Aug. 31: Arthur Godfrey's birthday (1903) and the first airline crash investigated by the CAB (1940)

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Fri Aug 31, 2018: Today's aeronautical anniversaries: Arthur Godfrey's birthday, and the first CAB crash investigation

Both have connections with Loudoun County and Lockheed Constellations.

If you remember Arthur Godfrey, you go way back. I used to listen to him on the radio, but his TV show was probably off the air before we got our first set.

Arthur Godfrey

Arthur Morton Godfrey (August 31, 1903 – March 16, 1983) was an American radio and television broadcaster and entertainer who was sometimes introduced by his nickname, The Old Redhead. An on-air incident undermined his folksy image and resulted in a gradual decline. At the peak of his success in the mid-1950s, Godfrey helmed two CBS-TV weekly series and a daily 90-minute television mid-morning show, but, by the early 1960s, his presence had been reduced to hosting the occasional TV special and his daily network radio show, which ended in 1972.

One of the medium's early master commercial pitchmen, he was strongly identified with many of his sponsors, especially Chesterfield cigarettes and Lipton Tea. Having advertised Chesterfield for many years, during which time he devised the slogan "Buy 'em by the carton", Godfrey terminated his relationship with the company after he quit smoking, five years before he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1959. Subsequently, he became a prominent spokesman for anti-smoking education.
{snip}

Radio

On leaving the Coast Guard, Godfrey became a radio announcer for the Baltimore station WFBR (now WJZ (AM)) and moved to Washington, D.C. to become a staff announcer for NBC-owned station WRC the same year and remained there until 1934.

{snip}

In addition to announcing, Godfrey sang and played the ukulele. In 1934 he became a freelance entertainer, but eventually based himself on a daily show titled Sundial on CBS-owned station WJSV (now WFED) in Washington.

{snip}

Godfrey became nationally known in April 1945 when, as CBS's morning-radio man in Washington, he took the microphone for a live, first-hand account of President Roosevelt's funeral procession. The entire CBS network picked up the broadcast, later preserved in the Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly record series, I Can Hear it Now. Unlike the tight-lipped news reporters and commentators of the day, who delivered news in an earnest, businesslike manner, Godfrey's tone was sympathetic and neighborly, lending immediacy and intimacy to his words. When describing new President Harry S. Truman's car in the procession, Godfrey fervently said, in a choked voice, "God bless him, President Truman." Godfrey broke down in tears and cued the listeners back to the studio. The entire nation was moved by his emotional outburst.

{snip}

Aviation

Godfrey learned to fly in 1929 while working in broadcast radio in the Washington, D.C., area, starting with gliders, then learning to fly airplanes. {snip} He made a television movie in 1953, taking the controls of an Eastern Air Lines Lockheed Constellation airliner and flying to Miami, thus showing how safe airline travel had become. As a reserve officer, he used his public position to cajole the Navy into qualifying him as a Naval Aviator, and played that against the United States Air Force, who later successfully recruited him into the Air Force Reserve. At one time during the 1950s, Godfrey had flown every active aircraft in the military inventory.

His continued unpaid promotion of Eastern Air Lines earned him the undying gratitude of good friend Eddie Rickenbacker, the World War I flying ace who was the president of the airline. He was such a good friend of the airline that Rickenbacker took a retiring Douglas DC-3, fitted it out with an executive interior and DC-4 engines, and presented it to Godfrey, who then used it to commute to the studios in New York City from his huge Leesburg, Virginia, farm every Sunday night.

{snip}

He actually lived in Paeonian Springs, which is about five miles west of Leesburg.

Anyway, here's that famous video of him at the controls of a Constellation. If you're a Constellation fan, you've surely already seen this.

20:38: time for a Chesterfield.

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Flying With Arthur Godfrey (1953)
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This is the full length movie and I did my best to fix the sound sync. An Eastern Air Lines promo piece with the Lockheed Super Constellation.

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And, on this day in 1940, about ten miles north of Paeonian Springs, this happened:

Lovettsville air disaster

The Lovettsville air disaster occurred on August 31, 1940 near Lovettsville, Virginia. Pennsylvania Central Airlines Trip 19 was a new Douglas DC-3A that was flying through an intense thunderstorm at 6,000 feet (1,800 m). Numerous witnesses reported seeing a large flash of lightning shortly before it nosed over and plunged to earth in an alfalfa field. With limited accident investigation tools at the time, it was at first believed that the most likely cause was the plane flying into windshear, but the Civil Aeronautics Board report concluded that the probable cause was a lightning strike. U.S. Senator Ernest Lundeen from Minnesota was one of the 25 people (21 passengers and 4 crew members) killed.

"Trip 19", as it was designated, was under the command of Captain Lowell V. Scroggins with First Officer J. Paul Moore. The pilot and copilot had over eleven thousand and six thousand hours experience respectively, although only a few hundred of those hours were on DC-3s. In the jump seat rode a new administrative employee of the airline, hired on August 26.

The DC-3A was newly delivered from the Douglas Aircraft on May 25, 1940 equipped with twin Curtiss-Wright R-1820 Cyclone 9 engines (also designated as G-102-A).

The CAB investigation of the accident was the first major investigation to be conducted under the Bureau of Air Commerce act of 1938.

Pennsylvania Central Airlines later gave itself the nickname "The Capital Airline." In 1948, it made the moniker its official name, by renaming itself "Capital Airlines." Capital Airlines flew, inter alia, Constellations:

Capital Airlines

In 1948 Capital introduced the "Nighthawk", one of the first coach class services, to compete with the railroads between Chicago and New York City and the dominant airlines on the route, United, TWA and American. Each flight left at 1 AM and stopped for ten minutes at Pittsburgh (Allegheny County). Chicago-NY fare was $29.60 plus 15% federal tax; seats on all other flights cost $44.10 plus tax.

Also in 1948 the first airborne television was installed on a Capital airplane.



A Capital Airlines Vickers Viscount at Allentown, Pennsylvania ABE Airport discharging passengers in 1960.

In 1950 Capital Airlines received their first Lockheed Constellations. In 1955 they became the first U.S. operator of the British manufactured, four engine Vickers Viscount, the first passenger turboprop airliner. The Viscount propjets were deployed on the flagship Washington-Chicago route and the airline had planned to fly them on expanded service; however, Capital was mostly stymied by the federal Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). The CAB also refused Capital a requested subsidy. Still, Capital's passenger-miles in 1957 were 88% more than 1955.

Without further ado, here is a video about Capital Airlines. If the notes are right, the Constellation is an L-049 model.

More Capital Airlines:

[marybourg]

1. I most remember Godfrey for his antisemitism,

which he demonstrated most notably by blatantly denying Jews entrance to his Florida hotel.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. Facts or allegations?

Allegations of anti-Semitism

Accusations of anti-Semitism shadowed Godfrey during the height of his career and continue to persist. Eddie Fisher, in his autobiography, Been There, Done That, discusses the rumor:

One of the best-known anti-Semites in show business was Arthur Godfrey, the host of radio's most important amateur talent contest. Godfrey owned the Kenilworth Hotel in Florida, which supposedly had a sign in front that read NO DOGS OR JEWS ALLOWED. But when I got the opportunity to appear on Talent Scouts, I leaped at it. I didn't care that Godfrey wouldn't let me in his hotel as long as he let me sing on his radio show.

Arthur J. Singer, author of Arthur Godfrey: The Adventures of an American Broadcaster (2000), rejects this accusation, citing Godfrey's good personal relations with a number of Jews in the entertainment industry, including his longtime announcer Tony Marvin. As for Godfrey's association with the Kenilworth, the hotel did establish a "No Jews" policy in the 1920s, but abandoned it when Godfrey acquired a stake in the hotel in the early 1950s. In the eyes of the public, the increasingly negative, and largely self-inflicted publicity Godfrey, despite his ongoing popularity, had generated since 1953 no doubt added credence to the accusations. In fact Godfrey was only a part-owner of the hotel and insisted that when he took that stake, he ended any discriminatory policies that existed. Further undermining Fisher's account, he appeared on Talent Scouts years before Godfrey purchased a part interest in the Kenilworth.

Dick Cavett, in an opinion piece for the New York Times (July 16, 2010), calls the accusations of anti-Semitism "...purest nonsense".

[marybourg]

4. He may have had good relations with Jews in show business,

but his “base” of hotel patrons didn’t want to rub elbows with Jews and he gave them what they wanted. I’m old enough to remember this. None of my family or neighbors would go near the Kenilworth when they went to Florida. It was everyday knowledge in the Jewish community. Had it been false, he could have done plenty to disprove it.He didn’t.

[Dream Girl]

2. Sorry but no one knows who half these obscure birthday people are.

I’m no spring chicken myself, but really this guy did radio show in the early 30s and died 40 years ago. Just saying.