placing the motor in a position to pull his aircraft, Mr. Cooke found that inverting said aeroplane motor improved both performance and the pilot’s visibility. Many consider this an aviation first (and by far, not an aviation last). Perhaps this is not surprising given that Mr. Cooke, unlike many other aviation pioneers, had a solid engineering background. He was a self-taught pilot as well.
Unfortunately, like many innovative devices, Cooke’s airplane never attracted customers, and Sandusky, Ohio, never became a mecca for aviation manufacturing. This setback did not dissuade Weldon B. Cooke, who persisted in advancing aviation technology until his untimely demise in an aircraft crash in 1914.

The first Duck – a GA-1.

Displaying one of its duck-like qualities, the GA-1 quietly floats on Lake Wingfoot, Ohio. Then and now, a hangar on said lake is home to the Goodyear Blimp.

A later version of the Duck: the GA-2. This aircraft, N5505M, was used by Goodyear for various purposes. Date of photo is June, 1960.

First flown in 1944, Goodyear’s GA Duck was a very handsome and well-performing aircraft, but (alas) it never went into major production. Of the less than two dozen GAs built (in various configurations), one, a four-seat “Drake”, survives today.

Update: Three months ago, a man in Kalamazoo, Michigan, wrote to me after reading this  post on the GA Duck. In his email, he informed me that he had, since the death of his grandfather, come into possession of four Goodyear GA Ducks, all sitting in sheds and barns, and he was wondering if I had any ideas on what to do with them.

One often hears of old planes sitting in barns, but these are always tales too good to be true. Despite thinking this was one of those scenarios, I did, with some skepticism, ask for a few photos. Here is one of those pictures, and it pretty much says it all.

Still in their original paint, the Goodyear Ducks had been gathering dust for decades.

The man who bought the aircraft way back when never got around to restoring them for flight or display. They remained secreted away in two locations, unknown to the public until just a few months ago.

When the gentleman contacted me, hoping to find a home for these planes, he was talking to the right guy because, by chance, I just happen to be affiliated with an aircraft museum. Did we need such aircraft in our collection? Not really. Such aircraft as the Ducks are outside our museum’s focus. It was therefore decided to allow another museum to have a chance. That facility is the Military Aviation Preservation Society (MAPS) museum in Ohio, home to Goodyear, and where the GA Ducks were built. They are also home to what was previously the lone example of a Goodyear GA, the “Drake”. That bird will be in great company, a whole flock of Ducks.

PS. When I called MAPS to inform them of the find, they must of thought Christmas had arrived in March.

And…For the sake of the photographer’s health, one hopes he got all he needed with a single pass by the chemical-spewing Stearman. The good news for him is that by the time this picture was taken in the 1950s, the crop dusters were no longer using what had proven highly effective in the past: a liquid mixture of lead and arsenic. Seems like a bad idea now, but it didn’t at the time. We humans are like that – we only learn by experience (when does the city put up a stop sign at an unmarked intersection, before a bad car wreck, or after?).

The location is Washington state, the target, apple trees, and the critters and caterpillars that love them.

From the official (and heavily redacted) CIA history of their U-2 operations, published in 1998.

The Air Force/U.S. Government has long insisted that the U-2 is a reconnaissance aircraft, not a “spy plane”. That sounds very nice and pretty too. But back in 1957, the U-2 seen here belonged to the CIA and that meant it was very much in the business of spying. No doubt the CIA would call that “intelligence gathering”, but to scoop up such info, they still needed to do what is known as the age-old act of “spying”. 

Thanks to Max Pashnev for this photo taken from the original negative.

Need to explore the remotest headwaters of a mysterious river but don’t have the time? Forward thinkers in 1935 already had the answer: Fill a boat with adventurers, attach it to an airplane, then drop it and its passengers like a bomb.