1928 | Transportation
Transportation
Pilot Floyd Bennett rises from a sickbed and flies with Bernt Balchen to rescue of three transatlantic flyers—Capt. Hermann Koehl, Maj. James A. Fitzmaurice, and Baron von Huenefeld—whose Junkers plane, the Bremen, has landed on an island in Labrador. Bennett contracts pneumonia and dies at Quebec April 25 at age 37.
Australian pilot Charles E. Kingsford Smith, 31, lands the Southern Cross at Brisbane June 9, having come with three companions from Oakland, Calif., via Honolulu and Suva in the first trans-Pacific flight. Having served with the Royal Flying Corps in the Great War and, after being wounded, as an instructor for the Royal Air Force, Kingsford Smith founded his own airline; he is lionized as a national hero (see 1930).
Pilots Wilmer Stultz and Louis E. Gordon fly a multi-engine Fokker from Newfoundland to Burry Port, Wales, June 17 in 15 hours, 48 minutes, with Atchison, Kansas-born aviatrix Amelia Earhart, 29, who denies that she was ever at the controls but becomes the first woman ever to fly the Atlantic. The three are honored with a New York ticker-tape parade July 6. Earhart paid for her first flying lessons in 1920 by driving a sand and gravel truck, decided after 2½ hours of instruction that she wanted to buy her own aircraft, borrowed $2,000 from her mother to acquire a small, experimental plane, made her first solo flight in 1922, and soon thereafter set an altitude record of 14,000 feet (see 1932)
Newark Airport opens in September. The 68-acre, $1.75 million field will grow to cover 2,300 acres (see La Guardia, 1939).
Lockheed Vega co-designer John K. (Knudsen) Northrop, now 32, quits the small Burbank, Calif., company to start his own firm (see 1926). Gerard Vultee, 27, succeeds Northrop as chief engineer and will redesign the Lockheed Vega for speed; he will also design the Sirius for Charles A. Lindbergh and his wife, Ann (see 1927; Lockheed, 1929; American Airlines, 1930).
The German dirigible Graf Zeppelin arrives October 15 at Lakehurst, N.J., after covering 6,630 miles in 121 hours on her first commercial flight (see Eckener, 1924). The voyage from Friedrichshafen inaugurates transatlantic service by lighter-than-air craft (see 1937).
Panama Canal builder George W. Goethals dies at New York January 21 at age 69. New York's Goethals Bridge and Outerbridge Crossing open to connect Staten Island with New Jersey.
The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad's Moffat Tunnel eliminates bottlenecks in east-west traffic to speed freight and passenger trains through the Transcontinental Divide. Dedicated February 26 and named for engineer David Hallady Moffat, who died in 1911 at age 71, the $15.6 million tunnel is more than six miles long, making it the longest in North America, but it has cost the lives of 28 men in the 5 years of round-the-clock work required to build it (workers were paid $5.15 per 8-hour shift, and it was easy to find a replacement for anyone killed).
The Jones-White Merchant Marine Act passed by Congress May 22 gives private U.S. shipping interests federal subsidies to help them compete with foreign lines (see 1891; 1936).
The British steamship Vestris sinks in a gale off the Virginia coast November 12, killing 110.
Plymouth automobiles are introduced by Chrysler Motors to compete with Ford and Chevrolet. "Look at all three," says Walter Chrysler in advertisements featuring Plymouths with high compression engines and hydraulic brakes that are far superior to the cable-activated mechanical brakes found in other cars. Plymouth will be third in sales by 1931.
The DeSoto introduced by Chrysler is a medium-priced car that will remain in production until 1960.
A new 112-horsepower Chrysler Imperial "80" is advertised as "America's most powerful automobile."
Automaker James W. Packard dies at Cleveland March 20 at age 64.
Florida's Tamiami Trail opens in April to link Miami with Fort Myers on the Gulf Coast. Advertising man-philanthropist Barron G. Collier, now 55, has led the effort to reclaim the Everglades and build the 143-mile highway through the swamps; it has taken 11 years to build and cost more than $48,000 per mile (see environment [Everglades National Park], 1947).
The world's first highway cloverleaf is completed at Woodbridge, N.J. Patented in 1916 by U.S. inventor Arthur Hill, the cloverleaf saves space.