Walking on Air (13 page)

Despite her vow at the end of the Dixie Derby to quit cross-country racing, Phoebe still had one more major race to go. The 1931 Sweepstakes race from Santa Monica to Cleveland, under the auspices of the National Air Races, was too tempting to resist. Unlike the preceding years, this one was a mixed event with both men and women—the first time that men and women pilots would be in direct competition in the air races. The National Sweepstakes Derby offered three distinct prizes for the fliers. The three winners in the men's division would divide $6,000, the three women winners
would divide $6,000, and a special prize of a Cord Cabriolet automobile valued at $2,500 would be awarded to the high point scorer, regardless of sex.
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All the planes would be handicapped by speed. In practical terms what this meant was that, unlike preceding races where the fastest plane won (provided it didn't fall apart and/or the pilot made no major errors), all planes would be given a handicap speed based on the various configurations of the airplanes. Rather than racing against one another, pilots would race against their own handicapped speed, with the goal of making the actual ground speed as far over the handicap speed as possible. Provided the system of handicapping was accurate, all entrants would have an equal chance of winning the Sweepstakes. Press releases emphasized that “the winner will be the man or woman who exercises the best race generalship and performs the most accurate navigation.”
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Phoebe was keen to take up the challenge. She had covered the route in competition twice before; she intimately understood her machine and its capabilities; she had confidence in her skill as a pilot. What's more, this would be a real competition, one that would not marginalize her for her small plane or for her gender, but allow her to push her machine and herself to their maximum capability against all other competitors. She explained her eagerness to participate this way:

In the two preceding derbies, which we won, we were fortunate in having the fastest airplane in the race. This made it possible for us to ease down on the throttle and cruise most of the way. But here, with a handicap derby, there was an opportunity to try and show the aviation and lay world that the equipment could be pushed to the utmost, and because of its efficiency, along with its speed and endurance, have a chance to win the Sweepstakes.
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The handicapping runs to establish the target speeds were conducted by U.S. Army officers at March Field in Riverside, California. Handicapping was based on a schedule of the average speed made by each contestant in four dashes over a one-mile course.
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Gladys O'Donnell had the fastest plane in the race; she registered 171 mph over the speed course.
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Sixty-three pilots, seventeen women and forty-six men, took off from Santa Monica on 23 August on the first leg of the Transcontinental Handicap Sweepstakes Air Derby. The eight-day flight would carry the pilots over eight states, with overnight stops in Calexico, Tucson, El Paso, Amarillo,
Bartlesville, St. Louis, and Dayton.
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The first thousand miles of the route were deemed to be the most dangerous; pilots were required to wear parachutes and carry food and water in case they were forced to land in the inhospitable western mountains and desert.
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Phoebe's was the third plane to take off. She made a required turn around a pylon at the southwest corner of the field, then pulled the Monocoupe into a steep climb to clear the Coastal Range thirty-five miles east of Santa Monica. In order to cut straight across the mountains and save mileage, she climbed to 9,000 feet. There she was pleased and surprised to capture a slight tailwind that brought her a greater speed than her handicap, so that her score for the first day was greater than 100 percent.
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Crossing the hot desert the next day, Phoebe eased back on the throttle to avoid overheating her engine as she bounced around in the convection currents on her way to Tucson. Gladys O'Donnell landed first in Tucson, but Phoebe was only twelve minutes and one second later.
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Still, she didn't like second place, so she decided that for the next leg into El Paso, she would apply full power.
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Already eight planes had foundered on the early legs, dropping the field to fifty-five. Three more entrants were forced down with mechanical problems on the lap from Tucson to El Paso. None of them was injured. Blanche Noyes turned back at Tucson; Earl Rowland landed in the soft desert sand east of Douglas, Arizona, damaging his landing gear; and Barney Rawson also slightly damaged his undercarriage when he landed in the desert eight miles west of El Paso.
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Gladys O'Donnell again led the pack of fifty-two into El Paso, with Phoebe nineteen minutes behind her. Officials made certain to announce repeatedly that arrival time meant little. Under the handicapping system, O'Donnell, who landed first, ranked fourth in the race; Phoebe landed second and was ranked second to Eldon Cessna at the fifth checkpoint.
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On the way to Amarillo, another plane was forced down with engine trouble. Ruth Stewart made a skillful landing in rough country crossed by ditches and arroyos near Roswell, New Mexico. After repairs, Stewart proceeded on to Amarillo.
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Handicapped tallies at the overnight stop showed Phoebe had moved ahead of Cessna and was now the leader.
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The greatest challenge of the race was a fierce thunderstorm with very strong winds that threatened the fliers as they headed toward Enid, Oklahoma. “My little Monocoupe tossed about like a leaf and the rain came down so hard I could scarcely see ahead of me,” Phoebe later noted.
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A fellow pilot witnessed Phoebe's arrival as she fought the gusty sixty-mile-per-hour gale:

Phoebe Omlie has just landed—and what a thrill she gave us. She put the plane's wheels on the ground five times before she got down, and then rolled first on one wheel and then the other. The wind nearly turned her plane over after she stopped rolling. Several local committeemen rushed out to the field to help her taxi in. This wind is especially treacherous for landing a high-winged monoplane.
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All the pilots struggled to land safely in the strong crosswind. As soon as they touched down and slowed, men grabbed wingtips to keep the planes grounded until they reached their parking places and could be tied down.
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O'Donnell managed to turn the wind to her advantage as a tailwind; she was said to have averaged 210 miles per hour for the rest of the leg into Bartlesville. Phoebe landed second.
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The following day, landing in East St. Louis, the two women maintained their respective leads, Phoebe landing within sixteen minutes of Gladys.
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The weather remained treacherous. A series of thunderstorms generated a 60 mph tailwind, pushing average speeds well beyond handicap targets. As she had at every stop, Gladys O'Donnell landed first in Dayton, but the handicap point system had Phoebe as the leader. Again, between Dayton and Akron, Ohio, the pilots ran into converging storms filled with lightning that danced from cloud to cloud. Phoebe was, she wrote, “tossed like a salad” in her tiny plane, wondering “whether the airplane was right side up or standing on end.” But she held on, anxiously scanning the horizon until she finally spotted the big dirigible hangar at Akron, and landed in a drizzling rain.
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At least two other pilots, Jean La Rene and Pancho Barnes, had been forced to land in open fields to wait out the storm.
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Phoebe Omlie flashed across the finish line at Cleveland, first of the contesting men and women fliers in the Transcontinental Handicap Derby. Eldon Cessna was the first man to land at Cleveland; he finished third overall. O'Donnell landed next. Although she had consistently posted faster speeds than the other competitors, O'Donnell finished sixth. “The smaller, slower planes had the advantage all the way,” she complained sourly. “If I ever fly a handicap Derby again, I'll fly an old war-time Jenny.”
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Phoebe's official first-place finish would not be announced until the following morning after hours of handicap computation by race officials. Nonetheless, the crowd saw a winner. As her plane rolled to a stop in front of the grandstand, a mob rushed forward to drape a horseshoe of roses and sweet peas over the front of
Miss Memphis.
Then, as Phoebe hopped to the
ground, the wreath was snatched from the plane and draped around her shoulders for photographs.
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Phoebe and her handicapped competitors arrived in the middle of a tenday extravaganza dedicated to the “grandest spectacle that peace time aviation [could] offer.”
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“With speed and more speed, thrills and more thrills, the pageantry of the air” opened the day before with an estimated 400,000 lining the streets and perched on street lamp posts and trees to watch a five-mile procession of marching bands, flower-decked floats, “living flags,” “floating gardens,” and military regalia.

The 1931 air races had more events and more spectacular aerial demonstrations than ever before: stunt flying by both men and women in planes of many shapes and sizes, hair-raising acrobatics by an international stunt team, precision flying by naval and marine squadrons, and one feature demonstration of dazzling new radio technology. Al Williams, flying his Flaming Hawk biplane, took his stunting orders from his audience. The “voice of the people” talked to Al through the announcer and a radio transmitting and receiving set. This set was a seventeen-pound affair built for this demonstration by Western Electric Company. The transmitter came with a special helmet with headphones attached. All Al had to do was flip a switch and he could hear the announcer giving him flying instructions from the audience, which he would then execute. The communications were broadcast over the public address system as the crowd watched in astonishment.
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The afternoon show featured “the greatest exhibition of daredevil flying ever staged in this air-thrill-wise city.” German World War I ace, Maj. Ernst Udet, pitted “his flying skill against the laws of gravity,” piloting his plane “in positions never intended by the Wright brothers …. Like a crazily bouncing ball, the little craft went hopping here and there, now bouncing on one wheel, now dragging a wing tip in the turf, now jumping a line of parked airplanes.”
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Udet picked up a handkerchief off the ground with his wingtip, then ended his show with a loop and a landing on a dead motor.
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Following his thrill show, Udet wanted to settle some unfinished business. During the war, he had shot down an American pilot named Walter Wanamaker. Udet had landed next to the crash and offered a cigarette to Wanamaker as they awaited German medics. The German ace cut the tail fabric containing the number of Wanamaker's plane as a prize of war. When Udet arrived in Cleveland some ten years later, he bore that souvenir fabric in a frame which he presented to Wanamaker, then the mayor of Akron, Ohio, who was in the stands.
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Then, in one of the more moving events at the races,
two World War enemies reached a separate peace when America's “ace of aces,” Maj. Eddie V. Rickenbacker, shook hands with his German counterpart, Maj. Ernst Udet.
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The following day, 31 August, Phoebe Omlie, “[t]he stocky little woman from Memphis, who in her career in the air has won more victories in competition than any other woman flier in the country,” was named the winner of women's division of the handicap transcontinental derby, more than ten points ahead of Martie Bowman, adding the $3,000 prize to a comparable amount in lap prizes.
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But she wasn't finished. That afternoon she competed in two closed-course events for small planes. The first race was a free-for-all restricted to women flying planes powered by engines of not more than 510-cubic-inch displacement. The three women entered—Phoebe, Mary Haizlip, and Maude Tait—took off in a race-horse start, with the planes lined up and leaving the ground together.
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The course lay over hilly and tree-covered country productive of extremely bumpy air, but the women had their planes down over the tree tops for the whole six laps of the five-mile course …. Mrs. Omlie's Monocoupe took the lead at the take-off. She wasted no power climbing but flew along, her wheels just clear of the ground, until she approached the forest at the first turn. Mrs. Haizlip … rounded the first turn within ten feet of the Omlie plane, and Miss Tait … was close behind. In this fashion almost flying formation, the three pilots made the six laps, and at the finish Mrs. Omlie was only three seconds ahead of Mrs. Haizlip.
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Phoebe averaged 129.885 mph, taking the $500 prize. “A few minutes later Mrs. Omlie, flying the same machine but at a faster clip took the women's race for commercial planes with engines of 650-cubic-inch displacement. The Monocoupe averaged 132.481 mph. over the thirty miles.”
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This time the prize was $750.
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She also put in a respectable speed of 149.049 mph in the race for the Aerol Trophy, which she had won in 1929. The criteria for the race had changed from rewarding a cross-country handicap winner to a free-for-all speed race for women pilots.
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Phoebe finished fifth, a full five minutes behind the winner, Maud Tait, who clocked 187.57 mph in her 215 hp Gee Bee Y racer.
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That night, at a huge banquet for the fifty-two finishers, Phoebe Omlie was officially declared the winner of the Sweepstakes Derby and presented with the keys to the long, low, rakish Cabriolet convertible.
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During the rest of the festivities at the National Air Races, Phoebe and her husband,
Vernon, were frequently spotted riding proudly in their new Cord automobile around the grounds.
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She had won the Sweepstakes against thirty-six men and sixteen women with a handicap score of 109.19 points. The winner of the men's division, D. C. Warren, finished second with 103.5 points. Altogether, Phoebe collected over $7,000, an extraordinary amount of money in the midst of the Great Depression.
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