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Documentary, American Experience - S02E01 - The Great Air Race of 1924 (October 3, 1989)
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00:00Next, on the American Experience.
00:05They had no directional finding equipment, no radio.
00:10They were going to go off around the world under those conditions.
00:14It was absurd.
00:16Dense fog just boiled up from the ground, the air nowhere.
00:21Major Martin started to climb and he never did get on top.
00:27The Great Air Race of 1924, next on the American Experience.
00:57But left on the road moving on in the air noticed a lot.
01:02He was perfectlyession ์ด์ ์์ต๋๋ค.
01:06But about an ะทั Griffith์ด ์์ต๋๋ค.
01:15The Great Air Race of 1924, next on the meses buscad,
01:20Major funding for this series is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
01:36and by the financial support of viewers like you.
01:42Corporate funding for the American experience is provided by Aetna for more than 130 years.
01:50A part of the American experience.
01:57Good evening, I'm David McCullough.
02:00Our film tonight, The Great Air Race of 1924, is an adventure story, an almost unbelievable story
02:06that thrilled its own generation, but that strangely has been almost forgotten.
02:12Imagine the United States of America that isn't a world power, that has no air force,
02:16only a tiny Army Air Service, and the Army itself is such small potatoes that it ranks 13th in the world,
02:24behind Romania and Switzerland.
02:26That's the situation in 1924.
02:29Lindbergh's solo flight over the Atlantic is still in the future.
02:32Few in America take aviation seriously.
02:35But eight men, four Army pilots and four mechanics, take off in airplanes built of wood and canvas to fly around the world.
02:44A lot was riding on their success.
02:47The airplane was in its infancy.
02:49But there were some, like the outspoken Colonel Billy Mitchell,
02:53who saw aviation as the key to great military and economic power.
02:57If Americans could fly around the world, they would show the future in store for the airplane.
03:03But for the flyers, only one thing mattered, the adventure.
03:07They would fly in open cockpits, and the world they were determined to circle was one where airfields and weather bureaus were almost unknown.
03:15The toolkit on board each plane gives some idea of the difference between aviation then and now.
03:22It included pliers, screwdriver, hammer, wrench, and a flashlight.
03:29At least they had a flashlight.
03:43In the spring of 1924, the Army Air Service prepared for a great adventure.
03:48For the love of flying and for the honor of their country,
03:53the crews of four single-engine planes were about to set forth on an unprecedented mission.
04:00A flight that would circle the earth.
04:06It would be a race against flyers from other countries who sought the glory for themselves in a place in the history books.
04:13Success would make the winners the Magellans of the air.
04:18The honor fell to four pilots and four mechanics.
04:38Pilot and mechanic, each a team, carefully selected to make the 30,000-mile zigzag odyssey around the world.
04:46The American military boasted more than 1,000 pilots.
04:51These were the best.
04:53Lieutenant Lowell Smith, 32 years old, an intensely private son of a California minister.
05:01Lieutenant Eric Nelson, 35 years old, a precise, determined immigrant from Sweden.
05:07Lieutenant Lee Wade, 28 years old, who had flown higher than any man alive in an open cockpit plane.
05:15It was very cold, he remembered.
05:19Major Frederick Martin, the flight commander, devout, dignified, selected in part for his diplomatic skills.
05:26At 42, Martin was by far the oldest, the only one married, and the father of a six-year-old boy.
05:42I recall, as if it were yesterday, walking under the light, the unshaded light of a hangar.
05:50And I opened the paper, and my God, there it was.
05:58Air Force to send men around the world, race against the other countries.
06:05They named four or five countries.
06:07And instantly, it mentioned my father being in command of it.
06:13And I got this feeling of terror, frightening.
06:19I was frightened for him and frightened for the whole idea of the race.
06:31Flyers from all over the world were anxious to rob the Americans of the glory.
06:35The French war hero, Lieutenant Doisy, and his mechanic were preparing to take off.
06:43England, Portugal, and France were all to join in before it was over.
07:06It may not have been official, but everyone knew the race was on.
07:13Most Americans only knew the airplane from the air circus pilots and barnstormers, daredevils, ready to try anything.
07:29Americans made good stunt flyers, European newspapers were saying, but they weren't cut out for the long distances.
07:36In America, the airplane had yet to prove itself as something more than a toy to thrill and entertain.
07:49A dangerous toy.
07:50There was no getting around it.
07:59Flying was exhilarating, but dangerous.
08:03Fuel lines broke.
08:04Engines cut out.
08:06Propellers sheared.
08:07All in midair.
08:08The delicate concoctions of plywood, linen, and wire called airplanes had another name as well.
08:18Flying coffins.
08:19There was simply no plane in America built sturdily enough to withstand the rigors of a flight around the world.
08:31The vast distances, the ice and snow, heat and fog, wind and rain, would test the limits of any aircraft.
08:39To design a plane tough enough, the Army Air Service turned to a young man in love with the romance of the sky, Donald Douglas.
08:53But Douglas was also a realist.
08:55He hoped that a successful world flight would build confidence among doubting Americans in the possibilities of commercial aviation.
09:02Those early days of building airplanes from plywood and linen are recalled by his son, Donald Douglas, Jr.
09:11Since I was old enough to practically walk, I used to spend time in the factory with my father.
09:18One of the things I remember so vividly was watching the kilns where they dried the spruce.
09:24Because the airplanes in those days, the wings were made of spruce, spart, and it was very important just exactly how dry that wood was.
09:36And the problem was always to build these airplanes light enough, but strong enough, that you could fly, of course.
09:43So there was an awful lot of very small little pieces of wood, very carefully put together, glued very carefully.
09:53And so when you got it all done, you had a thing that looked pretty fragile, and in many ways it was pretty fragile.
10:01The weakest link was the power system, the 12-cylinder, 450-horsepower Liberty engine left over from World War I.
10:09They lasted in the air no longer than 50 hours, and their joints leaked oil like sieves.
10:16The engines worked pretty hard, and I think one of the key items was to be sure you didn't run out of oil.
10:23I mean, you know, if you run out of oil in your car and your engine stops, you're on the ground.
10:30When you run out of oil up in the air and the engine stops, now you've got a hell of a problem.
10:34They had no directional finding equipment.
10:41They had no radio.
10:43They had no way to contact anybody or anything.
10:47And when you look back on it and you realize how primitive, and open cockpits, how primitive it was, you say to yourself,
10:54Good God, you mean they were going to go off around the world under those conditions?
11:00It was absurd.
11:03It would take more than lady luck to keep these airplanes aloft.
11:14They would be in constant need of repair.
11:17And with no trained ground crews on hand at the far reaches of the globe, the mechanic was a key member of the team.
11:23There were four pilots, and each pilot selected his own mechanic.
11:35And he came to me and he said, Harvey, you want to go on a flight?
11:39And I said, oh, yeah.
11:41And he said, when are we going?
11:43And he said, oh, pretty soon.
11:46And I said, I'll get your plane ready.
11:47I'll get your plane ready.
11:48And I was more or less his mechanic at the time.
11:54Now, Dad thought the world of Harvey.
11:56He knew Harvey was an excellent mechanic.
11:59And he also knew that Harvey had the guts of a blind burglar.
12:05He thought of Harvey almost as a son.
12:10They went to an air show in Chicago, and part of it was parachute dropping.
12:16Harvey, and Harvey was one of the two that dropped.
12:20Another guy dropped, and Harvey dropped.
12:27Then a little bit later, he looked over the side, and gee, there they were in free fall.
12:33They hadn't, neither one had pulled the chute.
12:36And it went on, and Dad got panicked, because here was Harvey and the other guy in free fall.
12:43And they couldn't get over it.
12:46And so at the last second, the other guy pulled his chute, and then Harvey pulled his.
12:55Well, it turned out that they had a bet on.
13:00Typical dumb kids.
13:02They had a bet as to who would pull his first.
13:06Hollywood was right next door to where the Flyers were training, and in the 1920s, aviators were as glamorous as movie stars.
13:25Soon they were part of the Hollywood scene, basking in the limelight and dating the starlets.
13:31Dad was trying to ride herd on those guys, and they were having the time of their lives.
13:43They're doing everything that young men do, or try to do.
13:47The newsreel cameras recorded everything they did, not for history, but for an audience eager for stories of youth and romance after the devastation of the First World War.
14:03The story of the first flight around the world savored of good things to come, emblematic of the promise and possibility of technology.
14:16But there was one man in America not especially enthusiastic about the world flight, the President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge.
14:27Although he wished them luck, he kept them waiting an hour and moved them quickly through the photo opportunity.
14:33Coolidge was well aware that the Army Air Service wanted government money to develop the military airplane.
14:40But the President was tight with the nation's pocketbook.
14:42The story went that Coolidge wanted to pay for just one airplane, and let the Air Service pilots take turns flying it.
14:50But other Americans were looking toward a new role for the nation, on the world stage.
14:57For these visionaries, it was the dawn of a new era, when the world flight finally began.
15:02The End
15:54As the Flyers left Santa Monica and headed up to Seattle, where their journey would officially begin, the awesome difficulties were almost forgotten. The New York Times predicted that the flight wouldn't take much more than 30 days. The European Flyers were barely given a chance.
16:24In Seattle, the planes were christened with bottles of water. Champagne might have been preferable, but Prohibition was now in its fifth year.
16:48Pontoons replaced wheels as the planes were readied for the long journey.
16:56Their range was no more than a few hundred miles a day. They would need to find a place to land every night. For the next 11,000 miles, the only airstrip would be the open seas.
17:12The plan was to head north, up toward Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, then west across the Pacific. The first challenge would be the Arctic and surviving the cold.
17:27We started the flight to Alaska long before anybody ought to have been flying up there in those days. But we had to go completely around the world and we had to get back through Iceland and Greenland and Labrador before next winter set in that sea.
17:45They start north and it's a terrible day. It is an unbelievable day up the Straits of Georgia. And the squall after squall after squall. And these squalls were blinding.
18:06It was low ceilings and rainy, foggy weather. Difficult to see where you're going. It wasn't difficult to fly. Sometimes you wondered what's right ahead of you.
18:21They flew low over the coastline. Their only guide navigational maps of the convoluted inlets and harbors below, which they could barely see through the low hanging clouds.
18:33When they got to the destination, which was Prince Rupert, dad came popping out of a squall and there was Prince Rupert.
18:55And he leveled off high and made a pancake lantern. Pancake lantern, we called it.
19:02Four tons of airplane plummeted toward the water, snapping the outside struts. Martin and Harvey were grounded.
19:13Fortunately, there were shipyards at Prince Rupert. The plane was hoisted out of the water and repaired.
19:18Four days later, they were ready to go. North to Alaska.
19:27After about two hours, I looked out to the left side and my left side of my plane and the wings all was covered with oil.
19:37So I checked my instruments real quick and my oil pressure was zero.
19:42They'd had a hole in the crankcase. That was it. So they put down in the bay and they spent the night in the ship.
19:56They didn't know if they'd ever get picked up.
19:59We were just cold weather. We had heavy boots, fur-lined boots, heavy fur-lined flying suits, helmet and all that malarkey.
20:14But it's still cold.
20:17And Harvey offered dad a drink of scotch.
20:20And dad said, well, that's a poor blanket for you, Harvey.
20:27But he didn't criticize him at all for taking the bottle.
20:33None of that nonsense.
20:35After a cold night floating on the Arctic waters, Martin and Harvey were towed ashore to the tiny town of Kenatuck,
20:43storm center of the Alaskan Peninsula, also called the Cauldron of the Winds.
20:48Old timers said that it was the first night that they could remember in their memory that the bay was ever calm.
21:00And of course, if it had been any sea at all, it would have just taken a goodbye.
21:06While Martin and Harvey fought off the ice clinging to the plane and worked to replace the damaged engine,
21:13Smith, Wade, Nelson and their mechanics flew on ahead to a small Aleutian island where they waited for their distressed commander.
21:20Martin radioed ahead.
21:23Don't get restless.
21:25Fighting hard to join you.
21:29Meanwhile, the European flyers were racing around the world in the opposite direction, eastward.
21:34The French flyer Doisy was already speeding across Europe.
21:38The British flyer McLaren had reached India in a month and was on his way to Tokyo.
21:45And two Portuguese flyers had left Lisbon and gotten as far as Persia.
21:49The Americans were still struggling at the top of the world.
21:54One final flight and Martin and Harvey would be reunited with their comrades.
22:00The clouds hung at 500 feet as they took off, searching for a narrow pass that would bring them through the mountains, heading safely north.
22:10Dan and Harvey took turns trying to follow the coastline, trying to figure out where this pass was.
22:20And finally they decided, well, this is the pass right here.
22:25So at that point, they turned.
22:27And it was very open and rather large, wide.
22:47And then it got narrower and narrower and narrower.
22:51And all of a sudden, it just petered out.
22:54And all once we were enveloped in a dense fog, just boiled up from the ground, the air, nowhere.
23:01In turbulent air shrouded in deep fog, Martin and Harvey had crashed into a mountain high above the uninhabited Alaskan Peninsula.
23:16The wings of the plane sheared, the fuselage crushed.
23:20And they step out and check each other, and by God, they're all right.
23:22So they figure out, well, what are we going to do now?
23:25So they decide, well, we better walk out.
23:29We started with the coast and walked about five hours.
23:34And all this time we realized we were climbing.
23:39And by God, they're all right.
23:41So they figure out, well, what are you going to do now?
23:45So they decide, well, we better walk out.
23:50We started with the coast and walked about five hours.
23:55And all this time, we realized we were climbing.
23:58We're in dense fog.
24:00If one person got 10 feet ahead of the other,
24:04you couldn't see him.
24:06We walked five hours and decided we weren't getting anywhere.
24:09And we went back to the plane.
24:12And didn't have any food or anything, of course.
24:15And we built far out of broken wooden parts of the plane,
24:19laid around there until the next morning.
24:25They were absolutely alone.
24:27They were on the moon.
24:30There was only one way out through the heavy, knee-deep snow
24:34with a small compass to guide them.
24:36Their only chance was to find the canneries down on the coast
24:39of the Bering Sea.
24:42We had no food of any kind but liquid beef, a teaspoon full,
24:48and a cup of water for a meal.
24:50Neither did we have a place where we could lay down and sleep,
24:55not one.
24:57The only sleep we got was sitting in the snow, indulging like that.
25:02We got pretty weak toward the last few days.
25:05We could walk maybe 20, 30 steps.
25:08And we'd sit down in the snow and rest a little bit.
25:13Trudge along, trudge along like that.
25:15And after the 67th day it just got so every step seems so useless,
25:27so forlorn, hopeless.
25:30But you sit down and rest a little and get up and go on.
25:35I think Major Martin was suffering remorse more than me.
25:43First, he's a senior officer.
25:45He's 42 years old.
25:46He's got a great future ahead of him.
25:49He'd been given a most important command, and he'd lost that.
25:55So I guess it's a little harder for him to fight on.
26:01Maybe he'd sit down and rest, and I'd be first to get up.
26:05Let's hit the road, partner.
26:08It's determination or something about it.
26:11The stubbornness.
26:13You want to survive, so you keep going.
26:18On the seventh day after we left the plane,
26:21we found this little stream flowing from melting snow coming off the mountain.
26:29And we got right in the middle of that stream and walked,
26:32because it's easier going than wading knee-deep snow out on the side.
26:37And around noon that day, the first thing we heard was some seagulls.
26:43And that was music to our eyes.
26:46We felt we were getting close to coastline.
26:51We walked in that stream, and we came upon a trapper's cabin.
26:57A little cabin.
26:59He'd built a trapper that come down traps in the seas.
27:04And that boy, that looked like the Hilton Hotel.
27:08That evening, a ferocious Arctic storm struck.
27:15They had made it just in time.
27:17Exhausted, they rested for three days.
27:21We walked along the coast, and there was an Eskimo out fishing on us in a little boat.
27:27He came over and picked us up and rode us to the canary.
27:32He didn't talk, we didn't talk much.
27:37But he had a smile on his face, and he knew who we were and all that.
27:42To be honest with you, I felt the disappointment.
28:11I wanted him to complete the job.
28:15Where I couldn't, and I didn't have any appreciation of what he and Harvey had been through.
28:21I felt that, in a way, that they'd been shorted.
28:31For Harvey and Martin, the world flight was over.
28:34But together, they had survived.
28:37I don't say he gave up.
28:40But he was under more strain than me.
28:43I'm a 23-year-old farmer boy.
28:45This is hard as nails, you know.
28:48I take a lot.
28:49I did take a lot.
28:51He told somebody, I said, thank God I took a big old Texan with me.
28:56After all, you know, Harvey, Harvey saved his life.
29:03He weirder's life.
29:04Waiting on a tiny island in the Aleutians, where storms last for weeks, sometimes months,
29:26Martin and Harvey's comrades endured a thick gray blindfold of sleet, snow, and icy winds.
29:34The message finally arrived.
29:37Do not delay waiting for Major Martin.
29:41Proceed to Japan at earliest possible moment.
29:46Three pilots remained, Lee Wade, Eric Nelson, and Lowell Smith.
29:52All lieutenants, each wanted to replace Martin as commander.
29:57The honor and the burden fell to Lieutenant Lowell Smith, 32 years old,
30:01intensely quiet, capable, but untested as a leader of men his own rank.
30:08Well, I think he was the senior member of the rest of the three.
30:13He already had so many firsts and records anyway.
30:18I think he would have been the logical one.
30:20Smith had a special talent for endurance.
30:24He just didn't seem to get tired.
30:27Only a year before, he flew nonstop for 37 hours, a world record.
30:32And in the course of that flight, set another aviation first, air-to-air refueling.
30:37Two little planes flying that close together with a pipe?
30:51You could hardly think of anything more dangerous.
30:55One drop of gas on any part of the hot automobile, hot airplane, and the whole thing goes up.
31:02Smith was no stranger to adventure.
31:05In 1915, he had joined Pancho Villa, answering the Mexican revolutionaries' call for airplanes and flyers.
31:15Smith would later say that Villa's army had the finest morale he had ever seen.
31:20He was not a show-off, and he didn't go around talking a lot, but he was good-looking.
31:33He was really a very handsome man.
31:38Smith's greatest gift was his instinct for navigation.
31:42Now, as the new commander of the world flight, all his skills would be challenged in an attempt to cross the Pacific.
31:51No one had ever before flown across the world's greatest ocean.
32:02In their open cockpit planes, they flew across a lonely and dangerous sea,
32:08a distance of more than a thousand miles, with only a compass to guide them.
32:12When at last they saw Japan, they were only one mile off their calculations.
32:20The Pacific Ocean had been crossed by air for the first time.
32:38The Americans had flown bravely through Arctic storms as they crossed the Pacific,
32:42but they had not anticipated the political storm that awaited them.
32:50It was only a year ago that a devastating earthquake had struck Tokyo
32:54in what was then described as the greatest disaster the world had ever known.
33:00More than 140,000 people had died, and most of Tokyo lay devastated.
33:05The American government had responded with a $150 million loan.
33:11But just as the flyers arrived, President Coolidge signed an immigration bill declaring aliens ineligible for citizenship.
33:19The Japanese were convinced it was aimed specifically at them.
33:23They reacted with protests and demonstrations, labeling the bill the Japanese Exclusion Act.
33:30The Japanese felt this was an insult that they didn't merit in any way, and were very indignant.
33:37And I remember this is probably the first thing of a political nature that I was really conscious of and felt something about.
33:45I took the Japanese point of view, of course.
33:48I was living out there, and I saw it from their point of view, and they were quite right to be indignant about it.
33:54I remember feeling tremendously indignant myself.
33:57In spite of Japanese indignation at America, the aviators were treated royally.
34:06Amidst the entertainment, the flyers hardly noticed the uproar.
34:17They were feted at an endless round of receptions and dinners in traditional Japanese fashion.
34:23And the geisha would be there to serve and to entertain, because it's rather hard for them to try to entertain the Americans, because they can't talk with them.
34:32I can imagine these boys fresh from the wilds of the Arctic, you know, would really be swept off their feet by it all, and really be feel that they'd somehow gone out of this universe to some other land.
34:50They were at dinner one night, and sometime in the evening, this young officer and Lowell went outside the house, in other words, to tend to nature.
35:04And the young officer said, you know, I like you, I like everything about the United States, but someday we fight, and that was 1924.
35:19It had now been almost two months since the Americans began their mission.
35:37Meanwhile, the French flyer, Doisy, had crossed the Middle East and arrived in India to an enthusiastic reception.
35:46He had flown across all of Europe and the Middle East in just 10 days.
35:53Now, the Americans took off from Japan, heading south.
35:56The plan was to move quickly down the Chinese coast to Vietnam, then cross Indochina, flying rapidly to Calcutta, where wheels would replace pontoons for the flight over Europe.
36:17Far below them, U.S. Navy destroyers waited to provide emergency help.
36:26Crowds lined the shores to welcome them, and to catch their first glimpse of a flying machine.
36:41A quick bit of sightseeing hardly brought them close to the real China, a country ravaged by civil war.
36:50Soon, they were on their way to Vietnam.
36:56In 1924, Vietnam was a classic colony, bent toward the commercial interests of France.
37:04But the flyers had no time to notice the political ferment alive in Saigon, where there was growing support for a young revolutionary named Ho Chi Minh.
37:18The flyers pushed on, and Smith faced a difficult decision.
37:22He could continue in relative safety over water, or save 800 miles by flying directly over dense jungle.
37:32Smith chose the shortcut.
37:34The forced landing meant disaster.
37:36Smith's gamble paid off.
37:49A safe arrival in Burma, and three days saved.
37:52Smith's gamble paid off.
37:58Smith's gamble paid off.
38:00A safe arrival in Burma, and three days saved.
38:04waiting eagerly to meet them in india was a 16 year old british citizen who over the last two
38:15years had also traveled halfway around the world that amazed people that somebody so young would
38:23be traveling as i was of course i didn't feel that young i was very adult at that time very superior
38:32feeling and i'd been through so much already
38:35like the flyers aloha baker was part of the spirit of adventure that swept the 1920s
38:49she had set out to cross the world by car as part of a wager the car and the airplane were shrinking
38:58the planet this was the last chance to be the first to cross a desert or fly over a mountain
39:04to go where no westerner had gone before it was just an urge to get out and do things to see the
39:12world and i think that was everywhere
39:14the story of the american flyers was known all over the world and as she traveled from country
39:24to country aloha followed their progress in the newspapers and when we got to india the thought
39:31occurred to the expedition leader that we would be halfway around the world from the united states
39:36at calcutta and they would be half consequently halfway around the world in the opposite direction
39:41cars and pilots aloha set out to cross the indian subcontinent to meet them
39:48six hundred miles but very tough miles you have deserts there and rivers very difficult terrain
39:57but it was a build-up i tell you when every morning when we woke up or every night when we
40:12crawled into our bunks we thought about getting to calcutta on the schedule they had landed on the
40:20hoodley river on pontoons and flew the ships up onto the maidan which is an immense park area right in
40:28the center of calcutta and that's where we met the boys and that was very exciting
40:36first we were introduced to um captain smith he had a dashing air about him he was tall and slim
40:49very handsome fell in love with him immediately in meeting him of course i i have a hard grip
40:57and especially from holding a wheel for so long i've developed some muscles so i reached out to to grasp
41:03his hand and he said do be careful i broke my ribs yesterday i fell off the fuselage
41:09he also invited me to get up into the cockpit and i thought that was a terribly exciting moment
41:16actually to sit in the seat that he had flown in and we just chatted about this and that the one thing
41:23that he said which amused us he said you guys have seen something of the world down there
41:29we haven't seen anything up there oh yes if i'd had a chance i would have climbed aboard and gone
41:36right off i'm afraid oh it was very exciting and the ships was so enormous compared to our little cars
41:45they stood away up in the high in the air
41:49with smith still recovering from his broken ribs they flew across persia in the middle east
42:04through thick tropical heat the temperatures soaring above 150 degrees
42:15and blinding sandstorms the flyers in their open cockpit taking the blast full in their faces
42:24after more than three months they at last stood on the threshold of europe
42:32suddenly the race was about to become one-sided
42:49landing in shanghai the french flyer doazi crashed
42:59the portuguese pilot cracked up in macau the englishmen in burma all of them would drop out of the race
43:08now the americans were alone with only their own fatigue and the elements to test them
43:13they arrived in paris on bastille day setting a new record on the flight from tokyo to france
43:27to the aviation mad parisians they were instant celebrities
43:33they had proved that american pilots were something more than stuntmen
43:37but the americans had to keep moving in three hours and 20 minutes they were across the channel
43:47london was waiting
43:48they had become international heroes
44:05by now the flyers were exhausted they had been flying for five months
44:11but there was still the final danger
44:21the flight across the atlantic
44:23with the skies heavy with fog and the seas thick with icebergs they headed toward iceland then greenland
44:40no airplane had ever been this way before
44:43of the three remaining pilots lee wade was the natural a born flyer with a sure touch for balancing
44:56a single engine plane on shifting currents of air all his talents were about to be tested
45:04there wasn't a cloud in the sky in any direction
45:08we're on our way until suddenly i looked at one the oil gauge
45:17and it went down
45:20that meant forced landing
45:24wade swooped along the edge of a swelling wave setting his plane gently down on the freezing arctic ocean
45:30he frantically waved nelson and smith off the swells were too high
45:39were the others to set down they would all be trapped on the iccs
45:44and when we got the oil pump off we found that it was broken
45:51it cleaned off just sheared off like it was a melted butter
45:56wade was alone with his mechanic on the tossing waves for five hours when a british trawler appeared in the far distance
46:09they were saved the american destroyer richmond soon arrived on the scene and put the plane in tow
46:17if they could get it ashore and repaired wade might still rejoin nelson and smith
46:22but the seas were too rough as they approached the coastline there was the risk of the destroyer
46:31running aground there was real danger the admiral said that chances are if we hit one of those rocks
46:40we lose every man aboard because of the rough sea and so we discontinued this
46:54rescue and sank the ship
47:01after 19 000 miles wade's journey was finally over
47:06i wasn't watching
47:22greenland
47:24wade's comrades had arrived safely
47:29but all that remained of their initial enthusiasm was a grim determination to get on with the mission
47:35there were only two pilots now smith had grown very serious the responsibility of command beginning to
47:43take its toll eric nelson the swede was tense the world flight had been his dream for longer than any
47:51of them he had helped to plan the route and to design the planes now he was almost there one more
47:59long passage 560 miles and they would be across the atlantic now smith almost bought it on the way to
48:09labrador because his fuel pump went out and this course poor mechanic of his uh had to pump pump pump
48:19by hand and then and then he said to smith something about my arms are giving out
48:26and and smith never said a word he just pointed down and christ you know there was 40 degree water
48:34down there before the guy goes back pumping uh like mad again
48:48so
49:04once again the americans were back on the north american continent
49:24they had become the first men to fly across the world's two greatest oceans the pacific and the
49:29atlantic a telegram was waiting for them your history-making flight is an inspiration to the
49:38whole nation my congratulations and heartiest good wishes it was signed calvin coolidge
49:53only the final flight across the united states remained
50:02as a tribute to lee wade the army air service loaned the unlucky aviator the last of the specially designed
50:08douglas planes once again there were three of them it would be one long ovation all across the country
50:16well we knew there'd be people out but i didn't know there'd be as huge as a crowd everywhere
50:25oh nobody could forget it the city was crazy
50:42the governor was there to greet them along with the mayor of boston james michael curley
51:01americans everywhere wanted them for heroes
51:12the new york times reported that the world flight impressed coolidge so much he doubted the need
51:24for future heavy expenditures for battleships the future of american aviation was guaranteed
51:32in city after city they were showered with gifts gold medallions plaques sets of silver service they
51:44were having celebrations everywhere themselves you know big dinners and dances and a lot of booze drinking
51:51and everything and everything and they showed them big time really did
52:09the flyers had trained in santa monica now the proud city prepared to welcome them home
52:14two hundred thousand grateful citizens turned out for the celebration it was a tremendous turnout just
52:23tremendous turnout and there was a great throng around those two planes
52:31in honor of their return santa monica covered the airfield with an acre of fresh roses
52:36there were thousands and thousands of people i had never seen that many people i mean this has really
52:44put santa monica douglas aircraft the whole aviation industry on the map
52:59in 176 days they had flown more than 26 000 miles they had touched down in 29 countries lost two planes
53:25and burned out 17 liberty engines their unlucky commander who went down in alaska major frederick martin
53:36was one of the first to greet them he more than anyone knew what they'd been through
53:49to this day no one has ever duplicated their feet
53:53circumnavigating the globe in an open cockpit single engine plane i guess i realized that they would be
54:01remembered as a pretty famous man
54:15three years after the first world flight their fame was to be eclipsed
54:20when a young airmail pilot charles lindberg flew alone across the atlantic
54:31of the four pilots only lee wade is still alive
54:35he served in world war ii and retired a major general
54:39eric nelson left the air service and went to work for the boeing aircraft company where he became a vice
54:52president
54:56lowell smith stayed in the military and rose to the rank of colonel in world war ii he was passed over for
55:02promotion he told his wife oh i would rather be an old colonel frederick martin the ill-fated flight
55:11leader rose to the rank of major general and received a strategic assignment he commanded the army air
55:18forces in hawaii on december 7th 1941 pearl harbor
55:28sergeant harvey finally got his wish
55:31which as a major in the 20th bomber command he at last flew around the world
55:47the
55:53the
55:55the
55:57the
55:57the
55:58the
56:00the
56:02the
57:36Corporate funding for the American experience is provided by Aetna for more than 130 years, a part of the American experience.
57:48For a printed transcript of this or any American experience program, send $5 to Journal Graphics, New York, New York, 10007.
57:59This is PBS.
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