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When
Elis Ruled the Skies
Just
after the Great War, veterans-turned-students squared off in a test
of aerial ability. The future founder of Pan Am helped lead Yale
to victory.
May
1999
by Judith Ann Schiff
Judith
Ann Schiff is Chief Research Archivist at the Yale University Library.
While Yale has participated
in a number of "firsts" in intercollegiate competition,
including the first crew race (1852) and the first hockey game (1896),
the University's triumph in the first Intercollegiate Air Contest
in 1920 has been all but forgotten. The competition pitted Yale's
best pilots against those of ten other Eastern colleges.
For its team, Yale turned to three students and a recent alumnus,
all of whom had flown in the Great War. Juan Trippe '20S had been
an ensign and instructor in the Naval Reserve Flying Corps, G. Willard
Horne '21S and William A. Hanway '19 had been second lieutenants
in the Air Service, and first lieutenant Sumner Sewall '20 had received
the Distinguished Service Cross with oak-leaf cluster for destroying
seven enemy planes. The team would be required to demonstrate their
skill in four events-a cross-country race, a "shooting-the-mark-contest,"
acrobatics, and an "alerte contest."
By midday on May 7, the day of the meet, 11 finely tuned aircraft
were lined up in front of the hangars at Mitchell Field in Mineola,
Long Island. Each was surrounded by a crew of mechanics making final
adjustments to the engines and wing bracing. (In addition to the
trophies to the champion pilots, a $100 prize was to go to the "mechs"
of the winning plane.)
Some 2,500 spectators who had motored out from New York City waited
in anticipation. At 2 o'clock, the cross-country flyers took the
air, all staying below 100 feet. Turning the first pylon, Yale pulled
up from sixth place behind the leader, Princeton, to third place.
Flying the next leg of 12 miles to Amityville, Yale was flying nose-to-nose
with Cornell and Pittsburgh, only ten feet apart and 30 feet above
Merrick Road. From overhead, Penn dove down to overtake them, but
Yale dove even deeper-to ten feet from the ground-banked, and made
a sharp turn around the post to take the lead on the third leg.
Penn and Yale flew side by side, leaving the other seven racers
far behind, until Yale, brushing the treetops for the last two miles,
pulled ahead and crossed the chalk line at Mitchell Field six seconds
ahead.
In the second event, aerial acrobatics, the crowd took in the sputter
and roar of the rotary engines and the smell of burnt castor oil
as Yale won second place behind Columbia. The Princeton craft won
the third event, "shooting the mark for accuracy," by
stopping exactly in the center of a 40-foot circle. The final event,
the "alerte contest," tested wartime skills most directly.
Upon hearing the explosion of a bomb dropped from a captured German
Fokker, each pilot in turn had to leap from a cot in his tent, suit
up, run across the field, jump into his plane, wait for the mechanic
to spin the propeller, and take off. First in the air in just 80
seconds was Williams, with Wesleyan second, and Yale third.
Winning the meet with a total of nine points, Yale was awarded the
four-foot silver American Flying Club trophy and the large cup provided
by the Cleveland Aero Club for the main event, the cross-country
race. In presenting the cups at the celebration dinner that night
at the Yale Club in New York City, officers representing the War
Department remarked on the value of the event to the Air Service.
The contest, they said, had proved that pilots trained at a cost
of $11,000 each could be recalled if necessary and fly efficiently.
Further, they added, since college-trained men apparently made the
best pilots, the War Department would help secure appropriations
to establish more R.O.T.C. ground schools.
As for Yale's flying aces, two of them went on to careers in aviation.
Sumner Sewall devoted his time to air transport activities and became
a director of United Air Lines. Juan Trippe organized one of the
first air-passenger services in the United States in 1923 and formed
Eastern Air Transport in 1925. Two years later, with the backing
of fellow alumni, he formed an international airline, Pan American
Airways. 
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