Grayson County TXGenWeb

Cal Rodgers

Fatal Crash
Calbraith Perry Rodgers (January 12, 1879 - April 3, 1912) was an American aviation pioneer. He made the first transcontinental airplane flight across the U.S. from September 17, 1911, to November 5, 1911, with dozens of stops, both intentional and accidental. The feat made him a national celebrity, but he was killed in a crash a few months later at an exhibition in California.
Rodgers was born on January 12, 1879, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and later lived in Havre de Grace, Maryland. He contracted scarlet fever which left him deaf in one ear and hearing impaired in the other ear.
He was related to Commodores Oliver Hazard Perry and Matthew Calbraith Perry and had a cousin, John Rodgers, in the Navy's Aerial Corps, learning to fly the Navy's newly purchasedd Wright airplane.
In March 1911, he visited John at the Wright Company factory and flying school in Dayton, Ohio and became interested in aviation. He received 90 minutes of flying lessons from Orville Wright, and on August 7, 1911, he took his official flying examination at Huffman Prairie and became the 49th aviator licensed to fly by the Federation Aeronautique International. He was one of the first civilians to purchase a Wright flyer.

Cross Country Flight
Publisher William Randolph Hearst offered the Hearst prize, US $50,000 to the first aviator to fly coast to coast, in either direction, in less than 30 days from start to finish. Rodgers had J. Ogden Armour, of Armour and Company, sponsor the flight, and in return he named the plane, a Wright Model EX designed for exhibition flights, after Armour's grape soft drink Vin Fiz.

Rodgers left from Sheepshead Bay, New York, on September 17, 1911, at 4:30 p.m. He reached Chicago on October 9, 1911. It was decided to avoid the ROcky MOuntains, he would take a southerly route, flying south through the midwest until reaching Texas. He turned west after reaching San Antonio. On November 5, 1911, he landed at Tournament Park in Pasadena, California, at 4:04 p.m. in front of 20,000 people. He had missed the prize deadline by 19 days. On December 10, 1911, he landed in Long Beach, California, and taxied his p lane into the Pacific Ocean. He had carried the first transcontinental U.S. Mail pouch. The trip required 70 stops, and he paid the Wright brothers' technician, Charlie Taylor, $70 a week to be his mechanic. Taylor followed the flight by train and performed maintenance for the next day's flight. The next transcontinental flight was made by Robert G. Fowler.

Death
On April 3, 1912, while making an exhibition flight over Long Beach, California, he flew into a flock of birds, causing the plane to crash into the ocean. His neck was broken and his thorax damaged by the engine of the airplane. He died a few moments later, a few hundred feet from where the Vin Fiz ended its transcontinental flight. The aircraft in this last flight was the spare Model B he had carried in the special train during the transcontinental flight, rather than the "Vin Fiz". The "Vin Fiz" itself was later given to the Smithsonian Institution by Calbraith's widow, Mabel Rodgers.
According to contemporary records, his was the 127th airplane fatality since aviation began and the 22nd American aviator to die in an accident. He was also the first pilot who ratally crashed as a result of a bird strike.
Rodgers was interred in Allegheny Cemetery.