=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/chronicle/archive/2003/12= /14/ING2Q3KOOL1.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday, December 14, 2003 (SF Chronicle) TAKEOFFS/Slipping the Surly Bonds of Earth/Bay Area abuzz with magnificent = men (and Amelia) in flying machines Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer On a windy sand dune at Kitty Hawk, N.C., a century ago, the Wright Brothers turned an ancient dream into reality. But dreams are made of many things and come from many places -- and the San Francisco Bay Area had an important role in early aviation history for more than 70 years. From the first flight of a steam-powered airship in 1869 to the wondrous China Clipper airliners in 1941, the Bay Area was a center of the world of flight. The first airmail flight landed on the Marina Green in San Francisco, the first plane that made it to Hawaii flew from Oakland. The first plane ever to land on a ship took off from the Tanforan Race Track on the Peninsula and landed on a Navy cruiser anchored in the bay near Yerba Buena Island. There were inventors, pioneers and daredevils, and all of them flew over San Francisco Bay. Flight on the West Coast began in the summer of 1869, only months after the first railroad train crossed the continent. The inventor was a man named Fredrick Marriott, a transplanted Englishman, who had built what he called an "aeroplane" of silk and wood in the basement of the old Montgomery Block in San Francisco. The airship, which Marriott named "The Avitor," was cigar shaped, filled with hydrogen gas, and powered by a one-cylinder steam engine. It carried no passengers and was controlled from the ground by ropes. But it did fly -- and among the throng who watched the first flight, on July 1, 1869, was a young newspaper reporter who called himself Mark Twain, and a young boy who later made a name for himself as an aviation pioneer. The Avitor flew only one summer; Marriott's main financial backer drowned and the airship burned and was nearly forgotten. The little boy who watched the flight of the Avitor was John J. Montgomery, who later graduated from St. Ignatius College, now known as the University of San Francisco. Montgomery also dreamed of flight, and in 1883 -- two decades before the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk -- he flew a glider of his own design at the Otay Mesa in San Diego. It was the first human flight in a glider controlled by the pilot. He later became a professor at Santa Clara College, built a glider called "Santa Clara" and flew near the school in 1905. His papers on the lift provided by wings were well known, and studied, it is said, by the Wrights. Flying in those days was dangerous, and Professor Montgomery was killed in an accident when his glider, the Evergreen, crashed near San Jose in 1911. The year Montgomery died was important in the history of aviation, but f= or different reasons. In the fall of 1910, Eugene Ely, 24, flew an airplane from the light cruiser Birmingham, and two months later, he managed to land a plane on a ship -- a first. In January, 1911, Ely took off from Tanforan race track, flew his plane over San Francisco Bay, and landed it aboard the cruiser Pennsylvania. He had lunch with the captain, then took off again and coolly flew back to Tanforan. It was the first time a plane had both landed and flown off a ship -- and naval aviation was born. In 1911, publisher William Randolph Hearst offered a $30,000 prize to the first person to fly from coast to coast in under 30 days. Robert Fowler, a San Jose aviator, took off from San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, headed for the East Coast. But the Sierra Nevada defeated him and he tried again, this time from San Diego. He made it to Florida in under 30 days, but someone else had flown from east to west and won the prize. Fowler, however, was the first human to fly from west to east across the United States. By 1915, daring aviators were hugely popular, and one of the best was Lincoln Beachey, a native San Franciscan, and the first American to fly the loop-the-loop. Beachey was both a superb pilot -- Orville Wright called him "the greatest aviator of all" -- and a showman. At the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco's Marina, Beachey caused a sensation by flying inside a building. His daring did him in: in one stunt he flew a monoplane into what was called a "death dive" straight down. His plane failed to pull up, and Beachey was killed as a crowd of several thousand watched in horror. World War I caused a big jump in aviation -- and the Bay Area also built airplanes, most notably the famous Jenny trainer, later used by barnstormers in the 1920s. Other aircraft were built in the Bay Area, particularly by the Loughhead Brothers, who built and flew planes over the bay. They became famous later, when they moved to Southern California and changed their name to Lockheed. In 1918, Congress appropriated $1.5 million for an army airfield at the Presidio of San Francisco. In 1919, the Army tried to prove how reliable planes were by staging a transcontinental reliability test. Forty seven planes flew west from Long Island, bound for San Francisco; 15 headed east from San Francisco. Of them all, only nine finished the flight and nine aviators were killed in crashes. One of them was Maj. Dana Crissy. The Presidio airfield was named in his honor. The new Crissy Field was a wonder. Marshal Ferdinand Foch, who had commanded all the allied armies in World War I, inspected the facility in 1921 and called it "the last word in airfields." The Army was eager to promote its air service and went to great lengths = to impress the public including a "Flying Circus" in early 1922, with plenty of stunts. More than 20,000 people watched. On the longest day of 1924, an army pilot flew from Long Island to San Francisco in a single day -- and he landed at Crissy Field at 9:47 p.m. after a flight of 21 hours, 48 minutes. A year later, two Navy planes tried to fly to Hawaii from Crissy Field. They didn't make it. The year 1927, when Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, was also a landmark in the Pacific. Army lieutenants Lester Maitland and Albert Hegenberger flew a specially equipped Fokker Trimotor plane into Crissy Field. The field was too small to handle the plane when it was fully loaded, so Maitland and Hegenberger flew from the new Oakland airport. The flight was a sensation: they made Honolulu in 25 hours and 50 minutes. A few months later, eight small planes tried to fly from Oakland to Hawaii. The prize for the first plane to make Hawaii was $25,000, put up by James Dole, the pineapple king. Four of the planes cracked up getting ready for the race, and only two made it to Hawaii. Some were never heard of again; some were lost looking for the missing planes. In all, 10 aviators were killed, including Mildred Doran, a 22-year-old Michigan State graduate who the papers called "The Flying Schoolmarm." In the meantime, the Navy had built aircraft carriers and was also interested in lighter-than-air craft, the famous dirigibles. One of the biggest and best of these was the airshipMacon, built at a cost of $2.5 million and based after 1933 at Moffett Field. The Macon was huge -- as long as a seven-story building is tall -- and the specially designed hangers for the airship are still a wonder. The Macon, which carried a crew of 100 officers and men, flew out of Mofffett Field for only 16 months before crashing at sea near the Big Sur coast in 1935. As the Macon disaster proved, flying was still dangerous. In 1935, after several other triumphs, Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific from Honolulu to Oakland. On St. Patrick's Day, 1937, she took off from Oakland on the first leg of an around the world flight. The plane was damaged in Hawaii and the trip was scratched. She resumed the attempt in the summer from Miami, and had made 22,000 miles of her trip when she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished over the Pacific. Though San Francisco had the top Army airport in the west, Oakland had t= he civilian airport. Not until October 1937 did the city get its own airport -- Mills Field in San Mateo County. Mills Field was supposed to be temporary, until San Francisco built an international airport at Treasure Island, then being reclaimed from the Bay. And so the East Bay beat San Francisco to the punch one more time. In 19= 35 Pan American World Airways opened the first commercial air service across the Pacific -- the fabled China Clipper. The clipper first flew in November of that year. The planes were such a hit that Hollywood made a movie about them -- "China Clipper" with Humphrey Bogart -- released in 1936. By 1939, the clipper base was moved to the lagoon at Treasure Island, the site of a glittering world's fair. Pan Am flew to Manila, not China, and passengers stayed overnight in Honolulu, Midway, Wake Island and Guam. A round- trip ticket cost $1,438 -- the price of a house in many Bay Area towns. World War II put an end to the dream of a Treasure Island airport, and changed the Bay Area forever. There was one last pioneer event. In 1944, Stanley Hiller, an inventor with deep Bay Area roots, flew his first helicopter in the UC Berkeley football stadium. It was a secret project; there was no football that day, and the stadium was empty. Only the seagulls saw the flight. For more information on the history of Bay Area flight, contact the Hill= er Aviation Museum at the San Carlos Airport, which is offering special exhibits on the centennial of flight.=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2003 SF Chronicle