He Knows What It’s Like to Meet, Beat Challenge : Pilot Among Few to Finish Deadly 1927 Race to Hawaii

Martin Jensen is writing a congratulatory letter to Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager on their successful nine-day, non-stop, around-the-world flight last month.

“It took a lot of guts, I’ll give them a lot of credit for that, especially since I didn’t think they could make it,” Jensen said.

The 86-year-old San Diego resident knows a lot about both guts and the odds of flying. Almost 60 years ago, Jensen was one of only two pilots to survive the first air race from California to Hawaii in the 1927 Dole Air Derby. Just two of the 15 planes intending to enter the race ever reached Wheeler Field north of Honolulu and newspapers across the United States condemned the race, one describing it as “an orgy of reckless sacrifice.”

As one of the nation’s earliest barnstormers, Jensen did loops and spins for crowds from San Diego to New York as a stunt pilot, even marrying his wife, Marguerite, on the wing of a plane over Yuma, Ariz., in 1925.

Jensen later taught aeronautics in Pennsylvania, did show flying for the New York Daily News and the Tidewater Oil Co., flew the MGM lion across the country for the movie studio, and later worked on engineering problems for the Langley and Douglas aircraft companies until retiring in the mid-1960s.

But Jensen’s proudest exploit in the annals of aviation history--one brought back to memory by the Voyager flight and its troubles both before and during its journey--was in August, 1927, when he weathered a harrowing 28-hour flight across a foggy Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Honolulu.

For flying enthusiasts, the time was one of tremendous excitement and heart-stopping risks, symbolized by the first civilian solo flight from New York to Europe by Charles Lindbergh in May, 1927, for which Lindbergh won the princely sum of $25,000.

James Dole, scion of the pineapple dynasty in Hawaii, decided to try to put the Pacific on the aviation map by sponsoring a mainland-to-Honolulu civilian race, slapping down $25,000 for the winner and $10,000 for the second-place finisher.

Dole publicized his offer in June, 1927, and pilots immediately scrambled to line up for the race. No civilian pilot had yet made the long flight successfully, although two fliers in 1925 had come within 300 miles of the islands before having to ditch their plane and float it as a boat the rest of the way. A three-engine U.S. Army craft made the first California-Hawaii flight in late June, shortly after the Dole civilian contest became public.

Jensen had learned to fly in the U.S. Navy while stationed in San Diego and subsequently had been working as the pilot for an inter-island air tour service in Hawaii, making the first regularly scheduled flights from Oahu to the chain’s outer islands. When he heard about Dole’s offer, he decided quickly to enter.

“I figured I could make the flight, so I asked Claude Ryan (T. Claude Ryan of Ryan Aeronautical in San Diego, an early airplane manufacturer) to work me up a plane,” Jensen recalled the other day. “But Ryan couldn’t get one ready in time.”

With time ticking away, Jensen learned by chance from a potential competitor in the race that a partially completed plane was available in San Francisco. The would-be purchaser of the craft had put down a diamond ring as security deposit but then forfeited it.

At that point, with only about 10 days left before the race’s scheduled Aug. 12 start, Jensen had to scramble to get the plane completed. Race rules required someone proficient in celestial navigation, and because Jensen was skilled only in compass readings, he had to find a navigator in short order as well.

Several people applied, Jensen recalled, including a 14-year-old Boy Scout, and a 16-year-old girl who thought the flight could propel her into the movies. Jensen settled on a ship navigator named Paul Schluter after Schluter successfully weathered the loops, spins and rolls that Jensen subjected him to during practice flights in the Bay Area.

In the meantime, tragedy struck even before the race, now pushed back to Aug. 16, began. A plane piloted by movie star Hoot Gibson plunged into San Francisco Bay during practice. Another known as the Angel of Los Angeles crashed on its way up the coast. A plane christened the Tremaine took off from North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego and smashed into Point Loma while fighting to get out of a fog bank.

Jensen’s plane, manufactured by Vance Breese of San Francisco, was christened Aloha, and he had it painted in flashy Hawaiian colors. The pilot sat in an open cockpit in front, with the navigator squeezed into a small hole in the tail, surrounded by gas tanks holding 405 gallons of aviation fuel. The two men used a trolley line equipped with a clothespin to send messages back and forth. If either failed to notice the communication, the other also had a long stick at his disposal to prod his colleague.

At exactly noon on Aug. 16, eight planes finally certified for the race by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s aeronautics branch lined up at one end of a 7,000-foot dirt runway in Oakland. The first plane, the Oklahoma, managed to lift off but returned shortly with problems. The El Encanto trundled halfway down the strip and cartwheeled. The Pacific Pabco Flyer stalled just after takeoff and crumbled back to the ground.

“It wasn’t too encouraging,” Jensen said, vividly remembering the lengthening wait in his own fragile plane.

The next plane, the Golden Eagle, made a fine takeoff. It was seen for the last time as it headed west across the San Francisco Presidio. The Miss Doran also took off safely, encountered engine trouble and landed, took off once more and would also disappear over the ocean without a trace.

Jensen’s Aloha was next and made it into the air safely, followed by the Woolaroc, whose pilot, Art Goebel, would win the race, two hours ahead of Jensen. The last plane, the Dallas Spirit, broke down shortly after leaving the field, and returned. Taking off the next day to look for the two planes by then reported as lost, it would become the third craft to be swallowed up by the Pacific.

In all, 10 people would die as part of the Dole derby. “And I knew every one of them,” Jensen said.

After his own takeoff, Jensen said that he and Schluter soon found themselves encased in an unending fog.

“After about seven hours (near sunset), I started to climb to 4,000 feet to try and get out of the fog,” Jensen said, “because I knew the hazards of blind flying, especially at night in total darkness.

“But then I found myself with vertigo.” That’s the condition where a person has a sensation of dizziness and believes he or she is whirling about uncontrollably. Vertigo hampers a pilot’s ability to know up from down.

Jensen said he went into three violent spins but recovered each time because of his experience with stunt flying. However, the three instances had left him dangerously low in altitude and while he attempted to maintain a 100-foot height to make out the horizon along the water, he realized that a wave had hit the left landing wheel.

“I put the plane into a steep climb but as I leveled, we experienced a negative ‘G’ (gravity) and the navigator was barely able to keep himself from floating out of his little hole.”

Jensen kept the plane at relatively low altitude for the next 17 hours. About 9:30 a.m. the next morning, he calculated that Hawaii should be near, based on a 100-mile-per-hour airspeed and the 2,400-mile distance between San Francisco and Hawaii. However, a thick cloud cover prevented the navigator from taking any readings. Jensen decided to wait until noon Hawaii time, another two hours away, and then make a sighting using the sun, which he expected to see by then.

“But when we looked at our gas tanks, we realized that the engine pump transferring fuel into the wing tanks had stopped and we were out of fuel in the main tanks,” Jensen said, reminiscent of a similar problem that plagued the Voyager. “Fortunately I got a hand wobble pump going to fill the tanks.”

At noon, Jensen and Schluter found themselves 200 miles north of Oahu and quickly changed headings, arriving over Wheeler Field in the middle of the island about 2:15 p.m.

“My navigator had told me, ‘For God sakes, no stunts!’ when we got over Oahu because of so little fuel left,” Jensen said. “We were damn lucky to be there, although I was never scared because if you ever get scared, you lose your wits.”

The $10,000 that Jensen won for finishing second ended up with his Hawaiian backers, who had put up funds for the Aloha. “I told everyone that I finished second--and last-- in the race,” he said.

But any celebrations by Jensen or Goebel, the winning pilot, over making the flight safely were tempered by the loss of life among the other competitors. As word of the results spread, the Philadelphia Inquirer called the race “an orgy of reckless sacrifice.” The St. Louis Star said Dole had sponsored a “death-dealing stunt” and the Louisville Times labeled the race “aviation asininity.”

But Jensen said all adventures carry risks and that the Dole race pointed up the need to perfect instruments for flying safely through weather such as fog. And he believes the tragedies during the race accelerated the search for better instruments.

Jensen went on to a variety of careers, all aviation-related. The Aloha was sold to a New York businessman. It later burned in a hangar fire at Roosevelt Field in New York.