By BILL ALLEY

Several thousand spectators gathered at Vancouver’s Pearson Field on March 21, 1926. They had come to witness an impromptu match between a veteran army airplane and a smaller, innovative new monoplane. The two competing aircrafts represented the rapid advances in aviation technology over the past decade, and they could not have been more different.

The home field favorite was the venerable and familiar De Havilland DH-4, piloted by Pearson’s military commander, Lt. Oakley Kelly. The Air Service’s DH-4s were based on a British design and manufactured under license in the United States during the Great War. It was a large biplane (a 44-foot wingspan and powered by the ubiquitous 12-cylinder Liberty engine, rated at 400 hp). In the period of “normalcy” following WWI, the DH-4s were used in many different roles, including pilot training, patrolling the Mexican border, spotting forest fires in the Pacific Northwest, and as the primary test bed at the Air Service’s research center at McCook Field in Dayton, Ohio. With military expenditures cut to the bone after the war, the DH-4 would remain the mainstay of army aviation throughout the 1920s.

The DH-4 pilot, Oakley Kelly, was among the best of Army Air Service fliers. As the American armed services dramatically downsized after World War I, only cream-of-the-crop pilots were retained. Of those kept on, the elite, including Kelly, were assigned to the Air Service’s engineering and research facility at McCook Field. While stationed there (where he flew with future Pearson Field namesake Alec Pearson), Kelly and Lt. John Macready made headlines and set a new record in 1923 when they completed the first non-stop transcontinental flight in a Fokker T-2. Afterwards, Kelly came to the Vancouver Barracks Aerodrome to command the 321st Reserve Observation Squadron.

Kelly’s opponent in the 1926 challenge race in Vancouver was Claude Ryan. Ryan, too, had served in the Army Air Service before forming a partnership to start a small airline and, later, the Ryan Aircraft Company. Under Ryan’s direction, his company designed and built the Ryan M-1 mail plane to offer to the many companies placing bids on the new government airmail contracts. Vern Gorst, the founder of Pacific Air Transport (PAT), had contracted to purchase several of Ryan’s mail planes to fly the west coast air mail route. Ryan and Gorst had come to Vancouver in a M-1 while surveying routes for PAT.

When Ryan and Gorst first arrived at Pearson Field, the sleek little monoplane, at 24 feet long and a 36 foot wingspan, and powered by a 200 hp air cooled Wright J-4B radial engine, engendered a great deal of interest. With Ryan singing the praises of his aircraft’s abilities, speculation as to which plane was the faster ran rampant. In the spirit of good fun, Kelly and Ryan agreed to a race after the conclusion of the Army’s polo match on Sunday, March 21. Even with only half the horsepower, the modern little M-1 dominated the venerable DeHavilland. While the latter lumbered along to gain altitude, Ryan raced skyward and treated the spectators to some examples of the mail plane’s maneuverability. The race, consisting of three laps around a 2.5 mile course, belonged to Ryan and his M-1, although the powerful DH-4 was able to close the gap on the straightaways. Kelly also fared well in a straight run against the Ryan from Camas to Pearson Field.

Oakley Kelly, an ardent supporter of aviation development, was not surprised by the outcome of the race and explained if thusly:

“The monoplane was built by private interests in 1926 with the advantages of modern construction and engineering. The plane I fly was built in 1917 by the government, and I have to carry around a lot of useless struts and cables that have since been done away with in modern air engineering. The result of the race, in which my ship with a 400 horsepower Liberty motor was bested by a monoplane with a 200 horsepower air cooled motor, proves that the government should equip the army with modern ships in place of the antiquated wagons the army flyers are forced — with few exceptions — to pilot.”

Lt. Kelly’s point is that the army had been saddled with rapidly ageing and obsolete aircraft was tragically hammered home the following June. Lts. Henry Goode and Julius Syfford, members of the 321st Reserve Observation Squadron, had just taken off from Pearson Field in Kelly’s DeHavilland when the ship burst into flames. Goode brought the plane down on the field but was trapped in the wreckage and killed; his observer was badly injured.

The Army would slowly upgrade and modernize its inventory of combat aircraft over the next decade — a process that received added impetus as war loomed over the horizon in the latter half of the 1930s. Still, military advances continued to trail those of the private sector. The last Army DH-4s weren’t retired until 1933-34.

To learn more about the “Golden Age of Aviation” visit the Pearson Air Museum on the Fort Vancouver National Site, www.fortvan.org/pages/. On January 28 from 5:30 - 7:00 p.m. at Pearson Air Museum, Dan Hagedorn, senior curator at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, presents “North American’s T-6: The World’s Most Famous Trainer Family.” This free program begins at 5:30 p.m. inside Pearson’s main hangar. For more information, call Pearson Air Museum at 694-7026.

This column is presented by the Center for Columbia River History (CCRH), located on the Fort Vancouver National Site. CCRH is a consortium of the Washington State Historical Society, Portland State University and Washington State University Vancouver. The CCRH mission is to promote study of the history of the Columbia River Basin and present the results publicly. CCRH is dedicated to examining the hidden histories of the Basin and to helping people think about the historical record from different perspectives. For more information, see ccrh.org