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Milton Caniff's portrait of Cal Rodgers hangs the in National Aviation Hall of Fame.

I endure. I conquer.  -- Inscription on the gravestone of Cal Rodgers.

Amongst the gifts that the invention of flight has given us, perhaps the most inspiring are its heroes. The very first flight on December 17, 1903 was a talrse to the first aviator to fly coast to coast in 30 days or less. Rodgers enlisted the Armour Meat-Packing Company as a sponsor, promising to promote their new soft drink, Vin Fiz. He purchased a Wright Model EX biplane, christened it the Vin Fiz, and on September 17, 1911, he took off from Sheepshead Bay on Long Island, New York.

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The Vin Fiz wrecked in Huntington, Indiana, one of several major crashes along the route. Although Cal was not hurt in most crashes, they cost precious time.

Cal Rodgers did not win the Hearst Prize. Almost from the first take-off, he was beset by problems, many of which should have ended his journey. Less than a day out from Sheepshead, he wrecked his aircraft and had to completely rebuild it — a delay that cost him several days. And this was only the first of five major crashes, two engine explosions, and dozens of minor incidents. In addition to his mechanical problems, he was plagued with navigational errors. The Vin Fiz carried no directional instruments, not even a compass. Cal Rodgers was forced to "follow the line," navigating from town to town by following railroad tracks. Occasionally he picked the wrong track and traced it for miles before he landed and found he wasn't where he expected to be. Finally, he was handicapped by his hearing loss. According to Henry Kisor, a deaf pilot who has himself flown the route of the Vin Fiz, "On quite a few occasions Rodgers made judgmental errors very likely because he could not hear."

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The "Vin Fiz Special" -- Cal Rodgers navigated across America by following this special train. The white box car behind the engine is a "hangar car" full of spare parts.

Nonetheless, he kept flying. Even when he had spent over 30 days crossing the continent, the hope of winning the Hearst Prize had evaporated, and everyone connected with the endeavor expected him to quit, he kept flying. His refusal to give in endeared him to the American public, and the crowds that met each landing grew larger and more enthusiastic after the prize was lost. When he finally landed at Long Beach, California, on December 10, 1911 — 84 days after he had left Sheepshead — 50,000 cheered him as he wet the wheels of the Vin Fiz in the Pacific surf. Several months later, when he died in a flying accident near the spot where he had complete his transcontinental flight, a whole nation mourned the loss of one of aviation's first heroes.

Cal Rodgers was enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame on December 17, 1964, along with Orville and Wilbur Wright and several other aviation pioneers. The inscription on his posthumous award reads, "To Calbraith Perry Rodgers, for outstanding contributions to aviation by demonstrating the feasibility of transcontinental flight, this award is most solemnly and respectfully dedicated."

 

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This Vin Fiz promotional poster from 1911 depicts Cal's route across the United States. However, it does not show all the detours he took when he got lost	Cal Rodgers wets the wheels of the Vin Fiz in the surf at Long Beach, California, after flying 4,231 miles in 84 days.

Cal was brought up to push the limits. He was born to the prestigious Rodgers and Perry clans, and could claim Commodores Matthew Calbraith Perry and Oliver Hazard Perry as his ancestors. On his father's side, there was a long list of admirals and vice admirals. The family boasted that there had always been a Rodgers serving in the U.S. Navy since its inception. Cal's mother Maria Chambers Rodgers Sweitzer described his ancestry as an "aristocracy of heroes." Unfortunately, a childhood bout with scarlet fever affected Cal's hearing, leaving him completely deaf in one ear and  severely impaired in the other. His deafness, in turn, made him unfit for military service. He seemed rudderless through most of his twenties, hunting for gold in Africa and racing motorcycles and automobiles in the States. In the spring of 1911, he traveled with his cousin Lieutenant John Rodgers to Dayton, Ohio where the Navy had posted John while he learned to fly. Cal's first sight of an aircraft at the Wright Flying School at old Huffman Prairie seemed to transform him. Said his wife Mabel, "It was as if the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle had slipped into place in his mind."

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Born to greatness -- as a young man Cal Rodgers (circled) played on the Mercerberg football team.
Tomfoolery at the Wright Flying School. Cal is seated at the extreme right, "grading" the balancing ability of the student on the cart.	Cal Rodgers at home in the cockpit of the Vin Fiz. He chain-smoked cigars, even as he flew.

Cal Rodgers determined to get into the air and reported to the Wright Flying School on June 5, 1911. Within a week, his instructor Al Welsh was letting him take-off, fly, and land the airplane. When he asked to be allowed a solo flight, Welsh balked — Cal didn't yet have enough experience. So Cal bought the training airplane — a Wright Model B — and on June 12 he made a wobbly take-off and a hard landing, but he made them alone as pilot-in-command. He continued to hone his flying skills at Huffman Prairie for the rest of June, and flew his first exhibition flights in July. On August 7, 1911 he took his official flying examination at Huffman Prairie and became the forty-ninth aviator licensed to fly by the FAI (Federation Aeronautique Internationale).

Five days later, he was in Chicago for his first big air meet. He came in third in the prize money, winning over $11,000 for endurance flying. While he was there, he caught the eye of promoter Stewart DeKraft. Dekraft broached the idea of a transcontinental flight with Cal, the fledgling aviator agreed, and by September 5, DeKraft had secured Armour's sponsorship. On September 10, Cal purchased a Model EX from the Wright Company. Orville Wright gave his honest opinion of the endeavor at the sale. "There isn't a machine in existence that can be relied upon for 1,000 miles and here you want to go over 4,000. It will vibrate itself to death before you get to Chicago. But then," said Orville, referring to the EX's comparatively light weight, "six good men could carry it across the country."

So — a little over three months after he had learned to fly, Cal Rodgers and the Vin Fiz were poised on a field in Long Island, pointed west toward the Pacific Ocean. When asked by a reporter why his transcontinental journey was so important, Cal replied, "It's important…because everything else I've done was unimportant."

 

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Publisher William Randolph Hearst takes flight at the San Diego Air Meet in 1910 after pilot Louis Paulhan invited him to "buss the clouds."

Cal Rodgers (middle) with Vin Fiz President Charles Davidson (right) at the initial take-off ceremonies in Sheepshead Bay, New York.

The Vin Fiz takes off from Sheepshead Bay on September 17, 1911.

The "hangar car" on the Vin Fiz special. It carried spare parts for the EX as well as the Wright Model B in which Cal learned to fly.

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The Vin Fiz engine after it exploded over Imperial Junction, California.

The Vin Fiz takes off from Olean, New York trailing a little hay after a near miss with a hay stack.

Cal and his wife Mabel Rodgers. Mabel had to contend with both her mother-in-law and the Vin Fiz for her husband's attention. "Sometimes," she said, "I suspect that Calbraith thinks showing affection to a woman would be unfaithful to his machine."

Cal and master mechanic Charlie Taylor rebuild a wing of the Vin Fiz. Charlie, who had worked for the Wright brothers since 1901, left their employ to participate in the Vin Fiz adventure.

Cal and Charlie Wiggins ("Wiggie") look over the remains of the Vin Fiz after it wreck in Huntington, Indiana. After Cal's death in 1912, Wiggins married Mabel and flew the Vin Fiz at exhibitions.

The hangar car also carried a Palmer-Singer automobile, the official chase car for the transcontinental trip. Whenever Cal would go down, the train would stop and the crew would unload the auto. Then they'd drive around until they found him. It usually wasn't hard -- news of an airplane landing traveled fast in 1911.

The Vin Fiz rounds a skyscraper in Waco, Texas.

In October 1910, publisher William Randolph Hearst, seeking to further the cause of aviation and boost the circulation of his newspapers (not necessarily in that order), offered a prize of $50,000 to the first aviator to cross the United States in an airplane in under 30 days. Experts had warned him that because aviation was in its infancy and the airplanes fragile and unreliable, this was an absurd notion that would bring nothing but ridicule. Hearst ignored them and went forward with the offer. He was lauded for his vision and genius, and was awarded a medal from the Aeronautical Society of America.

Several aviators announced their intentions to try for the prize, but only three made it to the starting line — Robert Fowler, Jimmy Ward, and Calbraith Perry Rodgers. Of these, Cal Rodgers was the last off the mark, leaving Sheepshead Bay on Long Island, New York late in the afternoon of on September 17, 191,  just a few weeks before the Hearst offer was due to expire.

Cal had secured financial backing from the Armour Meat-Packing Company who wanted to use the publicity that the transcontinental flight attracted to promote a new grape-flavored soft drink, "Vin Fiz." Consequently, Cal's aircraft was christened the Vin Fiz and a bottle of the drink was lashed to a front strut. Privately, he called the airplane "Betsy" and regarded the bottle as a powerful totem.

The aircraft was a Wright Model EX, purchased from the Wright Company of Dayton, Ohio, the aircraft manufacturing firm that had been founded by the Wright brothers just two years earlier. At the time, it was one of the sturdiest, fastest, and most advanced airplanes made, capable of flying for over two hours at speeds up to 60 miles per hour. Wilbur and Orville Wright had designed it specifically for exhibition flying (hence the designation "EX"), where they knew the pilots were likely to push the limits of their airplane. And this is precisely what Cal Rodgers did, pushing the Vin Fiz to an endurance record far beyond anything she had been designed to take.

From Sheepshead Bay, Cal angled north to Brooklyn, then flew across midtown Manhattan at an altitude of 800 feet. In New Jersey, a special train with a sleeper and a "hangar car" to carry spare parts, began to follow the aircraft. The Vin Fiz and the Vin Fiz Special both arrived at Middletown, New York that evening a little over a hundred miles from Cal's starting point. On take-off the next morning, he snagged a tree and completely wrecked the airplane. Cal was dazed by the accident, but unhurt. Despondent, he poked through the wreckage and found the bottle of Vin Fiz unscathed. Taking it as an omen, he told his incredulous entourage that this was not the end of the line. "Fix her up, boys. I'll be ready." It was a phrase they would hear over and over again throughout the adventure.

The Wright Company sent its best mechanic, Charlie Taylor, to help rebuild the Vin Fiz. Taylor had built the engine the Wright's used in their first aircraft and had been with them ever since. Now he would accompany Cal Rodgers most of the way across the United States. With Taylor's help, Cal was back in the air by September 21. He broke the skids when landing at Hancock, wrecked upon landing at Elmira, and smashed the machine again on take-off from Redhouse, New York. There were more major crashes in Huntington, Indiana, Spofford, Texas, and Pasadena, California. The engine exploded over Kyle, Texas, and again over Imperial Junction, California. Cal was lost over vast stretches of Pennsylvania, Indiana, Texas, and Arizona. He was nearly electrocuted in a thunderstorm in Indiana. But the bottle of Vin Fiz survived every mishap, the boys kept fixing up the airplane, and Cal kept flying.

If the flight of the Vin Fiz was a heroic tale, the story of the Vin Fiz Special was a soap opera. Near the beginning of the trip, the train picked up Cal's twice-widowed and indulgent mother, Mrs. Sweitzer. Cal's mother had little regard for Cal's wife Mabel Rodgers, who was also along on the trip. Mrs. Sweitzer didn't think that Mabel was good enough for her son — and she had no qualms about saying so. Mrs. Sweitzer left the adventure when it reached Chicago, rejoined it again in Kansas City, and left it again in San Antonio. When she joined it for the last time in El Paso she had a "traveling companion" in tow, Lucy Belvedere, a 22 year-old heiress. It soon became obvious to the Vin Fiz entourage the Mrs. Sweitzer thought Lucy would make a more suitable daughter-in-law than Mabel. In the wilds of the Arizona Territory, after Cal had paid Lucy just a little too much attention to suit his wife, Mabel stuffed Lucy's designer gowns in a trunk and put them on a train going east. Lucy soon followed her clothes.

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The Vin Fiz lands in Dallas, Texas -- the Hearst Prize was lost but the grandstands were full.

Cal Rodgers with an American flag draped around his shoulders, after his triumphant landing in Pasadena. The Rose Queen is to his right.

Somewhere south of Muskogee, Oklahoma, the clock ran out on the Hearst Prize. Cal had spent the 30 allotted days crossing the continent, and he was still over a thousand miles from the western shore. As the days ticked down, the crowds that greeted him had grown thinner and his crew more despondent. All expected him to concede. Cal, however, would not hear of it. "This is no longer a race against time," he told the reporters and crew aboard the Vin Fiz Special on October 17, 1911. "It is not against a competitor. This is a demonstration that man is not held down by the dead hand of the past."

Jasper Allen, one of the mechanics in the Vin Fiz crew, recalled, "Somehow, when the prize was gone, a second wind blew up. The crowds grew bigger and the cheers louder." Chalked messages to those aboard the train began to appear on water towers along the railroad, "Help that man Rodgers fly across America." The Vin Fiz flew on propelled not just by the tenacity of Cal Rodgers, but by the well wishes of a nation.

On November 5, 1911, 49 days from the start of his journey, Cal Rodgers and the Vin Fiz reached Pasadena, California, just 27 miles from the Pacific Ocean. As his wheels touched the ground in Tournament Park, the assembled citizens of Pasadena rushed him screaming, crying, and trying to touch him. It took Cal twenty minutes to negotiate a few dozen yards through the excited throng to the judges' platform, where officials draped an American flag around his shoulders. He was hoisted into a car and driven round and round the track while people cheered, danced, applauded, and wept with emotion. A reporter from the Examiner jumped on the running board and shouted, "What about the prize? What about the Hearst money?"

"Forget the prize," Cal shouted back. "I did it, didn't I? I did it!

Well, almost. He still had 27 miles to fly. Cal rested for a few days while the Vin Fiz was completely overhauled and spruced up with a fresh set of wing coverings. He took off from Pasadena on November 12 while crowds assembled at Long Beach to witness the end of his journey. But just 12 miles short of his goal, the engine sputtered and quit, forcing him to land. He was back in the air after a quick repair, but the engine continued to give him fits. He lost altitude, banked hard to avoid a power line, and plowed into the ground. Once again, he wrecked the Vin Fiz and for the first time, he was injured in the process. He was diagnosed with one ankle broken, the other sprained, broken ribs, twisted back, severe burns, and a concussion. The flying machine was almost a total loss — but the bottle of Vin Fiz was whole and entire.

The VIN FIZ

The Epic Flight of the Vin Fiz Flyer