The Bergdoll Boys, page 49
The timing was ideal for The Franklin Institute, organizing its new Hall of Aviation. It named C. Townsend Ludington, assistant director, in charge of the department. His mission: fill the Hall of Aviation with aircraft and other artifacts critical to the early development of the science and art of aviation.
On Sunday, October 8, 1933, as Philadelphians turned to page two of their morning newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, they learned what had become of a Bergdoll race car and, more importantly, Grover’s infamous Wright B Flyer. The Inquirer displayed photographs of two wrecks in an article headlined DELAWARE COUNTY GARAGE SHELTERS GHOSTS OF GROVER BERGDOLL’S DARING. They showed the broken-down and tattered remains of a race car and the airplane, rotting and resting among automobile debris and old tools in Erwin’s machine shop at the Bergdoll farm in Broomall.
The vintage 1908 racer was almost unrecognizable.12 It was sitting on jacks, missing its 875 x 105 Michelin rubber tires from the front wood spoke steel hubs and rims. The motor cowling, radiator, and nose cone were gone, showing large curved exhaust pipes protruding from the four in-line cylinders. One tube was either broken or badly bent. The leather cushions of the two seats were disintegrated, but the side chains from the differential countershafts to the rear wheels were intact. It was a rusting wreck of an original 2,652-pound race car.
Among the chassis of other vehicles, most notably old taxi cabs and buses, sat the Wright B, minus its motor and radiator. Nearby, wooden propellers lay on the floor, and above, the wing canvas was folded in the long angular steel trusses. The floor was scattered with tools, vehicle parts, oil stains, and broken glass. Bird droppings covered everything, including the canvas planes.
The newspaper article mistakenly attributed ownership of the machine shop to Grover, although it was owned by Erwin, who lived nearby in his farmhouse. The report and photographs contain no byline or credit, indicating that they were possibly provided to the newspaper to justify rescuing the airplane. Additionally, the article is produced in such a way as to suggest the writer did not witness the scene or have a knowledgeable source, such as Erwin, who would have explained the provenance of the wrecks. The lack of accuracy, attribution, and specific description supports the theory that the writer described the scene from handout photographs.13
Only weeks away, the 30th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, was approaching with a celebration event organized by the Institute. Orville Wright and Amelia Earhart were scheduled to attend. The new Franklin Institute wished to celebrate the Wright Brothers’ accomplishments in a big way. One way they could do it was to obtain an original Wright B Flyer for display at the new museum, with its more prominent space. The executives at the Franklin were undoubtedly aware of the October newspaper article displaying Grover’s rotting Wright B Flyer in Erwin’s machine shop, as was C. Townsend Ludington and Grover’s old flying companion, William Sheahan. This may have been the revelation that prompted them to act and save the airplane.
The Wright Brothers’ relationship with the Franklin Institute dates back to 1914 when the museum awarded Orville Wright the Elliott Cresson Gold Medal for his and his brother’s innovation in the “science and art of aviation.”14 Orville attended the ceremony but did not give a speech. In 1925 the Franklin awarded Orville the John Scott Medal. He appeared in person again at the Franklin in 1928 to honor his friend, Charles Lawrance, receiving the Cresson medal.15
In December 1933, Wright attended the 30th-anniversary ceremony of flight at the new Franklin Institute and was taken on a brief tour of the Aeronautical Mechanics workshop at the Camden County Vocational School. He told the instructor, Arrowsmith, and his students that he would advise them on their year-long restoration project of Bergdoll’s airplane. It’s presumed that the Franklin, or wealthy benefactors such as Ludington, in conjunction with his appointment as assistant director at the Franklin, may have organized funding for the restoration project, an even more difficult venture during the Depression.16
Wright and Earhart were the toast of the new Franklin dedication event on December 17, 1933. Wright wore gray slacks, a tie, a wingtip collar white shirt, and tails on his black coat. He did not speak at the event or dinner gathering the night before at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel.17 Amelia Earhart Putnam also dressed for the occasion elegantly in slacks, a blouse, a white waistcoat, and heels. The two pioneer fliers are pictured beneath the airplane Earhart-Putnam flew across the Atlantic alone. She was the keynote speaker, surrounded by Franklin scientists, researchers, students, and fliers of all kinds.
While many others also gave speeches about the future of aviation, nothing was recorded as being spoken about the recent acquisition and pending restoration of Grover’s Wright B.18
With successive and sponsored visits to Philadelphia, Orville Wright developed a close relationship with the Franklin Institute, partly because it courted his favor at a time when Wright was in a protracted dispute with the United States National Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington for its misguided recognition of the early flight accomplishments of its secretary, Samuel P. Langley, over the genuine first flight accomplishments of the Wright Brothers and their first flyer, the Kitty Hawk.
In 1928, several newspapers reported that Orville’s trip to Philadelphia was to survey the site of the new Franklin as a potential repository for the Kitty Hawk, which, as a result of the Smithsonian dispute, he had loaned to the Science Museum in South Kensington, London but which Wright wished to return to the United States. Wright told Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce dinner guests on May 16, 1928, that he would consider donating the Kitty Hawk to the new Franklin for a permanent display. The Franklin was delighted and further organized plans for the Hall of Aviation.
When the December 17, 1933, Franklin Institute dedication event made big news in Philadelphia and Washington, describing how the Franklin was courting Wright and the Kitty Hawk, it may have inspired the Smithsonian into action. It had a Wright Brothers display but no airplane.
Two days later, the Smithsonian announced on December 19 that it had requested Charles Lindbergh mediate its dispute with Wright to return the Kitty Hawk to the United States for installation in Washington. Following protracted negotiations with the Smithsonian for their agreement to portray the Wrights and the Kitty Hawk as the first in flight over Langley, Wright arranged in his will for his executors to send the Kitty Hawk to the Smithsonian for one dollar.19 Perhaps as a consolation for losing out on the Kitty Hawk, the small metal airfoils and notebooks used in the Wrights’ wind-tunnel research were donated to the Franklin Institute.20
On December 3, 1933, a vehicle with towing capabilities pulled up to Erwin Bergdoll’s old machine shop at the Bergdoll farm. It was 20 years since Grover had dumped his flight-damaged airplane in the shop from his flatbed truck and positioned it on an extended trailer.
The contents of the building were somewhat abandoned as Erwin had long ago given up working in the shop. Several men went inside, stabilized the trailer, aired the tires, and checked the hold-down ropes and chains on the folded Wright B airplane. They pulled the bird poop-stained canvas from the ceiling trusses and tied them to the trailer. Then, they slowly and carefully removed the old Wright B through the front carriage doors and onto the road between West Chester and Philadelphia.21 It would have been so startling that anyone passing on the trolley may have questioned if they witnessed a rescue or a theft.
Surely someone in the Bergdoll family understood what these men were doing. However, the circumstances leading up to this event were not described in family history until long after, sparingly and without specific details.22 It’s unknown who the men were or who from the Bergdoll family may have been present to approve or sign off on their airplane acquisition. Grover was still hiding in Weinsberg, Germany. If Erwin agreed to pull the old airplane out of his machine shop, he never told anyone about it. And, because he didn’t own it, Erwin could not have given away his brother’s airplane.
The men taking the relic considered it a rescue. While the Wright B aircraft’s structure was intact, the rubberized canvas planes (wings) were described as only somewhat salvageable. The trailer and airplane were towed eastward on West Chester Pike to Philadelphia, over the Delaware River Bridge (Ben Franklin Bridge), and to the recently opened Camden County, New Jersey Vocational School in Pennsauken Township, adjacent to the Ludingtons’ Camden Central Airport.23
The heap of the tattered canvas, wires, cables, struts and slats, twin propellers, bicycle wheels, skids, and empty space over the airplane motor mounts was delivered to the 76-member Aircraft Mechanics and Aeronautics course and instructor, Arrowsmith.24 Faintly visible on the underside of the lower wing canvas, students from the school could make out the name Bergdoll painted in large black letters from tip to tip.
The high school students had experience in aircraft woodwork and framework, cabling and spars, and engine maintenance. Still, from the Wright Brothers’ detailed instructions, they would first have to determine how to properly unfold the vintage Wright B and stand it on the bicycle wheels in their classroom garage.
It was an exciting event for the boys (and some girls) in the three-year-old vocational school—nearly as exciting, according to students, as the 1933 decision by New Jersey to allow the sale of beer and other alcoholic beverages on Sunday. And the publicity surrounding the celebrated airplane being entrusted to the school students significantly boosted continued state funding for vocational schools, threatened with closure at the end of the term because of the financial constraints of the Depression.
Perhaps unrealized at the time was the school’s unique relationship with Camden Central Airport, its owners, and the Franklin Institute. They were congruous, all supporting each other to restore the airplane, including the unknown expense.
Alternating between jobs, aeronautics course instructor Arrowsmith was also employed as a reserve transport pilot and ground supervisor at Camden Central Airport in 1933, at the peak of Ludington Airlines’ operations.25 He lived with his wife in a brick rowhouse complex of Ludington Apartments on Morse Street, Camden, about a half mile from the vocational school and airport. A Navy veteran from 1904–1914, he served at the war’s end with the Mechanized Medical Corps of the American Expeditionary Forces from 1918–1919.
In a local newspaper, Arrowsmith said of the airplane, “It was pretty much a wreck when we got it. We had to rebuild everything, including the engine. Through the efforts of C. Townsend Ludington, the plane has been given to the [Franklin] institute.”
However, Ludington passed the credit onto Sheahan but without naming him. Commenting in the Bulletin newspaper Ludington said he heard from a friend (Sheahan) that the plane had not been destroyed but was stored in a Bergdoll barn in Philadelphia. His comments closely resembled those of his employee, Arrowsmith. “Through this chap, who is a friend of Bergdoll’s, we got in touch with him and secured the plane,” Ludington said. “It was pretty much of a wreck after all these years.” And then, acknowledging that it was earmarked for the (Franklin Institute) museum, Ludington proclaimed, “neither the fact that it may be the 13th plane ever built by Orville Wright and his brother or that it once belonged to Grover Bergdoll has brought any objections from the museum people.”26
Arrowsmith and the students were given a deadline of less than one year to prepare the Wright B for the Wright Brothers’ 31st anniversary of flight, December 17, 1934.
Orville Wright would not be in Philadelphia for the big event on that upcoming date. Still, Grover’s Wright B would fly again, albeit barely off the ground near Philadelphia, celebrating the incredible feat of the Wright Brothers.
Fifty-four aircraft of all shapes and sizes filled the sky that morning for Philadelphia National Aviation Day at precisely 10:35 am, the same time the Wrights made their first flight 31 years earlier. Twenty-two military airplanes flew from Mustin Field at the Philadelphia Naval Base; another 30 planes took off from private airfields; a gas airship joined them from Lakehurst, New Jersey, and a U.S. Coast Guard seaplane from Cape May, New Jersey.
While spectators could watch the airplanes from locations throughout eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey, the biggest and most prestigious crowd was at Camden Central Airport. Reid got Grover’s plane off the ground for just two flights before his rough second landing damaged the struts. One of the more popular and widely read newspapers, the Philadelphia Record, capped off its coverage with a final line.
“The plane, formerly owned by Grover C. Bergdoll, World War draft dodger, was presented by his family to the Franklin Institute, which sponsored the flight.”27
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1 Film from Fox Movietone News. Copyright University of South Carolina.
2 Sheahan reported in Aero and Hydro that Grover flew a Wright B on December 28, 1913, during weather so cold he had to put boiling water in the radiator to get the motor started. The Aero Club of Pennsylvania also kept a Wright B at the Bergdoll hangar, probably the airplane in which Marshall Reid flew from Eagle Field in 1912 and 1913. Grover’s plane was still damaged, sitting in Erwin’s machine shop.
3 The Wright Brothers’ 1903 Kitty Hawk flyer was damaged and rebuilt, diminishing its original parts.
4 Despite learning to fly and soloing in 1913, Sheahan never achieved a pilot’s license. Using his photographs and testimony from fellow students as proof of his aviation skill, he was admitted to the Aero Club of Pennsylvania and served as its treasurer for many years. His photographs of early flight were later received by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
5 The Vertical 4, In-Line 4 Wright B engine stolen from Grover’s airplane powered Wright Brothers airplanes until 1912.
6 The wreck of a race car was Erwin’s 1911 Fairmount Park Motor Race championship 150 HP Benz, a 1908 model that preceded the infamous 200 HP Lightning or Blitzen Benz. It’s been claimed that the Mercedes Benz museum in Stuttgart purchased Erwin’s Benz, but the museum does not have it.
7 Erwin’s machine shop, the storage site for Grover’s Wright B Flyer, was somewhat distant and secluded from the farmhouse and stone mansion occupied by Erwin and Emma and another owned by Grover.
8 The Philadelphia Ludingtons were direct descendants of Revolutionary War Col. Henry Ludington of the Dutchess County, New York militia. On April 26, 1777, Col. Ludington’s 16-year-old daughter, Sybil, rode 40 miles through the Hudson Valley frontier, warning that British soldiers were marching on a military post at Danbury, Connecticut. She’s celebrated today as the “teenage female Paul Revere.” Sybil Ludington, the Female Paul Revere: The Making of a Revolutionary War Heroine. Paula D. Hunt. MIT Journals.
9 Air Mail Scandal investigations led to the exposure of the Postal Service colluding with large airlines for monopolies on airmail, undercutting the small carriers whose air mail bids were much lower. Airmail and the Evolution of the U.S. Aviation Industry in the 1920s and 1930s. Grant Cates. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
10 The Ludingtons also used their family ties in New York and Philadelphia to arrange ticket purchasing at Pennsylvania Railroad ticket counters and allow Ludington busses to pick up railroad passengers. The brothers said they were willing to invest one million dollars in their new passenger airline venture, realizing it would need cash without the benefit of air mail contracts. The total invested, however, was “no amount approaching one-half of this sum.” Telegrams of Nicholas and C. Townsend Ludington, Time Magazine, September 8, 1930
11 In buying Ludington Airlines, Eastern Air Transport acquired Ludington’s concept of a fast, no-frills shuttle service. The company later became Eastern Airlines, running a popular shuttle between New York, Philadelphia, and Washington.
12 The race car pictured is the remains of Erwin’s championship 1908 150 HP Benz, in which he won the 1911 Fairmount Park Motor Race. The article said it was one of Grover’s cars, Big Red. If Erwin had been there when the photograph was taken, he would have adequately identified the car’s provenance.
13 The machine shop entrance was within a few feet of West Chester Pike and easily accessible. Erwin’s farmhouse was several hundred feet farther along and set back from the road. The photographs are high quality for 1933, indicating a measure of professionalism. Conjecture suggests William Sheahan as the potential photographer who may have tipped The Inquirer to the wrecks and provided the photographs. At the time of this newspaper article, Grover was in Germany, arriving there in May 1933 after spending almost four years hiding at his Wynnefield mansion in Philadelphia.
14 Wilbur Wright died from typhoid fever in 1912.
15 Charles L. Lawrance was an engineer who designed the air-cooled Wright J-5 Whirlwind radial engines that Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart used on their record-setting airplanes.
16 Several years later, Orville Wright suggested the U.S. government singled out Bergdoll for persecution because he was rich and made fools of investigators trying to catch him. He suggested Bergdoll had suffered enough when other draft dodgers from the first war had been forgiven. His opinion was not accepted in the United States.
17 Wright was notoriously shy about speeches. The United Press said he had a throat infection at the dedication event.
18 Why the exciting Wright B restoration project was not mentioned publicly for the Philadelphia press at such a notable event is mysteriously unknown.
19 The airplane, Kitty Hawk, was not returned to the United States until long after World War II, in December 1948.
