Inspired by
Charles A. Lindbergh's successful trans-Atlantic flight,
James D. Dole, the
Hawaii pineapple magnate, announced on May 25, 1925 a prize of US$25,000 for the first fixed-wing aircraft to fly the from
Oakland, California, to
Honolulu, Hawaii, and US$10,000 for second place. The Honolulu chapter of the National Aeronautic Association drew up rules for the race.
The transpacific record The publicity for the first successful transpacific flights from Oakland to Hawaii were stolen by two flights in June and July 1927, ahead of the scheduled August start for the Dole Derby. On 28 June, about a month after Dole posted the prizes,
Air Corps Lieutenants
Lester J. Maitland and
Albert F. Hegenberger flew a three-engine
Atlantic-Fokker C-2 military aircraft from
Oakland Municipal Airport to
Wheeler Army Airfield on
Oahu in 25 hours and 50 minutes. An earlier attempt in 1925 had ended in failure for two Navy
PN-9 seaplanes; one of the aircraft, commanded by Commander
John Rodgers, ran out of fuel several hundred miles short of Hawaii and sailed to Kauai over the next nine days.
Ernie Smith and Captain C.H. Carter had arrived in Oakland earlier to attempt to parallel the Maitland/Hegenberger flight in the
City of Oakland, a small
Travel Air 5000 civilian monoplane, but due to mechanical difficulties, took off two hours after Maitland, and returned with a broken windshield. Unlike Lindbergh's purpose-built
Spirit of St. Louis,
City of Oakland had been serving as a mail carrier for
Pacific Air Transport. According to Smith, Carter threatened to dump the gas after the windshield was lost, forcing the plane's return shortly after takeoff. Carter quit after the record was lost, but Smith hired
Emory Bronte as a navigator, and took off again on July 14. Upon running out of fuel 26 hours and 36 minutes later, they crash-landed in a thorn tree on
Molokai. Dole disqualified the successful June and July flights from his prizes because they had not followed his rules. The Air Corps flight had been planned months prior to the prize announcement and had no intent to land other than at
Wheeler. By July 22, the starting and ending points had not been set. San Francisco began developing its new municipal airport, Mills Field, in anticipation that it could entice pilots into choosing it as the origin; the initial planned destination was
John Rodgers Airport near Honolulu.
Contestants draw positions . The first official entrant, announced on June 28, was Arthur C. Goebel. An early entrant was Richard Grace, a Hollywood stunt pilot who shipped his plane to San Francisco shortly after wrecking his Cruzair in a Kauai to San Francisco attempt in June. Fourteen official and four unofficial entrants were announced on August 3; Grace was not part of the group. The draw for starting position in the Dole race was held on 8 August in the office of
C. W. Saunders, California director of the
National Aeronautics Association, at the
Matson Building in
San Francisco. In all, fifteen entrants made the official draw; but the contestants later decided the air currents at Mills were too dangerous and all aircraft were to take off from Oakland instead.
Trouble and confidence before the race Before the race started, many of the aircraft had mechanical issues.
Pabco Flyer (Irving) broke a fuel line while conducting a test flight on August 5 from San Francisco to San Diego, and Irving was forced down in a cow pasture near Point Sur, approximately south of
Monterey. but was forced down near
Amboy by a broken exhaust pipe;
Spirit of John Rodgers (Covell/Waggener) was also forced down twice during a flight from
Brea to
San Diego: first near
Santa Ana by fog during a test flight on August 5; and the
Miss Doran Meanwhile,
Mildred Doran,
Auggy Pedlar, and navigator
Manley Lawing were flying into Oakland when their aircraft developed engine trouble due to fouled spark plugs. They successfully landed near
Mendota in a wheat field in the
San Joaquin Valley, but damaged the landing gear in the process and had trouble making repairs because they no longer had any tools. Doran went to
Modesto, California to secure tools and a mechanic; she quipped "We threw [the tools] off at Long Beach because they were in the way and cluttering things up." He reportedly got lost over Oakland. James L. Giffin announced he needed US$15,000 to complete a giant triplane under construction in July 1927; at the time, he was planning to fly it from Los Angeles to Tokyo via Hawaii. After a short test flight on August 10, Giffin confidently predicted they would rest upon arrival in Honolulu, then continue to Australia nonstop, a distance of . Giffin's intended final destination was Paris, a flight of 30 days in total via Borneo, India, Constantinople, and Rome. Goddard had already built and tested
El Encanto and anticipated it would reach speeds of at takeoff, speeding up to when nearing Honolulu as fuel was consumed, lightening the aircraft.
El Encanto means "The Enchanted" and was designed by Goddard after the streamlining of a salmon.
Woolaroc, piloted by Goebel, was originally intended to carry Lieutenant W. J. Slattery as navigator. In test flights before the race, Goebel's
Woolaroc encountered gear issues that required Goebel to hang outside the plane to fix. Martin Jensen and Robert Fowler competed over the purchase rights for the same
Breese-Wilde Model 5; Jensen won that race after his wife Margaret raised US$15,000 from local backers in Honolulu, and Jensen took delivery of
Aloha on August 8. requiring the navigator to fill the central tank, then transfer fuel to the tank in use via a hand pump; the plane was later retrofitted with a tank, obviating the need for the complicated refueling plan, which would have required the passing of written messages between the two men. Waggener had replaced Lt. Leo Pawlikowski as navigator; Pawlikowski had developed an abscess on his back which required surgery, and the doctors would not allow him to participate. The next day, shortly after British ace
Arthur V. Rogers took off for a test flight on August 12 in the twin engine
Angel of Los Angeles at
Western Air Express Field at
Montebello, California, the aircraft reached an altitude of and began acting "queer"; Rogers jumped out of the plane as it suddenly dived towards the ground, but died as either his foot or parachute snagged on the aircraft as it crashed. Leland A. Bryant, the designer of the aircraft, was to have served as Rogers's navigator, but was not onboard during the test flight.
Withdrawals and disqualifications Maj. Livingston Irving was the first pilot to qualify for the contest. Another rule was interpreted to require pilots to hold commercial licenses, which five unnamed pilots did not have. However, nine of the contestants agreed to postpone the contest late in the evening of August 11, which would give the teams time to rest and pass the stringent qualification tests; the deadline to qualify was extended to 10 AM on August 15. Later, it was noted that only two teams had qualified (
El Encanto and
Golden Eagle), with one more likely to qualify (
Oklahoma) by the original date of Friday, August 12. On August 12, four crews had passed:
Oklahoma (Griffin/Henley),
El Encanto (Goddard/Hawkins),
Pabco Pacific Flyer (Irving), and
Golden Eagle (Frost/Scott).
Miss Doran (Pedlar/Knope) passed with a new navigator on August 13. By the qualification deadline of August 15, nine crews had passed the tests; On August 10, Hollywood pilot and actor Frank Clarke either withdrew or was disqualified from participating in the race with his navigator, Jeff Warren, in
Miss Hollydale, an
International F-17 biplane. Clarke announced he would attempt the world endurance record instead and took off abruptly on August 13 with his sponsor, Charley H. Babb, leaving the other contestants fuming. On August 15, Frederick Giles was disqualified as he had not arrived in time to meet the navigation qualification test deadline. The
Air King (City of Peoria) flown by Charles Parkhurst Lomax and Ralph C. Lower Jr., was disqualified at 11:15 AM on the 16th, less than an hour before the first plane would start, because its 370-gallon tanks were estimated to give the plane a range 300 miles short by inspectors.
Final participants The race began on 16 August, by which time the starting line-up had dwindled to nine aircraft, with one of the nine disqualified just before the start of the race. In order of start, they were: •
Dallas Spirit, a
Swallow Monoplane,
NX941, flown by
William Portwood Erwin and navigated by
Alvin Eichwaldt Oakland start The fifteen competitors were seen off by a crowd estimated to include 75,000 to 100,000 persons on August 16, 1927. Weather was predicted to have a high fog on takeoff and showers along the route. A fog bank started at the Golden Gate and the entire route was overcast. At Oakland Municipal Airport, clearance to depart was not granted until just before noon; the fog that had lain over the airport did not lift until 10:40 AM. The crew would eventually abort the flight over San Francisco with an overheating engine.
Miss Doran circled back and landed approximately ten minutes later (1:24 PM),
Miss Doran and
Pabco Flyer would make second attempts to take off;
Pabco Flyer crashed a second time at 1 PM, The crew radioed Wahiawa Radio Station, next to Wheeler Field, when they were approximately out with an estimated remaining time of 2 hours. Jensen flew much of the way at a low altitude of above sea level, helping fuel economy but making it impossible to sight the stars for navigation.
Golden Eagle had a radio capable of reception only and could use the shipboard radio signals for navigation. The search for the
Golden Eagle and
Miss Doran was aided by three submarines, , , and . After repairing
Dallas Spirit, Erwin and Eichwaldt joined the search, leaving Oakland for Honolulu on August 19. The reward was withdrawn by James Dole in March 1928. In April 1929, the wreckage of an unidentified aircraft washed ashore near Carmel. The final search for the missing aviators concluded in June 1929, as Jack Frost's brother followed up a theory the
Golden Eagle may have crash landed on
Mauna Loa.
Aftermath In the days after the race, the disqualified owners of the
Air King charged that race officials should have disqualified the
Golden Eagle, because it also had only 350 gallons of fuel capacity when it took off. In a bitter conclusion, the father of the sponsor of the race, Rev.
Charles F. Dole, died on November 27, 1927. Goebel and Davis returned on the
Matson liner to an impromptu parade in San Francisco where they doubted there would be any survivors of a sea ditching.
Woolaroc has survived and is on display at the
Woolaroc Museum in
Oklahoma, which started as a hangar to store and display the plane. Both Ernie Smith, pilot of the first civilian nonstop flight to Hawaii, and Ben Wyatt, navigation examiner for the Dole Air Race, criticized the race after its conclusion. Smith called it "stunt flying – not practical with land planes. And now there are six men and a girl out there somewhere battling for their lives. All for $35,000. It isn't worth it." Wyatt believed that "[no] scientific value can be derived from such flights [with land planes]." On September 16, spread flowers and a floral Bible made by Miss Doran's students was released on the spot where the last message was received from the
Dallas Spirit. Each of the seven who died was eulogized and
Tennyson's poem "
Crossing the Bar" was recited. Constance Erwin, the wife of Bill, who piloted
Dallas Spirit, gave birth to a son, named Bill, on October 12, 1927. ==Race summary==