RALPH
JOHNSTONE'S AIRPLANE LANDS AT MIDDLE ISLAND
Plane lands in Van Horn's field, presently occupied by
the K-mart parking lot. Photo courtesy of Nassau County
Museum
At the end of October 1910, Long Island was host to an
international aviation meet that surpassed any flying
exhibition yet seen in the United States. From the 22nd
to the 31st of October, twenty-seven of the world's
leading aviators met in this historic multi-national
tournament, held at Belmont Park Racetrack. Planned for
each day of the tournament were cash prices for highest
altitude, greatest distance, longest time aloft and
fastest speed.
American tournament hopes rested primarily on pilots from
the Wright Brothers and Glen Curtiss combination teams.
Included in the Wright team were two of America's most
famous exhibition pilots, Ralph Johnstone and Arch
Hoxsey. Ralph Johnstone had gained fame for his daring
aerial maneuvering and Arch Hoxsey for having flown
former President Roosevelt in Saint Louis on the past
October 11th. (Roosevelt was the first president to have
ever flown.)
Hoxsey and Johnstone had flown together as part of the
Wright Brothers exhibition team throughout the summer of
1910 and had been dubbed the "Star Dust Twins"
for their altitude duels, each trying to out climb the
other. The first days of the Belmont Park tournament were
plagued with low clouds and strong winds, which prevented
full scale flying. The weather cleared on October 24th,
and New Yorkers witnessed a spectacle never seen in
America before, ten aircraft aloft at the same time. Few
Americans in 1910 had seen one aircraft fly, let alone
ten at once. The events that occurred during this
historic tournament made front page news around the
world.
Ralph Johnstone at the controls of his plane
The fifth day of the tournament, Thursday, October 27th,
opened full of promise and closed with a howling west
wind. The strong winds narrowed down the day's program to
one hourly event for distance and altitude. At 1:30 P.M.,
when the signal bomb used by tournament officials to
signal the opening of the altitude contest burst, the
surface winds were 20 miles per hour. There was great
doubt that there would be any entrants. These doubts were
quickly put to rest, however, for seconds after the
signal, Hoxsey and Johnstone started the engines of their
Wright B headless biplanes, and took off into the gale.
Rapidly they rose. It was soon apparent that they were
flying against the wind and at the same time being
carried with it, a spectacle seldom if ever witnessed
before in America. Climbing at 35 to 45 miles per hour,
with their engines at full power, Hoxsey and Johnstone
climbed directly into increasingly stronger head winds,
and actually rose much more rapidly than usual.
Forty-five minutes into their flight, Hoxsey and
Johnstone had drifted backwards over the woods to the
northeast of the racetrack, fighting the gale blowing in
the upper atmosphere, beyond the range of the strongest
field glasses on the ground.
Then ensued a period of great anxiety, which the Belmont
Park spectators had learned to expect whenever one of the
aviators made a real attempt for altitude. Ten minutes
passed. Fifteen, then thirty, and still there was no sign
of their return or word that they had landed. Anxiety
began to manifest itself not only among the thousands in
the grandstand, but also among team members around the
hangars. They envisioned many alarming possibilities. Had
the aircraft been thrown out of control by the high winds
and fallen from their great height? Could they have been
carried out over Long Island Sound and run out of fuel?
Still, no word came in.
Hoxsey, climbing as high as he dared go, was the first to
decide to come down. At 2:55 p.m., Hoxsey landed in an
open field 25 miles east of Belmont Park and about two
miles from Brentwood, Long Island. Even as Hoxsey landed,
Johnstone did not come down.
Arch Hoxsey was one of the
aviators to appear at both the 1910 Los Angeles and Belmont air meets.
He was killed on December 31, 1910, in Los Angeles, while trying to
better his own world altitude record.
As Johnstone reached an altitude he believed near nine
thousand feet, within 200 feet of the world altitude
record 9,186 feet, Johnstone knew he would not have the
fuel to return to Belmont Park, so he concentrated on
achieving the altitude record.
After his engine had been at full power for one and a
half hours burning fuel at a high rate of consumption,
Johnstone knew he better start down. The following
afternoon, Johnstone recounted the story of the remainder
of his flight. "Tell you what, boys," Johnstone
said when he landed at Belmont Park, "It was just
the mercy of providence that saved my neck. When I
thought I was within touching distance of the new world's
record I kind of forgot all about the wind and began to
reach out for more height. Then I suddenly said to
myself, 'Young man, you better see how much gas you've
got.' It's the truth. I had just enough to turn over the
two propellors. When I kept her nose up, the juice ran
down into the engine and she coughed. The moment that I
pointed down, I lost my fuel and she began to miss. I was
not much scared until I got down to the earth and saw
what a gale there was. Then I was frightened for fair.
While I was tossing pennies with myself, the wind turned
me clean around and landed me front end backwards. But
that was just what saved me. If I had come down head
first, the wind would have picked me up, tipped me over
and smashed me to pieces.
Johnstone was also quoted in The New York Times on
October 29th, 1910, concerning his flight. It sheds some
additional information on the difficult landing that
occurred at Middle Island. "Nothing but the lack of
gasoline kept me from making a new world's record for
altitude," he said, once he was back at the hangar
at Belmont Park.
"I could have kept going up indefinitely had it not
been for the fact that I might not have fuel enough to
reach the ground. As it was, I just made it, and no more.
The flight backward in that gale was the worst experience
I have ever had in an airplane, although I found
afterward that it wasn't half as bad up there as it was
nearer the ground. I was driven back from the time I
ascended. And soon, seeing that I couldn't get back to
the field, I contented myself with trying to make a new
mark for altitude. I was going up all the time, but
presently I be thought myself of the gasoline. It was
blowing like 60 and by looking below me where dust clouds
were traveling along on the wind at 60 miles an hour, I
realized to land I would need every bit of power my
engine would produce. It was because of this that I began
to look for a landing place. Finally I saw three fields
beneath and behind me. I determined to drop into the
first of them. I pointed the nose of my plane downward
and was dismayed an instant later to feel my engine begin
to miss. I was so short of gasoline that as the tank was
tilted forward the gasoline ran down into a corner and
refused to feed into the carburetor. I managed to keep
the engine from stopping all together by every once in
awhile straightening my craft out and letting the
carburetor fill again, when I could descend once more
until the gasoline which had accumulated was consumed.
Then I'd straighten her out again and get a fresh supply
in the carburetor. I might have done this until I made an
easy landing, except for the fact that the wind was
becoming more and more squally each moment, and I
couldn't prevent myself sometimes from falling 200 or 300
feet. In some of these falls, I was deathly afraid that
my engine would get so cold that when once again I should
be able to straighten out and fill the carburetor, the
engine would not respond. If it was located across Middle
Country Road; which was the road adjacent to Artist's
Lake. (K-Mart store now occupies the location).
The Patchogue Advance of November 4th 1910 described
Johnstone's first moments after landing in Middle Island,
"After landing and Without waiting to remove his
goggles, he approached the nearest farm house and knocked
on the door. The elderly lady who opened the door was
naturally somewhat startled at the apparition. After
Johnstone assured her that he was harmless and just a
lost man, he was directed to the store of Edward
Pfeiffer, where he had Pfeiffer quickly contact Wilbur
Wright at Belmont Park and assure him of Johnstone's
safety."
Due to Johnstone's remote location in Middle Island,
reporters were unable to contact him after he had had
Pfeiffer call Wilbur Wright. Reporters asked Wilbur
Wright what Johnstone had told him about the incident.
"Incidents? There weren't any. It was just one
straight forward progress, backwards. When they got up a
thousand feet or more, they struck a wind blowing about
25 miles an hour faster than they could travel. I
estimate that it must have been between 65 to 70 miles an
hour. So they just drifted. hadn't, I guess I'd have
landed in a heap.
As it was, I wasn't able to drop into the first field I
had picked out, so fast did the wind blow me backwards.
So then I aimed for the second one. This one, too, I
missed and I realized then that if I didn't make the
third field, I probably should alight on Middle Island
itself and obliterate the whole village. There are only
about three houses and a church there. However, I managed
to drop into that last field. And I could tell you, it
was my last chance for safety. For all around it were
groups of trees and a patch of open was little more than
four times the size of my craft."
Based on Johnstone's descriptions of the flight, one can
interpret his landing at Middle Island two ways: Either
he actually landed moving backwards or he landed downwind
- it's difficult to ascertain which, due to the imprecise
nature of Johnstone's description, "front end
backwards."
Upon his rough and dangerous landing, Johnstone damaged
two of his aircraft wheels and one of his aircraft
runners.
Johnstone had landed near Middle Island, Long Island, 55
miles from Belmont Park. The small field he landed in
belonged to Dr. A. N. Van Horn, and That's all there was
to it. But I guess it's the first time in the history of
aviation that anybody ever made a flight tail end
foremost."
Johnstone had no trouble keeping the aircraft over night
by covering it with canvas and tying it to trees. The
following day, he brought his damaged wheels to Yaphank,
six miles away, which was the closest location for his
repair work. A local Middle Island boy repaired his
damaged runner. Since an aircraft had never flown this
far east on Long Island, any person within miles around
who could made their way to Middle Island to see the
aircraft. To quote the Patchogue Advance, "It was
really a big day for our modest little community."
Johnstone's departure from Middle Island required some
preparation. "I had an awful task starting today,
however. There were so many trees that I had to chop a
good many of them down before I could get room to go up
in. Once off the ground I was all right." He was
unable to acquire enough fuel at Middle Island to fly
nonstop back to Belmont Park so he had to land near
Pinelawn, Long Island to take on more fuel. The
proprietor of the hotel in Pinelawn gave Johnstone some
700 postcards to drop on the way back to Belmont Park.
Upon his arrival back at Belmont Park, the grandstand,
full of 20,000 people, cheered wildly as Johnstone flew
low by the grandstand. But there was one more surprise
from this historic flight of the day before. After
landing, officials studied the sealed barograph that
Johnstone carried on his flight to Middle Island. It
disclosed that Johnstone had achieved a new American
altitude record by climbing to 8,471 feet.
Ralph Johnstone crossing the finish
line in air race, 1910.
On the last day of the International Aviation Meet at
Belmont Park, October 31st, 1910, in an aircraft in which
he had never flown before nicknamed the Baby Wright
Roadster, Johnstone would set the world's altitude record
by climbing to 9,714 feet. But this would be Ralph
Johnstone's last record. Less than three weeks later on
November 17, 1910, near Denver Colorado, while flying an
exhibition with Arch Hoxsey and Walter Brookins,
Johnstone performed his famous dangerous swooping spiral
dive and pull up. The day before, his wing tip had been
damaged on landing against a fence and had been repaired.
But apparently the strain of the spiral dive and pull up
caused the repaired wingtip to fail and crumble, sending
Johnstone, who was fighting the controls right to the
moment of impact, to instantaneous death. He was the
first American aviation casualty since Lt. Selfridge's
death on September 17, 1908. Ralph Johnstone was the
second aviation casualty.
In the eight months that Johnstone had been flying, his
daredevil aerial feats made him one of the foremost
aviators in the world. There was no other aviator like
him. He had the strength of a trained athlete and the
intuitive sense of balance that made him the best
vaudeville attraction in America when he was heading
bills from coast to coast as a trick bicyclist. Three
months before his death, Wilbur Wright described
Johnstone: "The trouble with Johnstone is that he
will never be content with equaling the achievements of a
rival. He must always excel. There is no way of holding
him in. orders mean nothing to him." Back of his
disobedience of the Wright Brothers orders and his
constant practice in the air of some startling feat, was
always his bulldog courage and obstinate purpose that
eventually made him the great aviator that he was.
A quote attributed to Johnstone at the beginning of his
professional career in the summer of 1910 sums up his own
beliefs: "There ate two kinds of aviators. There's
Wilbur and Orville Wright. They
have developed these machines and they have flown in them
many times. But neither of them will break any records in
them. They are the creators of the machines. I am in
another class. I find these airplanes ready to be used
for my purpose just as I found the bicycle. I couldn't
invent either a bicycle or an airplane, but I can use
them, and use them better than the men who made them.
Moreover, I can go on and on in discovering new methods
of controlling and handling them, because I have the
vaudeville performer's instinct."
Perhaps his "vaudeville performer's instinct"
pushed him too far. Just three days before his final
flight Johnstone was quoted one last time. "It's
going to get me some day. It's sooner or later going to
get us all. Don't think our Aim is the advancement of
science. That is secondary and is worked out by the men
on the ground. When you get into the air, you get the
intoxication of flying. No man can help feeling it. Then
he begins to flirt with it, tilt his plane into all sorts
of dangerous angles, dips and circles. This feeling is
only the trap it sets for us... the non-mankilling
airplane of the future will be created from our crushed
bodies."
When Ralph Johnstone died his widow was quoted in the
Kansas City Times, "I never was worried about Ralph.
He was so brave and careful. It seemed nothing could
happen to him. I did not take into consideration a mishap
to his machine."
Today, when I look up at a small airplane passing over
head, my thoughts bring me to 1910 and that historic
flight. When I see 747's make their way towards JFK, I
think of Ralph Johnstone. For these are the
non-mankilling airplanes Johnstone envisioned, and which
were created from the crushed body of this early pioneer
aviator, the first to fly over Eastern Long Island.
The fact that Ralph Johnstone set the American altitude
record on this flight enhances its historical
significance. I request the Town of Brookhaven and its
associated historical societies to erect an historic
marker near the location of Ralph Johnstone's landing. I
further request the marker be erected on the eightieth
anniversary of I his flight, October 27, 1990.
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Written by,
Peter Kockenmeister
Airline Pilot, Northwest Airlines
Former USAF Instructor Pilot
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