The day Hawai'i really took off
| • | Wright brothers launched revolution |
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer
It was described as "the greatest crowd that ever gathered" at the Moanalua polo field. On the day of the event, one local newspaper predicted that the entire population of Honolulu would show up to witness the spectacle.
R.J. Baker collection
Thousands paid a dollar a ticket for the privilege. Others clustered in the surrounding hillsides to watch history on the cheap. What the entire wide-eyed throng saw was J.C. "Bud" Mars — the "most daring" flier in the United States, by some accounts — leave the surface of the Earth aboard the Honolulu Skylark, a Curtiss P18 biplane, and soar to the altitude of 500 feet.
Taking the Honolulu Skylark up 500 feet above a Moanalua field on Dec. 31, 1910, daredevil J.C. "Bud" Mars piloted the first airplane flight in Hawai'i. Thousands of Honolulu residents showed up to witness history.
Aviation had begun in Hawai'i.
The date was Saturday, Dec. 31, 1910 — seven years and two weeks to the day after the Wright brothers made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C., on Dec. 17, 1903. On the same afternoon that Mars dazzled the Moanalua crowd aboard Hawai'i's first flying machine, two other noted aviators were killed during similar flying extravaganzas on the Mainland.
The day would foreshadow the progress and perils of flight in the Islands and would set Island aviation on a course that would one day open up Hawai'i to the world and forever change its way of life.
"The airplane in Hawai'i is absolutely essential," said Daniel Martinez, historian for the USS Arizona Memorial and National Parks Service. "Flight is the life's blood that feeds our tourist industry. Flight also plays a critical role in providing defense here."
The skyward path was blazed by those brave, foolhardy and visionary pioneers who provided the inevitable string of firsts:
On June 10, 1911, Clarence Walker plowed his biplane into a hala tree in Hilo and lived to tell folks he had been in Hawai'i's first airplane crash. Honolulu aviation pioneer Tom Gunn introduced passenger flying to the Islands on July 13, 1913, taking a tailor and a theater worker for a joy ride over Schofield Barracks.
Maj. Harold M. Clark of the Fort Kamehameha Aero Squadron flew to Moloka'i and back on March 15, 1918, completing the first inter-
island flight. On Nov. 19 the same year, Cpl. Mark Grace, with the Aero Squadron, became Hawai'i's first aviation fatality when the aircraft in which he was flying went into a tailspin and crashed.
R.J. Baker collection
Episode by episode, Hawai'i's early air trials led to the formation of a commercial airline industry. At the same time military aviation here was expanding on Ford Island, and later Hickam Field. In 1927, O'ahu dedicated an airfield — John Rodgers Airport — which eventually would become Honolulu International Airport.
J.C. "Bud" Mars, right, in flight jacket, moments before Hawai'i's first powered aircraft flight on Dec. 31, 1910. According to a scholar whose book will include a history of air transportation in Hawai'i, it would be difficult to name any other place more affected by the century of aviation.
Then, on Nov. 11, 1929, InterIsland Airways, the forerunner of Hawaiian Airlines, was launched. When Trans-Pacific Airlines, which became Aloha Airlines, started in July 1946, regular flights from the Mainland had become common.
"Airlines totally transformed Hawai'i's society," said James Mak, an author and University of Hawai'i economics professor who is working on a book about tourism that will include a history of air transportation in Hawai'i.
Commercial flight allowed the average Joe a chance to come to Hawai'i, said Mak. Before airlines, Hawai'i was an exotic destination reserved for the affluent who could afford to travel by ocean liner, he said.
"Hawai'i's is the most isolated major landfall on earth," said Paul Hooper, head of the American studies department at UH. "And that in itself says something about the absolute centrality of air travel for Hawai'i.
"You need to think about what Hawai'i was before air transport — which meant steamer travel, which took weeks."
Hawai'i's reputation as a crossroads of the Pacific was enhanced in the mid-1930s when Pan American Airways established a Ford Island terminal in its pioneering efforts to open air travel between the U.S. Mainland and Asia. Pan Am Clippers, luxury flying boats complete with sleeping births and hotel-style meals, ushered in the territory's most romantic airline era.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Hawai'i in 1934. Amelia Earhart flew solo from Hawai'i to the Mainland the next year, the first person to do so. Hollywood legends from Bing Crosby to Shirley Temple frequented the Islands throughout the '30s and '40s, broadening Hawai'i's appeal.
But it was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that thrust Hawai'i into the world spotlight — and in the process made aviation essential to the mid-Pacific, both militarily and commercially, according to Martinez.
The push for statehood in the 1950s and commercial jet travel beginning in the 1960s sealed Hawai'i's dependence on air travel, he said.
Mak said it would be difficult to name any other place more affected by air travel. Flight has become virtually the only means of travel to and from Hawai'i for tourists, affluent or otherwise.
"And for people living in Hawai'i there's no alternative," said Mak. "So it's never going to diminish in importance."
While it's anybody's guess what aviation will bring in the 21st century, there are still a few folks around who can marvel from a personal viewpoint at the achievements of the past century of flight.
Capt. Howard Phillips, 86, possibly the oldest Hawaiian Airlines pilot living in Hawai'i, is one. His career spans several eras — from Hawaiian Airline's eight-passenger S-38 Sikorsky amphibian craft, through the age of the DC-3 (those beloved converted World War II workhorses that transformed commercial aviation after the war), and beyond the advent of modern jet aircraft.
By the time Phillips retired in 1977 after nearly four decades, he had stopped counting his hours aloft. The experiences, though, remain fresh in his mind.
"I quit keeping track of my flying time after 25,000 hours," said Phillips, who remembers the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when his scheduled flight to the Neighbor Islands was abruptly canceled by the Japanese attack and America's entry into World War II.
"For me, it's hard to believe what all has happened since the Wright brothers made that first flight," he said. "My grandfather told my mother, on the day he died in 1927, that he'd like to live another 10 years because so much had happened in the previous decade — World War I, the radio and the advances in aviation.
"He certainly was right about all that. And of course, that was only the beginning."
Reach Will Hoover at 525-8038 or whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.
