Dave Driskill, the National Park Service, and Aviation on the Outer Banks

Dave Driskill, the National Park Service, and Aviation on the Outer Banks CASEY HUEGEL n May 19, 1938, in celebration of twenty years of regular air mail service, O53,223 special cachets were issued at the Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, post office—a record for postmaster Hattie Baum—which bested the approximate 27,000 letters received on December 17, 1928, for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Wilbur and Orville Wright’s first powered flight in an airplane. In 1928, aviators Orville Wright and Amelia Earhart dedicated the cornerstone of what became Kill Devil Hills’s sixty-foot granite monument to the brothers, which was completed in 1932. In 1938, on the roads below the manicured hill that supports Wright Brothers National Memorial, the bulk of these letters were loaded onboard the National Park Service’s (NPS) 1928 Fairchild FC-2W2, a rugged bush airplane developed for transport and aerial photography, for delivery to the Wright brothers’ hometown of Dayton, Ohio, via Richmond, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.1 Behind the controls of the Fairchild was NPS mechanic and pilot Dave Driskill, a journeyman aviator whose career blossomed during the federal government’s sand fixation and beach erosion control project on North Carolina’s coast. From the late 1930s to the early 1940s, Driskill ferried food and supplies, mail, pay, and emergency evacuations between the Outer Banks and the mainland. Although countless individuals have paid homage to the Wrights at Kill Devil Hills, the Outer Banks are particularly significant for pilots, who found creative ways throughout the twentieth century to honor aviation’s founders. Most dramatically, on December 17, 1934, director of air commerce Eugene Vidal penned an open letter to pilots and aircraft owners for a mass “flight of remembrance” from 10:30 A.M. to 11:00 A.M. (the Wrights’ first flight took off at 10:35 A.M.)—and an estimated eight thousand aircraft participated.2 One photograph of Driskill’s National Air Mail Week flight that survives in Wright Brothers National Memorial’s archives captures this connection for Driskill, with the dark fuselage and bright yellow wings of his loaded Fairchild soaring past the Wright memorial. VOLUME XCV • NUMBER 3• JULY 2018 252 CASEY HUEGEL A Kellett Aircraft photograph of Dave Driskill testing the XR-10 helicopter, late 1940s. Courtesy of the Dare County Regional Airport Museum, Manteo, N.C. Driskill also left his own legacy on the Outer Banks. His government aviation program in North Carolina was locally focused and functioned with the support of the project’s superintendent, A. Clark Stratton, who retired as deputy director of the NPS in 1967. Privately, with the capital of businessman, hotel proprietor, and native Outer Banker Robert Stanley Wahab, Driskill established a commercial aviation network from Norfolk, Virginia, to Beaufort to serve Wahab’s economic interests on Ocracoke Island. These efforts played a vital role in the expansion of the Outer Banks as a tourist destination beginning in the New Deal years, which included the establishment of Cape Hatteras National Seashore on August 17, 1937.3 In 1941, NPS officials asked Driskill to train as one of two autogiro pilots to serve the larger agency. The autogiro program’s primary goals were to test the practicality of the machines in fire spotting, aerial photography, emergency transportation, and wildlife surveying. This was not the agency’s first application of rotorcraft. In 1936 and 1937, an autogiro was contracted to spray insecticide on a cankerworm-infested forest at Morristown National Historical Park in New Jersey.4 Ultimately, the autogiro program collapsed, but it signified the beginnings of organized aviation in the NPS, which approached aviation conservatively. Driskill’s career illuminates the history of isolated aircraft use within the agency and its ties to official NPS policy. THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW DAVE DRISKILL, THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, AND AVIATION ON THE OUTER BANKS 253 In 1942, Philadelphia’s Kellett Autogiro Corporation (later Kellett Aircraft) hired Driskill to test autogiros and eventually helicopters for the firm. Although some individuals like Igor Sikorsky and Frank Piasecki tested and developed their own rotorcraft, many designers did not risk life and limb for the industry. Debugging machines in flight, particularly as companies expanded, was a job reserved for test pilots. According to one report, Driskill tested helicopters for hazardous jobs like laying pipe, setting telephone poles, and painting smokestacks. His ability to fly airplanes, autogiros, and helicopters was critical, as a successful transition between flight technologies did not always occur. According to one historian, “Many [autogiros] were destroyed in nonfatal crashes because of pilot error, typically when pilots tried to land them like airplanes.” Because the autogiro was a transitional technology to the helicopter, Driskill’s role in the rotary flight industry has been largely overlooked.5 This article will examine his contributions to rotary aircraft flight and to his career as a mechanic and pilot for the NPS on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. John David Driskill was born on September 12, 1897. His early years were spent in Bybee, Tennessee, an unincorporated community in Cocke County about forty-two miles northeast of Knoxville. He was the second child of Marion Franklin Driskill, a blacksmith, and Martha Heritage, both of whom were also born in Cocke County. In 1900, the county’s population was 19,153, and census records portray the Driskills’ community as overwhelmingly agricultural, with most of their neighbors identifying as farmers and farm laborers. At seventeen, Martha gave birth to the couple’s first child, Emsie. Four days after Dave’s fifth birthday, Martha died.6 Driskill attended elementary school at least partly in nearby Newport, Tennessee, and spent one or two years at Knoxville City High School before dropping out. In 1914, he moved to Greenville, South Carolina, for a mechanic’s apprenticeship at the Mutual Auto Company—a skill on which he relied for his entire career. After completing his apprenticeship, Mutual promoted Driskill to mechanic, and then to foreman of mechanics and service manager.7 Driskill registered for Selective Service on June 5, 1918. Sometime before this date, he married Bessie Belle Mingee from Elizabeth City County, Virginia. At that time, the couple lived in Phoebus, Virginia, and Driskill worked for the J. B. White Engineering Corporation, the major construction contractor developing Langley Field for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA) research laboratories. Three months after registering, Driskill was conscripted into the U.S. army at Camp Lee, Virginia, joining the 114th Replacement Company. On November 11, an armistice was VOLUME XCV • NUMBER 3• JULY 2018 254 CASEY HUEGEL Dave Driskill’s mother, Martha Heritage Driskill, died in 1902, when he was five years old. Courtesy of the Dare County Regional Airport Museum. signed that ended the bloodshed of World War I and Driskill’s brief military career. He was never deployed. Remarks on Driskill’s enlistment record and honorable discharge note that the five-foot, eight-inch-tall soldier with brown hair and blue eyes was in “good” physical condition, had “excellent” character, and was “honest and faithful” in service.8 In 1919, Driskill opened Phoebus Auto Service, which provided automobile repair and servicing; he remained in business until 1925, when he sold his interests. As Driskill’s career shifted from automobiles to aircraft, he maintained a strong entrepreneurial drive. For the next two years, he worked as a garage supervisor for the quartermaster division at Fort Monroe, a military installation in Hampton, Virginia, where two of his brothers-in-law were first sergeants in the army.9 In the late 1920s, Driskill’s life changed forever after he received his pilot’s training. In 1946, Outer Banks publicist Aycock Brown published a sketch of Driskill’s career in the Dare County Times. According to this report, on his days off from auto garage work, Driskill frequented a local airfield to help Hampton Roads barnstormer Jimmy Crane attract customers for paid hops in his biplane. As gratitude for Driskill’s efforts, Crane offered him free rides. During these flights, Driskill studied the pilot’s movements. The report continues: THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW DAVE DRISKILL, THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, AND AVIATION ON THE OUTER BANKS 255 Bessie Driskill (left) and a friend relaxing at the Manteo airport, ca. 1940s. Courtesy of the Dare County Regional Airport Museum. One day at the field, while Crane was out of town, Driskill decided to see if he could fly the plane. Already he had mastered the art of starting the Jennie [Curtiss JN-4 trainer]. So that part of his adventure was easily accomplished. Then, as no one was present to tell him not to do it, Driskill taxied up and down the dirt runway several times. Then he did it. Manipulating the controls as he had seen Jimmy Crane do it, he was soon airborne and thus he became one of the few pilots living today who can claim the distinction of being a self-taught aviator . thus with no actual instruction, Driskill became a pilot.10 Inspired, Driskill signed up for formal flight training and aviation mechanics courses at the Pitcairn Flying School at Fort Lee, near Richmond, Virginia, from May 1927 to October 1928, about a year after his first flight. In February 1927, Pitcairn Aviation received Contract Air Mail (CAM) 19, the overnight route between New York and Atlanta, and Fort Lee was designated the route’s maintenance hub. Pitcairn, which manufactured aircraft and employed air mail contractors and commercial operators, offered its students “intimate contact with commercial flying operations.” The aviation industry, however, was still in its infancy, and flying was a dangerous career move.

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