I recently mentioned in a story about Olympian Jack Turnbull, a decorated World War II Army Air Corps pilot who didn’t survive the war, that he learned to fly in the late 1930s at the old Curtiss-Wright Airport on Smith Avenue in Northwest Baltimore, which today is the site of the Greenspring Shopping Center.
The 250-acre flying field that sprawled across the city-county line spawned massive Sunday afternoon traffic jams along Smith and Greenspring avenues, as spectators chugged along in their cars anxious to witness daredevil pilots in their souped-up Jennys and other planes perform unimaginable dizzying airborne stunts.
“Say ‘Curtiss-Wright’ to Baltimoreans of my generation and you’ll conjure up a picture of Sunday afternoons spent watching old planes and 10-minute hops over North Baltimore for a dollar,” reminisced Col. Henry H. Kelcey in a 1959 Sunday Sun Magazine interview.
The Curtiss-Wright Airport was constructed in 1930 by the Curtiss-Wright Corp. manufactures aircraft engines.
Founded in 1929, it was the result of a merger between Glen Curtiss, considered the father of naval aviation and the famed Wright Brothers.
The airport was leased by Col. William Tipton, one of Baltimore’s early aviation pioneers and a famed World War 1 ace, who was known as Tip, and also flew The Baltimore Sun’s airplane that was used to fly to breaking news stories as well as deliver early editions of the newspaper to Delaware and South Jersey resort towns.
Realizing that commercial aviation was the wave of the future, Tipton envisioned the field one day becoming the city’s major airport.
Tipton’s optimistic view never came to fruition and instead he sold and serviced planes and gave flying lessons rather than selling tickets to Chicago, Los Angeles or Boston.
The field also became a hub for air shows and sightseeing planes that introduced Baltimoreans to their first case of airsickness as well as a view of the city and environs from a viewpoint formerly only reserved for birds.
“Airmen in general were daredevils in those days, and Tip took advantage of this to stage exciting air circuses almost every Sunday afternoon. He brought in National Guard planes, held contests which attracted private fliers from a wide area and, of course, let those of us who had learned to fly there take part also,” said Kelcey.
Barrel rolls, wing-walking, flying upside down and deliberately stalled engines as a plane plummeted toward the earth got the crowd’s adrenaline pumping.
A gathering of 25,000 wasn’t uncommon as they came to observe leather-helmeted and goggled fliers — both men and women — dressed in jodhpurs standing by their planes, and anxiously awaiting their airborne high jinks as they roared skyward.
Group stunts, a guaranteed crowd pleaser, was a novelty act when several planes tied together during flight, or spot-landing contests, when pilots cut their engines at 2,000 feet.
As a silent plant coasted toward earth, landed and rolled to a stop at a predetermined location on the field, the crowd roared its appreciation.
“One of the pilots who will take place in the air show climbs out of his airplane while flying over the field, after killing his engine, crawls down on the landing gear and spins the propeller, then crawls back into the cockpit. The airplane meanwhile, is without a pilot,” reported The Sun in 1938, of the heart-stopping feat.
The National Guard aviators excelled at pleting stationary targets or moving automobiles on the field with 2-pound bags of flour.
Aerial dogfights re-creating the aerial death confrontations of World War I was also a crowd pleaser.
“Tape cutting was another sport,” Kelcey said. “The object was to throw a roll of adding machine tape out of the plane at 2,000 feet and cut it three times with your propeller as it streamed down. I cut the time from two minutes to 55 seconds by the idea of throwing out the tape while upside down, then looping down to make the first cut immediatley.”
Archie Seese earned the moniker for his “human bat” act as he would glide thousands of feet toward the ground before pulling the cord on his parachute.
At times, there were unplanned near fatal disasters, as crowds watched in horror.
On a May afternoon in 1938, Ruth Allen of Owings Mills, who was performing her second jump ever, leaped out of a biplane, only to have her chute become tangled in the plane’s door handle.
“For thirty seconds a 19-year-old girl dangled 1,800 feet above the Curtiss-Wright field yesterday,” The Sun reported, until she was released by the pilot and then made “a near perfect landing” as spectators gasped.
In May, 1931, a Sun headline announced that the airport would be the site of the “First All Women’s Air Show In U.S. Will Be Held Here. Starting at 2:30 p.m., there will be ten events winding up with a triple parachute jump, the jumpers all being girls, at 5 p.m.”
The Evening Sun cracked; “Women Bar Men at Tomorrow’s Flying Carnival. Fair Sex Going To Monopolize Absolutely All Of Ten Events.”
A crowd of 5,000 watched Thelma Elliott, a Baltimorean, take her “cabin plane carrying a barograph to record the highest point up to 16,800 feet” which resulted in her setting an altitude record.
At a fall gathering in 1931 of women pilots, the guest of honor, the aviatrix Amelia Earhart Putnam, who six years later disappeared while flying across the Pacific, failed to make it to Baltimore when her plane suffered a mechanical issue and she was forced to land at Willow Grove, Pa.
In 1946, the field was renamed the Pimlico Airport, and some years later was sold to a developer, and the great days came to an end.
Where once biplanes, Ford Tri-Motors and other varieties of planes came and went, today busy shoppers jockey for parking places to do grocery shopping, or up until it closed in May, those desiring a hot pastrami on light rye with mustard and a pickle, could have slipped into Miller’s Delicatessen that had been there for 50 years.
Mr. Rasmussen thanks for an interesting article about the Baltimore Curtiss- Wright Field. As a young man, my father worked at that airfield in the 30s. There he learned engine and air frame skills and ultimately earned his “A&E” government license. Although he did not own a plane, he was able to work with some of his customers who owned planes and was able to obtain his pilot’s license. My Dad related many interesting stories to me about his experience at this airfield. Years thereafter he pursued a career in automobile repair and was a part owner of a new car dealership in the Pimlico area. Thanks again for the article. It brought back some good memories of my father stories.