Walking on Air (15 page)

Phoebe Omlie, whom the press deemed “second only to Amelia Earhart Putnam among America's women pilots,” was sworn in on her thirty-first birthday, 21 November 1933, to become the first woman to hold an executive job in federal aeronautics
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Her accomplishment was owing to her long experience and distinguished service to aviation. “She had won the trophies and scars of a decade when flying was new, the nation's airways uncharted, the aeronautical industry a game … Had she served in war instead of peace, she would have been decorated with a D. S. O…. She owes her position not to politics but to a single-track ardor for commercial aviation such as few possess.”
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Her job straddled the two primary agencies responsible for aviation in the New Deal administration, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce. Their shared responsibilities set the standards and practices for the growth of private and commercial aviation in the United States. The NACA was established by Congress in 1915 with a $5,000 appropriation “to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight, with a view to their practical solution.” By the time Phoebe joined the staff in 1933, NACA's Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory at Hampton, Virginia, was the premier aeronautical research organization; its scientists
and engineers engaged in intense research into virtually every characteristic of flight.
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The government's role in aeronautical research was sometimes regarded with suspicion by aircraft manufacturers who were invited to submit proposals for research but seldom allowed to participate directly. As a practical matter and a political one, the NACA's director of research, George Lewis, came to recognize the importance of positive publicity for their engineering work, and so he sought ways to enhance communication with aircraft manufacturers and the general public.
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Phoebe was hired to work in “a program to encourage the use of airplanes by making known the results of research to improve safety and efficiency in civil aviation,” acting as spokesperson for the agency and liaison between manufacturers and the NACA.
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She saw it as a perfect fit, doing what she had “longed for years to do—to preach, promote and popularize commercial flying in a big way.”
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The Air Commerce Act of 1926 created the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce. Passed during the barnstorming era in large part in reaction to its dangerous and uninhibited practices, the act established for the first time official government control and support for civil aviation. The goal was to shift aviation from the purview of stunt fliers to that of business and government officials charged with developing standards and regulations that would allow aviation to flourish as a transportation system. The Aeronautics Branch held fundamental regulatory powers to test and license pilots, issue airworthiness certificates for aircraft, establish airways, and investigate accidents.
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Early in her new job, Phoebe was loaned to the Bureau of Air Commerce to make a three-month nationwide survey of the Federal Airways System, “to obtain information as to the adequacy of fields and the effectiveness of airways lighting, radio directional, radio communication, and radio weather service.”
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The Federal Airways System, a sort of highway system in the sky, included all airports, navigational aids and the straight-line pathways in the sky between them. This information was critical for developing plans to fortify and strengthen this system. She inspected and cataloged airports and navigational systems, consulted with pilots, fixed base operators, mechanics, airline managers, New Deal agency officials, and airplane manufacturers on aircraft design, safety issues, and regulations.
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In the fall of 1933, the New Deal, through the Civil Works Administration, instituted a massive program of airport improvements. During the winter of 1933-1934, these agencies employed 70,000 men in 700 locations to build new airports and improve existing ones, including lighting 2,681 miles of airways with beacons placed on towers.
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Phoebe's assignment on the
project was to see what was being done, help determine what needed to be done, and to aid municipalities wishing to acquire landing fields in applying for them. She reported to her superiors that “everyone of them are solidly behind the people in Washington who are working on Aeronautics.”
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She continued her survey until midsummer, logging at least 20,000 miles.
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Almost as soon as she returned from surveying the airways system, Phoebe was ordered to leave again in order to make “a general survey of the possibilities, plans and designs for the development of low-cost airplanes, and in particular to visit the shops of those who have recently submitted designs to the Government. You are expressly authorized to visit such places in Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Omaha, Kansas City, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and also intermediate and adjacent cities and towns where plans or designs of low-cost airplanes may be inspected.”
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The scope of her work can be seen in the handful of letters between herself and her superiors that have survived. In fulfilling both assignments, she did extensive inspections of airports and facilities from December 1933 at least until autumn 1934. She talked with pilots about issues of safety and design of aircraft which she reported back to the bureau. She reported on the design and safety work NACA engineers were doing at Langley Laboratory to pilots and manufacturers in the field and sent their concerns and comments back to the committee. She made numerous speeches promoting private aviation, especially to women's groups. She inspected facilities to determine if they were appropriate for new runways, new navigational equipment, lighting systems or installation of “blind landing equipment.”
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The novelty of her gender paired with her official position as representative of the New Deal for aviation in the federal government ensured abundant media attention. She took every opportunity to repeat her consistent message that “President Roosevelt has saved and stabilized our industry, putting it on a businesslike basis … The individual operators thruout [
sic
] the nation are the ones who have made airports possible and created air-mindedness so the airlines could exist … the little base-operator is the unsung hero of the aviation industry and, until this administration, he has never in any way received help from our government.”
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While Phoebe was traveling around the country, bureau director Eugene Vidal enlarged the bureau's mandate, which had been limited to advising and assisting other agencies in carrying out research connected with airway and airport lighting, radio communication, and other air navigation systems, with an amendment to the Air Commerce Act to enable his agency
to “encourage and participate in such research and development as tends to create improved aircraft, aircraft power plant, and accessories.”
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The Bureau of Air Commerce announced the creation of a Development Section in July 1934 and, with a commitment of half a million dollars from the WPA, Vidal began his project to encourage production of a safe, affordable, easy-to-fly plane—the aerial equivalent of the Model-T—for the “average American citizen.” His idea was to stimulate the aircraft industry while at the same time “democratizing” aviation.
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Vidal's specifications called for an all-metal, low-wing, two-place monoplane with a maximum speed of 100 mph. It was to be as easy to fly and as easy to pay for as an automobile. In an era when the average private aircraft cost $1,800–$2,500 and the average automobile cost $500–$1,000, Vidal's proposal was for a $700 airplane. Citing extensive surveys of licensed pilots, Vidal demonstrated “that an airplane for that price, sold on the installment plan, would have a popular appeal.”
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Vidal's task would be to encourage the industry to design and begin volume production of such an airplane. WPA money would be awarded to help manufacturers retool and guarantee a market of 10,000 units.
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Almost immediately, the aircraft industry responded “with a shower of dead cats and brickbats.”
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Manufacturers had several criticisms of the plan: (1) it wasn't feasible to build a plane with those specifications for only $700; (2) they weren't willing to gamble on such a departure from their standard designs; and (3) all the publicity about a future low-cost airplane was retarding sales for their current models. Who wanted to buy a $3,000 airplane with a $700 one on the horizon? Airplane builders expressed their wish to handle their own business while suggesting that the Department of Commerce tend to its own business of developing airports and airways.
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In the midst of the brouhaha, the Works Progress Administration pulled the funding on the apparent justification that since aviation development benefited private industry, it did not meet the definition of public works.
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Determined to keep the dream alive, Vidal shifted from trying to encourage hostile manufacturers to build a cheap, safe airplane, to using his agency's fleet money to launch a competitive purchase program for planes to be used by his field inspectors. He abandoned the focus on the price tag in favor of setting performance and safety standards, asking manufacturers to design and build prototypes, and promising to buy twenty-five units from the winner, in the hopes that consumer demand and mass production would ultimately lead to lower prices.
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As the news came out of Washington, Phoebe was frequently called upon to discuss and defend plans for the low-cost airplane. What aviation needed most, she told reporters, was “a light, inexpensive plane, as near ‘fool-proof' as possible.”
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She confessed that, “we deplore that we once made flying a show business and stressed dangerous stunts. The aim of our department now is to make flying safer and cheaper and give the little fellow a break. Lack of money for experiments is all that is delaying the production of safe, fast planes for around $700. My chief job is to travel around the country and give all the light aircraft makers the benefit of all government research free of charge.”
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While the large manufacturers had always, as a matter of course, turned to the Bureau of Air Commerce for information and aid, she said, “the little man striving to put new ideas of wings and engines together had thought of the bureau only as a policy agency. He has been suspicious and afraid of it.” Her job was to change that perception.

I found men working in garages, in back of drug stores, inventing, designing and modeling. At first they were incredulous—refused to believe that the Bureau of Air Commerce in Washington was earnestly interested in what they were trying to do. When I finally convinced them, they brought out their plans and their blue prints. We studied them together. We changed a line here and there. When I left there was an added zest in their work and a new hope. It is impossible to predict what may evolve from this lone wolf experimentation. But whatever it may be, we want to encourage every man who is trying to further the development of the airplane in any way whatsoever.
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She encouraged private innovators, who she called the Bolsheviks of design, to take up the challenge. Bolsheviks, she said, were not afraid to test daring innovations and would give America its air flivver.
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Back in Washington, aeronautical research director George Lewis assigned her to work in cooperation with the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce directly on development of the low-cost airplane. Phoebe was to consult with the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory “for the purpose of ascertaining the progress being made in the construction and testing of the Weick airplane, and in other work being conducted by the laboratory in connection with the general problem.” She would serve as liaison between the two agencies, acquaint herself thoroughly with the activities of both, and file weekly reports about Langley Laboratory research
to the Bureau of Air Commerce and weekly reports to NACA “on the general project of the light airplane [including] your recommendations as to further studies which the Committee can conduct to assist in this important development.”
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Much innovative research in terms of performance and safety in new small aircraft design was going on at Langley, led by NACA engineer Fred E. Weick. Weick and a group of nine other Langley engineers designed and built a small experimental airplane, the W-1A, to study the special needs of the private flier. The W-1A design had a pusher engine (the engine and propeller were behind the fuselage and faced the tail) located between twin rear fuselage booms, with twin vertical tails. The Weick design featured two key innovations: flaps to control speed for landing and tricycle landing gear, that is, two wheels on either side of the fuselage and a steerable nose wheel. Tricycle gear had been used on a 1908 Curtiss model, but since that early innovation, traditional landing gear had evolved to a configuration of two wheels forward of the center of gravity, with a skid (later a wheel) supporting the tail. This caused poor visibility on the ground, forcing the pilot to lean out the side window to see what was in front of the plane. The most serious problem with this “tail-dragger” configuration, however, was the plane's susceptibility to ground-looping, particularly in crosswind landings, the avoidance of which required a good deal of pilot training and more than a little luck. Ground-looping occurred when the pilot could not maintain directional control on the ground and the tail of the aircraft swung around to pass the nose. The sudden whipping of the plane resulted in damage to the undercarriage, tires, propellers, and wingtips. Some builders had tried to make planes more maneuverable on the ground by incorporating brakes in the two front wheels, with limited success. Despite its potential for eliminating ground-looping, Weick's adoption of tricycle gear was controversial, considered a throwback to earlier developments in aircraft design.
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