Louise Thaden with the Porterfield Model 35-W. (FAI)
12 July 1936: Louise Thaden set a Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) World Record for Speed Over 100 Kilometers with an average speed of 176.35 kilometers per hour (109.58 miles per hour.)¹ She flew a Porterfield Model 35-W Flyabout over a course at Endless Caverns, near New Market, Virginia.
Less than two months later, 4 September 1936, Mrs. Thaden became he first woman to win the Bendix Trophy Race when she and her co-pilot, Blanche Noyes, flew a Beechcraft C17R “Staggerwing,” NR15835, from Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn, New York, to Mines Field, Los Angeles, California.
Harmon Aviatrix Trophy (NASM)
Iris Louise McPhetridge was born 12 November 1905 at Bentonville, Arkansas. She was the first of three daughters of Roy Fry McPhetridge, owner of a foundry, and Edna Hobbs McPhetridge. She was educated at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, as a member of the Class of 1927. Miss McPhetridge was president of the Delta Delta Delta (ΔΔΔ) Sorority, Delta Iota (ΔΙ) Chapter; head sports for basketball; and president of The Panhellenic.
Louise McPhetridge had been employed by Walter Beech as a sales representative at Wichita, Kansas, and he included flying lessons with her employment. She received her pilot’s license from the National Aeronautic Association, signed by Wilbur Wright, 16 May 1928. In 1929, she was issued Transport Pilot License number 1943 by the Department of Commerce. McPhetridge was the fourth woman to receive an Airline Transport Pilot rating.
Miss McPhetridge married Mr. Herbert von Thaden at San Francisco, California, 21 July 1928. Thaden was a former military pilot and an engineer. They would have two children, William and Patricia.
Louise Thaden served as secretary of the National Aeronautic Association, and was a co-founder of The Ninety-Nines. She served as that organization’s vice president and treasurer. She set several world and national records and was awarded the national Harmon Trophy as Champion Aviatrix of the United States in 1936.
Louise Thaden stopped flying in 1938. She died at High Point, North Carolina, 9 November 1979.
Louise Thaden flew this Porterfield Model 35-W to set a World Record for Speed, 12 July 1936. (FAI)
The Porterfield Model 35-W was based on the prototype Wyandotte Pup, which had been designed by Noel Ross Hockaday. The airplane was built by students of the aviation club of Wyandotte High School, Kansas City, Kansas.
Noel Hackaday’s Wyandotte Pup, NX12546, circa 1932. The children are identified as Leland and Milton House. (Guy F. House, via Keith House)
Hockaday had previously been a designer for the American Eagle Aircraft Corporation and had designed that company’s Eaglet high-wing monoplane. Edward Everette Porterfield, Jr., the founder of American Eagle, was present when the Wyandotte Pup made its first flight. He bought the airplane and its production rights. American Eagle had gone out of business during the early years of The Depression, and a new company, Porterfield Aircraft Corporation, was formed to manufacture the airplane as the Porterfield Model 35.
The Porterfield Model 35 Flyabout was produced in several variants, and was available with LeBlond, Velle, Warner or Continental engines. It was was a single-engine, high-wing monoplane, which carried a pilot and one passenger in tandem in an enclosed cabin. The airplane had fixed landing gear with a tail skid. The fuselage was a welded tube structure, while the wing was built around two spruce spars, with spruce and plywood ribs. The airplane was covered with doped fabric. A distinctive feature of the Porterfield series are the parallel wing struts. (Most similar aircraft have their struts arranged in a “V”.)
Porterfield Model 35-70 Flyabout, NC 20700, powered by a LeBlond radial engine. (San Diego Air & Space Museum)
The Porterfield Model 35-W was 22 feet, 1 inch (6.731 meters) long, with a wingspan of 32 feet, 0 inches (9.754 meters), and height of 6 feet, 7 inches (2.007 meters). The main wheel tread was 5 feet, 6 inches (1.676 meters). Maximum payload was 501 pounds (227.25 kilograms).
A 1936 Porterfield Model 35-W, NC16401, serial number 301. (San Diego Air & Space Museum)
The Model 35-W was powered by an air-cooled, normally-aspirated, 301.458-cubic-inch-displacement (4.940 liter) Warner Aircraft Corporation Scarab Junior. This was a 5-cylinder radial engine with two valves per cylinder and a compression ratio of 5.2:1. The Scarab Junior was rated at 90 horsepower at 2,050 r.p.m. at Sea Level for takeoff (five-minute limit). The engine was 1 foot, 2 inches (0.356 meters) long, 3 feet, 0.5 inches (0.927 meters) in diameter, and weighed 237 pounds (107.5 kilograms). The engine was covered by a Townend Ring.
The 35-W had a cruise speed of 110 miles per hour (177 kilometers per hour) and maximum speed of 120 miles per hour (193 kilometers per hour). Its range was 340 miles (547 kilometers).
Porterfield Aircraft Corporation built approximately 240 Model 35s. Twenty-five of these were the Model 35-W.
Noel Ross Hockaday was born 24 May 1905 in Kinmundy, Illinois. He was the first of two children of Jake Fred Hockaday, a farmer, and Mary Kathryn Sills Hockaday. He married to Ruby I. Kelley at Los Angeles, 31 March 1937.
In addition to the Eaglet and Pup, Hockaday designed the Rearwin Airplanes Inc., Speedster, Sportster and Cloudster. (Rearwin, like Porterfield, was based at Fairfax Airport, Kansas City, Kansas.)
In 1940, Hockaday worked for the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. He later formed Hockaday Aircraft Corporation at Burbank, California, to produce the Hockaday Comet.
Noel Ross Hockaday died at Los Angeles, California, 26 May 1959, at the age of 54 years.
Edward Everett Porterfield, Jr., circa 1925. (Airplanes and Rockets)
Edward Everett Porterfield, Jr., was born at Kansas City, Missouri, 7 November 1890. He was the son of Edward Everett Porterfield, Sr.,² a state circuit court judge, and Julia L. Chick Porterfield.
E. E. Porterfield, Jr., was a manager for the New England Equitable Life Insurance Company in Kansas City. On 17 January 1911, he married Miss Margaret Hughes in Nebraska. They would have two sons, both of whom died in infancy. Mrs. Porterfield sued for divorce, charging that she had been abandoned. The divorce was granted and she was awarded $30.00 per month in financial support.
Porterfield enlisted in the United States Army, 4 March 1918, and served as a sergeant with the 314th Trench Mortar Battery, 164th Field Artillery Brigade, 89th Division, American Expeditionary Forces. The division fought at the Battle of St. Mihiel and in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. The 89th was inactivated following the war. Sergeant Porterfield was honorably discharged, 20 February 1919.
Porterfield’s second wife was Margaret Jellison Porterfield. They also divorced.
In 1925, Porterfield founded the Porterfield Flying School at Richards Field, the first airport for Kansas City, Missouri. In 1928, he founded the American Eagle Aircraft Corporation at Fairfax Airport, Kansas City, Kansas.³
E. E. Porterfield married his third wife, Mildred Shiveley, at Odessa, Missouri, 25 December 1930.
Porterfield later founded the Porterfield Aircraft Corporation in 1932. During World War II, light aircraft production ceased and the company eventually went out of business.
Edward Everett Porterfield, Jr., died at Kansas City, Missouri, 29 August 1948, at the age of 58 years. He was buried at the Mount Washington Cemetery, Independence, Missouri.
Porterfield Model 35-70 Flyabout. (San Diego Air & Space Museum)
¹ FAI Record File Number 12022
² Full Disclosure: Judge Edward Everett Porterfield, Sr., a Kansas state circuit court judge, had an involvement in the infamous Dr. Hyde murders which took place at the Colonel Thomas H. Swope mansion near Independence, Missouri (State of Missouri v. Bennett Clarke Hyde, 1910). Colonel Swope was a distant relative of TDiA.
³ The Kansas City Metropolitan Area is divided by the Missouri River, which is the boundary between the State of Missouri and the State of Kansas. Therefore, there is a Kansas City, Missouri, and a Kansas City, Kansas.
Laura Ingalls in the cockpit of her Lockheed Orion 9D Special, NR14222, warming up its engine at Floyd Bennett Field, 10 July 1935. (Rudy Arnold Collection, NASM)
11 July 1935: At 4:31 a.m., Eastern Daylight Time, (08:31 UTC) Laura Houghtaling Ingalls took off from Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn, New York, and flew non-stop across the North American continent to the Union Air Terminal at Burbank, California. She landed there at 7:51 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (02:51 UTC, 12 July). The elapsed time of her non-stop transcontinental flight was 18 hours, 19 minutes, 30 seconds.
After departing Floyd Bennett Field, Ingalls flew along a commercial airway defined by radio beacons. Her route of flight was from Brooklyn, New York, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—Columbus, Ohio—Indianapolis, Indiana—Kansas City, Missouri—Albuquerque, New Mexico—Burbank, California. This was only the third time that a non-stop transcontinental flight had been accomplished.
The Los Angeles Times reported:
MISS INGALLS SETS RECORD IN AIR DASH
Nation Spanned Nonstop
First Woman Ever to Cross from East Without Halt Also Slashes Time.
Hatless and with her brown curls flying, diminutive Laura Ingalls, 30-year-old aviatrix, set her black-cowled monoplane down at Union Air Terminal, Burbank, at 7:51 o’clock last night and became the first woman pilot ever to span the American continent in an East-to-West nonstop flight.
Taking off from Floyd Bennett Airport, New York, at 4:31:30 a.m., she completed the Atlantic-to-Pacific hop in eighteen hours nineteen minutes and thirty seconds, establishing a women’s East-to-West record. She was timed in by Ted Raycraft, National Aeronautic Association representative.
Miss Ingalls failed, however, to break Amelia Earhart’s transcontinental mark of seventeen hours seven minutes and thirty seconds, set in 1933 in a Pacific-to-Atlantic hop. Winds are more favorable for flights starting from the West.
TELLS OF ORDEAL
With powerful floodlights playing on he low-winged Lockheed plane, Miss Ingalls circled the field once before landing.
“Boy, what a long ride!” she exclaimed as she climbed from the cockpit. “It was an ordeal and I’m glad I’m here.”
She immediately began plans, however, for an onslaught on Miss Earhart’s West-to-East record and said she contemplated a return nonstop flight as quickly as her ship can be overhauled and placed in order.
DISAPPOINTED AT TIME
The aviatrix said she had hoped to make the flight in fifteen hours and expressed disappointment that she was unable to do so.
The East-to-West nonstop record for men was established by Jimmie Doolittle in slightly more than thirteen hours.
Miss Ingalls said she encountered strong head winds most of the way and ran into an electrical storm over Winslow, Ariz., shortly after 5 p.m., which slowed her down.
She followed a TWA transport route most of the way and depended on the TWA radio beam for her directions. Her ship is equipped with a radio receiving set, radio compass, Sperry automatic pilot, retractable landing gear and landing wing flaps.
Miss Ingalls said she took off from the New York airport with a capacity load of 600 gallons of gasoline, enough to have carried her 3,000 miles.
She experienced some difficulty in gaining altitude with the heavy load and was forced to slow down at the start when she was unable to raise the retractable landing gear.
Her speed at times, however, exceeded 200 miles an hour, she said. The ship has a top speed of about 240 miles an hour.
After leaving New York, her ship was unsighted until she passed over the TWA airport at Winslow about 5:15 p.m.
TAXIES PLANE TO HANGAR
After landing at Burbank and removing her heavy shoes and flying togs, she taxied the plane to the Western Air Express hangar and gave orders for its care. She then went to the California Hotel in Burbank, where she will reside while here.
The flyer took up airplanes at Roosevelt Field in New York six years ago because she was “tired of vaudeville and wanted some excitement.”
SIX-YEAR RECORD
In six years she set the first women’s east-west transcontinental record. She has looped 980 times for a women’s record. She has barrel-rolled 714 times for a world’s record. She has captured third place in the Chicago-Dixie air derby. She has solo hopped 17,000 miles around South America with no accidents.She has been chosen outstanding woman flyer for 1934 by International League of Aviators.
—Los Angeles Times, Vol. LIV, Friday Morning, July 12, 1935, at Page 1, Column 5 and Page 3, Column 5
Laura Houghtaling Ingalls’ Lockheed Orion 9D Special, NR14222. (San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives)
Ingall’s airplane was a single-engine Lockheed Model 9D Orion Special, registration NR14222, which she had named Auto da Fé. ¹ Ingalls had taken delivery of the Orion at the Lockheed Aircraft Company, Burbank, California, 1 February 1935. Contemporary newspaper reports said that the “Black Mystery Ship” cost $45,000.
The Lockheed Model 9 Orion was a single-engine, low-wing monoplane, designed in 1931 by Gerard Freebairn Vultee for airline use. It was capable of carrying six passengers in an enclosed cabin. The Orion was the first commercial airliner with retractable landing gear. It was faster than any military airplane in service at the beginning of the decade. Like other Lockheed aircraft of the time, it was constructed of strong, light-weight, molded wood, but the Orion would be Lockheed’s last wooden airplane.
Billy Parker, Laura Ingalls and Wiley Post at the 1935 National Air Races. Ingall’s Lockheed Orion, NR14222, Auto da Fé, has its engine cowling removed for maintenance. (Monash University)
The Lockheed Orion 9D was 28 feet, 4 inches (8.64 meters) long with a wingspan of 42 feet, 9¼ inches (13.04 meters) and height of 9 feet, 8 inches (2.95 meters). It had an empty weight of 3,640 pounds (1,651 kilograms) and maximum takeoff weight of 5,200 pounds (2,359 kilograms).
Lockheed Model 9D Special NR14222. (SDASM)
Auto da Fé was powered by an air-cooled, supercharged, 1,343.804-cubic-inch-displacement (22.021 liter) Pratt & Whitney Wasp S1D1 nine-cylinder radial engine. The engine had a compression ratio of 6:1 and was rated 525 horsepower at 2,200 r.p.m. The S1D1 was a direct-drive engine, which turned a two-bladed Hamilton Standard variable-pitch, constant-speed propeller. The Wasp S1D1 was 4 feet, 3.438 inches (1.307 meters) in diameter, 3 feet, 6.625 inches (1.083 meters) long and weighed 763 pounds (346 kilograms). The engine was enclosed by a N.A.C.A. cowling.
The cruise speed of the Orion was 205 miles per hour (330 kilometers per hour) and the maximum speed was 220 miles per hour (354 kilometers per hour) at Sea Level. It had a range of 750 miles (1,159 kilometers) in standard configuration. The service ceiling was 22,000 feet (6,705 meters).
Laura Ingalls shows the Sperry Gyro Pilot equipment to be installed aboard her Lockheed Orion. (Corbis)
Ingall’s airplane had a fuel capacity of 630 gallons (2,385 liters) of gasoline and 40 gallons (151 liters) of engine oil. NR14222 was equipped with a Sperry Gyro Pilot and a Westport radio compass and receiver for navigation.
The Greek lower-case letter zeta (the astronomical symbol for the planet Jupiter) was painted on each side of the airplane under the cockpit rails. Ingalls had the same symbol on several of her airplanes. A source suggests that it was used as a stylized representation of her initials, “L.I.” (Her Lockheed Air Express carried the astronomical symbol for the constellation Sagittarius, which was Ingalls’ astrological sign.)
In 1937, NR14222 was sold to Rudolf Wolf, Inc., a burlap company in New York. It was then transferred to Fuerzas Aéreas de la República Española (FARE), the air arm of the Spanish Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War. What happened to the Lockheed Orion after that is not known.
Laura Ingalls stands on the wing of her Lockheed Orion at Alamosa, Colorado, 16 April 1935. Photo by Glen Gants. (SDASM Archives)
The San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives have a large set of photographs of the Model 9 construction process. See:
“Cutaway” illustration of the Lockheed Model 9D Orion. (SDASM)
Laura Houghtaling Ingalls was born at Brooklyn, New York, 14 December 1893. She was the first of two children of Francis Abbott Ingalls, a cotton goods merchant, and Laura McAlister Houghtaling Ingalls.
Laura Ingalls, 1920
Miss Ingalls lived in France prior to World War I, and returned there as a relief worker following the War. In 1920, she lived with her family in Tuxedo Park, New York, and was employed as a stenographer.
Laura Ingalls began flight training at Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York, and completed her first solo flight on 23 December 1928. In June 1929, she began training for a commercial pilot certificate at the Universal Flying School, Lambert Field, St. Louis Missouri.
Woman Pilot Finishes Studies
Miss Laura Ingalls, who recently received a limited commercial license, has completed her studies at the Universal Flying School and is taking the examination for a transport license under Inspector Fox. Miss Ingalls’ home is in New York, where she is said to have received several offers of work as a pilot.
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Vol. 82, No. 212, Sunday, 6 April 1930, Page 6-I, Column 1
Ingalls qualified for her limited transport license, 12 April 1930. (After qualifying for an F.C.C. radio-telephone operator license in 1934, her restricted transport license was upgraded to Scheduled Airline Transport Pilot, 26 January 1935.) Her pilot certificate number was 9330.
Laura Ingalls with her de Havilland DH.60G Gipsy Moth, circa 1930. The emblem is the logo of the Moth Aircraft Corporation of Lowell, Massachusetts, the owner of Miss Ingall’s airplane.(Parks Airport)
Laura Ingalls first gained public attention when she performed 344 consecutive loops with a de Havilland DH.60G Gipsy Moth NR9720 (c/n 885), at St. Louis, 4 May 1930. Three weeks later, she increased the number of loops to 980. On August 13, she completed 714 consecutive barrel rolls in the same airplane. (At the time, the airplane was a demonstrator for the Moth Aircraft Corporation, Lowell, Massachusetts, which was licensed by de Havilland to produce the DH.60 in the United States. Kits were built in England, then assembled in Massachusetts. Miss Ingalls later purchased the airplane, 23 June 1930.)
Laura Houghtaling Ingalls rests against the lower wing of her de Havilland DH.60G Gipsy Moth while its engine idles, October 1930. The forward cockpit is covered.
Miss Ingalls was the first woman to fly across the United States from East to West. In 5 October 1930, she flew NR9720 from Roosevelt Field, Westbury, Long Island, new York, to the Grand Central Air Terminal at Glendale, California, arriving 9 October. The flight required nine fuel stops, and took 30 hours and 27 minutes over four days.
Between 28 February and 25 April 1934, Laura Ingalls flew a Lockheed Model 3 Air Express, NR974Y, on a 17,000-mile (27,400 kilometers) solo flight around South America and over the Andes mountain range.
Laura Ingalls with her Lockheed Model 3 Air Express, NR974Y. (CTIE/Monash University)
Laura Ingalls was awarded the Harmon Aviatrix Trophy for 1934.
Ingalls flew her Orion in the 1936 Bendix Trophy Race, finishing in second place behind Louise Thaden, with an elapsed time of 15 hours, 39 minutes.
Miss Ingalls bought a Ryan ST-A low-wing monoplane, NC18901 (c/n 179), which was powered by a 125 horsepower Menasco C4 Pirate inverted 4-cylinder engine. The Ryan ST was developed into the Ryan PT-16–22 military trainers of World War II.
In 1939, Laura Ingalls dropped political leaflets during a 2-hour flight over Washington, D.C. On landing, she was met by representatives of the Civil Aeronautics Administration. Her pilot’s license was suspended by the C.A.A. for violating the airspace surrounding The White House. Some sources indicate that the license was later revoked.
After the United States entered World War II, Miss Ingalls was arrested for acting as an unregistered paid agent of Nazi Germany. At trial, she was convicted. She served 1 year, 7 months, 15 days in prison. (Ingalls was initially incarcerated at the federal prison in Washington, D.C., but after having been severely beaten by other prisoners, she was transferred to the womens’ prison in Alderson, West Virginia.)
Laura Houghtaining Ingalls died at her home in Burbank, California, 10 January 1967, at the age of 73 years. Her ashes were interred at Wiltwyck Cemetery, Kingston, New York.
Laura Ingalls with her Ryan ST-A, NC18901, circa 1937. (SDASM)
¹ An auto-da-fé was a public act of penance required of condemned heretics prior to their execution during the Spanish Inquisition. The meaning of the reference on Ingall’s Orion is unknown.
Joseph Sadi-Lecointe was born 11 July 1891 at Saint-Germain-sur-Bresle, Departement de la Somme, Picardie, France.
Sadi-Lecointe was employed as an aircraft welder. On 30 January 1910, without any instruction, he took off from Issy-les-Moulineaux in a monoplane designed by George and Gendre Zénith. The Aero Club de France awarded him its license number 431 on 10 February 1911.
Adjutant Joseph Sadi-Lecointe with a Morane-Saulnier, circa 1915. (Musée de l’air et de l’espace)
He joined the Service Aéronautique (the original form of the French Air Force) as a mechanic in October 1912, and was designated pilote militaire nº375, 20 September 1913.
Sadi-Lecointe was promoted to sergeant 6 July 1914. He served as a pilot during World War I, flying the Blériot XI-2 with l’escadrille BL 10 from 1 August 1914 to 6 March 1915. After serving five weeks with the RGA, Sergent Sadi-Lecointe was transferred to N 48, flying the Nieuport X. He was promoted to Adjutant, a warrant officer rank, 17 April 1915. On 23 November 1915 became a flight instructor at l’Ecole de Pilotage d’Avord. Sadi-Lacointe was promoted to sous-lieutenant in October 1916. On 17 September 1917 he was assigned as a test pilot at Blériot–Société Pour L’Aviation et ses Dérivés, where he worked on the development of the famous SPAD S.XIII C.1 fighter.
Joseph Sadi-Lecointe was a test pilot for the Société Pour L’Aviation et ses Dérivés SPAD S.VII C.1 and S.XIII C.1 fighters. (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
After the War, he was a test pilot for Nieuport-Delâge, and participated in numerous races and set a series of speed and altitude records with the company’s airplanes. He won the Coupe Deutsche de la Meurthe, 3 August 1920, and the Gordon Bennett Aviation Trophy Race, 28 September 1920, flying a Nieuport-Delâge Ni-D 29V. He also won the Coupe Beaumont, 23 June 1924, flying the Nieuport-Delâge Type 42. Joseph Sadi-Lecointe was appointed Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in 1924.
Joseph Sadi-Lecointe with the Blériot-SPAD S.26 during trials for the Coupe d’Aviation Maritime Jacques Schneider races, 1919. (Bibliothèque nationale de France)Joseph Sadi-Lecointe in the cockpit of his Nieuport-Delâge NiD-29 V racer during te eGordon Bennett races. (Bibliothèque nationale de France)Nieuport-Delâge NiD-42 S. (FAI)Sadi-Lecointe’s record-setting Nieuport-Delâge NiD-40 R. (FAI)
Sadi-Lecointe returned to military service in 1925 and participated in the Second Moroccan War. Then in 1927, he returned to his position as chief test pilot for Nieuport-Delâge. From 1936 to 1940, he served as Inspecteur général de l’aviation civile (Inspector General of Aviation) for the French Air Ministry. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Lieutenant Colonel Sadi-Lecointe was again recalled to military service as Inspector of Flying Schools.
With the Fall of France, Sadi-Lacointe was dismissed by the Vichy government. He joined La Résistance française, and operated with the group, Rafale Andromède. He was arrested 21 March 1944 and held at the Fresnes prison in Paris, where he was interrogated and tortured. He was released to l’hôpital Saint-Louis, Paris, and died there, 15 July 1944.
Centre pénitentiaire de Fresnes
Joseph Sadi-Lecointe, Commandeur Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur, was awarded the Croix de Guerre in three wars. He was posthumously awarded the Médaille de la Résistance. The Aéro-Club de France awarded him its Grande Médaille d’Or. During his flying career, Sadi-Lecointe set six World Records for Speed,¹ and two World Records for Altitude.²
¹ FAI Record File Numbers: 15489, Speed over 100 km, 279,50 km/h (173.67 m.p.h.), 25 September 1920; 15494, Speed over 200 km, 274,60 km/h (170.63 m.p.h.), 28 September 1920; 15498, Speed over a straight 1 km course, 296,69 km/h (184.36 m.p.h.), 10 October 1920; 15499, Speed over a straight 1 km course, 302,53 km (187.98 m.p.h.), 20 October 1920; 15279, Speed, 375 km/h (233 m.p.h.), 15 October 1923; and Speed over a given distance of 500 km, 306,70 km/h (190.58 m.p.h.), 23 June 1924.
² FAI Record File Numbers: 8246, 10 741 m (35,240 ft.), 5 September 1923; 11750, 8 980 m (29,462 ft.), 11 March 1924.
A Piedmont Airlines Boeing 737-201, N735N, photographed at New York La Guardia Airport, 1 December 1984. (Jon Proctor/Wikimedia Commons)
10 July 1982: The first scheduled jet airliner flown in the United States with an all-female crew was Piedmont Airlines’ Flight 328 from Norfolk, Virginia, to Newark, New Jersey. The airliner was a Boeing 737. Captain Cheryl Faye Peters and First Officer Rebecca Rose Schroeder were on the flight deck. The Flight Attendants were Paula Lanier, Dolly Wenat and Cindy Perry. The duration of the flight was 1 hour, 1 minute.
Cheryl Faye Peters, 1963 (The Colonel)
Cheryl Faye Peters was born in 1945 in Roanoke, Virginia. She is the daughter of Lowell Lewis Peters and Virginia Crumpacker Peters. She attended William Fleming High School, graduating in 1963. A member of the school’s student government, Miss Peters served as secretary-treasurer of the senior class. She was a cheerleader, played basketball and volleyball, and was the school’s 24th Homecoming Queen.
After high school, Miss Peters began taking flying lessons. She also rode motorcycles and learned to skydive.
In 1965, she went to work for Eastern Air Lines as a flight attendant based at Miami, Florida. The following year, Eastern’s machinists’ union went on strike and Miss Peters was furloughed. With time available, she continued her flight training, earning a private, then commercial pilot’s license with ratings in both single-engine and multi-engine airplanes. She also earned a flight instructor’s certificate.
In December 1967, Miss Peters married Mr. James Bowers Ritchie III, a law student, in Roanoke.
Following the airline strike, Ms. Peters (Mrs. Ritchie) returned to work at Eastern, but also worked as a commercial pilot and flight instructor. By 1974 she had flown more than 2,000 hours.
In 1974, Cheryl Peters Ritchie applied to Piedmont Airlines as a pilot. After passing her employment interview, in which she was required to fly a simulator in a “Hydraulics OFF” mode to evaluate her strength, she became the first woman to be hired as a pilot by Piedmont.
Ms. Peters completed initial flight training with the company on her 29th birthday, and was then assigned as a first officer on the twin-engine Nihon YS-11 turboprop. Later, she transitioned to the twin-jet Boeing 737.
First Officer Peters upgraded to captain on the company’s Boeing 737s, making her first flight as captain on 10 May 1982.
Captain Peters retired from flying in 1994.
Captain Cheryl Peters, circa 1994. (Collection of Cheryl Peters)
The airliner flown by Captain Peters and First Officer Schroeder was a Boeing 737-201A, serial number 22443, with U.S. registration N786N. It had first flown exactly one year earlier, 10 July 1981, and was delivered to Piedmont Airlines on 29 July 1981. The 737 was christened Roanoke Valley Pacemaker.
The Boeing 737-200 series were short- to medium-range, narrow body, twin-engine civil transports. The -200 first flew 8 August 1967. It had a flight crew of two and could carry a maximum of 136 passengers.
The 737-200 is 100 feet, 2 inches (30.531 meters) long with a wingspan of 93 feet, 0 inches (28.346 meters) and overall height of 36 feet, 10 inches (11.227 meters). Flight 243’s actual takeoff weight was 93,133 pounds (42,224 kilograms). (Its maximum certificated takeoff weight was 100,000 pounds (45,359 kilograms).
The airliner was powered by two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-9A low-bypass turbofan engines producing 14,500 pounds of thrust, each. The 737-200 had a cruise speed of 0.74 Mach (489 miles per hour, 787 kilometers per hour) and a maximum speed of 0.82 Mach (542 miles per hour/872 kilometers per hour). The service ceiling was 35,000 feet (10,668 meters).
1,010 Boeing 737–200s were built. The last one in service with an American airline was retired 21 March 2008.
After U.S. Air merged with Piedmont, 5 August 1989, the 737 was painted in the US Air livery and re-registered N241US. The airliner was transferred to MetroJet, 23 November 1999. Its registration was cancelled 23 November 2005. The aircraft was broken up at Mohave Airport (MHV) in the high desert of southern California.
MetroJet Boeing 737 N241US. (Aero Icarus)
Thanks to Captain Kathryn McCullough of the International Society of Women Airline Pilots for providing this information. Captain McCullough is a retired Northwest Boeing 747 pilot and the author of Ups and Downs and To the Edges of the World.
Telstar 1 launches aboard a Delta rocket at Launch Complex 17B, 0835 GMT, 10 July 1962. (NASA)
10 July 1962: At 0835 GMT (4:35 a.m., EDT) the first communications relay satellite, Telstar 1, was launched into Earth orbit from Launch Complex 17B, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The launch vehicle was a three-stage liquid-fueled Delta rocket.
This was the first commercial space flight, sponsored by a consortium of communications companies and government organizations, including AT&T, Bell Labs, the BBC, NASA, and British and French postal services. The satellite was used to relay live television broadcasts across the Atlantic Ocean. This had never previously been possible.
Telstar weighed 171 pounds (77.5 kilograms). Its weight and size were restricted by the availability of launch vehicles. The satellite was placed in an elliptical orbit, varying from 591 miles (952 kilometers) to 3,686 miles (5,933 kilometers), and inclined at about a 45° angle to Earth’s Equator. The orbital period was 2 hours, 37 minutes. The properties of Telstar’s orbit restricted its use to about 20 minutes during each pass.
In addition to its primary role as a communications relay satellite, Telstar also performed scientific experiments to study the Van Allen Belt.
The Delta was a three-stage expendable launch vehicle which was developed from the Douglas Aircraft Company’s SM-75 Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile.
Designated Thor DM-19, the first stage was 60.43 feet (18.42 meters) long and 8 feet (2.44 meters) in diameter. Fully fueled, the first stage had a gross weight of 108,770 pounds (49,337 kilograms). It was powered by a Rocketdyne LR-79-7 engine which burned liquid oxygen and RP-1 (a highly-refined kerosene rocket fuel) and produced 170,565 pounds of thrust (758.711 kilonewtons). This stage had a burn time of 2 minutes, 45 seconds.
The second stage was an Aerojet General Corporation-built Delta 104. It was 19 feet, 3 inches (5.88 meters) long with a maximum diameter of 4 feet, 6 inches (1.40 meters). The second stage had a gross weight of 9,859 pounds (4,472 kilograms). It used an Aerojet AJ10-104 rocket engine which burned a hypergolic mixture of nitric acid and UDMH. The second stage produced 7,890 pounds of thrust (35.096 kilonewtons) and burned for 4 minutes, 38 seconds.
The third stage was an Allegany Ballistics Laboratory Altair 1. It was 6 feet long, 1 foot, 6 inches in diameter and had a gross weight of 524 pounds (238 kilograms). This stage used a solid-fuel Thiokol X-248 rocket engine, producing 2,799 pounds of thrust (12.451 kilonewtons). Its burn time was 4 minutes, 16 seconds.
The three stages of the Delta rocket accelerated the Telstar satellite to 14,688 miles per hour for orbital insertion.
The day prior to launch, the United States detonated a 1.45 megaton thermonuclear warhead at an altitude of 248 miles (400 kilometers), near Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean. (Operation Dominic-Fishbowl Starfish Prime). Between 21 October 1961 and 1 November 1962, the Soviet Union detonated five nuclear warheads in space (Project K), at altitudes ranging from 59 to 300 kilometers (37–186 miles) over a test range in Khazakhstan. High energy electrons from these tests were trapped in the Earth’s radiation belts. This damaged the satellite’s circuitry and it went out of service in December 1962. ¹
Engineers were able to work around the damage and restore service by January 1963, but Telstar 1 failed permanently 21 February 1963.
