A Very OK Podcast
Episode 6: “Oklahoma’s Early Aviation History”
August 19, 2021
Episode Transcript
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m the director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, and I’m sitting here with Dr. Bob Blackburn, who was the previous director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. And Bob, it’s great to be back with you today to record our podcast. And we have a fascinating topic, one I’m very excited about. We’re going to talk about the history of aviation in Oklahoma, and we’re commemorating an important event in Oklahoma’s aviation history, because it’s kind of a sad event. But August 15 is the anniversary of the day that Will Rogers and Wiley Post crashed in Point Barrow, Alaska, which sent ripples all across the world, not in the, not only in the aviation community, but throughout the entire world because of the popularity of these gentlemen. So I thought this would be a great time to talk about aviation, and Oklahoma has had such a robust history in the field of aviation. So, how are you doing, and how’s things going?
Dr. Bob Blackburn: I’m loving it. I’m working on some historical projects. Still writing books, of course, I’ll never quit doing that. And some museum exhibit design projects and learning more all the time. And you know, if the PhD taught me anything, it’s taught me how much I don’t know, and the research skills I developed over the years, the contacts, and the opportunities. I just keep learning, and that’s what keeps me going.
Thompson: I always joke because, you know, we’ve been doing this podcast for several months now, and Bob shows up, and he’s got some notes scrawled out about some things that he wants to talk about. It takes me about two weeks of research to get ready to do these podcasts. And Bob’s got so much information just kind of floating around in his head about all of these topics. And so I hope that by the time that I’m where you’re at, that I have all of this stuff stuck somewhere in my head as well, and it comes out as easily as it does for you. But I have to say that I’ve been so thrilled that we’ve been able to do these podcasts and to share all the knowledge and information that you have, and I get comments all the time from people who are enjoying what we’re doing. And so, thank you for continuing to go on this ride with us.
Blackburn: Well, thanks for hosting this and using the resources, the Oklahoma Historical Society, to share history and yet another way.
Thompson: That’s exactly right. So talking about aviation in Oklahoma, and of course, we always like to have a little bit of a pop culture conversation, movies, musics, things like that that have a relation to the topic we’re discussing. You got any favorite movies about airplanes and aviation?
Blackburn: Oh yeah, of course, as a child of the ’50s. I grew up back in the days when there were three television stations in almost every community, and you’d have Late shows and the Early Late show and the Late Late Show and the Very, Very Late show, because movies were cheap and didn’t cost much to put them on. So I was always watching movies, and I’ll never forget the emotional connection I made with Jimmy Stewart, who was playing the role of Charles Lindbergh flying across the Atlantic in The Spirit of St. Louis, made in 1957. And it was so dramatic, and there was very little in it. I’ve watched it since, and it still affects me, but it’s a fairly simple movie. Most of it takes place of him on the set, in this cab of the airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, and the courage, and I think what it meant to me is the reaction of the world to someone willing to crawl into an airplane and to try something that had never been done. New frontiers, which, of course, is the spirit of aviation going higher, farther, faster. All of that is part of the Oklahoma story, and I think that Jimmy Stewart in that movie captured that. But then I also like to be silly. And I’ll never forget the first time I saw the movie Airplane!
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: With Lloyd Bridges as the commander, trying to bring them in, and kept smoking cigarettes and then doing drugs. It was such, such satire that it still makes me laugh to think about the movie. But those two are two extremes of drama and then silly, but both around the experience of flying and taking a chance.
Thompson: Yeah, yeah. So I’m a child of the ’80s, and so some of my favorite aviation movies are from that time period. And of course, there’s Top Gun and everybody knows about Top Gun. But one of my favorites from that era is Iron Eagle. And that was a movie with Louis Gossett Jr., where there was a man in the military, and he was on a mission. And he was shot down over this unnamed Middle Eastern country. And the boy had learned to fly, and so he arranged this elaborate plot to go hijack a United States government fighter plane and fly over and rescue his, rescue his dad from the Middle East. And I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world, as I guess I was probably 10, 11, 12 when I first saw that movie. And the fact that, you know, this young kid who was in high school could go and rescue his dad and fighter pilot, and that certainly captured my imagination. I will say, I went back and watched that movie recently, and it didn’t hold up as well as it did when I was that age.
(laughter)
Thompson: But and then, going in that vein of what you talked about with the Airplane!, Hot shots! is one of my favorite movies, and that’s with Charlie Sheen and several other notable actors. But that’s a spoof on Top Gun. And there’s a scene in that movie where the pilot’s flying the plane, and he’s talking. He’s like, oh, lost the wing, lost my other wing, lost the tail, lost, and then next thing you know, you just see the cockpit slam down on the tarmac, and that was his landing. And, oh, Lloyd Bridges was in that. And he was incredible in that. Everybody knew him from Sea Hunt and kind of this serious role. And he was hilarious as the admiral in Hot Shot! so.
Blackburn: You know, it’s not really surprising that aviation has been a central story to so many movies because, you know, creativity in movies or television or even books or whatever it might be is all based on dramatic tension, and the whole idea of leaving Earth and flying is dramatic. And so it’s an easy topic applied to art, whether it’s a book, like when I was a kid, Tom Swift Jr. books were one of my favorites. I started, I discovered those when I was about 10, 11 years old. And Tom Swift Jr. could fly an airplane, and I wanted to be up there with him, experimenting. So, aviation is a natural. But in Oklahoma history, there’s so much reality that is just as interesting as these movies and the skills in flying, the taking a chance of pushing the frontiers of what can be done, perseverance. This is the reality of Oklahoma history.
Thompson: Yeah. Do you remember the first time you flew in a plane?
Blackburn: I do. In fact, one of the stories I want to share today was the story of Braniff Airlines. But my mother had a television show starting in 1958. So in 1959, she got to fly to Dallas to meet with Jack LaLanne. And your older listeners might know that name, but he had an exercise show on television.
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: Jack LaLanne, and he had part of mom’s TV show slot, and we were going to Dallas. So Mom took Betty and me, and we got on to a prop Braniff Airlines out at Oklahoma City Airport. Across the street from the airport was a big field that people could go out and park and watch planes land and take off. That was really popular to do in the 1950s. And so that was my first flight. And when I finally flew on a jet, I thought, oh, I’d rather be on a prop. It was more fun. You could hear it. You were lower. You could see things.
(laughter)
Blackburn: But that was my first flight. How about you?
Thompson: Yeah. You know, we didn’t. We didn’t take a lot. I was a farm kid, and usually in the summer times, we didn’t take a lot of vacations because there was so much work to do on the farm. And in winter times, we went on vacations, we always drove. We would drive to go snow skiing or something like that. So it wasn’t until I was 21 that I had my first flight, which is pretty late for, you know, people born in the era that I was. But I was in college, and I flew out to visit a friend of mine who lived out in California, and it was my first time to travel that far by myself and travel on a plane by myself. And I remember being quite captivated by it all.
And still, even today, I just got back from, we took a family vacation to Charleston last week and flew out there. There’s still even something about that takeoff and landing part where you’re kind of, your stomach jumps up into the middle of your throat, and you always kind of have that thought of, I wonder what happens if one of these engines doesn’t make it, but I love to fly. And I’ve had an opportunity now to fly on a Vietnam-era helicopter that OBNDD had. I don’t know, not sure if they still have it, but I got to do that a few years ago. And so I do love to fly when I get the opportunity.
Let’s talk about the history of aviation in Oklahoma. And, you know, doing my research for this, I pulled up a few bits of information. There was a guy named Jimmy Jones who was a Tulsan. He attempted to build the first airplane in Oklahoma with a man named Bill Stigler in 1906. And 1906 is only three years after Kitty Hawk. And this is kind of a crazy story because they built the plane, they kind of tested it out a little to make sure it was going to do what they wanted it to do. Then they disassembled it, hauled it in a wagon to Red Fork, which was a little community just right across the river from Tulsa. And then they reassembled the plane, but by the time they got it reassembled, it was into the evening. And they said, okay, we’re going to come back the next morning, and we’re going to fly our plane. Well, as is want to happen in Oklahoma, a storm blew up overnight. The plane was destroyed. And so that ruined the chance for them to try to be the first people in Oklahoma to achieve powered flight. Charles Willard was actually the first person to fly a plane in Oklahoma. He was not an Oklahoman, but he came to Oklahoma City in March of 1910 with his Curtiss Pusher biplane, and at 5:30 p.m. on March 18, 350 people watched him make the first powered flight in Oklahoma. He flew 50 feet at a height. I’m sorry, he flew 50 feet high at a height of for three-quarters of a mile in distance. And then the second day, he flew for 20 minutes at 400 feet high.
Blackburn: Well, and Trait, years ago, I wrote the history of the Oklahoma City State Fair, and aviation was a huge attraction. They had balloon artists come in, and they would do a sense, and aviation was so popular. But this is before passenger airline. It’s before mail routes. This is before really military aviation. And it was such a novelty that state fairs would feature flights of these people like that coming in and demonstrating and taking people on a flight. And the barnstormers would really come in and entertain people.
Of course, one of my favorite stories, the next year, 1911, there was a car dealer in Enid, Oklahoma, named Clyde Cessna, born in Iowa, but had come west, came to Oklahoma running a car dealership. Well, he was fascinated with airplanes, and he designed his first monoplane, at that time during the Wright brothers’ years. It was really more of a kite with a motor on it that they tried to get up in the air, but he really believed a monoplane with the wings above the fuselage would work. He made a monoplane and with his location he went out to the Great Salt Plains that’s still there today, because it was flat, and with the southerly breezes thought he could catch a breeze, and many crashes and some alterations later, he finally flew. Well, Cessna, of course, would go on to create Cessna. Unfortunately for us in Oklahoma, he found financial supporters in Wichita. So he moved it, and that became Cessna.
But another Oklahoma connection is that as Oklahomans were developing their oil companies, people like Frank Phillips and E. W. Marland, they found a market with aviation just as aviation was starting, just like cars’ internal combustion engines. They were developing aviation fuel, and Frank Phillips started putting money into aviation. Well, one of Clyde Cessna’s monoplanes in 1927 was flown by a pilot and won the Dole Derby Race from Oakland, California, to Honolulu, Hawaii, won $25,000. That airplane, called the Woolaroc, is still in a museum near Bartlesville at the Woolaroc Museum. And it’s a story that comes right out of the pages of history. And it was worldwide popularity, only a couple of years after Lindbergh had flown across the Atlantic. And that was another connection with Oklahoma. And Phillips Petroleum would continue developing over 100-octane jet or airplane fuel, and then later, jet fuel became an important part of their business.
Thompson: Bob, I don’t think people realize just how popular these pilots were and and how influential they were. Can you talk about what captured the imagination? Why were these popular, these pilots the rock stars of their day?
Blackburn: Well, they had a little bit of the drama of a cowboy. You know, when we thought of cowboy culture, and of course, from the 1920s with Tom Mix all the way through Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, and all the cowboy people we’ve talked about many times, is that, you know, the idea of one person getting out there on their own and surviving, taking care of themselves. Well, you take that whole image and put it in the cockpit of something with an engine that’ll take you up off the ground. The danger is there, and people like that self-reliance, that spirit of individualism, the courage it takes to do that. It’s something that is admirable, and these people were heroes. It’s hard to imagine today when flight is so common. We just kind of take it for granted. But in the 19-teens and ’20s, it was on the cutting edge of technology and extremely dangerous. And, but there were pilots here who were willing. And as I think you’re going to share the story, one of the greatest and most well-known pilots of all time, Wiley Post.
Thompson: He’s an Oklahoma story through and through. I mean, you can’t really talk about aviation in Oklahoma without talking about Wiley Post. He saw his first flight when he was a child. He went to an exhibition. Like you said, these fairs were so popular where they would do these flight exhibitions, by Art Smith in Lawton. And he was a laborer at Post Field, which was at Fort Sill, and so that kind of captured his imagination as well. Went to the oil fields to earn money and to be able to purchase an airplane. And unfortunately, that’s where the accident occurred, where he lost his eye, and he got their version of workers’ compensation at that particular time. And so he used that money to buy a Curtiss Jenny biplane, which was really an essential kind of a training plane at that point. And he began to pursue a career as a barnstormer. And then he was hired in 1930 to be the personal pilot for the oilman F. C. Hall, and F. C. Hall purchased a Lockheed Vega monoplane and named it after his daughter, the Winnie Mae. He named the plane the Winnie Mae.
Blackburn: And they lived in Chickasha.
Thompson: And they lived in Chickasha. A lot of people think that the pilot, that the plane was named after either Wiley Post’s daughter or his wife, because Wiley Post wife’s name was Mae, but that’s actually not the case. It’s F. C. Hall’s daughter. He won, in 1930, he won the Bendix Trophy Race from Los Angeles to Cleveland, and then in 1931, he and a gentleman named Harold Getty circumnavigated the globe in a record eight days, 15 hours, and 51 minutes. And this was an incredible feat at that time. 1933, first person to fly solo around the world. That’s an Oklahoman! First person to fly solo around the world. You might think it would have been Charles Lindbergh or somebody else, but it wasn’t. It was Wiley Post, and he bested his previous time. He did it in seven days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes, got a ticker-tape parade in New York City, was an international star. In 1934, he started to pioneer high altitude flights, and along with B. F. Goodrich, he helped develop the very first pressurized flight suit, which is the precursor to exactly what we see today that the astronauts use, which is the precursor to the suits that pilots use in the military. Wiley Post was the first person to develop those.
September 5, 1934, he reached 40,000 feet, and this is in the Winnie Mae, a plane that was not designed, not designed to do this. And later that fall, he got up to 48,000 feet. He thinks that he reached 50,000 feet, but the gauge that he had that determined that broke. And so they don’t I don’t think they gave him credit for that. But he got to 48,000 feet, and he discovered the jet stream, which is just an incredible contribution to aviation history. In 1935, he wants to go and see if there’s a new air route from the United States to Russia. And he convinces his good, good friend and also a person who is really interested in aviation, Will Rogers, to come along with him. He’s got an experimental aircraft. It’s kind of a hybrid plane that he’s flying. He wants to outfit it with these floats so that he can land on the water. The floats that were designed for the plane didn’t come in at the right time. So he’s up in Seattle. He has another person equip it with a different set of floats. So the whole aircraft is experimental. So they are flying in Alaska. They encounter fog. They land to check with the Native population and see where they’re at, and this is August 15, 1935. They take off off the shallow lake, engine trouble, go down into the lake. And two of the biggest international stars in both flight, and then, of course, Will Rogers—movies, vaudeville, author, columnist, radio star is—they are deceased on August 15, 1935. One of the interesting things to me about Wiley Post is when he, August 22, 1935, he lay in repose in the Capitol. Twenty thousand people showed up. The halls were so packed that people were fainting in the hallways because it was so hot, and they had pilots flying overhead, dipping their wings down low, and they were dropping flowers and streamers all around the Capitol that day.
And of course, he’s buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in north Oklahoma City. And in fact, last year I took my kids, and I said, we’re going to go find where Wiley Post is buried. His grave is very easy to find. There’s a big marker there. And so I took my kids and used that as an opportunity on the anniversary of his death to show them Wiley Post’s grave and to talk to them about him.
Blackburn: You know, another personal connection there, Trait. I spoke at the dedication of that marker, along with Bob Burke, who wrote the great biography of Wiley Post. A lot of people over the years have assumed that the airplane that crashed in Alaska was the Winnie Mae, but it was not. The Winnie Mae was back here in Oklahoma. Mae Post would sell it to the Smithsonian, and it’s been property of the Smithsonian since the 1930s. Well, when we were planning the Oklahoma History Center, we got our first funding for planning in ’98, ’99, and I was in charge of the planning. And I wanted to have the first story that people saw when they came into the building to be about the State Capitol. So when you come in the back, you look, you see the Capitol. That’s artifact number one, represents all Oklahomans.
But the second story is as you walked in, you look up, you would see an aircraft. Well, of course I wanted that to be the Winnie Mae. And of course, we were not going to get the Winnie Mae from the Smithsonian. Frank Keating still has not forgiven me. He thinks that I should have fought to get it, but there’s no way they would have ever done it, and we couldn’t have put it there with that light anyway. But I wanted to do a replica that would hang. And so in the planning documents, before we had any funding, I think we had $200,000 to do the planning. I had a picture drawn by an artist of the Winnie Mae hanging in this big picture window that you could see from 23rd and Lincoln. And connecting the dots of history here, it was going to cost $200,000 to do a replica, full-scale replica in Houston. And I went to Walt Helmerich, who was actually Walt Helmerich III, who was head of the Helmerich & Payne Drilling Company. And the connection there is that Walt’s father, the original Walt Helmerich that we knew, was a pilot at Fort Sill at Post Field, not named after Wiley Post, but called Post Field because it was part of the military post, and it was the first headquarters of the Army Aviation, and because at that time aviation was tied to artillery as spotters. And so Walt Helmerich, this young hot dog pilot, was there, met a young girl from Oklahoma City, happened to be the daughter of Charlie Colcord, who was president of the Oklahoma Historical Society at that time, but also the richest man in Oklahoma. Well, Charlie has to decide, what is he going to do about this son-in-law who’s out there risking his life barnstorming. He says, son, I’m going to put you in business. And he creates this drilling company, Helmerich & Payne.
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: William T. Payne from Seminole County becomes the business partner. Well, this pilot gets into, you know, the oil and gas industry. And then his son says, yes, Bob, I will fund the Winnie Mae. So today, in the Oklahoma History Center, as people drive by, they see an airplane in the big window. And it is a replica of the Winnie Mae that is a tribute to the story of Wiley Post, the son of sharecroppers in Oklahoma, who does great things and pushes the boundaries of the frontier. And to me, it’s one of the typical Oklahoma stories— rags to riches.
Thompson: Well, and speaking of the History Center, which is the building, we’re now sitting here doing this recording in. And, you know, we’ve got some great exhibits on aviation. In fact, we just a few months ago dedicated a new exterior exhibit where we have a Huey helicopter that was flown in Vietnam, and people can come see that outside. We have exhibits on African American pilots. Of course, we have our brand new Oklahomans and Space exhibit, where people can come see the contributions that Oklahomans have made to the space program. We’ve got a helicopter simulation, so we have all kind of great things to see and learn more about aviation here. But one of the exhibits that we have is about Braniff Airlines, and there’s a great little simulation that you can do where you can kind of feel what it must have been like to take off from the airfield in Oklahoma City and land in Tulsa. And so I think it would be great if you talked a little bit about the history of Braniff Airlines, because this is, they were formed, I believe in 1928, and made a major contribution to aviation in the state.
Blackburn: Several connections with Oklahoma. One reason I wanted to do that exhibit, and I wrote that script where Paul Braniff turns around and is talking to, you know, the passengers, and they fly across Oklahoma City and Tulsa. I had a great time with that exhibit. But Paul Revere Braniff was born in Oklahoma. His dad was in the insurance industry, came about 1900 to Oklahoma City, which was the fastest- growing city in the nation at the time. Did well. Had two sons, Tom Jr. and Paul Revere. Well, Paul, during World War I, enlists, becomes a pilot down at Fort Sill, loves flying. He comes out of World War I, starts barnstorming, experimenting, and aviation is in his blood. He has a passion for it. He can’t quit. Well, by 1928, while Tom Jr. is expanding his insurance business at a prosperous time, Paul says, I want to start an airplane company. So they create a little company, and in 1928, they make their first commercial flights, and this would be the first regular-scheduled air passenger flights in Oklahoma from Oklahoma City to Tulsa. And it was about $12 for a one-way ticket. And mainly oil people from Tulsa, Oklahoma City, going back and forth, strictly limited to the money they could make on passengers. It was in a Stinson Detroiter. It would carry five people, and so you couldn’t make a lot of money. But Paul was the pilot, and he was having fun taking off every day, making two runs a day over to Tulsa and back to Oklahoma City. And they finally sold out to a company that would become American Airlines.
And Paul and Tom would create another company, and that’s the one that everyone knows today, Braniff Airlines, if you go back 30 years at least. But Braniff Airlines starts here in Oklahoma City. They expand. They do well. Paul finally retires. Coming out of World War II, they have a growing fleet. They get some of the first routes into Central and South America, going to Cuba. They become a regional. They then expand all the way from the Gulf states to Mexico, and they keep expanding. And in 1953, Tom Braniff passes away. Well, another Oklahoman steps up. One of the early investors in that airline in 1930 was man named Fred Jones, who would have Fred Jones Mercury, Lincoln, Ford dealerships, the second-largest Ford dealer in the entire country. The first was in LA, bigger market, but here in Oklahoma City and in Tulsa, Fred Jones. Well he invested in that early airline, believed in them. He loved to fly. And I have a photograph of Fred Jones in my book about Fred Jones Industries of getting on an airplane. Well, he became chairman of the board of Braniff Airlines just as they began expanding into these new markets in the ’50s, and by the 1960s, they’re absorbed by an even bigger airline company. And then when aviation is deregulated in the late ’70s, they decide they’re going to be one of the big boys, and what is Braniff Airlines by that time, over expands and then a recession hits in 1981, and they go bankrupt. And finally, the company goes away. But Braniff Airlines’ legacy is so strong, people like me remember their first flight in a Braniff Airline. And it was the main airline in and out of Oklahoma City for 20 years. If you’re flying in and out of Oklahoma City now, it’s probably Southwest or American Airlines.
Thompson: Right.
Blackburn: But then it would have been Braniff and Braniff, and you might have a few others coming in. But Braniff was huge. And at one point, when they were expanding there in the ’70s, they decided to paint all of their airplanes really gaudy colors and put their stewardesses in hot pants.
(laughter)
Blackburn: And, you know, they were trying all these gimmicks because during regulation, you tried you got your customers not based on price, because everyone had to charge the same for every route. But it was with food service. It was with the color. It was with the flash. And Braniff was one of the flashiest airlines of all time. But it’s rooted right here in Oklahoma.
Thompson: You know, another thing I want to talk about is African American pilots and also made a pretty important contribution. And one of the most significant is James Banning, who was born in Canton, Oklahoma Territory, in 1900. He moves to Iowa in 1919. He’s working on his electrical engineering degree. He’s operating an auto shop at the same time, or an auto repair shop. In 1920, took his first plane ride in an air circus, and that gets him hooked. You know, there always seems to be this moment where you have that one experience with flight, and they couldn’t think about doing anything else. He becomes passionate about aviation. He’s the first African American to get his pilot’s license from the US Department of Commerce in 1926, and then in 1932, he and Thomas Cox Allen, another African American person from Oklahoma City, they partner together, and they become the first African Americans to fly coast-to-coast in 1932. And unfortunately, James Banning was killed in a plane crash in 1933 at an air show, which could have been prevented. Because of discrimination, he wasn’t allowed to fly the plane, and so there was a lesser- qualified pilot who was flying the plane in the air show and crashed the plane. So, certainly want to make sure that we pay tribute to those who have, from our minority communities, who made such an important impact in aviation as well.
Blackburn: Well, and to wrap up. I’ve got two stories from the minority communities, although one is not a minority, but the glass ceiling there was with women, and it happened to be an American Indian, a young Chickasaw woman named Pearl Scott, later Pearl Scott Carter, and she learned to fly. She again, had this passion, and one of her early instructors was Wiley Post, and at the time that she got her pilot’s license, she was the youngest licensed pilot in Oklahoma, and later Bill Anoatubby and the Chickasaw Nation would make a movie about her life, Pearl. And it’s online. People can see that.
But the story that intrigues me so much that I used it as the last story in my centennial history of the state in 2007, and it’s the story of Lawrence Hart. Lawrence Hart was fullblood Cheyenne. His grandfather was at the Battle of the Washita when Custer’s forces attacked Black Kettle’s village, and they helped raise Lawrence. He was born near Hammon in the western part of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Nation, and from the time he was a kid, he was a good student, a great athlete, and he wanted to fly. He went to a Mennonite college in Kansas, but then got into the Marines. He wanted to serve his country. Korea, who was just flaring up, and he joined. He was one of the first full-blood American Indians to fly a Marine jet. So he was this aviator.
And the story that I end the book with is he finally was chosen by the Cheyenne elders to take his grandfather’s place among the peace chiefs, and he was flying down near the coast at the time at a Marine base. And they said, we want you to come and go through the Sun Dance, and we want to make sure that you’re right to be a peace chief. And to be a peace chief, you have to turn your back on fighting and violence and be a man of reconciliation and peace and harmony among the community. That’s the reason we had the peace chiefs. Well, he flies his jet from the base to Burns Flat, which is one of the military bases in Oklahoma at the time. And he lands, and he goes to the Sun Dance, and during the Sun Dance, he gets back on a horse, and during the ceremonies, he circles the teepee, and he goes through the ceremonies, and he becomes a peace chief. He then turns away from that traditional life of the Cheyennes that’s ancient, hundreds of years old. He gets back into a jet, flies back to the base, and before he goes back to the base, he goes out over the Gulf of Mexico and breaks the sound barrier. So in one day, he takes this journey back into this ancient life as a peace chief of the Cheyenne Nation, and breaks the sound barrier, and then turns his back and says, I’m leaving the life of a warrior and becoming a man of peace. And Lawrence Hart has always been an inspiration to me, a good friend. I wanted to end my book with that story of this man who wanted to be a pilot, but it was more important to be a man of peace and reconciliation.
Thompson: What an incredible story. Wow.
Blackburn: Well Trait, aviation history runs deep in Oklahoma history. We’ve had pilots. We’ve had aviators designing aircraft. We’ve been part of defending America around the world with aviation, and we’ve had so many pilots that come from Oklahoma. And today, our guest speaker is Randy Vierling, who had a career in aviation, would end up as a pilot for TWA and American Airlines and go from being a pilot, to training, and an instructor, and then a private pilot for businessmen in Oklahoma City. But Randy is willing to join us. Randy, it’s good to have you on the podcast today.
Randy Vierling: Well, Bob, I’m glad to be here. Trait, same to you. Thank you so much for having me on.
Thompson: Well, I’ve been interested ever since Bob told me about you. I couldn’t wait to hear some of your stories, so we really appreciate it. And let’s just go ahead and start out. It would be great if you could just tell us a little bit about some of your early life here in Oklahoma.
Vierling: Yes, I was born back in 1942, 78 years ago, at Wesley Hospital in Oklahoma City. My dad was a veterinarian here in Oklahoma City, just about to head off to World War II, and spent two years in China. But basically, my whole life I’ve lived here in Oklahoma and consider myself a native son.
One of the thoughts I had about my career is, and this is very true, wanting to fly, it’s kind of like the call of the sea. You can’t explain it. It’s just there. And for me, it was there from the time I first knew what an airplane was, I actually flew with people at the airline that their attitude was, well, I’m an electrical engineer, but they weren’t hiring, so I became an airline pilot, and they were fine, competent pilots. But there were those of us that flew with a passion and those that it was just a job. For me it was a passion. I got my chance to begin my flying lessons at the Oklahoma University ROTC program. I had gone to Oklahoma Military Academy, two years high school and two years college, and completed my advanced ROTC at OMA. And having completed that, they allowed me to begin my flying lessons, paid for by ROTC, my junior year. Fifty-seven years ago, after I began those flying lessons in 1964, I started to work at Wiley Post Airport as what they call a line boy, gassing airplanes, cleaning airplanes at night, and so forth. Little company called TRAEX Aviation. It was located in hangar five. At the time, corporate aviation was still kind of fledgling. As a matter of fact, I remember Amos Construction Company actually operated a World War II vintage B-26 bomber for their corporate aircraft. A guy named Vernon Thorpe was their pilot.
During the time I was at TRAEX, I traded my vacation time, worked extra hours for flight training, and in two years, in 1966, I got my commercial flight instructor license and began instructing for the same company I gassed airplanes for, and over the next three years, I just built my flight time instructing and acquiring additional licenses, ending up with my airline transport license, which is the highest you can get, in January of 1969. The company I worked for, TRAEX, was acquired by Kerr Aviation around 1968 by the son of the late Senator Robert Kerr, Robert S. Kerr Jr. He was my boss, and I was given the opportunity to fly copilot on the company-owned Jet Commander, an aircraft that was manufactured by Rockwell International right there at Wiley Post in Oklahoma City.
And that begins kind of the story of the most exciting thing that ever happened to me in my 42 years and 27,000 hours of professional flying. As a matter of fact, in my entire life, we were going to demonstrate this aircraft to a prospective buyer who had a summer home up in Pellston, Michigan, and I was flying with Captain Bill Wallace, an employee of Kerr Aviation and a salesman for the company. The purpose was to demonstrate the aircraft to our client, and it required, or he required that the aircraft be able to consistently nonstop Oklahoma City to his summer home up in Michigan. So we took off about 5:30 in the morning, just before daylight, and headed off to the northeast towards Tulsa, where we began working our way up towards Pellston, Michigan. It wasn’t shortly after takeoff, we started seeing some lightning and some storm activity up to the northeast. And in the weather briefing, there had been some mention of scattered storms, but nothing of what we were looking at. So Bill Wallace, flying the aircraft, elected to climb to a higher altitude to see if we could top this stuff. Then we realized if we went around the weather system, which was rather large, to the south, it would have required us to stop for fuel, and that would have kind of messed up our sales pitch, since he wanted us to be able to build their nonstop. So we continued to climb, and climb, and climb, and as we climbed, it got darker, and the weather got rougher, and finally it got very turbulent— so turbulent that Bill elected to disconnect the autopilot and hand-fly the aircraft. Shortly after that, we heard this loud explosion and the right side of what we call the annunciator panel lit up that shows all the engine parameters. We lost our right engine.
Thompson: Oh my gosh!
Vierling: Bill said, advise air traffic control that we’ve lost our right engine. Before I could even get the microphone up to my mouth because of the extreme turbulence, we heard another loud explosion. The left side of our annuciator panel lit up, and we had lost both engines, and we only had two of them, so there was only one choice at that point, and that was to start down.
Thompson: That choice is made for you whether you want it or not at that point. Right?
Vierling: Exactly. And kind of ironically and humorously, I remember this very clearly. I advised air traffic control, we’ve lost both engines. And he very kindly said, Roger, “you’re cleared to descend through all altitudes.”
Thompson: Well, thanks for that. (laughter)
Vierling: Yeah, so we thought that was very appropriate clearance on his part. And so it, the odyssey began. We started coming down to the clouds. Now, I noticed also, having lost our both engine generators, that our flight instruments that tell us if we’re right side up or upside down had to basically malfunctioned. They were tumbling all over the place, so I was going to call that to Bill’s attention, and he kind of waved me off. And I thought, well, he knows what he’s doing here. But shortly after we started being pushed down into our seats, 5 or 6g forces, or then we’d be hanging on the seatbelt, then we’d be pushed into the seat again, and I realized we were completely out of control, going right down to the throat of this massive thunderstorm. We were moving so fast that the altimeter was unreadable. The needle was spinning so fast. We went through the icing level of the storm so fast that we went from a clean windshield up to about two inches of ice on the windshield, back to a clean windshield in about 20 seconds. So we were coming down and coming down fast.
Thompson: Now, how are you, what are you thinking during all of this? I mean, are you kind of calm and in control, or would you do like I would be doing and just completely freaking out?
Vierling: Well, I think the initial reaction is like if you hear a loud noise or something dramatic happens, it takes a minute to to even respond, emotionally. And trying to be a professional pilot, which I was calling myself at the time, trying to focus and stay calm. Bill appeared to be staying calm, and I wanted to be there for him, to back him up and whatever he needed. So, so not much emotion. I think that the short answer to that is, yeah, we got emotional after we were on the ground and realized what we had been through, but we were busy thinking about survival at that point and probably functioning as well as we could. We put our oxygen masks on and did the necessary things when you have an engine failure like that, and continued to come down through the storm. What frightened us was a loud explosion shortly into the descent and kind of, the controls kind of jerk. And Bill said, I think we’ve lost the tail, which wasn’t encouraging at the time. Turned out that later that the landing gear on the right hand side had dropped partially down out of the wing and the door had blew off and hit the tail, and that was what caused the shock. So we had full flight controls available.
So the big, big thing then was the storms were going all the way to the ground in that area, and we thought, we’re not going to have time to recover from this before we hit the ground. And amazingly, all of a sudden we saw a shaft of light, and we popped out underneath this thing. And the first time we saw the ground was out the little eyebrow windows, which are located just above the pilot’s head. We were upside down. So Bill and I began to grab the control yoke and pull us through this kind of a direct, straight-down dive to level flight. And the weather was right there in front of us, so we had to do another steep turn to avoid going back into the weather. And we just stayed in this tight turn in this little area that we could see all the way to the ground.
And interestingly, and this is where my faith kind of increased a little bit. There had to be an airport with a little runway right in the middle of this small bubble, in the middle of this massive system of storms. We asked the air traffic controller. He said that’s Columbia, Jefferson City, Missouri, Regional Airport, and it’s available. Well, we took it and got an engine started once we got down into the lower altitudes. We’re able to make our way onto the airport. And another miraculous thing about this was the weather was coming across the little airport so fast that we were starting to lose sight of it just before touchdown. And when we touched down, we rolled out down the runway into basically zero-zero conditions. It was that little airport had just opened up long enough to get to get us on the ground and closed up again in clouds.
Thompson: Now, did you essentially glide down? Was it a crash landing or just a, you know, just kind of glide down and land regularly?
Vierling: Well, that’s a good question. And that’s where Bill Wallace’s World War II fighter pilot experience came into being. He was able to get the aircraft engine started on the right-hand side, and then a few minutes, seconds later, he was able to get the other. So we had engines running again. It was just that high-altitude turbulence combination that had killed them to start with. Now we’re down in that thick, syrupy air, and the engines were running again, so we did have power as we approached the runway and landed. One of the main gear, the one that had pulled down partially out of the wing, wasn’t locked down completely. So we kind of tore the right tire off the aircraft when we landed but made our way back up to a little prefab building on the airport. Just getting there, a little girl at the rental car place there said, “where did you guys come from?” And we told her that was a long story.
(laughter)
Blackburn: Randy, the first time I heard you tell this story, you were talking. We met because of the Aero Commander. I was doing research to do an exhibit here at the Oklahoma Historical Society, History Center, on Aero Commander. And you talked about how well it was made, and that’s one reason you survived. Once you landed, describe what you found and the forces that that airplane had survived.
Vierling: We happened to have a G-meter that measures the forces on the aircraft in flight. And we also had our Machmeter that told us how fast we were going. We looked at one time, and we were up above 85% of the speed of sound on the Machmeter in an aircraft that was designed maximum for 76% of the speed of sound, and the G-meter had registered 12gs.
Thompson: Oh, my gosh!
Vierling: That was probably an instantaneous load or we would have not survived. Interestingly, the spar was inspected, x-rayed after that flight, found to be completely intact. All the skin on the top of the wing was all wrinkled up. They had to reskin the aircraft later. A lot of superficial damage like that, but basically the aircraft was intact, got us on the ground safely, and we survived as a result. It drove home to me an old adage, you may have heard this or not. It’s a very popular adage, but the adage is simply this: “aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous, but to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any act of carelessness, incapacity, or neglect.” And we were driven there to make a sale that morning. But in that indecision and what happened served me extremely well for the remainder of my flying career, obviously.
Thompson: Well, your story reminds me of the adage that says, “Flying ain’t nothing. It’s just falling in style.”
Vierling: So well, that’s true. Another good one is “hours and hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of stark terror.”
(laughter)
Blackburn: Well, Randy, you did survive that, obviously, and would go on with your career. Talk about your first commercial aviation with TWA and describe TWA’s system at that time.
Vierling: Well, I was hired by TWA four months after that incident and completed a 32-year career there. TWA, at the time, as you guys would know, was “the grand old lady of the sky.” Her and Pan Am were great international airlines. We competed, of course, with American and United. But TWA had a stellar reputation known as the airline of the stars that we flew all the movie stars in the old constellation days. So I was very, very proud to have been selected as one of about 5% of the pilots that were hired by TWA during that time were non-military, and to have been selected to be a pilot for TWA at that time made me very, very blessed and very happy. It was a great career.
I had the privilege of flying international routes: London, Rome, even charters into Saudi Arabia, and even a quick stop at Casa Blanca once. So, very fascinating career. During my career, there became an instructor and a Check Air Captain, which means I’m the guy that trained the student captains, and I finished up as an instructor there at American. They purchased the airline just two years before I retired at age 60. And during that time, interestingly, I would be with student captains in stormy conditions, and they would go, well, let’s climb up out of this. And reflecting on my experience that many years ago, I’d say, hey, the air is thicker down here. The engines run better. Let’s just ride it out at a lower altitude and don’t get up near the edge of the aircraft’s performance on the altitude, and would hopefully impart some wisdom to the younger guys at that point. So anyway, I finished my career at age 66.
That was after five years of flying for the owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder. So, I was hired to fly the airplane after it was purchased and it was a great airplane— a French-made jet, a Falcon. It was called a three-engine corporate jet that carried about 12 people. We did have an international experience. We took Mr. Bennett and his family to Rome during the ownership, and then that was during the time that he was in the process of purchasing the Seattle SuperSonics from Mr. Schultz, the owner of Starbucks up there in Seattle. So we have made 36 round-trips to Seattle and back in 18 months during that process.
Thompson: Wow.
Vierling: So it was one of the best airplanes I’ve ever flown. Great experience. I just enjoyed every bit of it. I’d had a couple of short furloughs during the middle of my airline career and had the privilege of being chief pilot for Furrs, Inc. You probably remember their cafeterias around here, and flew for Jones & Pellow Oil Company here in Oklahoma City as their chief pilot for a year and a half or so. So I’ve had a really colorful, interesting career both in airline and general aviation, corporate aviation. And I couldn’t, as I look back, I can’t imagine ever having done anything else. My dream was fulfilled, and as I always tell people, it sure beat working for a living.
(laughter)
Blackburn: Well, Randy, thank you for sharing your time and your story. That’s one of the great stories that I’ve heard in my 41 years of being a historian. And, and I’ve summarized that for many people, and it’s always good to hear it directly from you. Thank you for sharing today.
Vierling: Thank you. And thank you for the contribution you two are making to the historical legacy of our great state. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Thompson: Well, Bob, that interview with Randy was fascinating. I enjoyed hearing his stories.
Blackburn: Well, Randy has been a great community leader. I’m working with him now on a new life for the Oklahoma Military Academy Museum in Claremore. But Randy is a leader there. He’s been a leader in his professional life. And like so many pilots, he had a passion for flying, and you can tell it in the way he tells his stories. And you can just sense that that was a great life that he had in the air.
Thompson: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we have some interesting news for our next podcast. Bob and I are going to participate in a live podcast taping on September 22 at 6 p.m. here at the History Center. And guess what? All of you were invited to come out and join us. So if you’ve ever wanted to come listen to a live podcast taping, and I’m sure that you will treat Bob and I—even though we’re celebrities now— you’ll treat us like normal people. But we would love to have you come out to our live podcast taping, and we’re excited about that.
You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast hosted by Trait Thompson and Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by Ryan Green. I encourage you to go out and like us and subscribe to us on whatever podcast app that you use, and please rate us. And if you liked what you heard today, please go recommend us to a friend, and we’ll see you next month for our next episode.
