Iron Aviator

In 1911, a legally deaf, beginner pilot with limited training and only 90 minutes of solo flying experience took on newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst’s $50,000 challenge to be the first aviator to fly across America in 30 days or less. The transcontinental flight was considered by most to be an extremely dangerous and nearly impossible feat, considering roughly half of all pilots perished in the early years of aviation. Less than a decade since the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, a time when less than two percent of the country had even seen an airplane, Calbraith “Cal” Perry Rodgers drew tens of thousands of people to watch him fly. He survived a grueling journey, making history by becoming the first person to complete an east-to-west transcontinental flight.
In a flimsy aircraft prone to mechanical failure, Rodgers crashed an astonishing 16 times, narrowly avoiding death on numerous occasions. By the time he had reached California and the coast where he would land, on the sand at Long Beach, his story of courage and determination had captured the imagination of an entire nation. This book chronicles the life of Cal Rodgers and depicts the world of aviation during its adventurous, if dangerous, beginnings.

Christopher C. Wehner is a professional screenwriter with a Netflix original film to his credit. He is also the curator of the online Civil War Soldier Letter Archive, Soldier Studies, a database of hundreds of searchable letters and soldier profiles. For more about the 11th Wisconsin Regiment visit, 11wisconsinregiment.soldierstudies.org. For more about the author see his website, warmbeerproductions.com.

Christopher C. Wehner
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 229
Bibliographic Info: 43 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2024
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9322-4
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5143-9
Imprint: McFarland

Preface 1

 1. “I am a part of all that I have met” 5

 2. “Death by scientific suicide” 14

 3. “There is nothing in your old, flat world” 24

 4. “The Windy City” 35

 5. “[The] people below seemed to belong to the past” 46

 6. “It was the only one of its kind the Wrights ever built” 56

 7. “Carried by Rodgers aeroplane, Vin Fiz” 67

 8. “I Endure…. I Conquer” 70

 9. “Once you have left the ground to fly through the air” 79

10. “I hope I never have any more trouble in the air than I had today” 85

11. “There were five thousand pairs of eyes” 93

12. “The panorama of little villages spread out ahead” 97

13. “I breathed when I sailed over the edge of the cloud” 104

14. “Ambition coupled with energy is the driving force of mankind” 108

15. “For all of his back of steel determination” 114

16. “All the population that could get out of doors gazed” 121

17. “[Cal] is going to master the air and fly to the Pacific coast” 126

18. “[The] American people were melting down old heroes” 135

19. “I will not stop until I have reached the Pacific” 144

20. “Thrilled as they never were before” 152

21. “But as long as someone had to establish the ­long-distance record” 156

22. “He [Rodgers] remains outwardly unimpressed” 168

23. “I am proud to have blazed the way to the Pacific” 178

24. “The spirit of man and his willingness to sacrifice his life” 183

Afterword: “The Iron Aviator” 191

Chapter Notes 195

Bibliography 213

Index 217