1910AviationMeet4

What the International Air Meet Gave to California

To fly like the birds had long been a dream of mankind. The very idea of flight intrigued America and the world. Yet today, we hardly think twice about ascending in a Boeing built 747. But in 1910 Los Angeles hosted its justly famous Dominguez Hills international Air Meet, only the second such aerial congregation the world had witnessed, and the first ever in the United States.

After the Wrights, Glenn Curtiss was the most important name in American aviation in the pre-World War I period. At thirty-two, Glenn Curtiss opened the meet with what has generally been held to be the first heavier-than-air-flight on the West Coast. Curtiss had just concluded a successful period of aeronautical experimentation with Alexander Graham Bell's Aerial Experiment Association (AEA) and had set out on his own. The first "commercial" aircraft was the Curtiss built Gold Bug (later called the Golden Flyer). Having represented the United States at the Gordon Bennett Trophy races at Rheims, France, Curtiss was the featured American flyer of the meet. Curtiss's aeroplanes would set the basic design for most aircraft over the next four years.

Frenchman Louis Paulhan became the first person to fly over the Pacific Ocean. And, the color and success of Dominguez Hills set the tone for California's long fascination with flight.

Another hero of that eventful show, Glenn Martin, may even have, in early experimentation, preceded Curtiss into California skies. More certain, however, is Martin's claim to be the godfather of the prodigious Los Angeles aviation industry. After the Dominguez Hills International Air Meet, Glenn Martin began manufacturing planes, first in Santa Ana and later in downtown Los Angeles. His first aircraft were basically nothing more than copies of Curtiss's planes. A gifted designer, his success attracted creative and innovative men, chiefly Lawrence Bell and Donald Douglas.

Donald Douglas came to Los Angeles and joined Glenn Martin in 1915. He was there as the company strained to meet the demands of World War I during which Martin managed the imposing production of one plane a day. In the early 1920's Donald Douglas, with cash resources of less than $1,000, began his own operation. Donald found financial backing from wealthy David R. Davis, who had $40,000 to back an aircraft manufacturing company, provided it built an airplane that would make the first nonstop, coast-to-coast flight. The Davis-Douglas Company set up shop first in the back room of a Pico Boulevard barber shop and then in a 3,600-square-foot loft above a Los Angeles planing mill. Helped by a staff of five former employees of the Glenn Martin Company, Douglas designed and built the Cloudster which first flew Feb. 24, 1921. In June 1921, the Cloudster set out for its flight from March Field, California, to Curtiss Field, New York. It failed to make it, and Davis sold his portion of the company to Douglas and left the business. In July 1921, Douglas incorporated The Douglas Company on his own and in 1922, Douglas leased an abandoned movie studio on Wilshire Boulevard near Santa Monica. Douglas would later merge with James Smith McDonnell to form McDonnell-Douglas. In 1997, The Boeing Company, with its newly acquired Rockwell International (North American), merged with McDonnell-Douglas.

In that early decade aviation witnessed rapid expansion.

Lockheed Aircraft's history can be traced back to 1913 to the Alco Hydro-Aeroplane Company. Even though this venture failed, it lead to the formation of the Loughhead Aircraft Manufacturing Company located in Santa Barbara, California, which later was to become the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. Lockheed later became known as the Lockheed Martin Corporation.

The year was 1916 when a young John Knudsen Northrop went to work for the Loughead brothers helping them to design a flying boat. In 1923, John Northrop joined the Douglas Aircraft Company and helped design the famous "World Cruisers." He also moonlights by helping T. Claude Ryan design the wing of his M-1, from which Lindbergh's "Spirit of St. Louis" evolved. In 1928 he formed the Northrop Aircraft Corporation. Four years later, in 1932, Northrop would form the Northrop Corporation, which was first a subsidiary of Douglas.

California was further blessed when the owners of the Northrup Corporation decided to move to Kansas City and the company's young founder, John Northrup, elected to remain behind and form the North American Aviation (later, in 1966, North American merged with the Rockwell Standard Corporation and became North American Rockwell Corporation, and then becoming Rockwell International in 1973. The company's Space Systems Division, Satellite Division, Aircraft Division, Rocketdyne, Autonetics, Defense Electronics, and other units would become part of The Boeing Company in 1996.

When North American Aviation sprouted its wings, it had interests in a number of leading airlines and aircraft manufacturing companies including the General Aviation Manufacturing Corporation, located at the Curtiss-Caproni plant at Dundalk, Md. Because Southern California had excellent year-round weather, the company was promptly moved, including machinery and 75 people, to a 159,000 square-foot facility located on 20 acres near the edge of the Los Angeles Municipal Airport (now Los Angeles International Airport)

William Boeing attended the Dominguez Hills International Air Meet in an attempt to secure his first ride in an aeroplane. When this failed, he returned to Seattle, Washington only to return to California five years later to take flying lessons from Glenn Martin. Boeing would begin his career that same year, 1915.

Within a few years, the old aeronautics industry quietly ceased to exist and was quickly replaced by something called aerospace. One thing had not changed, however, the innovations of those early years.

Charles Willard, Glenn Curtiss's famous pupil and probably the most experienced aviator in America at the time, became another one of Glenn Martin's employees. He became chief engineer for Glenn Martin in Martin's Los Angeles plant. Willard would remain active in the industry until his retirement in Los Angeles.

By the time of World War II, aircraft plants in California employed some three hundred thirty thousand (330,000) workers, more than the entire population of Los Angeles in 1910.

Charles Hamilton was to go on to gain fame for the first night flight in America at Knoxville, Tennessee, making exhibitions for several years flying in Roy Knabenshue's employment. Of the other Dominguez aviators, Roy Knabenshue, a pioneer balloonist who had propelled a dirigible at the speed of twenty-five files per hour, served in various commercial phases of aviation and resided, until his death, in Arcadia, California.

Louis Paulhan left Los Angeles nineteen thousand dollars richer than when he arrived. Following a short tour of the United States, he returned to Europe where he won the Daily Mail prize for the London to Manchester flight on April 27-28, 1910. In 1912, flying a Curtiss biplane, he placed third in the first Monaco Hyudroaeroplane race. Paulhan made his last flight as a pilot in 1930, the year that Curtiss died.

Nearly a score of future American aviation leaders, including Roscoe Turner, Carl Spaatz, John Northrop, and James Doolittle, to name but a few, were between the ages of thirteen and nineteen in 1910. It is to these early aviation pioneers that the United States is indebted. Even more, it is to the impetus which the Dominguez International Air Meet provided.

And, it is to Glenn H. Curtiss' inventive genius, administrative ability, and technical skills. He opened California's first flying school in North Island (San Diego), where he trained many of this nation's pioneer aviators. Waiting for the financial backing which his feats at Los Angeles brought him, Curtiss placed aeroplane manufacturing on a sound and continuing basis. In 1913-14, he introduced the flying boat into Brazil, Russia, Austria, Italy, and Germany. By 1916, the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company had four manufacturing plants and five fields. Its plant at Buffalo, New York, which covered a seventy-two acre site and boasted thirty-one acres of buildings under one roof, was the largest such operation in the world. Ironically, as a result of these successes, the Curtiss-Wright Corporation was formed from the merger of 12 Wright and Curtiss affiliated companies on July 5, 1929. On August 22nd of that same year, Curtiss-Wright Corporation was listed on the New York Stock Exchange where it still trades today.

Related Pages

Glenn Hammond Curtiss

Glenn Martin

Donald Douglas

John "Jack" Northrup

Charles Willard

Loughead Brothers

William Boeing