Bertrand Blanchard Acosta | |
|---|---|
 Acosta circa 1927 | |
| Born | (1895-01-01)January 1, 1895 |
| Died | September 1, 1954(1954-09-01) (aged 59) |
| Resting place | Portal of Folded Wings |
| Education | Throop Polytechnic Institute |
| Occupations | Aviator,Test pilot |
| Spouses | |
| Children |
|
| Parent(s) | Miguel Aphonse Ferdinand Acosta Martha Blanche Reilly-Snook |
Bertrand Blanchard Acosta (January 1, 1895 – September 1, 1954) was a record-setting aviator andtest pilot. He andClarence D. Chamberlin set an endurance record of 51 hours, 11 minutes, and 25 seconds in the air. He later flew in theSpanish Civil War in theYankee Squadron.[1] He was known as the "bad boy of the air". He received numerous fines and suspensions for flying stunts such as flying under bridges or flying too close to buildings.[2]
Acosta was born inSan Diego, California, to Miguel Aphonse Ferdinand Acosta and Martha Blanche Reilly-Snook.[3][4] He attended theThroop Polytechnic Institute inPasadena, California, from 1912 to 1914.[5]
He taught himself to fly in August 1910 and built experimental airplanes up until 1912 when he began work forGlenn Curtiss as an apprentice on ahydroplane project. In 1915 he worked as a flying instructor. He went to Canada and worked as an instructor for theRoyal Flying Corps andRoyal Naval Air Service inToronto. In 1917 he was appointed chief instructor,Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps at Hazelhurst Field,Long Island where he test flew early open-cockpit aircraft such as theContinental KB-1 over New York in below freezing conditions.[6]
Acosta married Mary Louise Brumley (1886–1962) in 1918 but they divorced in 1920.[7] He won The Pulitzer Trophy Race in 1921 and the same year set anairspeed record of 176.9 miles an hour.[8] In 1922 he served as a test pilot for theStout Batwing Limousine, Stout's forerunner to theFord Trimotor. In 1925 he was a lieutenant in theU.S. Navy and was living at 1 Winslow Court inNaugatuck, Connecticut. He married Helen Belmont Pearsoll, on August 3, 1921. They eventually separated but never divorced.
In April 1927, he andClarence D. Chamberlin set an endurance record of 51 hours, 11 minutes, and 25 seconds in the air.Time magazine reported on April 25, 1927:
EngineerGiuseppe M. Bellanca of theColumbia Aircraft Corporation had conditioned anelderly yellow-winged monoplane with one Wright motor, and scouted around for pilots. Lieut. Leigh Wade, round-the-world flyer, declined the invitation, saying Mr. Bellanca's plans were too stunt-like, not scientific. Shrugging, Mr. Bellanca engaged PilotsClarence Duncan Chamberlin and burly Bert Acosta, onetime auto speedster, to test his ship's endurance. Up they put fromMitchel Field, Long Island, with 385 gallons of ethylated (high power) gasoline. All day they droned back and forth over suburbia, circled theWoolworth Building, hovered overHadley Field, New Jersey, swung back to drop notes onMitchel Field. All that starry night they wandered slowly around the sky, and all the next day, and through the next night, a muggy, cloudy one. Newsgatherers flew up alongside to shout unintelligible things through megaphones. Messrs. Acosta and Chamberlain were looking tired and oil-blobbed. They swallowed soup and sandwiches, caught catnaps on the mattressed fuel tank, while on and on they droned, almost lazily (about 80 m.p.h.) for they were cruising against time. Not for 51 hours, 11 minutes, 25 seconds, did they coast to earth, having broken the U.S. and world's records for protracted flight. In the same time, conditions favoring, they could have flown fromManhattan toVienna. They had covered 4,100 miles. To Paris it is 3,600 miles from Manhattan. Jubilant, Engineer Bellanca's employers offered competitors a three-hour headstart in the race to Paris. TheBellanca monoplane's normal cruising speed is 110 m.p.h. She would require only some 35 hours to reach Paris—if she could stay up that long again.[9]
Columbia Aircraft Corp presidentCharles Levine planned on usingClarence Chamberlin or Bert Acosta as pilot withLloyd W. Bertaud as copilot on their attempt at theOrteig Prize in theWright-Bellanca WB-2 Columbia. Levine bumped Bertaud from the copilot position, prompting an injunction preventing any Orteig record flight.Charles Lindbergh arrived on May 5, 1927. While Chamberlin waited for the injunction to be lifted, his other competition,Admiral Byrd's team was repairing his Fokker C-2 Trimotor, the "America" after a practice run crash. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh leftRoosevelt Field and crossing the Atlantic, while leaving the 'Columbia' and 'Atlantic' behind at the adjacentCurtiss Field.[10]
On June 29, 1927, thirty-three days after Charles Lindbergh's record settingtransatlantic flight, Acosta flew fromRoosevelt Field on Long Island to France with CommanderRichard E. Byrd, LieutenantGeorge O. Noville andBernt Balchen aboard theAmerica.[11] A short film of Acosta, Byrd, George Noville, andGrover Whalen giving a farewell speech was filmed in thePhonofilm sound-on-film process on June 29 and released asAmerica's Flyers. During the flight, the (perhaps apocryphal) story was that Byrd had to hit Acosta over the head with a fire extinguisher or a flashlight when he got out of control from drinking during their flight.[12]
In 1928Connecticut suspended his pilot license for trying to fly under the Whittemore Memorial Bridge inNaugatuck. According to local Naugatuck tradition, the wing span of his aircraft was much longer than the width of the center arch of the bridge. The flight may have been a publicity stunt, as there was an advertisement for Splitdorf Spark Plugs on the fuselage.
In 1929 he was fined $500 for low flying and stunting. When he failed to pay the fine, theDepartment of Commerce revoked his pilot license. He was arrested by Connecticut State troopers in 1930 for flying without a license.[12][13]
A newTerle Sportplane was being tested atRoosevelt Field in New York in 1931, but theCAA did not register it as a licensed aircraft. The aircraft was later test flown by Acosta, who found it perfect for his use since he was currently grounded from flying licensed aircraft from a previous infraction. After performing aerobatics with the aircraft to a large crowd, Acosta and designer Joseph Terle planned to produce the aircraft together as the "Acosterle Wild Cet". The aircraft was test flown for two years, but could not meet certification requirements.[14]
In 1931 he planned to fly from New York toHonduras with Captain Lisandro Garay of the Honduran Air Force in aBellanca CH-300. Acosta disappeared before a fully loaded "test flight" with 360 gallons of gasoline. Instead, Garay departed fromFloyd Bennett Field without him, making it as far as Cape Hatteras, NC, where due to a storm he was forced to land at sea.[15][16]
In 1936 Acosta was head of theYankee Squadron in theSpanish Civil War withEddie August Schneider andFrederic Ives Lord.[17][18]
Time magazine wrote on December 21, 1936:
Hilariously celebrating in the ship's bar of the Normandie with their first advance pay checks from Spain's Radical Government, six able U.S. aviators were en route last week for Madrid to join Bert Acosta, pilot of Admiral Byrd's transatlantic flight, in doing battle against GeneralísimoFrancisco Franco's White planes. Payment for their services: $1,500 a month plus $1,000 for each White plane brought down.[19]
Time magazine wrote on January 4, 1937, although the attack was later determined to be propaganda:
On Christmas Eve the "Yankee Squadron" of famed U.S. aviators headed by Bert Acosta, pilot of Admiral Byrd's transatlantic flight, at the last minute abandoned plans for a whoopee party with their wives at Biarritz, swank French resort across the Spanish frontier. They decided that they would rather raid Burgos, Generalísimo Franco's headquarters. The hundreds of incendiary bombs that they dropped on White hangars and munition dumps they jokingly described as "Messages of Christmas Cheer for the boys in Burgos."[20]
In December 1951 Acosta collapsed in a New York City bar and was hospitalized withtuberculosis. He died at the Jewish Consumptive's Relief Society sanatorium inColorado in 1954.[2][21][22] He was 59. Acosta was buried at thePortal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation atValhalla Memorial Park Cemetery inNorth Hollywood, California.
In 2014, Acosta was posthumously inducted into theNational Aviation Hall of Fame, along with pilot and astronautJames McDivitt, the first female airline captainEmily Warner,Cirrus founders and designersDale and Alan Klapmeier, andhomebuilt aircraft racer and engineerSteve Wittman.[23][24]
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| Preceded by | Transatlantic flight 1927 | Succeeded by |
