KING OF HOLLYWOOD PILOTS
IN JUNE 1928 AVIATION CADET ALBERT PAUL MANTZ HAD THE WORLD BY ITS TAIL FEATHERS.
The 24-year-old, high on the honors list at the U.S. Army flight school at March Field, Calif., had more than 125 hours in the air, needing just one more hour of solo time to graduate the next day.
He took off in a Consolidated PT-1 Trusty biplane trainer and followed the Southern Pacific rail line east toward Whitewater. Spotting a train laboring up 2,600-foot San Gorgonio Pass, he decided to have some fun with it, and rolled the Trusty over and down to pull out just above the tracks, headed right for the locomotive. As the engineer blared his whistle, Mantz pulled up just enough to miss its stack and buzzed the length of train, for good measure doing a low roll past Whitewater Station, giving a wing-wave to passengers as they hit the dirt.
When he landed back at March Field, he was arrested on the spot. The train had been full of Army Air Corps brass, coming to attend the graduation ceremony. Mantz was dragged before a disciplinary board and dismissed, his Army flight career over. And they hadn’t even found out he’d faked two years of college at Stanford University just to get in.
Mantz found work as a flight instructor and distributor for Consolidated Aircraft, manufacturer of the Fleet two-seat biplane trainer. On July 6, 1930, for the dedication of the San Mateo airport, he flew a Fleet Model 2
