The 1924 Dayton Air Races: Speed, Boosterism and a Fatal Dive at Wilbur Wright Field

A poster for the 1924 Dayton International Air Races. Image courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

In October 1924, Wilbur Wright Field, a military installation northeast of Dayton, Ohio — now part of Area B of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — hosted the Pulitzer Trophy race, the headline event of the three-day National Air Races, billed as the "Dayton International Air Races."

The Pulitzer races

The Pulitzer brothers — Ralph, Herbert and Joseph Jr., heirs to publisher Joseph Pulitzer Sr. — sponsored a trophy and cash prize to publicize their newspaper and spur aeronautical progress. The race, run under the Aero Club of America (which became the National Aeronautic Association, NAA, in 1922), went to the fastest time over four laps of a 50-kilometer course.

Rising costs and fewer entrants ended the series after 1925, on Long Island. The trophy is now at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. The National Air Races went on under the NAA for most of the next century, mostly in Cleveland and later Reno; a revival is planned for Roswell, New Mexico.

Spectators at the 1924 races. Image courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

Who flew, and why

Air racing was extremely dangerous. In the 1920s it was open only to young white men, most of them serving in or veterans of North American or western European air forces, flying before crowds reported in the hundreds of thousands early in the decade. Women and people of color watched but didn't race — though aviators such as Bessie Coleman flew publicly elsewhere, and the first organized race with women pilots came in 1929.

Promoters hoped races would keep the public interested in flying — no longer the novelty it had been before the war — and spur government investment to sustain the industry and advance military aviation, at a time of deep postwar cuts and cheap surplus warplanes.

Fred F. Marshall (1891–1975), Dayton editor of The Slipstream Monthly — begun as the house journal of the engineering division at McCook Field and taken private when the Army stopped supporting it in 1923 — was a booster's booster. His October 1924 issue called Dayton a spot unmatched "on the face of the earth," claimed it had more flying fields than any other U.S. city, and billed the races "the event of the century."

The souvenir program. Image courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

The course and the program

Militaries didn't organize races; national bodies such as the NAA did, answering to the Paris-based Fédération aéronautique internationale — so courses and records were measured in kilometers. At Dayton, racers flew a hexagonal, 50-kilometer course — four laps, 200 kilometers — mostly north and northeast of the field, avoiding the city, with turns marked by pylons or observation balloons.

The race course. Image courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

Local sponsors — from the Central Labor Union of Dayton and NCR to the city's Engineers and Bicycle clubs — offered trophies, with prizes paid in Liberty bonds; every event was a speed contest. Walter Lees won the NCR Trophy in a Hartzell VC-1, and J. M. Johnson the Dayton Daily News Light Airplane cup in a Driggs-Johnson DJ-1 monoplane.

An Aeromarine NBS-1 at a pylon; the mock-up of New York City behind it was used in a bombing demonstration on the third day. Image courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

Hopes and reality

The 1923 races at what became St. Louis Lambert International Airport had drawn about 140,000 people, including Orville Wright — by one historian's account the most successful U.S. air meet yet. Dayton got the 1924 event after NCR president Frederick B. Patterson became the NAA's president. But Patterson couldn't persuade European aviators such as France's Joseph Sadi-Lecointe to come, the Army and Navy declined to build new racers, and the Navy stayed away altogether. Organizers planned for 250,000 spectators, with special rail fares and lodging from tents to the best hotels; perhaps 50,000 came over three days. Orville and Katharine Wright attended, and the Wrights' 1903 airplane made its last public appearance before Orville sent it to London's Science Museum in 1928.

A fatal dive

Lieutenant H. H. Mills, winner of the 1924 Pulitzer Trophy. Image courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

Four Army officers entered the Pulitzer race, climbing high to dive across the start line at racing speed — nearly 350 km/h (215 mph). Midway through his dive, Captain Burt Skeel's Curtiss racer broke apart, plunging into the ground and killing him instantly. The others flew on, and Lieutenant Harry Mills won. Skeel, 30, left his wife Gertrude and two young children. The awards ceremony at Dayton's Memorial Hall was canceled, and because his plane's wooden frame failed under the forces of the dive, his death helped end wooden frames in military aircraft. Skeel Avenue on the base still bears his name.

Captain Burt Skeel with his Curtiss racer. Image courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

Verdicts

The New York Times declared that "the art of flying has been mastered" and that the airplane might soon rival the automobile. The Dayton Daily News noted the lack of "popular appeal": long courses kept planes out of sight — "If the public is to be more keenly interested in aviation it must of necessity be given more to watch." Marshall blamed Daytonians, used to airplanes overhead, for staying home, yet his November headline asked "Was it a Failure and Why?"; he thought mass-audience races would now need country-fair sideshows. The National Air Races stagnated until a California car dealer revived them in 1929.

The races lost money — a $75,000 shortfall — and without new aircraft brought neither faster speeds nor new technology. Historians see the Pulitzer races as a push for faster, cheaper propeller aircraft that helped U.S. makers sell abroad after a decade dominated by French builders; but they also showed air shows losing their public. Today little marks the site of the October 1924 races but Skeel Avenue.

Aircraft at the 1924 races. Image courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

Sources

Based on Edward Roach, "The Pulitzer Trophy and National Air Races at Wilbur Wright Field" (June 2024), National Park Service, Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, drawing on The Slipstream Monthly (1924), the Dayton Daily News and New York Times (1924), the Aircraft Year Book 1925, and Michael Gough's The Pulitzer Air Races; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The article puts the number of events at both ten and nine, and names Skeel's racer as both a Curtiss R-6 and an R-8, so neither figure is given here.