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December

Exhibits & Collections > History Up Close > December

December is a month of reflection, a time when people look back at the events of the previous months and prepare for the New Year. In this spirit we devote this edition of “This Month in Naval Aviation History” not to one singular event, but instead the string of happenings in naval aviation eighty-years ago as reported by the Bureau of Aeronautics Newsletter.

Naval aviation took to the sky in distant places and climes during December 1927. In California, pilots of Fighting Squadron (VF) 2B conducting runs over ships to help train their antiaircraft gunners relished the relief from high temperatures on the ground while cruising in open cockpits at 6,000 ft. altitude. The opposite was true on the East Coast. At Naval Air Station (NAS) Anacostia in Washington D.C., there was a great demand for face masks to ward off the cold, prompting mention of needed work on a face mask that did not fog an airman’s goggles in flight. At NAS Hampton Roads, Virginia (pictured on this page), Observation Squadron (VO) 3S reported a snap of “lanyard” weather that had personnel in a “frenzied rush for winter flying suits,” a lanyard being a piece of rigging used to secure shipboard objects. An NY-2 seaplane based at NAS Hampton Roads, Virginia, returned from a training flight with two inches of ice on the leading edge of its lower wing, making aileron control somewhat more difficult than normal for the pilot. The weather even had Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, Rear Admiral William A. Moffett down, the newsletter announcing that he had returned to work after a bout with influenza.

Aviators continued to push the boundaries of flight amid this golden age of aviation, with seventeen Fighting Squadron (VF) 5S pilots making flights to an average altitude of 23,000 ft. comparing the performance of an oxygen mouthpiece and an oxygen mask. They preferred the former because of its comfort and the fact that the mask fogged their goggles, but history tells us their desires were ultimately not the Navy’s decision.VO-3S welcomed the O2U (pictured on this page) to the fleet, the first plane christened with the famous name “Corsair” to serve in naval aviation.

Though existing primarily for war, naval aviation helped save lives during that December many years ago. A seaplane based at Coco Solo in the Canal Zone located a wayward launch containing a fishing party looking for a holiday catch. On 18 December an F-5L flying boat launched from NAS Hampton Roads bound for Coast Guard Station Number 182 six miles north of Hatteras, North Carolina, where a man and his wife, who was pregnant and suffering from appendicitis, awaited them in a boat. The pair were successfully taken aboard the airplane and it started north. About two hours later, about twelve miles off Hampton Roads, the F-5L’s starboard generator carried away, which threw the motor out of time. The crew put the plane down and taxied to shore, where the patient and her husband were driven by ambulance to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. They had been in good hands for the F-5L that carried them was flown by enlisted pilots Harold June and Pappy Byrne. Two years later June would fly over the South Pole as co-pilot and radioman on Richard Byrd’s aircraft Floyd Bennett, while Byrne finished his career having logged over 23,000 flight hours in 140 different types of aircraft. The day after Christmas, with the station complement of NAS Lakehurst, New Jersey, very much on holiday routine, the crew of the Los Angeles (ZR 3) combed the surrounding area to find volunteers to man a ground crew, and then launched to hunt for a downed aircraft. The airship returned two days and 1,200 nautical miles later, having found no trace of the of Sikorsky amphibian The Dawn, piloted by American aviatrix Frances Wilson Grayson and her navigator Brice Goldsborough, who were flying from New York to Newfoundland, from which they would attempt to fly the Atlantic. Their disappearance remains a mystery.

December was also a time of hails and farewells, with flight class 27-3 at NAS Hampton Roads giving a party to remember and a young lieutenant (junior grade) named John C. Waldron receiving orders to report to fly torpedo planes, foreshadowing his future command of the ill-fated Torpedo Squadron (VT) 8 at the Battle of Midway. Washington D.C. bid farewell to Assistant General Inspector of Naval Aircraft Lieutenant Ralph S. Barnaby, CC, who was also an accomplished singer and sculptor, the newsletter reporting the departure met with tears among “the fair sex of this fair city.” Also in the nation’s capital, none other than Charles Lindbergh paid a visit to the party honoring the 1927 recipient of the Herbert Schiff Memorial Trophy for flight safety. Fittingly, across the continent, Santa Claus arrived by air to distribute gifts to over 500 children at the NAS San Diego gymnasium.

Such was life in naval aviation four score Decembers ago.

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