dave driskill, the national park service, and aviation on ...inspired, driskill signed up for formal...

VOLUME XCV • NUMBER 3• JULY 2018

Dave Driskill, the National Park Service, and Aviation on the Outer Banks

CASEY HUEGEL

On May 19, 1938, in celebration of twenty years of regular air mail service, 53,223 special cachets were issued at the Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, post office—a record for postmaster Hattie Baum—which bested the approximate 27,000 letters received on December 17, 1928, for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Wilbur and Orville Wright’s first powered flight in an airplane. In 1928, aviators Orville Wright and Amelia Earhart dedicated the cornerstone of what became Kill Devil Hills’s sixty-foot granite monument to the brothers, which was completed in 1932. In 1938, on the roads below the manicured hill that supports Wright Brothers National Memorial, the bulk of these letters were loaded onboard the National Park Service’s (NPS) 1928 Fairchild FC-2W2, a rugged bush airplane developed for transport and aerial photography, for delivery to the Wright brothers’ hometown of Dayton, Ohio, via Richmond, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.1

Behind the controls of the Fairchild was NPS mechanic and pilot Dave Driskill, a journeyman aviator whose career blossomed during the federal government’s sand fixation and beach erosion control project on North Carolina’s coast. From the late 1930s to the early 1940s, Driskill ferried food and supplies, mail, pay, and emergency evacuations between the Outer Banks and the mainland. Although countless individuals have paid homage to the Wrights at Kill Devil Hills, the Outer Banks are particularly significant for pilots, who found creative ways throughout the twentieth century to honor aviation’s founders. Most dramatically, on December 17, 1934, director of air commerce Eugene Vidal penned an open letter to pilots and aircraft owners for a mass “flight of remembrance” from 10:30 A.M. to 11:00 A.M. (the Wrights’ first flight took off at 10:35 A.M.)—and an estimated eight thousand aircraft participated.2

One photograph of Driskill’s National Air Mail Week flight that survives in Wright Brothers National Memorial’s archives captures this connection for Driskill, with the dark fuselage and bright yellow wings of his loaded Fairchild soaring past the Wright memorial.

252 CASEY HUEGEL

A Kellett Aircraft photograph of Dave Driskill testing the XR-10 helicopter, late 1940s. Courtesy of the Dare County Regional Airport Museum, Manteo, N.C.

Driskill also left his own legacy on the Outer Banks. His government aviation program in North Carolina was locally focused and functioned with the support of the project’s superintendent, A. Clark Stratton, who retired as deputy director of the NPS in 1967. Privately, with the capital of businessman, hotel proprietor, and native Outer Banker Robert Stanley Wahab, Driskill established a commercial aviation network from Norfolk, Virginia, to Beaufort to serve Wahab’s economic interests on Ocracoke Island. These efforts played a vital role in the expansion of the Outer Banks as a tourist destination beginning in the New Deal years, which included the establishment of Cape Hatteras National Seashore on August 17, 1937.3

In 1941, NPS officials asked Driskill to train as one of two autogiro pilots to serve the larger agency. The autogiro program’s primary goals were to test the practicality of the machines in fire spotting, aerial photography, emergency transportation, and wildlife surveying. This was not the agency’s first application of rotorcraft. In 1936 and 1937, an autogiro was contracted to spray insecticide on a cankerworm-infested forest at Morristown National Historical Park in New Jersey.4 Ultimately, the autogiro program collapsed, but it signified the beginnings of organized aviation in the NPS, which approached aviation conservatively. Driskill’s career illuminates the history of isolated aircraft use within the agency and its ties to official NPS policy.

THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW

DAVE DRISKILL, THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, AND AVIATION ON THE OUTER BANKS 253

In 1942, Philadelphia’s Kellett Autogiro Corporation (later Kellett Aircraft) hired Driskill to test autogiros and eventually helicopters for the firm. Although some individuals like Igor Sikorsky and Frank Piasecki tested and developed their own rotorcraft, many designers did not risk life and limb for the industry. Debugging machines in flight, particularly as companies expanded, was a job reserved for test pilots. According to one report, Driskill tested helicopters for hazardous jobs like laying pipe, setting telephone poles, and painting smokestacks. His ability to fly airplanes, autogiros, and helicopters was critical, as a successful transition between flight technologies did not always occur. According to one historian, “Many [autogiros] were destroyed in nonfatal crashes because of pilot error, typically when pilots tried to land them like airplanes.” Because the autogiro was a transitional technology to the helicopter, Driskill’s role in the rotary flight industry has been largely overlooked.5 This article will examine his contributions to rotary aircraft flight and to his career as a mechanic and pilot for the NPS on North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

John David Driskill was born on September 12, 1897. His early years were spent in Bybee, Tennessee, an unincorporated community in Cocke County about forty-two miles northeast of Knoxville. He was the second child of Marion Franklin Driskill, a blacksmith, and Martha Heritage, both of whom were also born in Cocke County. In 1900, the county’s population was 19,153, and census records portray the Driskills’ community as overwhelmingly agricultural, with most of their neighbors identifying as farmers and farm laborers. At seventeen, Martha gave birth to the couple’s first child, Emsie. Four days after Dave’s fifth birthday, Martha died.6

Driskill attended elementary school at least partly in nearby Newport, Tennessee, and spent one or two years at Knoxville City High School before dropping out. In 1914, he moved to Greenville, South Carolina, for a mechanic’s apprenticeship at the Mutual Auto Company—a skill on which he relied for his entire career. After completing his apprenticeship, Mutual promoted Driskill to mechanic, and then to foreman of mechanics and service manager.7

Driskill registered for Selective Service on June 5, 1918. Sometime before this date, he married Bessie Belle Mingee from Elizabeth City County, Virginia. At that time, the couple lived in Phoebus, Virginia, and Driskill worked for the J. B. White Engineering Corporation, the major construction contractor developing Langley Field for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA) research laboratories. Three months after registering, Driskill was conscripted into the U.S. army at Camp Lee, Virginia, joining the 114th Replacement Company. On November 11, an armistice was


254 CASEY HUEGEL

Dave Driskill’s mother, Martha Heritage Driskill, died in 1902, when he was five years old. Courtesy of the Dare County Regional Airport Museum.

signed that ended the bloodshed of World War I and Driskill’s brief military career. He was never deployed. Remarks on Driskill’s enlistment record and honorable discharge note that the five-foot, eight-inch-tall soldier with brown hair and blue eyes was in “good” physical condition, had “excellent” character, and was “honest and faithful” in service.8

In 1919, Driskill opened Phoebus Auto Service, which provided automobile repair and servicing; he remained in business until 1925, when he sold his interests. As Driskill’s career shifted from automobiles to aircraft, he maintained a strong entrepreneurial drive. For the next two years, he worked as a garage supervisor for the quartermaster division at Fort Monroe, a military installation in Hampton, Virginia, where two of his brothers-in-law were first sergeants in the army.9 In the late 1920s, Driskill’s life changed forever after he received his pilot’s training.

In 1946, Outer Banks publicist Aycock Brown published a sketch of Driskill’s career in the Dare County Times. According to this report, on his days off from auto garage work, Driskill frequented a local airfield to help Hampton Roads barnstormer Jimmy Crane attract customers for paid hops in his biplane. As gratitude for Driskill’s efforts, Crane offered him free rides. During these flights, Driskill studied the pilot’s movements. The report continues:



Bessie Driskill (left) and a friend relaxing at the Manteo airport, ca. 1940s. Courtesy of the Dare County Regional Airport Museum.

One day at the field, while Crane was out of town, Driskill decided to see if he could fly the plane. Already he had mastered the art of starting the Jennie [Curtiss JN-4 trainer]. So that part of his adventure was easily accomplished. Then, as no one was present to tell him not to do it, Driskill taxied up and down the dirt runway several times. Then he did it. Manipulating the controls as he had seen Jimmy Crane do it, he was soon airborne and thus he became one of the few pilots living today who can claim the distinction of being a self-taught aviator . . . thus with no actual instruction, Driskill became a pilot.10

Inspired, Driskill signed up for formal flight training and aviation mechanics courses at the Pitcairn Flying School at Fort Lee, near Richmond, Virginia, from May 1927 to October 1928, about a year after his first flight. In February 1927, Pitcairn Aviation received Contract Air Mail (CAM) 19, the overnight route between New York and Atlanta, and Fort Lee was designated the route’s maintenance hub. Pitcairn, which manufactured aircraft and employed air mail contractors and commercial operators, offered its students “intimate contact with commercial flying operations.” The aviation industry, however, was still in its infancy, and flying was a dangerous career move. Two of Pitcairn’s airmail pilots died during the company’s first month of deliveries to Atlanta.11

On January 28, 1929, Driskill passed his flight test at Langley Field in an Alexander Eaglerock airplane, earning a limited commercial license. According to his scorecard, Driskill was docked points for his tail height on his first two landings. He recovered on his next three flights and earned positive scores for his control of the aircraft in a


https://Atlanta.11https://pilot.10

256 CASEY HUEGEL

maximum climb, spiral, and final landing. Interestingly, pilots were also judged on their reputation in the aviation community. Driskill’s was circled as “fair”; however, he sharpened his skills through years of study and experience. On November 9, Driskill expanded his credentials with an upgraded transport license.12

On March 29, 1930, Aeronautical Industry reported that “Busyman Driskill” instructed fifteen students at the Grand Central Air Terminal, a commercial airport in Norfolk. It was an apt description of Driskill’s industrious pursuit of aviation. That year he successfully trained forty students, including one of his most promising pupils, Britta Aspegren of Norfolk, who soloed after less than ten hours in the air. At the time, women were a small—at most five hundred, according to one historian—but highly visible minority of pilots who held professional jobs as “test pilots, flight instructors, aerial photographers, and flying chauffeurs,” and raced and often beat men at aviation meets. Driskill’s duties as Grand Central’s chief pilot included airport management, flying, and supervising engine repairs. In August, Driskill led a “Good Will” air tour of Virginia sponsored by the Norfolk-Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce, which featured six pilots flying two mechanics and nine businessmen twenty-five hundred miles around the state to stimulate commercial interest in aviation.13

Driskill barnstormed around Hampton Roads, Virginia, offering airplane rides or performing aerial stunts for a fee. One photograph from the Dare County Regional Airport Museum’s collection pictures Driskill and “Santa Claus” aboard an aircraft greeting an eager crowd of children in Norfolk. On another occasion, Driskill proposed a parachute jump that was expected to attract thousands of people to Norfolk’s Grand Central Air Terminal. However, the airport’s manager canceled the affair because “[e]xhibition jumps are just another example of dare-deviltry in the air. . . . I value Dave’s services and skill as a pilot too highly to be willing for him to risk his life to give people another thrill.” At one air show, four thousand people gathered to watch Driskill drop a watch from fifteen hundred feet. The watch, enclosed in a jewelry store box, survived unscathed; it was presented to the local fire chief as a gift. At the same event, Driskill and his business partner, Charles W. Barclay, who co-leased the Newport News, Virginia, airfield, competed in an aerial ribbon-cutting contest. Pilots from NACA also made an appearance. It was not unusual for aviation events to attract large crowds. Especially after Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight in 1927, Americans were dazzled by aviation celebrities, record-breaking flights, daring exploration, and technological advancement as part of what historians now call the “Golden Age of Flight.”14

In 1930, prolific inventor and industrialist George Albert Lyon—best known, perhaps, for his car bumpers—hired Driskill as a private transport pilot for Lyon Industries, relocating the aviator to Asbury Park, New Jersey. An avid outdoorsman, Lyon built the Gooseville Gun Club on fifteen hundred acres of the southern tip of North Carolina’s Hatteras Island in 1927. Wealthy hunters and fishermen increasingly frequented the Outer Banks after the Civil War, and by the early decades of the twentieth century, hunting camps and lodges were scattered across the islands. Driskill ferried the mogul and his guests in a Bellanca airplane to the Outer Banks. These flights were Driskill’s introduction to this complex coastal landscape and the opportunities available to pilots


https://aviation.13https://license.12


Driskill and an air-minded Santa Claus greet an eager crowd in Norfolk, Virginia, ca. 1927. Courtesy of the Dare County Regional Airport Museum.

serving the region’s nature tourism industry. Later, in a eulogy to Driskill, Stanley Wahab reiterated the importance of this period for Dave, and commended the pilot’s work through the lens of divine providence: “It was while in this position [with Lyon Industries] that he pioneered safe and practical use of certain places on our beaches— where God gave us airports for our landings and take-offs.” Lyon commented that “[w]e would always rather fly with Dave than with the commercial airlines. He was very brave and cool-headed under all circumstances. We got into many dangerous spots, and with his great judgement, always came out okay.”15

Four decades after the Wright Brothers first utilized the beaches near Kitty Hawk for soft glider landings and their strong winds for takeoff, the Ocracoke-Manteo Transportation Company advertised the Outer Banks as the safest landing fields that Driskill, the company’s general manager and chief pilot, ever used. Yet what attracted the Wrights to the Outer Banks—including the perilous winds that long plagued sailors— did not always benefit later airplanes. Sand and water were additional hazards, and there were a number of crashes on the Outer Banks in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1940, Driskill’s privately owned Stinson airplane had its wheel ripped off during takeoff on Ocracoke Island after it “bogged in the quicksands resulting from recent heavy rains.” In the air, Driskill radioed his colleague Charles Barclay to fly in from Newport News in case of disaster. Ironically, Driskill safely landed the Stinson on one wheel, while Barclay crash-landed on the waterlogged island.16


https://island.16

258 CASEY HUEGEL

Lyon fired Driskill in 1932, probably for economic reasons. That year the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped to its lowest point of the Great Depression, and New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president. The following year, Driskill took a job with Roosevelt’s newly established Civil Works Administration (CWA) as an airport inspector before a brief period of self-employment in aircraft maintenance and transport. Around this time, he helped launch Witch Duck Airplane Lines in Norfolk, which offered two flights daily to Cape Charles, Virginia. In 1934, Driskill was hired as the garage supervisor for Fort Eustis, near Newport News, managing automobile, truck, and tractor repair. That October, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) established Fort Eustis as a regional transit rehabilitation camp, which the Works Progress Administration (WPA) took over in 1935. Fort Eustis was the largest relief camp in the country, housing at its peak between three thousand and four thousand people. The facility operated largely on a self-sustaining basis; it issued its own scrip, managed nearby work projects for its men, and maintained recreational and educational systems. A program survives from a December 1, 1935, educational commencement at the camp, listing Driskill as one of nineteen faculty members. The graduating students earned certificates for their schooling.17

Fort Eustis provided laborers to construction projects at Langley Field, which became an important resource for Driskill’s educational program. In March 1935, in cooperation with camp director Paul B. Murphy and business manager A. Clark Stratton, Driskill planned an aviation ground school, which at its beginning included two mechanics, twenty-four students, Driskill’s Travel Air airplane, and a few spare parts. NACA later donated additional parts and aircraft to the WPA, including a dilapidated autogiro and a Douglas O-2H, which was quickly restored. During the previous August, Driskill flew Stratton roundtrip to Kansas City, Missouri, successfully converting his colleague into an aviation enthusiast. To borrow a term from the interwar years, Driskill and Stratton were “air-minded,” meaning they had enthusiasm for powered flight, believed in the technology’s potential to better the human condition, and pushed development in the aviation industry.18 This partnership grew after Stratton was designated the Park Service’s superintendent of the sand fixation and beach erosion control project on the Outer Banks.

By the summer of 1936, it was rumored that Fort Eustis would close. Since February, select men from the relief camp were deployed to the Outer Banks project, which officially began with the establishment of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp Virginia Dare on October 11, 1934, and was bolstered by sixteen hundred WPA workers in 1936. The purpose of the sand fixation project was to construct massive barrier dunes and anchor the coast with vegetation and fencing to slow erosion caused by wind and the encroaching ocean, thereby conserving the landscape, protecting property, and boosting economic interest in the islands. The project was one of many CCC-supported conservation and recreational development efforts that altered over 118 million acres of the American landscape by the time the program was abolished in 1942. Along with the CCC and WPA, FERA, the Public Works Administration (PWA), and the Civil Works Administration (CWA) all “contributed heavily to the development of Park Service areas.”19


https://industry.18https://schooling.17


After the Fort Eustis and North Carolina projects merged, WPA relief workers began to see their modifications of the coast—and especially Driskill’s flights—as a continuation of the Wrights’ pioneering experiments on the Outer Banks, and therefore, humanity’s larger struggle against nature. In the Fort Eustis WPA’s Atalantis Magazine, one author wrote, “At Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on a stretch of sandy beach now marked by an imposing memorial, and included in the sand fixation program being carried out by men from Fort Eustis, Orville Wright made on December 17, 1903, the first flight of man in a heavier-than-air flying machine. Thus began world aviation history and another milestone in man’s conquest of the elements was passed. A chapter of this history is now being written at Fort Eustis by the construction of a modern airport.”20

Over the next several years, Driskill used aircraft to aid the government’s conservation work, increase community and economic interest in aviation, attract tourists to hunt and fish along the coast, and build his personal business on the Outer Banks. Driskill’s work, like much of the Park Service’s expansionist projects during the New Deal, had elements of both preservation and development. Public and private conservation efforts benefited Driskill because they preserved wildlife habitat and fisheries for his customers, and the Park Service provided relatively stable employment for him during the Great Depression.21 Both the agency and the public, however, feared that aircraft would distract park visitors and startle or harm wildlife. For Driskill, this included the bird populations that attracted his hunting clientele to the Outer Banks. In the late 1920s, airplane noise was perceived by some as dangerous. In 1929, the Washington Post published an article, “Deadly Airplane Noise,” protesting a proposed airfield near Washington, D.C., that recounted complaints of aerial noise pollution from across the country that harmed livestock, a litter of foxes, and even the Cincinnati zoo’s animals. Acting NPS director Arno B. Cammerer expressed similar concern over the issue. Another airplane critic in the Knoxville News-Sentinel wrote, “national parks are the last stand of unmodified nature. None of their area can be spared for utilitarian purposes.”22 Although there is no evidence that Driskill’s flights raised significant alarm on the isolated Outer Banks, his work was part of the broader intellectual debate over aircraft use in national parks that began in the early twentieth century.

On January 5, 1917, about four months after President Woodrow Wilson signed the law creating the NPS, Orville Wright presented a paper titled, “Air Routes to the National Parks” at the Fourth Annual National Parks Conference in Washington, D.C. The conference was held to generate “a body of expert discussion and advice” to guide the agency’s future policies. Wright was likely invited to speak because the conference was designed to take a broad and fresh look at land management. Although no longer at the forefront of aviation technology, Wright was widely respected and held culturally symbolic importance as the co-inventor and first pilot of the airplane. He argued that the airplane was an untapped and more efficient mode of transportation to reach national parks. At the time, all NPS lands were in the west, and park access was limited to a “few rail and wagon roads” that were costly to maintain, and unfortunately, were constructed at the expense of the parks’ natural features. According to Wright, airplanes also provided the cleanest form of transportation by avoiding the “dust, smoke, and


https://Depression.21

260 CASEY HUEGEL

vibration” familiar to automobile and train passengers. They were the fastest mode of travel available, and at forty or fifty miles per hour, were also the safest. Aircraft also required infrastructure, however, and to reap the benefits of air travel, the Park Service needed landing strips inside or near park boundaries.23

Despite Wright’s paper, automobiles—not airplanes—were the pressing issue of the day. In the early twentieth century, Henry Ford popularized assembly line production, which revolutionized the automobile industry by making these machines accessible beyond the elite class, and therefore expanded the range of possibilities for the American family vacation (Ford himself was an “auto camper”). In the 1900s and 1910s, the automobile’s admission to parks was a contentious issue, and one the Department of the Interior accepted hesitantly and gradually. Only in 1915 were automobiles permitted in Yellowstone National Park. But after President Wilson signed the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 into law, roadbuilding became a public good. Wright knew this, conceding at the start of his lecture that his “automobile friends” should still pursue road construction. In closing, Wright explained that national parks were best enjoyed from the ground: “The giant sequoia, when viewed from on high will be no more impressive than a modest shrub.”24

In the 1920s, the NPS used aircraft sparingly. The agency collaborated with the U.S. Army Air Corps and the U.S. Forest Service on fire suppression missions and a geological survey of Yosemite’s Tuolumne Meadows for hotel, camp, and road development. The Park Service’s first director, Stephen T. Mather, summarized the agency’s stance in a September 1928 memorandum: “[T]he Park Service has not found it practicable as yet to make any particular use of aircraft. In connection with park work only in isolated instances has the aeroplane been a factor in our activities.” That same year, however, private companies pressured the NPS to call a conference to discuss commercial aviation in the national parks. Many of these companies led aerial tours over parklands and were seeking permission to solicit business in the parks. One particular nuisance to NPS management was the Scenic Airways Company, which flew customers over the Grand Canyon in Ford Tri-Motors. Even Charles Lindbergh was planning an aerial survey of Glacier National Park, although in collaboration with the Great Northern Railroad. By holding a conference, the NPS sought to better control the issue.25

On February 20, 1929, Secretary of the Interior Roy Owen West hosted this aviation conference in his Washington, D.C., office. The meeting’s primary goal was to explore whether private aircraft should be granted access to national parks, and, if airfields were to be constructed for travelers, did they belong inside or outside of park boundaries? Attendees included park officials, politicians, railroad representatives, and aviation professionals, who voiced a range of perspectives on the issue. Republican congressman Roy G. Fitzgerald of Dayton, Ohio, who emphatically supported the parks—and climbed Mount Rainier on his fiftieth birthday—voted favorably for aircraft in parks because “[t]hose who use the airplanes will have great difficulty in destroying the flowers.” However, the committee largely disagreed. One concern was that airfield development and noise pollution would disturb natural conditions in the parks, and that visitors were better served on foot, by horseback, or even automobile. This attitude


https://issue.25https://boundaries.23

261 DAVE DRISKILL, THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, AND AVIATION ON THE OUTER BANKS

was captured by Robert Sterling Yard, with the National Parks Association, who warned, “The great danger is in the first step. If we permit one aerodrome and one landing field in a single national park how are we going to withstand the tremendous development of this airplane business[?] Let us be safe.” Carl Gray, president of the Union Pacific Railroad, reminded the group that railroad companies had heavily invested in park infrastructure, land donations, and transportation networks created for Bryce Canyon National Park and Yellowstone National Park. In his opinion, airlines were riding the coattails of the railroads and would cut into their profits, making it more difficult to maintain existing rail lines. Almost every speaker was sympathetic to railroad interests.26

In 1933, NPS director Arno B. Cammerer wrote Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes “that the policy of permitting passenger airplanes in national parks has never been decided. We have consistently been against the introduction of passenger carrying planes in the parks.” Although this statement mostly holds true, the Park Service had issued provisional contracts to concessioners at Yosemite and Grand Canyon National Park to accommodate air transportation when deemed appropriate by the secretary of the interior. In 1936, the NPS released a report to quell further calls for airfield development in parks. The agency was responding to the Federal Aviation Commission, which argued in January 1935 that “It should be the policy of the federal agencies concerned to provide airports and glider sites in or adjacent to recreational areas under federal control, such as national parks and monuments.” According to one NPS press release, landing strips already existed within an eighty-mile radius of every national park, and the “[e]stablishment of commercial landing fields within these areas is not to be encouraged. Rather the present and future policy requires their location to be within convenient distance of the park gates.” This information was compiled by A. Roy Knabenshue, who was hired as the principal aeronautical clerk for the agency in 1933. Knabenshue was a pioneering dirigible pilot who first gained notoriety flying the California Arrow at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 before conducting the first powered flight over New York City on August 20, 1905, in his Toledo II airship. From 1910 to 1911, he also managed the Wright Company’s exhibition department. Most significantly for NPS history, he orchestrated the agency’s autogiro program, which hired Dave Driskill as its first pilot.27

In the summer of 1936, Driskill flew NACA’s former Douglas O-2H over the Outer Banks to photograph and document the sand fixation project, his first major contribution to the future national seashore. Driskill flew NPS officials between camps and over work sites to “make regular inspection tours of all work from the air.” He spent at least 864 days conducting reconnaissance. The Douglas O-2H was invaluable for project inspection and expediting medical aid to injured laborers, since roads were poor on the Outer Banks. Although local lobbyists succeeded in bringing a few bridges and highways to the Outer Banks in the late 1920s and early 1930s, navigating the less populated areas remained problematic.28

On August 1, 1936, the Park Service officially assumed control of the sand fixation project, although it had offered technical expertise since the beginning. Driskill followed Stratton to North Carolina, and together, they developed the most active


https://problematic.28https://pilot.27https://interests.26

262 CASEY HUEGEL

aviation program in the NPS, including the procurement in November 1936 of the first agency-owned airplane, a Fairchild FC-2W2.29

Given the scope of work in developing barrier islands, the Fairchild FC-2W2 offered distinct advantages over the Douglas O-2H and automobiles. Most importantly, it featured an enclosed and spacious cabin that reportedly carried over twenty-two hundred pounds of payload, earning it the nickname of the “winged freighter” in one North Carolina newspaper. The aircraft was invaluable in an area where roadways were limited and winter weather paralyzed boat travel. On January 29, 1936, a massive snowstorm blanketed the Buxton CCC camp and froze Pamlico Sound. The camp reported that Hatteras Island was “snow and ice bound for ten days,” causing a “food shortage for the native population.” Luckily, the CCC camp was well stocked for such a situation. On another occasion, ice formations collapsed a hundred-foot section of the Wright Memorial Bridge. To assist the stranded island communities, Driskill flew in two shipments of their mail, about fifteen hundred pounds.30

Driskill took over hauling food, including frozen beef and vegetables, payroll, mail, and additional supplies to the labor camps scattered across the Outer Banks by air. One newspaper account described these grocery flights: “When men work they eat, and a thousand men can do a lot of eating when their appetites have been whetted by such winds as swirl around the lighthouse at the Point of the Cape. And there isn’t much sense in expecting them to eat wholly out of tin cans. They have to have fresh meat and fresh vegetables.” By 1940, relief laborers erected over three million linear feet of sand fencing, planted 141,841,821 square feet of grasses and 2,552,359 trees and shrubs, and built 77,178 linear feet of barrier sand dunes, a process Stratton called “sandbanking.” To satiate young appetites, hearty menus were a staple of CCC culture, and this mixed relief agency project was no different. Overall, physical labor and high-calorie meals significantly improved health within the CCC.31

The Fairchild FC-2W2, christened the “Stars and Stripes” for Lt. Cmdr. Richard Byrd’s 1929 inaugural aerial expedition to the South Pole, was an exceptionally durable aircraft. The airplane was packed away and buried in a snow hangar after its photographic, mapping, and rescue missions in the unexplored Antarctic during 1929 and 1930. Amazingly, the “Stars and Stripes” was recovered in December 1933 and restored to flying condition the following year. The hardiness of this aircraft aided Driskill as he battled coastal winds and rain, blowing sand, and takeoffs and landings in potentially saturated conditions. For sick or injured New Deal workers, the Fairchild’s reliability was essential. One can imagine a short airplane hop was a welcome relief for a laborer’s broken bone over a slow and jarring car ride. Similarly, Driskill not only transported sportsmen to their hunting camps; he occasionally evacuated them after they suffered accidental gunshot wounds. According to a 1943 interview with Driskill, the medical flights were frequent: “During the time I was down there I flew more than 500 patients from Cape Hatteras to the Marine Base Hospital in Norfolk. Every one of these were emergency cases and they had no other way of getting to the hospital. It makes a man feel good to know that he is doing a real service like that.” That same report also recalls three days in 1937 when Driskill ferried food and medicine after a bridge washed out.32


https://pounds.30https://FC-2W2.29


One newspaper clipping provides context for Driskill’s aerial pay delivery for the CCC and the WPA. During a previous payday delivery by automobile, the paymasters’ vehicle sank into the sand, and darkness fell before the party could reach help. The paymasters left to look for assistance from the Coast Guard, leaving one person behind. To protect his funds, the paymaster buried and marked the location of his cashbox in the sand while he waited. After the moon rose and cast shadows across the beach, the paymaster lost track of his cashbox. He was found frantically digging holes to retrieve the money; the scene was described as looking similar to an “air raid.” Although the situation was probably exaggerated, stranded automobiles on the Outer Banks were commonplace, and timely pay was indispensable for camp morale. Pay was a volatile issue for Outer Banks relief workers. At first, they received increased wages when an exemption was approved from the general pay scale after the NPS assumed control of the project in 1936. This was intended to attract and maintain the project’s workforce in an isolated environment. After WPA wage reductions, however, from January to March 1938, one hundred men abandoned their posts to return to Fort Eustis. There, they could earn three dollars more per month and enjoy the amenities of Norfolk.33 As a result, Driskill’s timely delivery of food, payroll, and supplies was critical to maintaining the labor force.

On December 17, 1936, according to the New York Times, a “National Park Service plane,” which was almost certainly flown by Driskill, dropped a wreath over the Wright Memorial in commemoration of the thirty-third anniversary of the Wright brothers’ historic flight. Although Driskill’s Park Service flights offered coastal communities a taste of aviation, his private ventures inspired them the most. In July 1937, WPA laborers cleared an airfield about a half mile south of Manteo on the Midgett and Day properties in the village of Skyco. There, Driskill took many Outer Bankers on their first airplane rides, including sixteen-year-old Aline Midgett Robbins, whose family lived near the airfield. Growing up, she became fascinated with flight after visiting Kill Devil Hills with her family every December 17. At Skyco, Driskill parked his car on the Midgetts’ yard and used their water supply. In return, he offered the family free airplane rides. Years later, Aline recalled her first flight with Driskill: “Taking off was a feeling I had never experienced before. From the air the little creeks and marshes were so beautiful and, at that time, the beaches were nothing but white blowing sand.”34

In 1938, Driskill and five investors incorporated the Roanoke Island Flying Service in Manteo to buy and sell aircraft, operate airports and a flight school, maintain aircraft service stations, and promote aviation events. The company first acquired a Taylor Cub airplane, in which Driskill taught his partners to fly. Gas station operator Wilton “Jolly” Joliff was the first to solo, having flown years earlier in the navy. The Taylor Cub quickly became a popular attraction on Roanoke Island. The Dare County Times reported, “For as little as a dollar, they have been giving flights to customers, and . . . have delighted many of the local folks of all ages by taking them up in the air.” Outer Bankers’ fascination with aviation was not limited to men, as illustrated by Robbins and her sisters, and two women in their seventies who became “the oldest people ever on the island to have flown.” In fact, Driskill reported that 70 to 80 percent of his customers


https://Norfolk.33

264 CASEY HUEGEL

Left to right, Bill Curtis, Bill Newton, Stanley Wahab, Dave Driskill, and Al Baer at the Manteo airport, 1946. Courtesy of the Dare County Regional Airport Museum.

were women. He also found the youth technologically sophisticated—at times even stumping the veteran pilot with aviation questions—and overall, very “air-minded.”35

Two years later, Driskill joined forces with Baltimore-based businessman, hotel proprietor, and Ocracoke Island native Robert Stanley Wahab. Wahab, a former educator and accountant, earned his fortune organizing independent retailers beginning in the late 1920s. His company, Retail Store Services, turned a profit even in the early Great Depression years. With his newfound wealth, he hoped to develop his native Ocracoke. Wahab purchased a thousand acres on the island and built a hotel, an inn, cottages, electric power plants, and an ice-making plant. He also invested in fishing boats. An advertisement for the Ocracoke Island Hunting and Fishing Club captures Wahab’s vision. One could “pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and come to Wahab Village on the Isle of Ocracoke for a glorious vacation.” There, patrons were offered a selection of boats and rustic or modern lodging accommodations. They could catch the “the fightenest fish you ever tackled” or hunt waterfowl. There was not only outdoor recreation, but patrons could also dine, dance, or see a movie, and potential visitors were reminded that the “swimmin’ is swell.” The island was reachable by daily ferry service, or visitors could fly in using “an excellent landing field for airplanes.”36

To support his lodges, Wahab created the Ocracoke-Manteo Transportation Company, which bought out the Roanoke Island Flying Service. Wahab hired Driskill as his pilot and company president. With significant capital, Driskill’s ability to develop an aviation business on the Outer Banks increased dramatically, particularly through



Dave Driskill and the NPS Fairchild juxtaposed with the Kill Devil Hills monument (today Wright Brothers National Memorial) for National Air Mail Week, May 19, 1938. Courtesy of the NPS, Wright Brothers National Memorial, Kitty Hawk, N.C.

marketing. Advertisements frequently appeared in the Beaufort (N.C.) News, the Dare County Times, and Norfolk newspapers for the company’s air taxi service, and after World War II, a large prospective market of hunters and fishermen were alerted in the New York Times. One South Carolina newspaper reported, “112 strong already have made reservations for the ‘Waterfowl Special’ planes which Dave Driskill and Stanley Wahab are operating.” The company established an airline stretching from Norfolk to Beaufort via Manteo and Ocracoke. In connecting a larger population base to the islands, the men hoped to attract the potentially lucrative Baltimore and Washington, D.C., markets. To organize this service, Driskill and Wahab cooperated with community members, including publicist Aycock Brown and the Coast Guard and Civil Aeronautics Administration to ensure safe landing fields and routes. For example, in Beaufort, the Tide Water Power Company and the Carolina Telephone and Telegraph Company rerouted their wires because they obstructed a runway. Besides attracting outdoorsmen, the company also capitalized on transporting passengers to see The Lost Colony at Fort Raleigh, a famous outdoor performance written by North


266 CASEY HUEGEL

Carolina’s Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Green. From January 18, 1941, to October 1, 1941, the company transported 470 passengers, and after expenses, turned a profit of $1,800. Meanwhile, a movement was under way to build a modern public airport north of Manteo to replace the temporary landing strip at Skyco. According to one account, “Dave Driskill is the guiding brains of the airport.”37 During the late 1930s and early 1940s, Driskill organized a professional commercial aviation industry on the Outer Banks to support the increasingly tourist-driven economy. His efforts also laid the foundation for the CAP arrival on the Outer Banks in 1942. CAP squadrons flew out of both Skyco and Roanoke Island’s new WPA-built airport.38 As the United States increasingly prepared for war, Driskill’s career shifted toward rotary flight.

On June 30, 1938, Congress authorized $2,000,000 for the development of rotary-wing aircraft for national defense and civil aviation, with an initial appropriation of $300,000. The NPS was one agency selected to submit to the secretary of war “plans for research, development, procurement, experimentation, and operation for service testing of rotary-wing and other aircraft.” A. Roy Knabenshue failed to solicit funds for the Park Service, but he later arranged for the transfer of two Kellett YG-1B Autogiros from the Army Air Corps. By this time, the military and the civilian market found no practical use for autogiros, but Knabenshue thought their slower cruising speeds were potentially suitable for national parks. On January 3, 1941, the NPS’s supervisor of recreation and planning, Conrad L. Wirth, asked Driskill if he was “interested in flying one of these machines” after undertaking twenty to twenty-five hours of specialized instruction. Driskill responded enthusiastically on January 7, “I would like very much to learn to fly one of the autogiros assigned to the Service.” The following month, the NPS dispatched Driskill and his new colleague H. Clay MacBrair Jr., of the Civil Aeronautics Administration, to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for training.39 After years of uncertainty surrounding the airplane problem, Driskill and MacBrair’s recruitment into the autogiro program marked a clear shift in the Park Service’s policy toward adopting aviation technology. However, its momentum was short-lived.

Driskill and MacBrair recorded their training at Fort Knox in a series of reports (the latter was more meticulous in his paperwork). Despite their limited content, these reports reveal information on ground instruction, mechanics, flying, and, when the weather was uncooperative, inspecting of the autogiros. On February 10, after less than five hours aloft, Driskill soloed for two hours and forty minutes. Eight days later, Driskill endured his first autogiro accident due to mechanical failure. During a lesson on taxi takeoffs, one of the rotors escaped its track and collided with the propeller, seriously damaging the machine. After a brief hospitalization with an unrelated illness, Driskill returned to duty and installed a new propeller and rotary blades on his autogiro. When Driskill departed Fort Knox on March 1, he had accumulated about seventeen and a half hours of rotary flying time. His three-day return trip to Manteo took him through Lexington, Kentucky; Huntington, Charleston, and Elkins, West Virginia; and Washington, D.C. MacBrair was sent west to Boulder City, Nevada.40

In a 1941 letter from their office in Richmond, Virginia, Park Service administrators recommended potential assignments for Driskill and his autogiro, including mosquito


https://Nevada.40https://training.39https://airport.38


Dave Driskill delivering supplies for New Deal projects at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, 1939. Courtesy of the Outer Banks History Center, State Archives of North Carolina, Manteo.

control and shorebird surveys at Cape Hatteras, photography at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park and Manassas National Battlefield Park for interpretive media, fire patrol at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, wilderness road and archaeological surveys at Natchez Trace Parkway and Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, and a deer census at Acadia National Park. Still, Acting Regional Director Fred T. Johnson was careful to note the experimental nature of the program, writing, “we are particularly anxious to have comments and recommendations from those who would be concerned with the specific activities proposed in the program if they are undertaken. Should you believe that any of the suggested uses are impracticable or unnecessary, please let us have your opinions and the reasons for them.”41

The Park Service’s call for Driskill’s services was answered. Photographs survive depicting Driskill and historian Floyd Taylor posing with an NPS autogiro for what Taylor remembered as photography flights near Fredericksburg and Richmond for interpretive media. On July 7, 1941, planning coordinator James F. Kieley penned a memorandum describing his photographic flights with Driskill near Yorktown and Wakefield, Virginia: “All in all, I think the autogiro is a splendid type of machine for


268 CASEY HUEGEL

observation and photographic work. . . . Mr. Driskill handles the autogiro expertly and gives most intelligent cooperation to the observer-photographer by placing the ship in the correct position for the most advantageous shots.” Photographs taken from Driskill’s autogiro of Jamestown Island National Historic Site and Colonial National Historical Park were published in the Park Service’s Regional Review. Additional aerial photography flights were planned in July for Gettysburg National Military Park and Shenandoah National Park. At Gettysburg, one employee wrote, “I was especially pleased with the fine spirit of cooperation shown by Pilot Dave Driskill who, in addition to being a very competent pilot, did everything possible to make the project a success.”42 Despite the autogiro’s technical deficiencies, Driskill’s talents served the Park Service’s mission well on the East Coast. However, MacBrair found the machine completely impractical in the West and became increasingly disenchanted with the agency.

On May 29, 1941, MacBrair wrote a stinging letter from Boulder City to Knabenshue that he was out of money, lacked parts for his autogiro, and had no hangar for mechanical work or access to a military base for radio assistance. With winds as strong as eighty miles per hour, he was also skeptical of the autogiro’s ability to fly. MacBrair wrote Knabenshue again on June 23. Due to high desert temperatures, his autogiro could stay aloft for only forty minutes, especially frustrating as he was grounded the previous week because of high winds. He wrote, “I don’t see how I am going to be able to fly this contraption to Yellowstone when I can only keep in the air for [forty] minutes at a time—suitable landing areas are not that close together in this territory.” MacBrair concluded that in rugged western terrain, autogiros were only operable in such a miniscule area that “it will be considered useless.” Another major concern of MacBrair’s was the autogiro’s inability to glide any significant distance; as a single-engine aircraft, this could be deadly. Further, there were no funds available for maps or to pack his parachutes, and he had yet to receive any travel reimbursement. Overall, he was “pretty disgusted with things as they are.” Most scathing, perhaps, was his interpretation of the autogiro program: “I would hate to see this whole thing discarded because of the inadaptability of autogiros, which the Army has already proven to be useless, when an airplane of the proper type could be of so many important uses.”43 In this letter, MacBrair echoed what the military and most of the rotary industry already knew—the autogiro had no practical purpose.

On August 8, 1941, Knabenshue informed MacBrair that with forthcoming budget reductions, his autogiro needed to be packed away and stored in Manteo. However, he reassured MacBrair that his former position at Civil Aeronautics awaited him. Realistically, the autogiro program’s funding never existed, and MacBrair, with his portion of the mission failing, was the first economic casualty. The autogiro program ran on Knabenshue’s ability to acquire or borrow obsolete and surplus property— the machines were transferred and the camera equipment loaned to the NPS by the military. Several attempts to secure funding for MacBrair and Driskill’s salaries, autogiro maintenance and fuel, and the construction of hangars failed. By this time, the military was focused on helicopter research, and the Park Service’s autogiro program was considered an unqualified and unproductive use of appropriated funds.



Knabenshue felt discouraged by the program’s collapse, confiding to Driskill, “This is a keen disappointment to me as all of the plans I had worked so hard to bring about seem to have crumbled solely through the lack of funds.”44

Funding problems hindered the possibilities for an NPS aeronautical program into the next decade. In 1950, Yellowstone’s forester, Maynard B. Barrows, cited an airplane for fire suppression as the park’s greatest need, which is significant coming from the first and most iconic national park. Despite little material progress, in 1954, NPS director Conrad L. Wirth at least acknowledged Knabenshue’s intellectual legacy in NPS aviation:

I shall always remember your interest and efforts in getting the Service air-minded and your airport survey to which we have referred on many occasions. We could use a plane or planes to especially good advantage in our areas in Alaska, but neither authorization nor funds have yet been forthcoming.45

The Park Service’s autogiro program was well intentioned, but it was dangerous even for a veteran pilot like Driskill to fly semi-experimental and mostly unwanted aircraft. Before the United States entered World War II, about three hundred autogiros were built. Pilots flew approximately one hundred thousand hours in these machines, which overall developed a poor safety record. A straight drop in descent generated hazardous vertical velocity, and their rotors were susceptible to metal fatigue and vibrations, although there was only one reported death in an autogiro crash because the machines landed at comparatively slower speeds.46 Adopting autogiros into the Park Service was precarious because the agency never received Dorsey Bill funding, so there was little incentive besides personal interest to implement unproven equipment. Despite Knabenshue’s storied aviation career, the questionable judgement of the sixty-five-year-old aviator demonstrated that he and the NPS had fallen behind the times. Since Orville Wright’s lecture in 1917, the agency struggled to address its relationship to airplanes. As a result, when Knabenshue assembled the agency’s first aviation program over two decades later, its knowledge base was dangerously disconnected from contemporary developments in the industry.

Uncertainty also surrounded Driskill’s position at Cape Hatteras, and he resigned on October 24, 1941. Luckily for Driskill, Knabenshue lobbied the Office of Indian Affairs on Navajo Nation land in Window Rock, Arizona, which recently requested a surplus army airplane to transport personnel and emergency rations, to hire the aviator. When the Park Service transferred its Fairchild, two autogiros, and extra engines, propellers, and parts to Indian Affairs, it liquidated its entire aeronautical program.47

Driskill was intrigued by his new assignment and was highly respected by his former supervisor Knabenshue and new supervisor, Superintendent E. R. Fryer, who exchanged kind remarks about the pilot. Knabenshue considered Driskill “one of the outstanding pilots in this country” and expressed frustration that “unfortunately, due to his lack of technical training, he will not get the universal recognition he deserves.” Fryer agreed: “I share completely your opinion of Dave. He is undoubtedly one of the best giro pilots in the country. Certainly his lack of educational qualifications doesn’t handicap him in


https://program.47https://speeds.46https://forthcoming.45

270 CASEY HUEGEL

any way as a pilot.” However, a new opportunity presented itself when Kellett Autogiro offered Driskill a test pilot position, which included a $1,000 raise and the opportunity to serve his country by testing military aircraft. Driskill responded enthusiastically, despite the dangers of the job, “the autogiro is the answer for sinking submarines.” The offer satisfied his wallet and patriotic spirit; he accepted the position and moved to Pennsylvania.48 Driskill’s recruitment from his western outpost is significant. Through government service he had proven himself courageous, skilled, and adaptable—critical characteristics for a test pilot. It also marked an important move for the aviator from the small airline, barnstorming, and Park Service periphery of aviation to Philadelphia, the hub of America’s autogiro industry.

Driskill tested autogiros and helicopters for Kellett while the company expanded its operations through military contracts during World War II. Meanwhile, he returned to Manteo to rebuild the Ocracoke-Manteo Transportation Company, commuting between his jobs. As a test pilot, Driskill accepted the strong possibility of accidental death because rotary flight was still in its infancy compared to the airplane, and mishaps were frequent during the race to produce marketable rotorcraft. For example, in 1940, Igor Sikorsky survived a twenty-foot plummet in his pioneering VS-300 near the Bridgeport, Connecticut, airport. In 1943, Driskill was injured testing an XO-60 autogiro after the machine oscillated so violently that the controls almost knocked him unconscious. The machine also caught fire, but Driskill and his copilot both escaped with their lives. After these failures, in 1945, Kellett abandoned autogiro research and shifted its focus to helicopters. Three years later, the Piasecki Helicopter Corporation’s test pilot, Leland G. Felt, was killed flying a production HRP-1 helicoptor. Eyewitness testimony eliminated the possibility of pilot error.49 Unfortunately, the following year, Driskill also faced an insurmountable mechanical failure.

On October 3, 1949, Driskill and his thirty-year-old copilot, Charles Dougherty, took off from the Central Airport in Camden, New Jersey, in a Kellett XR-10, an all-metal, twin-engine experimental transport helicopter built under contract with the U.S. Air Force. The aircraft was constructed to meet the requirements of the March 27, 1944, Military Characteristics for Aircraft “Utility Cargo Helicopter,” which called for an aircraft capable of flying troops and cargo and conducting medical evacuations. The Kellett XR-10, with a gross weight of 11,000 pounds and a capacity for twelve total individuals, or a useful load of 2,744 pounds, was the largest U.S. Air Force helicopter built to date. Since its completion in December 1946, repeated engine failures, autorotation issues, and other mechanical problems had complicated its testing process.50

Shortly after 4:00 P.M., the XR-10 suffered a serious control malfunction while flying about one thousand feet above a peach orchard near Moorestown, New Jersey. In one final act of bravery, Driskill ordered his copilot to jump first, and Dougherty parachuted safely into a tree, suffering only a few minor scrapes. After further wrestling the controls and sinking quickly, Driskill leapt for his own life. Reportedly, just as he evacuated the aircraft, the shrouds of the pilot’s parachute caught in the aircraft’s rotors as it tilted during its fall. Entwined in the blades, Driskill plummeted to the earth with the


https://process.50https://error.49https://Pennsylvania.48


Photographs of Dave Driskill, historian Floyd Taylor, and the NPS autogiro in Virginia, 1941. Courtesy of the NPS, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Manteo, N.C.


272 CASEY HUEGEL

Dave Driskill and a St. Louis YPT-15 aircraft in the Navajo Nation, 1941. Courtesy of the Outer Banks History Center, State Archives of North Carolina.

aircraft. He died instantly. Kellett investigated the accident and suspected that the likely cause of the crash was a failure in the collective pitch system in the synchropter’s right rotor. Frequent rotary blade interference had plagued the XR-10 and its predecessor, the XR-8, which led the military to abandon its testing program for the XR-10 in the months before Driskill’s death. However, since the aircraft was so thoroughly consumed by fire, the actual mechanism that failed was never identified.51

News of Driskill’s tragic death spread in newspapers and trade journals. Manteo was hit particularly hard. His obituary in the Dare County Times noted that Driskill “was known to every man woman and child in the North Carolina coastland.” At nearby Wright Brothers National Memorial, Superintendent Horace A. Dough recorded a tribute in the superintendent’s monthly report to Driskill: “Mr. Driskill will be remembered by Park Service [personnel] as the popular pilot of a big freight and passenger carrying Fairchild Plane and also an autogiro which he flew up and down the outer banks of North Carolina for several years. Dave, as he was called by all his friends, was connected with the NPS for several years in that capacity.”52

On May 30, 1952, about a hundred former friends, family members, and colleagues of Driskill’s gathered at the Dare County Regional Airport to dedicate a memorial tablet in his honor. Their inscription succinctly captures Driskill’s legacy: “PIONEER PILOT OF THE N.C. COASTLAND WHO AFTER A LIFETIME OF SAFE FLYING AND MANY MISSIONS OF MERCY, GAVE HIS LIFE TO MAKE AIRCRAFT


https://identified.51


Dave Driskill sitting on the tire of a Kellett KD-1A. This photograph was published in the Dare County Times, May 14, 1943. Courtesy of the Dare County Regional Airport Museum.

SAFE FOR OTHERS.” Stanley Wahab’s eulogy expanded on these words, crediting Driskill as the founder of the Outer Banks’ commercial aviation industry, and as an individual with a strong sense of purpose and duty. He recalled that Driskill once flew a heart attack patient through inclement weather from Norfolk to Ohio, and that a baby was born on his airplane during a hurried flight to the hospital. Although unable to attend the ceremony, vice president and chief engineer of Kellett Aircraft C. A. Barnett forwarded his remarks to the memorial commission. He reminded the community that “few pursuits [are] more challenging and hazardous than that of the test pilot. . . . Dave Driskill will long be remembered as a pioneer in the advancement of rotary wing aircraft in this country.”53

Driskill is still remembered on the Outer Banks. Aycock Brown observed that Driskill’s dedication to his craft allowed him to rival, if not surpass, North Carolina’s migratory birds in hours spent flying over the Outer Banks.54 In 2001, a small museum opened at the Dare County Regional Airport called the “Dave Driskill Ready Room,” in which dedicated volunteer curators compiled and made accessible many important documents, photographs, and artifacts related to Driskill’s career. Driskill was a pioneer in early NPS aviation. By expediting the delivery of fresh food, Driskill supported the individuals who physically altered the Outer Banks landscape during a critical juncture in the islands’ transition toward a tourist economy. Through medical evacuation flights, Driskill demonstrated the potential of aircraft for emergency services at national parks,


https://Banks.54

274 CASEY HUEGEL

and overall, he made a strong impression on Park Service officials with his autogiro photography flights on the East Coast.

The Park Service never developed a significant and centralized aviation program during Driskill’s lifetime, suggesting that reconciling the environmental concerns and utility of aircraft with visitor needs and partner interests was a difficult undertaking for the agency. The NPS’s inability to secure rotorcraft funding and the limitations of autogiro technology killed its first centralized aviation program, and budgetary problems and an unprecedented rise in visitation in the wake of World War II halted further advances. The Park Service knew that aircraft were used advantageously by Driskill at Cape Hatteras and other eastern parks, for fire suppression and patrol of the western parks in collaboration with the Forest Service, and for transportation to Mount McKinley and Isle Royale National Parks. However, the agency’s primary aviation focus from the 1920s to the early 1950s was combating the private sector’s pressure to accommodate air travelers, rather than developing its own aviation program.55

Mr. Huegel is a museum technician at Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park and a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Cincinnati. He would like to thank former superinten-dent Dean Alexander, management assistant Nicholas Georgeff, and historian Edward Roach at Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park for supporting this project. He is also grateful to archivists Tama Creef and KaeLi Schurr at the Outer Banks History Center, cultural resource manager Jami Lanier at the NPS Outer Banks Group Archives, curator Roger Connor at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, curators Harry Bridges and John Ratzenberger at the Dare County Regional Airport Museum, and owner Greg Herrick at the Golden Wings Flying Museum for sharing their knowledge and access to materials.


https://program.55


NOTES

1. Stamps: A Weekly Magazine of Philately, June 4, 1938; Tom Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1989), 505–507. Greg Herrick first collected information on the Fairchild’s history into booklet form, most significantly the FAA records. See his “1928 Fairchild FC-2W2, N-1934, SN: 531,” Golden Wings Flying Museum, Blaine, Minn. 2. Joseph J. Corn, The Winged Gospel: America’s Romance with Aviation, 1900–1950 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 64. 3. See A. Clark Stratton’s obituary in the Raleigh News and Observer, August 23, 1970; Cameron Binkley, The Creation and Establishment of Cape Hatteras National Seashore: The Great Depression through Mission 66 (Atlanta: Southeast Regional Office, NPS, 2007), 215–217. 4. Hillory A. Tolson to Acting Secretary of the Interior, August 11, 1938, Central Classified Files, 1937–1953, Box 3778, Aviation File, Record Group 48, Records of the Office of the Secretary of the Interior (hereinafter Secretary of the Interior Records), National Archives College Park (hereinafter NACP). For Morristown, see John C. Paige, The Civilian Conservation Corps and the NPS, 1933–1942: An Administrative History (Washington, D.C.: NPS, 1985), chapter 4, https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/ccc/ccc4a.htm. 5. An autogiro is “a type of aircraft in which lift is derived from a freely rotating unpowered horizontal rotor and forward motion from a powered propeller.” See OED Online, s.v. “autogiro,” http://www.oed.com/view/ Entry/13430?redirectedFrom=autogiro. For some of Driskill’s hazardous jobs in helicopters, see Clipping, “Driskill,” [1949], Dare County Regional Airport Museum (hereinafter DCRAM). This clipping is from an obituary. For the autogiro quotation, which was informed by interviews with former Kellett Autogiro test pilot John Miller, see James R. Chiles, The God Machine: From Boomerangs to Black Hawks, the Story of the Heli-copter (New York: Bantam Book, 2007), 86. On page 87, Chiles also describes the autogiro’s vindication as a technology when Pitcairn’s successors won a lengthy lawsuit against the federal government over licensing fees. For the autogiro’s semi-experimental role in vertical flight development, see Richard P. Hallion, Test Pilots: The Frontiersman of Flight (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988), 145. 6. Driskill’s birthplace is frequently listed as Knoxville in biographical records, although he also specified Bybee. See J. D. Driskill, untitled application [Kellett, 1942] and Personal History Statement, John David Driskill, December 26, 1940, John David Driskill Biographical File (hereinafter Driskill Biographical File), Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, hereinafter NASM; 1900 U.S. Census, Cocke County, Ten-nessee, population schedule, Civil District No. 5, Enumeration District No. 162, Sheet No. 1–8, Ancestry. com. The Driskills are on page 3B. Tennessee, Population of Counties by Decennial Census: 1900 to 1990, March 27, 1995, ed. Richard L. Forstall, U.S. Bureau of the Census: https://www.census.gov/population/ www/censusdata/cencounts/files/tn190090.txt; Tennessee State Marriages, Marion Driskill and Martha Heritage, Cocke County, August 21, 1895, p. 238, Ancestry.com. A photograph of Martha’s grave can be seen at: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=DR&GSpartial=1&GSbyrel=all&GSst= 45&GScntry=4&GSsr=2401&GRid=48965418&, Ancestry.com. 7. J. D. Driskill, untitled application [Kellett, 1942]; Kellett Autogiro Corporation Engineering Department Application for Employment, John David Driskill, February 28, 1942; untitled employment history pages, Driskill Biographical File, NASM; Department of Commerce, Application for Pilot’s License, John David Driskill, October 18, 1928. A copy can be found at DCRAM. 8. John D. Driskill, World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918, Registration State: Virginia, Registra-tion County: Elizabeth City, Roll: 1984711, Ancestry.com; Bessie Belle Mingee, Death Records, 1912–2014, Ancestry.com; James R. Hansen, Engineer in Charge: A History of the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, 1917–1958 (Washington, D.C.: Scientific and Technical Information Office, NASA, 1987), chapter 1, http://history. nasa.gov/SP-4305/ch1.htm; The Personnel Replacement System in the United States Army (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1954), 184–185, http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/104/104-9/CMH_ Pub_104-9.pdf; Honorable Discharge from the United States Army, John David Driskill #4632743, Driskill Biographical File, NASM; Enlistment Record, John David Driskill #4632743, [1918], DCRAM. 9. Untitled employment history pages; Application for Employment, United States Department of the Inte-rior, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, both in John D. Driskill, Driskill Biographical File, NASM. 10. Dare County Times (Manteo), April 26, 1946. 11. Personal Information Sheet, John D. Driskill, June 15, 1940, Driskill Biographical File, NASM. Driskill’s flying record begins in 1926. See Flying Record of John David Driskill from 1926 to January 29, 1941, Driskill Biographical File, NASM. For the Pitcairn Flying School, see William F. Trimble, High Frontier: A History of Aeronautics in Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), 131–132, and Aeronautics, June 1929, p. 51.


http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/104/104-9/CMHhttps://nasa.gov/SP-4305/ch1.htmhttp://historyhttps://Ancestry.comhttps://Ancestry.comhttps://Ancestry.comhttp://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=DR&GSpartial=1&GSbyrel=all&GSsthttps://Ancestry.comhttps://www.census.gov/populationhttp://www.oed.com/viewhttps://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/ccc/ccc4a.htm

276 CASEY HUEGEL

12. Pilots Flight Test Report #5193, John D. Driskill, January 28, 1929; Edward P. Howard, Department of Commerce, to John D. Driskill; Application #38128 for Transport Pilot’s License, John D. Driskill, October 2, 1929, both in DCRAM. 13. “Busyman Driskill,” Aeronautical Industry, March 29, 1930; Thomas C. Parramore, Norfolk: The First Four Centuries (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1994), 324. For women in early aviation, see Corn, The Winged Gospel, 72. United States Civil Service Commission, Personal Information Sheet, June 15, 1940, Driskill Biographical File, NASM; Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Va.), August 10, 1930; Photograph Clip-ping, “The Norfolk-Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce,” [n.d.], DCRAM. 14. For Driskill’s stunts, see W. E. Debman, “Aviation” (clipping), n.d.; “Dave Flying in Santa” (photograph), n.d.; and “Lessees of City Airfield Hold Transport Licenses ”(clipping), n.d., all in DCRAM. “Golden Age of Flight,” Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/golden-age-flight. 15. Reginald Wells, “The Commodore of Bimini,” Sports Illustrated, January 21, 1957; J. D. Driskill, untitled application [Kellett, 1942], Driskill Biographical File, NASM. For the development of private hunting and fishing clubs, see Ethnohistorical Description of the Eight Villages Adjoining Cape Hatteras National Seashore and Interpretive Themes of History and Heritage (Cape Hatteras National Seashore: NPS, 2005), Final Technical Report, vol. 2, 330; and Gary S. Dunbar, Historical Geography of the North Carolina Outer Banks (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1958), 71. Dare County Times, April 26, 1946. A photograph of Driskill, Lyon, an unidentified man, and the Bellanca is at the DCRAM. For Wahab’s quote, see Coastland Times (Manteo), June 6, 1952; for Lyon’s, see Coastland Times, May 23, 1952. 16. Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys, 182. Stanley Wahab authored the advertising letter for the Ocracoke-Manteo Transportation Company, June 30, 1941, DCRAM. For early examples of aviation accidents on the Outer Banks, see Dare County Times, June 17, 1938, and Elizabeth City Daily Advance, July 6, 1936; for Driskill’s one-wheeled landing, see the Coastland Times, November 8, 1940. 17. Untitled employment history pages; Application for Employment, United States Department of the Inte-rior, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, John D. Driskill; John David Driskill, Personnel Information Sheet, United States Civil Service Commission, June 15, 1940, all in Driskill Biographical File, NASM; “The Depths of Depression,” Today in History—July 8, Library of Congress, https://memory. loc.gov/ammem/today/jul08.html. For Witch Duck Airplane Lines, see Parramore, Norfolk: The First Four Centuries, 324; for context on Fort Eustis, see Ronald L. Heinemann, Depression and New Deal in Virginia: The Enduring Dominion (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), 73, 90–91. Charles H. Alspach to Paul B. Murphy, November 27, 1935; First Semi-Annual Commencement, Fort Eustis Transient Rehabilita-tion Camp Educational, December 1, [1935]; P. B. Murphy to Elizabeth Wickenden, December 10, 1935, Fort Eustis, Virginia, Transient, August File, Central Files, 1933–1936, Box 302, PC 37, Entry 10, all three in Record Group 69, Records of the WPA Federal Emergency Relief Administration (hereinafter FERA Records), NACP. 18. Atalantis Magazine 1 (April 1936): 32, Library of Virginia. For my definition of “air-minded,” I referenced Corn, The Winged Gospel, 12. 19. Schuyler Otis Bland to Harry L. Hopkins, July 29, 1936, Central Files, 1933–1936, Box 302, PC 37, Entry 10, FERA Records, NACP; Atalantis Magazine 1 (July 1936): 32–33, Library of Virginia; Binkley, Creation and Establishment of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, 66, 12, 26; Neil M. Maher, Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 43–44. For the quote on New Deal programs in parks, see Hal Rothman, Preserving Different Pasts: The American National Monuments (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 165. 20. Atalantis Magazine 1 (April 1936): 32, Library of Virginia. 21. For a section on the NPS’s growth during the New Deal years, see Richard West Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), 140–145; Audit Report for North Carolina Beach Erosion Control Project, August 1, 1936–September 30, 1937, Recreational Dem-onstration Areas Program Files, 1934–1947, Box 74, Entry P 100, 38, Record Group 79, Records of the NPS (hereinafter NPS Records), NACP; Fred T. Johnston to John D. Driskill, December 19, 1940, Driskill Biographical File, NASM. 22. Washington Post, June 1, 1929; “Airfields in the Parks,” Knoxville News-Sentinel (clipping), n.d., Central Classified Files, General Records, Box 82, Entry P10, Aircraft Facilities 1928–1929, NPS Records, NACP; C. A. Harrell to Arno B. Cammerer, August 20, 1928, Records of Director Horace M. Albright, 1927–1933, Box 3, Entry P59, Airplanes FY 1928 FY 1929, NPS Records, NACP. For a historiographical essay on noise pollution, see Peter A. Coates, “The Strange Stillness of the Past: Toward an Environmental History of Sound and Noise,” Environmental History 10, no. 4 (October 2005): 636–665. 23. Proceedings of the National Parks Conference held in the Auditorium of the New National Museum, Washington, D.C., January 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, 1917 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office), 1, 281–283.


https://loc.gov/ammem/today/jul08.htmlhttps://memoryhttps://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/golden


24. Proceedings of the National Parks Conference, 1917, 1, 281–283. For the automobile and roadbuilding’s impact on nature tourism, see Paul Sutter, Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 24–25. For automobiles in national parks in the 1900s and 1910s, see Laura E. Soullière, Historic Roads in the National Park System: Special History Study (Denver, Colo.: NPS, Denver Service Center, 1995), https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/ roads/index.htm. For context on Orville Wright and his last active years in aviation, see Edward J. Roach, The Wright Company: From Invention to Industry (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014). 25. Stephen T. Mather to W. B. Acker, September 29, 1928, Central Classified Files General Records, Box 82, Entry P 10, Aircraft Facilities 1928–1929, NPS Records, NACP; Arno B. Cammerer to Stephen T. Mather, August 6, 1928; “Starts Park Survey: Lindbergh Plans Airlines in Glacier National Park” (clipping), Washington Star, n.d.; Miner Raymond Tillotson to Stephen T. Mather, June 23, 1928; Miner Raymond Til-lotson to Stephen T. Mather, September 6, 1928; “Billings People Make Tour of Yellowstone with Airplane Sunday,” Livingston (Tenn.) Enterprise, August 20, 1928; “Vance Plans Air Traffic in Glacier,” Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune, May 18, 1928, Records of Director Horace M. Albright, 1927–1933, all in Box 3, Entry P 59, Airplanes, FY 1928–FY 1929, NPS Records, NACP. For the NPS and the railroads, see Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 8–11. 26. “Airplanes in the National Parks,” excerpt from the Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior, June 30, 1928, Central Classified Files, 1907–1949, 0-1.5 Airplane Conferences to 0-3, Invitations and Addresses, Box 9, Entry P 10, General Airplane Conferences, Part 1, NPS Records, NACP; “Proceeding of the Airplane Conference,” 1929, Central Classified Files, 1907–1949, 0-1.5 Airplane Conferences to 0-3 Invitations and Addresses, Box 9, Entry P 10, NPS Records, NACP. 27. Arno B. Cammerer to Harold L. Ickes, September 28, 1933, DOI Office of the Sec. Central Classified File, 1907–1936, Aviation Box, 1967, Secretary of the Interior Records, NACP; Charles L. Gable to New-ton B. Drury, January 26, 1944; Memorandum for the Press, April 17, 1936; Memorandum to Arthur E. Demaray, et al., December [30?], 1935, NPS Central Classified File, 1933–1949, General Box 143, Aviation Facilities Policy File, all in NPS Records, NACP; Ann Deines, “Roy Knabenshue: From Dirigibles to NPS,” in American Aviation: The Early Years, special issue of CRM 23, no. 2 (2000): 20–21; Tom D. Crouch, “Chauf-feur of the Skies: Roy Knabenshue and the Gasbag Era,” Timeline 28, no. 2 (April–June 2011): 25–33, 39–41. 28. Atalantis Magazine, July 1936, 30, Library of Virginia; Dare County Times, October 29, 1937; Binkley, Cre-ation and Establishment of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, 28, 66; New York Times, September 16, 1936; David Stick, The Outer Banks of North Carolina, 1584–1958 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1958), 243–247; A. C. Stratton and James R. Hollowell, “Methods of Sand Fixation and Beach Erosion Control,” 42, 44, 89, Box 90, Cape Hatteras National Seashore Collection, Outer Banks Group Archives (hereinafter OBGA), Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, Manteo. 29. Binkley, Creation and Establishment of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, 25, 28, 66, ; New York Times, Septem-ber 16, 1936; N-13934 Application for Commercial, Restricted, or Experimental or Unlicensed Identification Mark, Department of Commerce, n.d., A. C. Stratton; N-13949 Department of Commerce Title Memoran-dum, February 18, 1937. Thanks to Greg Herrick for sharing this record and confirming the order of owner-ship. Although Driskill was flying the Douglas O-2H first, which Binkley noted, it was officially transferred from the WPA to the NPS three months after the Fairchild FC-2W2. Audit Report for North Carolina Beach Erosion Control Project, August 1, 1936–September 30, 1937, Recreational Demonstration Areas Program Files, 1934–1947, Box 74, Entry P 100, 38, NPS Records, NACP. 30. According to Joseph P. Juptner, U.S. Civil Aircraft Series (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: Tab Aero, 1993), vol. 1, 159, Fairchild FC-2W2s could carry fifteen hundred pounds of payload. However, after engine overhauls, it reportedly could carry twenty-two hundred pounds. See W. Barton Greenwood to E. R. Fryer, November 5, 1941, Box 2, Folder 2, A. Roy Knabenshue Collection (hereinafter Knabenshue Collection), NASM. For the “winged freighter,” see Raleigh News and Observer, March 26, 1939. Ocracoke Beacon 1, 1936, no. 2, Outer Banks History Center, Manteo; Raleigh News and Observer, February 6, n.d. This clipping discussing the Wright Memo-rial Bridge can be found in Recreational Demonstration Areas Program Files, 1934–1947, Box 74, Entry P100, File 000 General 3, 1939–1941, NPS Records, NACP. 31. Raleigh News and Observer, March 26, 1939; Stratton and Hollowell, “Methods of Sand Fixation and Beach Erosion Control,” 88–90, Box 90, Cape Hatteras National Seashore Collection, OBGA; Maher, Nature’s New Deal, 98–100. p.268, note 31: See also Harley E. Jolley, That Magnificent Army of Youth and Peace: The Civilian Conservation Corps in North Carolina, 1933–1942 (Raleigh: Office of Archives and History, N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, 2007). 32. “Fairchild FC-2W2,” NASM, https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/fairchild-fc-2w2?object=nasm_ A19720533000. For broken bones and gunshot wounds, see “Driskill” (clipping), [1949], DCRAM; for Driskill’s quote, see Dare County Times, May 14, 1943.


https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/fairchild-fc-2w2?object=nasmhttps://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books

278 CASEY HUEGEL

33. Dare County Times, October 29, 1937; E. K. Berlew to David K. Niles, May 17, 1938, Recreational Demon-stration Areas Program Files, 1934–1947, Box 73, Entry P100, North Carolina WC-1 Sand Fixation Project, NPS Records, NACP. 34. Corn, The Winged Gospel, 64–65; New York Times, December 18, 1936; Penelope Robbins, “The Wrights Discovered Aviation on the Outer Banks, but Dave Driskill Brought It to the Community,” The Edge / Outer Banks, 2003–2004, http://www.outerbankspress.com/edge/2003-2004/edge03_driskill.shtml. 35. Martin Kellogg Jr., “Two Shares in the Roanoke Flying Service, Inc.,” April 23, 1938, DCRAM; Dare County Times, May 20, June 17, 21, December 2, 1938. 36. “What’s Going On in North Carolina,” in The State: A Weekly Survey of North Carolina, September 7, 1940; Stick, Outer Banks of North Carolina, 301; Woodrow Price, “Stanley Wahab, Tarheel of the Week” in David Stick, ed., An Outer Banks Reader (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 187–188; “Join the Ocracoke Island Hunting Club” (advertisement), R. Stanley Wahab and Family Papers, Outer Banks History Center, Manteo. 37. For the buyout of the Roanoke Island Flying Service, see the Beaufort News, October 24, 1940. A descrip-tion of the airline route can be found in the Dare County Times, December 27, 1940. Driskill is pictured welcoming possible Lost Colony patrons aboard his aircraft in the Beaufort Times, July 31, 1941. For commu-nication with the CAA, see the Beaufort News, December 12, 1940; for the power line rerouting, see Beaufort News, January 2, 1941. New York Times, May 31, December 5, 1946; Spartanburg Herald, November 29, 1946. For advertising, see Stanley Wahab to Dave Driskill, March 7, 1941; for the Coast Guard, see Stanley Wahab to Dave Driskill, November 26, 1941, both in Driskill Biographical File, NASM. Numerous letters to Aycock Brown are also in this file. Stick, Outer Banks of North Carolina, 249–250. For “Dave Driskill is the guiding brains,” see the Beaufort News, March 13, 1941. 38. Frank A. Blazich Jr., “North Carolina’s Flying Volunteers: The Civil Air Patrol in World War II, 1941– 1944,” North Carolina Historical Review 89 (October 2012): 420. 39. “An act to authorize the appropriation of funds for the development of rotary-wing and other aircraft,” Public Law No. 787, 75th Cong. (1938). The Dorsey Bill, called “a forgotten piece of landmark legislation that helped shape the U.S. helicopter industry” by one historian, prioritized defense, not natural resource management. For the quote and context on the Dorsey Bill, see Jay P. Spenser, Whirlybirds: A History of the U.S. Helicopter Pioneers (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998), 27–28. Spenser also concludes that autogiros “failed utterly to find a meaningful niche in aviation,” 96. Henry L. Stimson denied the NPS’s funding request in a May 6, 1941, letter to Harold L. Ickes, Box 2, File 11, A. Roy Knabenshue Collection (hereinafter Knabenshue Collection), NASM. Memorandum, Report on Field Trip to Fort Knox, Kentucky, November 30, 1940, Box 2, File 7, Knabenshue Collection, NASM; Application for Registration for All Types of Aircraft, Kellett Autogiro 37–377, NPS, and Kellett Autogiro 37–381, Box 2, File 3, Knabenshue Collection, NASM; Conrad L. Wirth to John David Driskill, January 3, 1941; John David Driskill to Conrad L. Wirth, January 7, 1941, both in Box 2, File 10, Knabenshue Collection, NASM. 40. Dave Driskill to Roy Knabenshue, March 8, 1941, Box 2, File 10; Autogiro Reports, J. D. Driskill, Febru-ary–March, 1941, Box 2, File 6; Autogiro Reports, H. Clay MacBrair, February–June, 1941, Box 2, File 5, all in Knabenshue Collection, NASM. 41. Regional Office Letter No. 729, May 6, 1941, Box 2, Folder 11, Knabenshue Collection, NASM; Memo-randum for the Acting Regional Director, March 31, 1941, Region I; Memorandum for the Acting Regional Director, March 31, 1941, Region II, both in Box 2, Folder 10, Knabenshue Collection, NASM. 42. See photographs of Driskill, Taylor, and NPS Autogiro, 1941, Accession 212, Catalog Number 5417, Box 10, Folder 2, Cape Hatteras National Seashore Collection, OBGA. A copy of these images and Tay-lor’s remarks recorded during a 1971 phone conversation can be found at the DCRAM. Herbert Evison to Chief, Army Air Corps, July 10, 1941; James F. Kieley to Ben Thompson, July 7, 1941, both in Box 2, File 11, Knabenshue Collection, NASM; Regional Review, July–August 1941, https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/ online_books/regional_review/vol7-1-2c.htm; John David Driskill to A. Roy Knabenshue, August 6, 1941, Box 2, File 12, Knabenshue Collection, NASM; Acting Chief, Naturalist Division to Regional Director, Region One, July 25, 1941, Driskill Biographical File, NASM. 43. H. Clay MacBrair Jr. to A. Roy Knabenshue, May 29, 1941; H. Clay MacBrair Jr. to A. Roy Knabenshue, June 23, 1941, both in Box 2, File 11, Knabenshue Collection, NASM. 44. A. Roy Knabenshue to H. Clay MacBrair, August 8, 1941; A. Roy Knabenshue to John David Driskill, October 23, 1941; John Collier to Chief, Air Corps, October 1, 1941; W. Barton Greenwood to E. R. Fryer, November 5, 1941; A. Roy Knabenshue to John David Driskill, November 3, 1941; A. Roy Knabenshue to John David Driskill, November 7, 1941, all in Box 2, Folder 2, Knabenshue Collection, NASM. 45. Conrad L. Wirth to A. Roy Knabenshue, November 19, 1954, Box 1, Folder 14, Knabenshue Collection, NASM. For Yellowstone’s airplane needs, see Hal K. Rothman, Blazing Heritage: A History of Wildland Fire in the National Park

dave driskill, the national park service, and aviation on ...inspired, driskill signed up for formal...

Documents