IT WAS KNOWN as the "Summer of Eagles," the months following Lucky Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic, when the world went mad for aviation and records were broken at every opportunity. Hawaii businessmen, anxious to capitalize on the new craze, created an air race between the islands and the mainland. Dozens signed up, eager for fame and James Dole's prize money. The "Dole Derby" became the most notorious aviation event in Hawaii's history, a dash for glory punctuated by tragedy. Just two of 14 aircraft entered made it to the finish. Seven aircraft crashed or disappeared, with 10 lives lost.
To commemorate the Centennial of Flight, the Star-Bulletin has presented this serialized account by staff writer and aviation historian Burl Burlingame. "The Dole Derby" concludes today.
* * *
Hope dies as few adventurers
land safely
Chapter 3 - Conclusion
Aloha landed two hours after Woolaroc, with no fanfare, and no escort.
Marguerite Jensen pushed free of her Army guards and raced to the plane. Martin Jensen looked down on her from the high cockpit. He looked wind-blasted and weary. Her face was wet with tears.
"Martin, where the hell have you been?" she screamed.
JIM DOLE was plenty worried. Golden Eagle should have been in by now. She was the fastest ship, and the best equipped. And Miss Doran, with those two boys and the girl. All those preparations, the inspections by the Department of Commerce.
There was no word from the other two planes, not even messages from ships parked on the ocean flight path. They had simply disappeared.
As the long afternoon uneasily stretched into twilight, the crowd grew anxious and sympathetic. The scent of disaster was in the air. A celebration scheduled that evening fizzled as hopes evaporated.
Dole quickly offered $10,000 for the rescue of either plane's crew, $20,000 for both. Bill Malloska pledged $10,000 for the crew of Miss Doran, dead or alive. George Hearst offered $10,000 for Golden Eagle.
Rumors abounded. Miss Doran is safe on Maui! The San Francisco Examiner's Honolulu correspondent filed the story and it was picked up by Associated Press and swept the country. In Flint, newspapers rushed out extras, and movies were halted so theater managers could blurt out the news. Strangers wept and clapped each other on the back.
The Aloha, piloted by Martin Jensen, was one of only two planes to land safely in the Dole Derby.
"LONESTAR BILL" Erwin received a telegram from Easterwood in Dallas. Unless he took off for Honolulu before 6 p.m. Aug. 19, 1927, he'd be disqualified. Instead, three days after the Derby began, Erwin and Alvin "Ike" Eichwaldt took off to search for the missing flyers.
The two worked out their own search pattern with the Navy, a zigzag pattern that would eventually wind up in Honolulu. Maj. Livingston G. Irving loaned them the radio from his damaged Pabco Pacific Flyer, knowing both men were expert telegraphers.
Dallas Spirit took off with 460 gallons of fuel aboard, more than that carried by Charles Lindbergh, more than enough to keep the plane in the air for 40 hours, nearly enough to fly to Honolulu and back again.
IN THE DARKNESS, the plane reared up and Ike slammed down in his seat. The interior swung sickeningly. Ike could hear Bill shouting something, but couldn't make it out.
The lights on the instrument panel went out. Ike wondered about the clinging darkness as he fought to reach the telegraph key. It's not this dark, even in caves ...
The plane evened out, the motor began to bellow smoothly and the instrument lights flickered on. Ike saw Bill look back, give an all-clear sign.
Bill's a damn fine pilot, thought Ike. We'll get through this.
Bill was a little upset that his wife Connie had stayed in Dallas. But Ike's mother had come to the field. A reporter asked how she felt. "I don't like this very much," she said, making sure her son couldn't hear, but he did. "When I think of those others down in the water ... But I mustn't cry, for that might unnerve Alvin." She kissed her son and smiled bravely.
Ike began to tap out a radio message, the crackling dots and dashes audible on Bill's headset as well: "WE WENT INTO A TAILSPIN. S.O.S. S.O.S. He saw Bill wave his hand. BELAY THAT. WE CAME OUT OF IT BUT WE WERE SURE SCARED. IT WAS A CLOSE CALL. WE THOUGHT IT WAS ALL OFF ..."
The plane lurched again, the lights went out.
FOUR DESTROYERS raced to Dallas Spirit's last estimated position, and found nothing. After a few days of faint hope, mostly in her husband's skill and level-headedness, Connie Erwin said, "I felt at first that Bill would come through, but now they tell me I must expect the worst."
As the pregnant woman turned away, reporters heard her softly say, "Why couldn't I have been with him when he fell?"
DOLE AT ONCE declared it was never his intention to race. The Derby became the greatest aerial and public-relations disaster in Hawaiian history, directly costing the lives of 10 people and the loss of five aircraft. The largest search in Navy history cost $125,000 in fuel and $40,000 in food for 8,000 men. Thirty-nine Navy ships and 19 civilian ships tracked the ocean. Army planes flew 50 miles out to sea from both Hawaii and San Francisco, reporting back by radio every five minutes. But there was nothing.
Dole was plagued for decades by mystics who claimed to know where the missing fliers were.
Relatives of the Golden Eagle crew -- buoyed by rumors of a similar plane seen above the Big Island on the day of the race and of mysterious flares seen on Mauna Loa that night -- spent the next year searching the mountain. The Jensens flew from Honolulu in Aloha to help. Again, nothing.
William Randolph Hearst, backer of Golden Eagle, got cold feet backing a plane called Old Glory in an Atlantic flight. The plane finally did take off, but all that was found later was a section of wing floating in the greasy ocean.
In a classic case of Monday-morning quarterbacking, the Honolulu Starting Committee stated after The Dole Derby: "The planes were not fitted for such an adventure, and rashness in understanding (that) is palpably the cause of what was a disaster."
Jensen, however, who lives in San Diego, defends the Derby. In a recent interview, he said all adventures carry risks, and the Derby pointed out defects in blind-flying techniques and instruments.
He's also fond of saying he came in "second and last" in the Dole Derby, and he recently wrote a congratulatory letter to Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, "because I didn't think they'd make it" around the world.
After the brilliant flights of Lindbergh and the other successes, the Derby and other losses dampened the public's aerial enthusiasm. "Long flights over the sea became definitely unpopular," groused Australian flyer Charles Kingsford-Smith, who had just arrived in America to scare up funds for an across-the-Pacific flight.
The Dole disaster "caused an unprecedented slump in aviation in the West."
As Kingsford-Smith prepared for his successful series of flights the next year, the mother of Lt. Eichwaldt gave him a ring her son had made from a franc while serving in the Great War. It was to be a good-luck piece.
A week after the race, Secretary of the Navy Curtis Wilbur, visiting San Francisco, said a federal push must be made to prevent anything like the Dole disaster from happening again. Other Navy officials predicted hazardous ocean flights would be made illegal.
Even so, more than a dozen planes were being readied for ocean flights. Some made it, most didn't. By the end of the year, 25 men and three women had died flying over water, most simply vanishing over the horizon.
A month after the Derby, the Matson liner Maui, bound for Honolulu, paused 600 miles out of San Francisco to cast thousands of flowers on the waters. One floral tribute from Mildred Doran's pupils came in the shape of a Bible. It had a cork base and was designed to stay afloat for many weeks, a speck easily lost on the rolling blue face of the Pacific.
Portions of this story originally appeared in the Star-Bulletin in 1986. Some dialogue is courtesy Lesley Forden's book "Glory Gamblers," used with permission.
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