COMMENTARY>>Arkansas aviation history

by Chris Rumley
314th Airlift Wing historian

Arkansas has a long aviation history that goes back much further than you might think. As early as 1872, Arkansan Charles McDermott received a patent for a flying machine. One of McDermott’s first creations featured 10 vertically stacked wings and was operated by a single pilot lying in the prone position. He later modified the design for two and three winged apparatus and managed to glide for short distances. Later, planes built by the Wright brothers, looked much like McDermott’s creation, and they credited the inventor for their success.

In February 1908, the Hot Springs Airship Company opened shop and began building and flying dirigibles. Owner Joel T. Rice’s first airship, “The Arkansas Traveler,” was over 50 feet long. The airship was powered by a single motor, and directional control was achieved through manipulation of three swiveling propellers. On its first test flight, the hydrogen filled giant rose only 25 feet before the weight of the carriage proved too heavy.

The first, well-documented powered aircraft flight in Arkansas occurred at Fort Smith on May 21, 1910. Pilot James “Bud” Mars lifted off in his Curtiss biplane named “Skylark.” One Fort Smith reporter wrote, “The spectacle of witnessing a man flying in the air with the ease of a bird was indeed thrilling to the spectators.” Mars circled over the crowd at 75 feet reaching speeds of 40 miles per hour.

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, there was a great need for qualified pilots. The Army established one of the largest flight-training centers at Eberts Field near the town of Lonoke. Some 1,500 military personnel worked at the training base, and over 1,000 cadets came through for aviator training on the JN-4D “Flying Jenny” aircraft.
In 1919, Jerome Zerbe built what he called the Zerbe Air Sedan in Fayetteville. The aircraft looked more like a small bus with four wings mounted on top. The single engine sedan, intended to be a passenger aircraft, was better at bouncing than flying.

Reports vary as to its air worthiness. Some witnesses claimed the Sedan reached an altitude of 40 feet while others claimed it was more like 40 inches.

In 1925, the 154th Observation Squadron was established in the Arkansas National Guard. The squadron originally flew out of Little Rock Municipal Airport and helped locate stranded citizens after the flood of 1927. The unit served in combat during World War II and is still active today as the 189th Airlift Wing; flying C-130s out of Little Rock Air Force Base.

Here are some other significant, Arkansas related, aviation milestones:

• Charles Lindbergh flew his first night flight near Lake Village in April 1923.

• Louise McPhetridge Thaden, from Bentonville, was the first woman to win the Bendix Trophy for the Transcontinental Air Race (1936). She also co-founded “The Ninety-Nines,” an organization for women pilots.

• African-Americans Woodrow Crockett, William Mattison, Herbert Clark and Richard Ceasar, all from Arkansas, served as Tuskegee Airmen fighter pilots in World War II.

• Little Rock AFB opened in October 1955 as a B-47 bomber base.

• Federal Express was founded in Little Rock in 1971.

• James Smith McDonnell, from Jefferson County, founded McDonnell-Douglas and turned it into one of the largest aviation corporations in America.

The list of aviation achievements by Arkansans is too long to be covered here, but you may want to explore some of these local museums that have great aircraft and aviation themes -- the Jacksonville Museum of Military History, the Aerospace Education Center in Little Rock, The Arkansas Air Museum and Ozark Military Museum in Fayetteville, and the Aviation Cadet Museum in Eureka Springs. There is also the Air Museum in Fort Smith and Walnut Ridge is home to the Army Flying School Museum.