The sea-to-sea aviator

One of Texas’s first great aviation events was the arrival of the Vin Fiz Flyer in Fort Worth on Oct. 17, 1911. The Vin Fiz was a Wright Model EX biplane with four cylinders, a water-cooled engine and a wingspan of 32 feet. The absence of a throttle gave it two gears—wide open and stop.

 A 33-year-old daredevil named Calbraith (Cal) Perry Rodgers was the Flyer’s fearless pilot. His inspiration was a $50,000 prize that media mogul William Randolph Hearst offered to the first pilot to fly across America, coast to coast, in 30 days or less. Cal Rodgers set out to claim the money, or at least become famous trying, which is how it worked out. 

That he had neither experience nor an airplane bothered Rodgers not at all. He took 90 minutes of flying lessons from Orville Wright and partnered with a cousin to buy one of the first airplanes the Wright Brothers sold to a private citizen. He persuaded J. Ogden Armour, the famous meat packer, to sponsor his effort.

 In exchange for Armour’s financial support, Rodgers named his plane after Armour’s new grape-flavored soft drink, the Vin Fiz. He flew it into the wild blue yonder from Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York on Sept. 17, 1911. With no compass and no map, Rodgers simply pointed the plane west and, other than a southern detour to avoid the Rock Mountains, followed railroad tracks in the general direction of California.

The smartest decision Rodgers made was paying Charles Taylor $70 a week to keep the Vin Fiz in the air. The plane crashed as many as 16 times, give or take a crash landing or two, on its way west. Taylor was just the man to keep the plane flying; he built the Wright Brothers’ first engine-driven plane. 

The Wright Brothers refused to teach Taylor how to fly a plane because he was too valuable to lose but knew more than anybody how the plane worked and what to do when it didn’t. He and his tools, parts and know-how rode in a rail car that followed and sometimes led the Vin Fiz to California. 

Rodgers was already 30 days into his trip when he flew to Texas at the request of Fort Worth Star-Telegram publisher Amon Carter, but he kept going and big crowds kept showing up to see him. In Texas, Rodgers followed the wrong tracks for 70 miles but realized his mistake in time to turn the plane around and land at Fort Worth, much to the delight of an estimated 10,00 people. An even larger crowd greeted him at the State Fair in Dallas the next day. 

From the Dallas Morning News: “Amid tumultuous applause from an eager crowd of 75,000 persons, Cal P. Rodgers, sea-to-sea aviator, glided gracefully down the infield of the State Fair racetrack at 1:50 p.m. After hovering over the Fairgrounds for 15 minutes in the most thrilling exhibition of aerial navigation ever seen here, he headed his biplane south and started again on his long journey to the Pacific Ocean.” 

It took Rodgers two more weeks and at least 23 stops to cross the miles and miles of Texas. Troubles were many. A piston crystallized near Kyle. In Spofford, his propeller struck the ground during take off. Other Texas stops, scheduled and unscheduled, included Austin, San Antonio, Denison, Gainesville, San Marcos, LaCoste, Sabinal, Uvalde, Del Rio, Alpine, Marfa, and El Paso. 

Forty-nine days after he started, on Nov. 5, 1911, Rodgers taxied the Vin Fiz Flyer into the Pacific Ocean, making him America’s first coast-to-coast pilot. The Vin Fiz arrived with only the rudder, engine drip pan and a single strut remaining from the original plane. 

Rodgers arrived with his leg in a cast and a pair of crutches strapped to the side of the plane. But he arrived. 

The first pilot to fly America coast-to-coast died, not too surprisingly, in an airplane crash in Long Beach, California, on April 3, 1912, a few hundred feet from where he and the Vin Fiz had completed the cross-country trip five months earlier. 

The FAA inducted Rodgers posthumously into its Hall of Fame in 1964. Taylor, the world’s first airplane mechanic, joined him there, also posthumously, a year later. The FFA’s “Charles Taylor Master Mechanic Award” is named in his