lifetime he filed about 120 patents
in a variety of fields ranging
from metallurgy to automobile
suspension. He was the inventor
of the “joystick” aircraft control,
radial engines, and of a new type of
fuel pump. He also developed the
idea of rocket maneuver by means
of vectored thrust.
C
albraith Perry Rodgers
(January 12, 1879 – April
3, 1912) was an American
aviation pioneer. He made the first
transcontinental airplane flight
across the U.S. from September 17,
1911, to November 5, 1911, with
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
at an exhibition in California. 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. 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 had J. Ogden
Armour, of Armour and Company,
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.
26| FlyUAA| www.FlyUAA.org| November Issue
Rodgers left from Sheepshead Bay,
New York, on September 17, 1911,
at 4:30 pm. He reached Chicago
on October 9, 1911. It was decided
to avoid the Rocky Mountains,
he would take a southerly route,
flying south through the Midwest
until reaching Texas. He turned
west after reaching San Antonio.
On November 5, 1911, he landed
at Tournament Park in Pasadena,
California, at 4:04 pm in front of
20,000 people. He had missed
the prize deadline by 19 days. On
December 10, 1911, he landed
in Long Beach, California, and
taxied his plane into the Pacific
Ocean. He had carried the first
transcontinental U.S. Mail pouch.
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 and
performed maintenance for
the next day’s flight. The next
transcontinental flight was made
by Robert G. Fowler. 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 the airplane. 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. According to
contemporary records, his 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.
Issue November| www.FlyUAA.org| FlyUAA| 27