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Bert Acosta
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Bert Acosta
Bertrand Blanchard Acosta (January 1, 1895 – September 1, 1954) was a record-setting aviator and test pilot. He and Clarence D. Chamberlin set an endurance record of 51 hours, 11 minutes, and 25 seconds in the air. He later flew in the Spanish Civil War in the Yankee Squadron. He was known as the "bad boy of the air". He received numerous fines and suspensions for flying stunts such as flying under bridges or flying too close to buildings.
Acosta was born in San Diego, California, to Miguel Aphonse Ferdinand Acosta and Martha Blanche Reilly-Snook. He attended the Throop Polytechnic Institute in Pasadena, California, from 1912 to 1914.
He taught himself to fly in August 1910 and built experimental airplanes up until 1912 when he began work for Glenn Curtiss as an apprentice on a hydroplane project. In 1915 he worked as a flying instructor. He went to Canada and worked as an instructor for the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service in Toronto. In 1917 he was appointed chief instructor, Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps at Hazelhurst Field, Long Island where he test flew early open-cockpit aircraft such as the Continental KB-1 over New York in below freezing conditions.
Acosta married Mary Louise Brumley (1886–1962) in 1918 but they divorced in 1920. He won The Pulitzer Trophy Race in 1921 and the same year set an airspeed record of 176.9 miles an hour. In 1922 he served as a test pilot for the Stout Batwing Limousine, Stout's forerunner to the Ford Trimotor. In 1925 he was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and was living at 1 Winslow Court in Naugatuck, Connecticut. He married Helen Belmont Pearsoll, on August 3, 1921. They eventually separated but never divorced.
In April 1927, he and Clarence D. Chamberlin set an endurance record of 51 hours, 11 minutes, and 25 seconds in the air. Time magazine reported on April 25, 1927:
Engineer Giuseppe M. Bellanca of the Columbia Aircraft Corporation had conditioned an elderly yellow-winged monoplane with one Wright motor, and scouted around for pilots. Lieut. Leigh Wade, round-the-world flyer, declined the invitation, saying Mr. Bellanca's plans were too stunt-like, not scientific. Shrugging, Mr. Bellanca engaged Pilots Clarence Duncan Chamberlin and burly Bert Acosta, onetime auto speedster, to test his ship's endurance. Up they put from Mitchel Field, Long Island, with 385 gallons of ethylated (high power) gasoline. All day they droned back and forth over suburbia, circled the Woolworth Building, hovered over Hadley Field, New Jersey, swung back to drop notes on Mitchel Field. All that starry night they wandered slowly around the sky, and all the next day, and through the next night, a muggy, cloudy one. Newsgatherers flew up alongside to shout unintelligible things through megaphones. Messrs. Acosta and Chamberlain were looking tired and oil-blobbed. They swallowed soup and sandwiches, caught catnaps on the mattressed fuel tank, while on and on they droned, almost lazily (about 80 m.p.h.) for they were cruising against time. Not for 51 hours, 11 minutes, 25 seconds, did they coast to earth, having broken the U.S. and world's records for protracted flight. In the same time, conditions favoring, they could have flown from Manhattan to Vienna. They had covered 4,100 miles. To Paris it is 3,600 miles from Manhattan. Jubilant, Engineer Bellanca's employers offered competitors a three-hour headstart in the race to Paris. The Bellanca monoplane's normal cruising speed is 110 m.p.h. She would require only some 35 hours to reach Paris—if she could stay up that long again.
Columbia Aircraft Corp president Charles Levine planned on using Clarence Chamberlin or Bert Acosta as pilot with Lloyd W. Bertaud as copilot on their attempt at the Orteig Prize in the Wright-Bellanca WB-2 Columbia. Levine bumped Bertaud from the copilot position, prompting an injunction preventing any Orteig record flight. Charles Lindbergh arrived on May 5, 1927. While Chamberlin waited for the injunction to be lifted, his other competition, Admiral Byrd's team was repairing his Fokker C-2 Trimotor, the "America" after a practice run crash. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh left Roosevelt Field and crossing the Atlantic, while leaving the 'Columbia' and 'Atlantic' behind at the adjacent Curtiss Field.
On June 29, 1927, thirty-three days after Charles Lindbergh's record setting transatlantic flight, Acosta flew from Roosevelt Field on Long Island to France with Commander Richard E. Byrd, Lieutenant George O. Noville and Bernt Balchen aboard the America. A short film of Acosta, Byrd, George Noville, and Grover Whalen giving a farewell speech was filmed in the Phonofilm sound-on-film process on June 29 and released as America's Flyers. During the flight, the (perhaps apocryphal) story was that Byrd had to hit Acosta over the head with a fire extinguisher or a flashlight when he got out of control from drinking during their flight.
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Bert Acosta
Bertrand Blanchard Acosta (January 1, 1895 – September 1, 1954) was a record-setting aviator and test pilot. He and Clarence D. Chamberlin set an endurance record of 51 hours, 11 minutes, and 25 seconds in the air. He later flew in the Spanish Civil War in the Yankee Squadron. He was known as the "bad boy of the air". He received numerous fines and suspensions for flying stunts such as flying under bridges or flying too close to buildings.
Acosta was born in San Diego, California, to Miguel Aphonse Ferdinand Acosta and Martha Blanche Reilly-Snook. He attended the Throop Polytechnic Institute in Pasadena, California, from 1912 to 1914.
He taught himself to fly in August 1910 and built experimental airplanes up until 1912 when he began work for Glenn Curtiss as an apprentice on a hydroplane project. In 1915 he worked as a flying instructor. He went to Canada and worked as an instructor for the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service in Toronto. In 1917 he was appointed chief instructor, Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps at Hazelhurst Field, Long Island where he test flew early open-cockpit aircraft such as the Continental KB-1 over New York in below freezing conditions.
Acosta married Mary Louise Brumley (1886–1962) in 1918 but they divorced in 1920. He won The Pulitzer Trophy Race in 1921 and the same year set an airspeed record of 176.9 miles an hour. In 1922 he served as a test pilot for the Stout Batwing Limousine, Stout's forerunner to the Ford Trimotor. In 1925 he was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and was living at 1 Winslow Court in Naugatuck, Connecticut. He married Helen Belmont Pearsoll, on August 3, 1921. They eventually separated but never divorced.
In April 1927, he and Clarence D. Chamberlin set an endurance record of 51 hours, 11 minutes, and 25 seconds in the air. Time magazine reported on April 25, 1927:
Engineer Giuseppe M. Bellanca of the Columbia Aircraft Corporation had conditioned an elderly yellow-winged monoplane with one Wright motor, and scouted around for pilots. Lieut. Leigh Wade, round-the-world flyer, declined the invitation, saying Mr. Bellanca's plans were too stunt-like, not scientific. Shrugging, Mr. Bellanca engaged Pilots Clarence Duncan Chamberlin and burly Bert Acosta, onetime auto speedster, to test his ship's endurance. Up they put from Mitchel Field, Long Island, with 385 gallons of ethylated (high power) gasoline. All day they droned back and forth over suburbia, circled the Woolworth Building, hovered over Hadley Field, New Jersey, swung back to drop notes on Mitchel Field. All that starry night they wandered slowly around the sky, and all the next day, and through the next night, a muggy, cloudy one. Newsgatherers flew up alongside to shout unintelligible things through megaphones. Messrs. Acosta and Chamberlain were looking tired and oil-blobbed. They swallowed soup and sandwiches, caught catnaps on the mattressed fuel tank, while on and on they droned, almost lazily (about 80 m.p.h.) for they were cruising against time. Not for 51 hours, 11 minutes, 25 seconds, did they coast to earth, having broken the U.S. and world's records for protracted flight. In the same time, conditions favoring, they could have flown from Manhattan to Vienna. They had covered 4,100 miles. To Paris it is 3,600 miles from Manhattan. Jubilant, Engineer Bellanca's employers offered competitors a three-hour headstart in the race to Paris. The Bellanca monoplane's normal cruising speed is 110 m.p.h. She would require only some 35 hours to reach Paris—if she could stay up that long again.
Columbia Aircraft Corp president Charles Levine planned on using Clarence Chamberlin or Bert Acosta as pilot with Lloyd W. Bertaud as copilot on their attempt at the Orteig Prize in the Wright-Bellanca WB-2 Columbia. Levine bumped Bertaud from the copilot position, prompting an injunction preventing any Orteig record flight. Charles Lindbergh arrived on May 5, 1927. While Chamberlin waited for the injunction to be lifted, his other competition, Admiral Byrd's team was repairing his Fokker C-2 Trimotor, the "America" after a practice run crash. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh left Roosevelt Field and crossing the Atlantic, while leaving the 'Columbia' and 'Atlantic' behind at the adjacent Curtiss Field.
On June 29, 1927, thirty-three days after Charles Lindbergh's record setting transatlantic flight, Acosta flew from Roosevelt Field on Long Island to France with Commander Richard E. Byrd, Lieutenant George O. Noville and Bernt Balchen aboard the America. A short film of Acosta, Byrd, George Noville, and Grover Whalen giving a farewell speech was filmed in the Phonofilm sound-on-film process on June 29 and released as America's Flyers. During the flight, the (perhaps apocryphal) story was that Byrd had to hit Acosta over the head with a fire extinguisher or a flashlight when he got out of control from drinking during their flight.