Calbraith Perry Rodgers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calbraith_Perry_Rodgers

Calbraith Perry Rodgers (January 12, 1879 – April 3, 1912) was a pioneer American aviator who made the first transcontinental airplane flight across the U.S. from September 17 to November 5, 1911, a journey punctuated by dozens of stops, both intentional and accidental. The feat made him a national celebrity, but he was killed in a crash a few months later while exhibition flying in California. Crashed into the Pacific during an air show after hitting a seagull which fouled his controls. He died of a broken neck. First person to die from a bird strike. 1 killed.

Family

Rodgers was born on January 12, 1879 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and later lived in Havre de Grace, Maryland. A childhood bout with scarlet fever left him completely deaf in one ear and hearing impaired in the other. He was related to Commodores Oliver Hazard Perry and Matthew Calbraith Perry and had a cousin, John Rodgers, in the Navy's Aerial Corps, learning to fly the Navy's newly purchased Wright airplane. In March 1911, he visited John at the Wright Company factory and flying school in Dayton, Ohio and became interested in aviation. He received 90 minutes of flying lessons from Orville Wright, and on August 7, 1911 he took his official flying examination at Huffman Prairie and became the 49th aviator licensed to fly by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. He was one of the first civilians to purchase a Wright Flyer.

Cross country flight

The publisher William Randolph Hearst offered the Hearst prize, $US 50,000 to the first aviator to fly coast to coast, in either direction, in less than 30 days from start to finish. Rodgers persuaded J. Ogden Armour, of Armour and Company, to sponsor the flight, and in return he named the plane, a Wright Model EX designed for exhibition flights, after Armour's grape soft drink Vin Fiz. (A previous attempt had been made by Harry Atwood). Rodgers left from Sheepshead Bay, New York on September 17, 1911 at 4:30 pm. He reached Chicago on October 9. He crossed the Rocky Mountains, and on November 5, 1911 he landed at Tournament Park in Pasadena, California at 4:04pm in front of a crowd of 20,000 people. He had missed the prize deadline by 19 days. On December 10, 1911 he landed at Long Beach, California and symbolically taxied his plane into the Pacific Ocean. He had carried the first transcontinental U.S. Mail pouch and was accompanied on the ground by a support crew that repaired and rebuilt the plane after each crash landing. The trip required 70 stops, and he paid the Wright brothers' technician Charlie Taylor $70 a week to be his mechanic. Taylor followed the flight by train, frequently arriving before Rodgers at the next rendezvous, and made any required repairs and prepared the aircraft for the next day's flight. The next transcontinental flight was made by Robert G. Fowler. In 1986, to celebrate the 75th anniversary a reenactment in a "replica" biplane was flown by Jim Lloyd of New York.

Death

On April 3, 1912, while making an exhibition flight over Long Beach, California, he flew into a flock of birds, causing the plane to crash into the ocean. His neck was broken and his thorax damaged by the engine of his machine. He died a few moments later, a few hundred feet from where the Vin Fiz ended its transcontinental flight. The aircraft in this last flight was the spare Model B he had carried in the special train during the transcontinental flight, rather than the "Vin Fiz". The "Vin Fiz" itself was later given to the Smithsonian Institution by Calbraith's widow, Mabel Rodgers. He was the 127th airplane fatality since aviation began and the 22nd American aviator to die in an accident. He was also the first pilot who fatally crashed as a result of a bird strike.

Rodgers was interred in Allegheny Cemetery.