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PLEASE NOTE: AS OF APRIL 2, 2007 A ONE-MINUTE MOTION PICTURE
CLIP OF TOUR AIRPLANES IN THE AIR AND ON THE GROUND AT TUCSON
IS AVAILABLE HERE.
There are many other sources of information, books
and websites alike, that are complete in describing the national
Air Tours (see the link at left). Therefore, I won't go into
a lot of detail about the Tours here, leaving you to explore
them elsewhere on you own.
However, the Davis-Monthan Airfield played a small role
in one of them, and this vignette will summarize only that.
The fourth National Air Tour for the Edsel B. Ford Trophy
was almost a circumnavigation of the United States (map,
above). The Tour blasted through Tucson in July 1928. Most
of the aircraft landed during a few hours on Tuesday the
10th. Please follow this
link to
see images of some of the competing aircraft on the ground
at San Diego, CA a day after their stop in Tucson on 7/10/1928.
Participants were westbound on their way from El Paso, TX
to Yuma, AZ. After Tucson they would make a large arc up the
west coast to Washington state, then eastward near the Canadian
border, across the midwest back to Dearborn, MI and the finish
line. Image above from Forden reference at left, page 66.
If you look at the register page,
none of the pilots who landed at Tucson entered times of day
in the register on the 10th except Breene at 10:20 AM and
Cantwell at 11:30:50 AM (to be exact!). Other times listed
on the page pretty much bracket the landings of competitors.
It was a busy day for air traffic at the airfield! On the
next page,
the final tour participant, L.H. "Jack" Atkinson
(near the top of the page) landed at Tucson on 7/14 at 9:30
PM.
What is significant is about our day at Tucson is that,
of 25 pilot entrants on the tour of 1928, over half (14)
signed the Davis-Monthan Airfield register. Among them Robert
Cantwell, Phoebe
Omlie, Eddie
Stinson, William
S. Brock, Al Henley, M.G.
Beard and
E.W. "Pop" Cleveland.
Information about these Ford Tour airplanes is available
here: NC4097, NC5553,
NC5877,
NC5878,
NC5900.
Compare the tabulation of pilots in the 1928 tour available
from the link at left with the pilot signatures and aircraft
cited on the register pages linked above.
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Dossier 4.2
UPLOADED: 5/7/05 REVISED: 7/1/05, 02/14/06, 05/02/06, 02/18/07,
04/02/07 (movie), 05/15/07, 10/30/08
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