I have to admit that before I started this blog I had read about the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh and had watched the movie The Great Waldo Pepper. I thought I knew everything I needed to about early aviation. I was therefore surprised when I came upon the Lincoln Beachey plaque at the northwestern edge of the Marina Green. I was astonished that I’d never heard of him, especially having ancestors who lived in San Francisco during Beachey’s lifetime. He was born and died in the City, and is considered by most to be America’s greatest acrobatic pilot.

Beachey was born in 1887 and lived with his parents and a brother on Mission Street. His father, a Civil War veteran, was blinded from a war injury and unable to work. Lincoln opened his own bicycle repair shop at the age of 13. He expanded his area of expertise to automobiles and motorcycles, and was eventually hired as a mechanic by dirigible pilot Thomas Baldwin. Beachey made his first dirigible flight in 1905 at the age of 17. Later he and Baldwin designed a more aerodynamic dirigible known as the “Beachey-Baldwin”. 

In 1911, at the Los Angeles International Air Meet, Beachey took the place of an injured pilot and was the first pilot to ever successfully recover from a nosedive spin. Eight years after the Wright Brothers accomplished the first successful flight, Beachey was the first person to fly an aeroplane over Niagra Falls. In front of 150,000 spectators, he circled his plane over the falls several times before diving down into the mists of the falls and flying under Honeymoon Bridge, with about 20 feet between him and the Niagra River. This stunt made him a national icon. Orville Wright would say of Beachey: “An aeroplane in the hands of Lincoln Beachey is poetry.”

At the age of 23 Beachey apprenticed himself to Glenn Curtis and his aeroplane exhibition team, first as a mechanic, then as a pilot.  He soon became both famous and wealthy, wearing a business suit when he flew. 

Beachey retired briefly in 1913 after a friend died attempting one of Beachey’s stunts, but he was back at it within three months. He would retire again when his team refused to build him a stunt plane powerful enough to perform an inside loop (which up to that point had only been accomplished twice). Curtis eventually acquiesced, and on his first flight Beachey lost control of the plane, dipping down and clipping three people who were on the roof of a nearby hanger. One woman was killed and Beachey once again retired (this time for two weeks). He rejoined the Curtis team to perform in the 1913 San Diego Air Show where he became the first American to successfully complete a loop-to-loop. A year later he dive bombed both the White House and Congress to make his point that the United States needed a stronger air defense system (soon after this incident, Congress passed a bill increasing military spending).

In 1915 Beachey was set to perform at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco^[2]. Days before Opening Day he once again demonstrated US military vulnerably by placing a realistic wooden replica of the battleship USS Oregon about a mile offshore in the San Francisco Bay. The US Navy participated in the stunt by manning the ship for hours, secretly setting up 50 rounds of explosives. When Beachey’s plane was suddenly spotted over the Bay, everyone’s attention was drawn to the sky and the Navy personnel on the “ship” were safely evacuated. Beachey then dive-bombed the fake USS Oregon, dropping what appeared to be a smoking bomb, which was followed by 50 consecutive explosions. Wood and water shot hundreds of feet in the air. Men screamed. Women fainted. 

On March 14th, a month into the 9 month Exposition, 50,000 people gathered at the Marina Green to see Beachey’s aerobatic exhibition. Taking off from the Marina Green, he inverted his plane but was too low to the water. In an effort to get belly-up quickly, Beachey put too much pressure on the wings, which snapped off. He plummeted into the water between two ships. In an ironic twist of fate, the real USS Oregon was the vessel that, two hours later, retrieved Beachey’s body. He had only suffered a broken leg, but drowned as a result of being unable to release his safety harness. He was 28 years old.

His funeral was the largest public funeral in San Francisco up to that date. He was buried at Cypress Lawn in Colma. After the funeral a poem made the rounds in local papers:

Lincoln Beachey thought it was a dream

To go up to Heaven in a flying machine

The machine broke down and down he fell

Instead of going to heaven he went to ….

^[2] 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition: story coming February 20th