Bertrand Blanchard Acosta

Infobox Person
name = Bertrand Blanchard Acosta


image_size =
caption = Acosta circa 1927
birth_date = birth date|1895|1|1|mf=y
nationality = American
birth_place = San Diego, California
death_date = death date and age|1954|9|1|1895|1|1|mf=y
death_place = Denver, Colorado
resting_place = Portal of Folded Wings
occupation = Aviator
education = Throop Polytechnic Institute
spouse = Helen Belmont Pearsoll
parents = Miguel Acosta
Martha Blanche Reilly
children = Allan Acosta
Bert Acosta, Jr.|

Bertrand Blanchard Acosta (January 1, 1895 – September 1, 1954) was an aviator who flew in the Spanish Civil War in the Yankee Squadron. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=4 Americans in Spain to Fly for Madrid. Acosta and Three Mates Reach Valencia to Take Course in Military Aviation. |url=http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F6081EF83E59167B93C3AB178AD95F428385F9 |quote=Bert Acosta, one of this country's leading racing pilots, and four other fliers from fields in the Newark district have arrived at Valencia, Spain, where they will go through a hurried course in military flying before taking the air against the Rebels, it was revealed here yesterday. |publisher="New York Times" |date=November 21, 1936, Saturday |accessdate=2007-09-25 ] He was known as the Bad Boy of the Air, and was a heavy drinker. He was divorced twice and received numerous fines and suspensions for flying stunts such as flying under bridges or flying too close to buildings.

Birth

Acosta was born in San Diego, California to Miguel Acosta and Martha Blanche Reilly. [Bertrand Blanchard Acosta's mother had a half-brother with the surname of Snook.] He attended the Throop Polytechnic Institute in Pasadena, California from 1912 to 1914. [cite web |url=http://www.earlyaviators.com/eacosta.htm |title=Bertrand Blanchard Acosta |accessdate=2007-09-25 |quote=Taught self to fly, August 1910; built experimental planes and continued personal research until 1912; joined Glenn H. Curtiss as apprentice assisting in developing land and hydroplanes; instructed in flying; 1915. became instructor of R.F.C. and R.N.A.S. at Toronto, Canada; trained many of the first overseas contingent and continued this work for two years; 1916-1917, made chief instructor, A.S.S.C. at Hazelhurst Field, L. I.; 1918, director of flying, testing and consulting aeronautical engineer as assistant to Col. E. J. Hall, Bureau of Aircraft Production; appointed Captain, A.S. (reserve); after armistice until 1923, chief test pilot and consultant, Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Corp., J. L. Aircraft., Netherlands Aircraft Co., Remington Burnelli, Corp. Wright Aeronautical Corp., Bee Line Co., and various other companies and individuals; experience covers practically every type of plane, land, hydroplanes and flying boats; first pilot in this country to attain speed of 200 miles per hour; 1920, third place, First Pulitzer Trophy Race; first place, Second Pulitzer Trophy Race; made first transcontinental round trip. |publisher=Early Aviators ]

He taught himself to fly in August 1910 and built experimental airplanes up until 1912 when he began work for Glenn Curtiss as an apprentice on a hydroplane project. In 1915 he worked as a flying instructor. He went to Canada and worked as an instructor for the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service in Toronto. In 1917 he was appointed chief instructor, Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps at Hazelhurst Field, Long Island.

Acosta was married in 1918 but he divorced his first wife in 1920. He won The Pulitzer Trophy Race in 1921, then married Helen Belmont Pearsoll, on August 3, 1921. In 1925 he was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and was living at 1 Winslow Court in Naugatuck, Connecticut. He and Helen separated but they never divorced.

Endurance record

In April 1927, he and Clarence D. Chamberlin set an endurance record of 51 hours, 11 minutes, and 25 seconds in the air. "Time" magazine reported on April 25, 1927:

Engineer Giuseppe M. Bellanca of the Columbia Aircraft Corporation had conditioned an elderly yellow-winged monoplane with one Wright motor, and scouted around for pilots. Lieut. Leigh Wade, round-the-world flyer, declined the invitation, saying Mr. Bellanca's plans were too stunt-like, not scientific. Shrugging, Mr. Bellanca engaged Pilots Clarence Duncan Chamberlin and burly Bert Acosta, onetime auto speedster, to test his ship's endurance. Up they put from Mitchel Field, Long Island, with 385 gallons of ethylated (high power) gasoline. All day they droned back and forth over suburbia, circled the Woolworth Building, hovered over Hadley Field, New Jersey, swung back to drop notes on Mitchell Field. All that starry night they wandered slowly around the sky, and all the next day, and through the next night, a muggy, cloudy one. Newsgatherers flew up alongside to shout unintelligible things through megaphones. Messrs. Acosta and Chamberlain were looking tired and oil-blobbed. They swallowed soup and sandwiches, caught catnaps on the mattressed fuel tank, while on and on they droned, almost lazily (about 80 m.p.h.) for they were cruising against time. Not for 51 hours, 11 minutes, 25 seconds, did they coast to earth, having broken the U.S. and world's records for protracted flight. In the same time, conditions favoring, they could have flown from Manhattan to Vienna. They had covered 4,100 miles. To Paris it is 3,600 miles from Manhattan. Jubilant, Engineer Bellanca's employers offered competitors a three-hour headstart in the race to Paris. The Bellanca monoplane's normal cruising speed is 110 m.p.h. She would require only some 35 hours to reach Paris—if she could stay up that long again. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Paris Preliminaries |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,730448,00.html |quote=Engineer Giuseppe M. Bellanca of the Columbia Aircraft Corporation had conditioned an elderly yellow-winged monoplane with one Wright motor, and scouted around for pilots. Lieut. Leigh Wade, round-the-world flyer, declined the invitation, saying Mr. Bellanca's plans were too stunt-like, not scientific. |publisher="Time" |date=April 25, 1927 |accessdate=2007-09-25 ]

Transatlantic flight

On May 13, 1927, fourteen days after Charles Lindbergh's record setting transatlantic flight, Acosta flew from Long Island to France with Commander Admiral Richard Byrd aboard the "America". [ [http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/America-NX206.htm Check-Six.com - The Ditching of the 'America'] ] The perhaps apocryphal story was that Byrd had to hit Acosta over the head with a fire extinguisher or a flashlight when he got out of control from drinking during their flight.cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Pilot's Pilot |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,883487,00.html |quote=Long before anyone ever heard of Lindbergh, Chamberlin, Post or Earhart, one of aviation's big names was Bert Acosta. Famed as a 'natural' among pilots, he probably had a greater talent for flying than any man before or since. But like many another early barnstormer and stunter, he took to the fleshpots on earth as an offset to his work in the air. His life, consequently, became a rowdy romance in which brawls, jails and domestic entanglements were due to play a large part. |publisher="Time" |date=Monday, June 10, 1935 |accessdate=2007-09-25 ]

Bad Boy

In 1928 Connecticut suspended his pilot license for trying to fly under a bridge in Naugatuck. In 1929 he was fined $500 for low flying and stunting in the same. When he failed to pay the fine, the Department of Commerce revoked his pilot license. He was arrested by Connecticut State troopers in 1930 for flying without a license. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Bert Acosta Freed In Connecticut Case. Two-Year-Old Charge For Stunt Flying At Naugatuck Dropped By Waterbury Prosecutor. Pilot Promises To Behave His Air Record Wins Leniency, But He Faces Federal Inquiry On Flight Without License. |url= |quote=Waterbury, Connecticut; September 18, 1930; (Associated Press). Bert Acosta, transatlantic flier, who was arrested in Wilton last night after he had landed his plane in a meadow, received a nolle today in ... |publisher="New York Times" |date=September 19, 1930 |accessdate=2007-09-25 ] In 1931 with Captain Lisandro Garay of the Honduran Air Force he planned to fly from New York to Honduras . They left from Floyd Bennett Field and loaded their Bellanca monoplane with 360 gallons of gasoline to make a test flight, Bert disappeared and never made the flight. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Biggests |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,742123,00.html |quote=Captain Lisandro Garay of the Honduran Air Force last week at Floyd Bennett Field loaded a Bellanca monoplane with 360 gallons [of] gasoline and Bert Acosta 'to make a test flight' from New York to Honduras. Acosta sneaked away; Captain Garay took off, headed for Tegucigalpa, reprimand, glory, or death. |publisher="Time" |date=August 17, 1931 |accessdate=2007-09-25 ]

panish Civil War

In 1936 Acosta was head of the Yankee Squadron in the Spanish Civil War with Eddie August Schneider and Frederic Ives Lord. [Bertrand Blanchard Acosta had been living at 46 West 17th Street in New York City before leaving for Spain.] [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=3 U.S. Airmen Here to Explain Aid to Loyalists; Acosta, Berry, Schneider Fly to Capital With Their Attorney. |url= |quote= ... Apparently none the worse for the wear and tear of the bitter civil conflict, now in its sixth month, the trio who quit because 'it would be suicide to continue' and because their actions 'might not be in tune with the spirit of neutrality', talked freely with newsmen about the reasons that motivated their enlistment. 'I was broke, hungry, jobless,' 25-year-old Schneider, who is married and has a family in New York, said. 'Yet despite the fact that all three of us are old-time aviators who did our part for the development of the industry were left out in the cold in the Administration’s program of job making. Can you blame us for accepting the lucrative Spanish offer?' While other airmen – British and French – were afforded a two-week courtesy for training, American fliers were just shown to loyalist hangars, given a plane and ordered to do their stuff. 'We were flying old crates,' Acosta said, 'while other nationalists were given modern ships. But for the protection afforded us by Soviet pursuit planes we would not be alive now to tell you this tale.'|publisher="Washington Post" |date=January 20, 1937 |accessdate=2007-08-21 ]

"Time" magazine wrote on December 21, 1936:

Hilariously celebrating in the ship's bar of the Normandie with their first advance pay checks from Spain's Radical Government, six able U.S. aviators were en route last week for Madrid to join Bert Acosta, pilot of Admiral Byrd's transatlantic flight, in doing battle against Generalissimo Francisco Franco's White planes. Payment for their services: $1,500 a month plus $1,000 for each White plane brought down.cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Pilots, Death, Plebiscite |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,757204,00.html |quote=Hilariously celebrating in the ship's bar of the Normandie with their first advance pay checks from Spain's Radical Government, six able U.S. aviators were en route last week for Madrid to join Bert Acosta, pilot of Admiral Byrd's transatlantic flight, in doing battle against Generalissimo Francisco Franco's White planes. Payment for their services: $1,500 a month plus $1,000 for each White plane brought down. |publisher="Time" |date=December 21, 1936 |accessdate=2007-08-21 ]

"Time" magazine wrote on January 4, 1937, although the attack was later determined to be propaganda:

On Christmas Eve the "Yankee Squadron" of famed U.S. aviators headed by Bert Acosta, pilot of Admiral Byrd's transatlantic flight, at the last minute abandoned plans for a whoopee party with their wives at Biarritz, swank French resort across the Spanish frontier. They decided that they would rather raid Burgos, Generalissimo Franco's headquarters. The hundreds of incendiary bombs that they dropped on White hangars and munition dumps they jokingly described as "Messages of Christmas Cheer for the boys in Burgos." [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Uneasy Christmas |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,762332-2,00.html |quote=On Christmas Eve the "Yankee Squadron" of famed U. S. aviators headed by Bert Acosta, pilot of Admiral Byrd's transatlantic flight, at the last minute abandoned plans for a whoopee party with their wives at Biarritz, swank French resort across the Spanish frontier. They decided that they would rather raid Burgos, Generalissimo Franco's headquarters. The hundreds of incendiary bombs that they dropped on White hangars and munition dumps they jokingly described as "Messages of Christmas Cheer for the boys in Burgos. |publisher="Time" |date=January 4, 1937 |accessdate=2007-09-25 ]

Death

In December 1951 Acosta collapsed in a New York City bar and was hospitalized with tuberculosis. He died at the Jewish Consumptive's Relief Society sanatorium in Colorado in 1954. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Bert Acosta 59, A Veteran Flier; Piloted Plane With Byrd and Balchen Across Atlantic in 1927, Dead in Denver. |url= |quote= |publisher="New York Times" |date=September 2, 1954 |accessdate=2007-09-25 ] [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Bert Acosta, Atlantic Flier, Dies. |url= |quote=Bert B. Acosta, spectacular barnstorming pilot who, with Admiral Richard E. Byrd, made the first trans-Atlantic flight in a multi-engined plane, died yesterday from advanced tuberculosis in a Denver sanatorium, the Associated Press reported. |publisher="Washington Post" |date=September 2, 1954 |accessdate=2007-09-25 ] cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Died. |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,820213,00.html |quote= Bert Acosta, 59, pilot of the historic multi-engined flight across the Atlantic (1927) with Admiral Richard E. Byrd and Bernt Balchen; of tuberculosis; in Denver. At 14 (in 1910), Acosta built and flew his own plane, went on to establish a world's speed record (176.7 m.p.h.) at 26 and endurance record (51 hr. 11 min. 25 sec.) at 32; in later life, despite hard times and family problems, wound up with a legendary reputation for skillful piloting and artful risk-taking (e.g., he once buzzed Manhattan's Metropolitan Life tower to see what time it was). |publisher="Time" |date=Monday, September 13, 1954 |accessdate=2007-09-25 ] He was buried at Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in North Hollywood, California.

ee also

*Flight airspeed record

Timeline

*1895 Birth
*1910 Builds experimental airplane
*1912 Starts at Throop Polytechnic Institute
*1914 Finishes at Throop Polytechnic Institute
*1921 Marriage to Helen Belmont Pearsoll
*1921 Sets airspeed record of 176.9 miles an hour [http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/apjinternational/apj-s/2trimes99/ashcroft.htm]
*1927 Endurance record
*1927 Crosses Atlantic with Admiral Byrd
*1936 Spanish Civil War
*1951 Collapse from tuberculosis in New York City
*1954 Death

References

Further reading

* "New York Times", New York City, November 4, 1921; "Bert Acosta Wins Air Race Trophy; New York Aviator Defeats Five Contestants For The Pulitzer Silver Prize. H.E. Hartney Badly Hurt Parachute Jumper Drowned By Falling Into River After A 1,000-foot Leap At Omaha. Omaha, Nebraska, November 3, 1921. Bert Acosta of New York won the annual Pulitzer silver trophy race for heavier-than-air craft here today, defeating a field of five other contestants one of whom, H. E. Hartney of New York, was injured when his plane crashed near Loveland, Iowa."
* "New York Times", New York City, October 2, 1922; "Brings Plane To Earth Without Landing Gear. Bert Acosta Comes Down Safely at Selfridge Field. Astonishes the Onlookers. Mount Clemens, Michigan, October 1, 1922. Landing the Navy Bee Line racer, which he was testing preparatory to its entry in the airplane races at Selfridge Field, October 12, 13 and 14, Bert Acosta brought the plane to Earth this afternoon without the use of its landing gear."
* "New York Times", New York City, October 7, 1923; "Aviator Sent to Jail; Judge Gives Bert Acosta Five Days for Driving Auto While Drunk."
* "New York Times", New York City, January 25, 1928; "Jersey Sheriff Wants Bert Acosta's Plane, Which Flew Away After His Attachment. Bert Acosta's Fokker monoplane The Splitdorf is wanted in Bergen County, New Jersey. Under Sheriff Jack Donaldson wants it. For a little while on Monday afternoon through his deputy, Louis Turro, the ..."
* "Daily News", Frederick, Maryland, December 3, 1936; "Acosta faces rebels"
* "New York Times", New York City, February 20, 1937; "Aviator Held in Nassau in Failure to Post Bail on Wife's Charge. Bert Acosta, who recently faced a Federal inquiry for enlisting in the Spanish Loyalist air force, was remanded to the Nassau County jail here this afternoon pending the posting of a $500 bond to insure his appearance in Children's Court next Friday morning."
* "New York Times", New York City, December 17, 1945; "Bert Acosta in Hospital"
* "New York Times", New York City, August 12, 1952; "Bert Acosta in Hospital"
* "New Bridgeport Telegram", Bridgeport, Connecticut, September 2, 1954,
* "Time", July 11, 1927, "Four men in a fog"
* "Time", February 6, 1928, "Gaol"
* "Time", September 28, 1936, "Transatlantic Tradition", Pilot crews that hate each other
* "Time", March 25, 1957, "End of the Adventure", Byrd Obituary