Afterword #3
She often talked about spending her wedding night with Rankin, declaring she was never doing that again, and nine months later she gave birth to their only child, William.
Pancho also spoke with bitterness about the times Rankin drove her to the home of one of his female parishioners and made her sit in the car and wait while he went inside and had dalliances with the woman.
She became one of the top stunt pilots in Hollywood and flew in a number of movies, including Howard Hughes’s Hell’s Angels and The Flying Fool.
Unhappy with the working conditions for pilots in the industry, she organized Hollywood’s stunt pilots and formed a union that successfully got better pay and safer working conditions for movie pilots.
Pancho and Rankin argued often about having more children, but she refused to give up her pilot’s license to do so and cited his frequent infidelities as another reason she refused to have more children with him.
They also argued frequently about money.
He wanted full control of her wealth, but she steadfastly refused to relinquish it to him.
In the stock market crash of 1929, Pancho lost most of her fortune and retained only her Hollywood apartment.
In 1935, she divorced Rankin and bought an eighty-acre ranch in California’s Mojave Desert with the proceeds from selling the apartment.
She opened a dude ranch, bar, hotel, and airstrip where she and her son, William, lived, and she continued flying.
Her bar was called the Happy Bottom Riding Club and was a favorite hangout of America’s top pilots.
Celebrities and movie stars often drove or flew in to rub shoulders with America’s aviation royalty gathered at her bar.
Chuck Yeager was one of her best friends and the best man at Pancho’s 1952 wedding to her fourth husband.
Pancho had a giant personality and was even more charismatic, loud, and outrageous than we portrayed her. She was famous for being able to insult someone for an hour without ever repeating herself, but she was even more famous for her facility with cursing and obscenities.
Marvel Crosson’s death was declared an accident caused by carbon monoxide poisoning that made her pass out.
However, her body was found several hundred feet away from the wreckage of her plane with a partially deployed parachute.
Her blood was never tested for carbon monoxide poisoning (although such a test was readily available at the time), and her body was rushed onto a train bound for Alaska extremely quickly after her remains were recovered. No autopsy was performed.
Marvel did, indeed, suffer a serious case of carbon monoxide poisoning in Fort Worth, Texas, on her cross-country flight to California to start the race.
However, Walter Beech was aware of the problem with the new racing Travel Air design from Louise Thaden and sent a replacement engine to Phoenix to be installed in Marvel’s plane on day three of the race.
Marvel never reached Phoenix.
It’s clear from interviews with various pilots in the race that Marvel was fully aware of the carbon monoxide problem with her plane before the race began and that such a problem was not at all uncommon in open-cockpit planes of the day.
She was also widely considered to be one of the most experienced and competent pilots in the country.
Before the race, Marvel discussed with multiple fellow pilots the need to stick her face over the edge of the cockpit into the airstream every few minutes to make sure she didn’t pass out.
This was standard procedure for all open-cockpit pilots and was a routine part of flying, which Marvel would surely have been familiar with.
None of the nineteen surviving pilots from the race ever spoke after the race about why they thought Marvel’s plane had crashed. This, too, appears to have been part of the pact of silence the women shared after the race.
Marvel Crosson’s brother, Joe, never did open the airline he and his sister had dreamed of, but he did continue to fly as a bush pilot in Alaska.
He was the first pilot to land on Mount McKinley, the first to fly to Point Barrow, and the first to cross the Brooks Range in a plane.
He flew many mercy flights, delivering medications to remote villages, and he performed heroic search and rescue missions.
He became the chief pilot of Alaska Airlines and later flew for Pan American. Notably, he flew the bodies of Will Rogers and Wiley Post from Point Barrow, Alaska, back to Seattle, Washington, after their fatal crash in August 1935.
On November 2, 1929, twenty-six women pilots, many of them participants in the 1929 National Women’s Air Derby, gathered on Long Island, where they agreed to form a group to promote women in aviation and help women become pilots.
Amelia Earhart was named the first president of the group because of her fame and the attention she could bring to the organization.
On November 16, 1929, Amelia Earhart and Neva Paris wrote and mailed a “Call to Colors,” a letter to every licensed woman pilot in the United States at that time, inviting each of them to join in forming their organization of women pilots.
Ninety-nine of the 117 licensed women pilots in America on that date responded to the letter and joined the group, hence its eventual name.
Today, the Ninety-Nines number nearly eight thousand and have chapters in over forty countries. They continue the work of promoting women in aviation.
As for Amelia Earhart . . .
She successfully got backers to fund her solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 20–21, 1932, making her the first woman ever to successfully make the solo crossing.
She flew the same Vega she had raced in the 1929 National Women’s Air Derby after its seats were removed, the interior stripped down, and the plane filled with extra fuel tanks.
She was asked to write a book about her flight and ultimately married her publisher, George Putnam. Their marriage was described as “unusual,” and Amelia always insisted on equality and having a home of her own that she could retreat to when she needed to escape her marriage.
After completing her solo Atlantic crossing, Amelia was unquestionably the most famous woman pilot in the world and one of the most recognized faces on earth. She set her sights on her next dream—flying around the world—and commenced raising money to make that attempt.
After completing nearly three-quarters of her trip around the world, she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared in the South Pacific in July 1937.
Her disappearance remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time.
If you’re interested in learning more about the 1929 National Women’s Air Derby, we encourage you to visit the Ninety-Nines Museum in Oklahoma City and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, where Amelia’s Vega is on display.
We only hope that we have done these courageous women justice and that we have captured even a portion of their intelligence, independence, daring, and resolve.
They were true pioneers in an extremely perilous field.
It’s been our honor to bring these unsung giants of aviation out of the shadows of forgotten history and into the light where they belong.
The twenty participants, their aircraft, and their outcome in the race were as follows:
HEAVY-CLASS FINISHERS (in order):
Louise Thaden—Travel Air Whirlwind with Wright J-5 engine—WINNER, Heavy Class—Finished in 20 hours, 19 minutes, and 4 seconds
Gladys O’Donnell—Waco 10 with Wright J-5 engine—second place
Amelia Earhart—five-passenger Lockheed Vega monoplane with enclosed cockpit and Wright J-5 engine—third place
Blanche Noyes—Travel Air with Wright J-5 engine—fourth place
Ruth Elder—Swallow F-28-W with Wright J-5 engine—fifth place
Neva Paris—Curtiss Robin with Challenger engine—sixth place
Mary Haizlip—American Eagle A-129—seventh place
Opal Kunz—Had to find a lesser-horsepower Travel Air after her 300 hp Travel Air was deemed “too fast for a woman”—eighth place
Mary Von Mach—Travel Air with Wright J-5 engine—ninth place
Vera Dawn Walker—Curtiss Robin with Challenger engine (sponsored by Howard Hughes)—tenth place
LIGHT-CLASS FINISHERS (in order):
Phoebe Omlie—Monocoupe 90 with Warner engine—WINNER, Light Class—Finished in 25 hours, 12 minutes, and 47.5 seconds
Edith Foltz—Alexander Eaglerock Bullet with Kinner 5 engine and enclosed cockpit—second place
Jessie “Chubbie” Keith-Miller—Fleet with Kinner 5 engine—third place
Thea Rasche—Gipsy Moth with a de Havilland Gipsy engine—fourth place
Evelyn “Bobbi” Trout—Golden Eagle Chief with a 100 hp Kinner engine—Finished untimed due to multiple mechanical problems
DID NOT FINISH:
Marvel Crosson—Travel Air Model 2000 with narrow fuselage, specially built for racing—KILLED—Crashed in the Gila River Valley, Arizona, possibly from carbon monoxide poisoning
Florence “Pancho” Barnes—Travel Air Whirlwind with Wright J-5 engine—Crashed into a truck that drove onto the runway while landing at Pecos, Texas
Ruth Nichols—Rearwin with Ken-Royce Challenger engine—Crashed into construction equipment in Columbus, Ohio
Claire Fahy—Travel Air—Withdrew—Wing wires were eaten through, possibly sabotaged with acid
Margaret Perry—Spartan with Wright J-5 engine—Withdrew—Caught typhoid fever and was hospitalized in Abilene
These women went on to accomplish much more in the field of aviation and in their lives. Below are some of their major achievements.
Pancho Barnes:
Hollywood stunt pilot in multiple films, including Hell’s Angels and an early talkie, The Flying Fool
Founded the first stunt pilots’ union, which promoted flying safety and standardized pay
Broke Amelia Earhart’s speed record in a TF-102 Delta Dagger
Founded Happy Bottom Riding Club and was called the “Mother of Edwards Air Force Base
Marvel Crosson:
Experienced Alaskan bush pilot
First licensed female Alaskan commercial pilot
Barnstormed with her brother, Joe
Set women’s altitude records