Трагическая гонка через Тихий океан: Дерби Доула 1927 года.

The Dole Air Race, also known as the Dole Derby, was an air race across the Pacific Ocean from Oakland, California, to Honolulu in the Territory of Hawaii held in August 1927 that resulted in several deaths. There were eighteen official and unofficial entrants; of them fifteen officially drew for starting positions, and of those fifteen, two were disqualified, two withdrew, and three aircraft crashed resulting in three deaths before the race. Eight aircraft eventually started the race on August 16. Only two successfully arriving in Hawaii; Woolaroc, a Travel Air 5000 piloted by Arthur C. Goebel and William V. Davis, arrived after a 26 hour, 15 minute flight, leading runner up Aloha by two hours. Of the other six aircraft, two had crashed on takeoff, two were forced to return for repairs, and two went missing during the race (Golden Eagle and Miss Doran). One of the aircraft that was repaired took off again to search for the missing aircraft several days later and also vanished over the sea (Dallas Spirit). In all, before, during, and after the race, ten people died and six airplanes were lost or damaged beyond repair.

Inspired by Charles A. Lindbergh's successful trans Atlantic flight, James D. Dole, the Hawaii pineapple magnate, announced on May 25, 1927, a prize of $25,000 (25000.0 in 1927 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years) for the first fixed wing aircraft to fly the from Oakland, California, to Honolulu, Hawaii, and $10,000 (10000.0 in 1927 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years) for second place. The prospect of breaking more long distance flight records enticed other wealthy businessmen to offer similar Pacific conquering prizes: Sid Grauman offered $30,000 (30000.0 in 1927 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years) to the first to fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo, and William Easterwood offered a similar $25,000 prize for the first to fly from Dallas to Hong Kong in three stops (Honolulu, Guam or Manila, and San Francisco), taking no more than "144 consecutive hours" and before 28 September. All the wealthy patrons hoped to draw Lindbergh.

The publicity for the first successful transpacific flights from Oakland to Hawaii was stolen by two flights in June and July 1927, ahead of the scheduled August start for the Dole Derby. On 28 June, about a month after Dole posted the prizes, US Army Air Corps Lieutenants Lester J. Maitland and Albert F. Hegenberger flew Bird of Paradise (a three engine Atlantic Fokker C 2 military aircraft) from Bay Farm Airport in Oakland to Wheeler Army Airfield on Oahu in 25 hours and 50 minutes. An earlier attempt in 1925 had ended in failure for two Navy PN 9 seaplanes; one of the aircraft, commanded by Commander John Rodgers, ran out of fuel several hundred miles short of Hawaii and sailed to Kauai over the next nine days. Ernie Smith and Captain C. H. Carter had arrived in Oakland earlier to attempt to parallel the Maitland/Hegenberger flight in the City of Oakland, a small Travel Air 5000 civilian monoplane, but due to mechanical difficulties, took off two hours after Maitland, and returned with a broken windshield. Unlike Lindbergh's purpose built Spirit of St. Louis, City of Oakland had been serving as a mail carrier for Pacific Air Transport. According to Smith, Carter threatened to dump the gas after the windshield was lost, forcing the plane's return shortly after takeoff. Carter quit after the record was lost, but Smith hired Emory Bronte as a navigator, and took off again on July 14. Upon running out of fuel 26 hours and 36 minutes later, they crash landed in a thorn tree on Molokai. Dole disqualified the successful June and July flights from his prizes because they had not followed his rules. The Air Corps flight had been planned months prior to the prize announcement and had no intent to land other than at Wheeler airfield. By July 22, the starting and ending points had not been set. San Francisco began developing its new municipal airport, Mills Field, in anticipation that it could entice pilots into choosing it as the origin; the initial planned destination was John Rodgers Airport near Honolulu.

Neither Golden Eagle nor Miss Doran was ever seen again. Dole put up a US$10,000 reward for anyone who found either plane; this was matched by each plane's sponsors, for a total of US$20,000 reward for each aircraft. In addition, the route was experiencing rough seas and a high sea state. Unlike the unsuccessful flight of Rodgers in 1925, the two missing aircraft were not flying boats, and they were not expected to remain afloat for more than a few days. Both Jensen and Goebel took to the air and searched the ocean on August 18; Goebel searched near Kauai and Jensen checked the Molokai Channel. According to Wyatt, the radial engine of Miss Doran was misfiring on four of nine cylinders when it returned to Oakland; he believed the aircraft had gone down shortly after entering the fog bank just off the Golden Gate. Miss Doran was last sighted passing the Farallon Islands at 2:43 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST). Wyatt rejected that theory as ludicrous, as the Golden Eagle would have passed over the islands in broad daylight. The search fleet included three submarines, R 8 , S 42 , and S 46 By August 19, Langley had started steaming towards Hawaii at from a spot 40 mile (64 km) west of the Farallones, sweeping a lane 200 mile (322 km) wide with its airplanes. Other surface ships that had set out from California were commanded to shift their search parallel to the Great Circle route. Meanwhile, three ships left Hawaii for San Francisco on August 18, sweeping the ocean in the opposite direction: USS S 29, USS Pelican, and USS Sunnadin. Some residents of Wailuku stated they had heard an airplane's engine grow louder, then abruptly cease on the afternoon of the 17th. A report that Miss Doran had been found in Honolua Bay the night of August 18 proved to be false; a sampan with an identical red, white, and blue color scheme had been mistaken for the aircraft. On August 19, an amateur radio operator in Alhambra reportedly intercepted a radio message stating a derelict airplane had been found along with a raft containing a live man and a dead woman; the radio frequency was not traditionally used by ships, however, and no ships were known to be in the vicinity of the transmission's origin.

After repairing Dallas Spirit, Erwin and Eichwaldt joined the search, leaving Oakland for Honolulu on August 19 at approximately 2:20 PM PST; the crew intended for Honolulu to be the next stop on their way to Hong Kong to win the Easterwood prize, although Erwin stated they would refuel in Hawaii and fly back to Oakland if they did not spot the missing aircraft on the westbound trip. Local ham radio operators convinced Erwin to take along the radio set from Pabco Pacific Flyer, a 50 watt transmitter powerful enough to allow the aircraft to stay in contact with other operators in California or Hawaii for the entire trip. Their last radio message, received at 9 PM that night, was that they were in a tailspin approximately 600 mile (966 km) out to sea. USS Hazelwood, which was approximately 100 mile (161 km) away and searching for the other two missing aircraft when Dallas Spirit went down, proceeded to the spot where the last transmission was made, arriving less than three hours later. Hazelwood scoured a area of without finding any wreckage or flotsam from Dallas Spirit. By August 22, naval ships from California had met their counterparts who had left from Hawaii, with neither fleet finding a trace of the three planes. On August 23, green flares were spotted on the slope of Mauna Kea, but Army airplanes sent to investigate reported the flares were a new gasoline powered light being tested by a rancher. At the time, the Navy's search operation was authorized to continue until August 23, then extended to August 25, after 16 ships were added to the search fleet, including USS Omaha. Ships were ordered to "Seek Till All Hope Gone" on the night of August 24. The estimated cost of the extra fuel used in the search was US$90,000, later revised to $135,000, with 8,000 sailors involved. A final accounting tallied the total cost at $82246.14, of which $70256.34 was for fuel; the search covered an area of and involved 54 ships, which steamed a combined total of 152000 mile (244620 km), and airplanes from Langley flew 9000 mile (14484 km) of search routes. On October 1, another tugboat was dispatched to the Johnston Atoll, approximately 750 mile (1207 km) northwest of Hawaii, under the continued suspicion that Golden Eagle had overshot Hawaii or drifted past it after ditching in the ocean. After a thorough search, USS Whippoorwill radioed that no trace of the missing aircraft had been found.

Bright yellow debris with dangling wires was spotted several hundred miles off Cape Flattery on September 1, 1927, thought to be part of Golden Eagle. A silver colored piece of an aileron washed ashore at Redondo Beach in late October 1927; it may have come from Dallas Spirit, based on the color. Two fishermen retrieved the collar of a kapok life jacket on September 9 near Waimanalo Beach on Makapuu Point; they stated they had seen the torso of a body in the jacket when they snagged it, but the collar broke free during retrieval. In November 1927, a skeletal leg and foot washed ashore at Eureka, California; it was never conclusively tied to the Dole flyers. A note in a bottle was found near Fleming Point on October 5, 1927 and initially thought to be from Mildred Doran; its authenticity was doubted immediately, as the handwriting was noted to be "that of a woman, small and delicate, but ungrammatically worded". A nearly illegible message was found in a perfume bottle washed ashore near Aberdeen, Washington in August 1928; it purported to be from Mildred Doran and was dated October 2, 1927. Another message in a bottle, purportedly from the crew of Golden Eagle, was turned into Redondo Beach police in August 1928; this was also suspected to be a hoax. The reward for the return of the aircraft was not withdrawn by James Dole until March 1928. Martin Jensen piloted Aloha on an aerial search, carrying Denham Scott, Golden Eagle navigator Gordon's brother, in May 1928, looking over the jungle slopes of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii based on unsubstantiated reports that a monoplane had been spotted there heading for Honolulu on August 17, 1927. Denham also led a ground search. In June 1928, Denham announced that he had found an area where an airplane may have made a forced landing. The tops of the trees had been broken off and a burned rag on a stick was placed at the end at the site. He led a second search on Mauna Loa starting in early August; however, no further clues were found and the search was abandoned later that month. In April 1929, the wreckage of an unidentified aircraft washed ashore near Carmel. Wreckage from one or more airplanes washed ashore at Kamilo Beach in June 1929; one bit apparently was part of a stabilizer, a piece of aluminum with a few chips of red, white, and blue paint, matching the livery of Miss Doran. The final search for the missing aviators concluded later that month, as Jack Frost's brother Ezra followed up a theory the Golden Eagle may have crash landed on Mauna Loa.

In the days after the race, the disqualified owners of the Air King charged that race officials should have disqualified the Golden Eagle, because it also had only 350 gallons of fuel capacity when it took off. In a bitter conclusion, the father of the sponsor of the race, Rev. Charles F. Dole, died on November 27, 1927. Goebel and Davis returned on the Matson liner SS Manoa, to an impromptu parade in San Francisco, arriving on August 31. They doubted there would be any survivors of a sea ditching. For their winning flight, both Goebel (a Lieutenant in the Army Reserves) and Davis (active duty Navy) were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1928. Jensen returned to San Pedro aboard City of Los Angeles on September 1 and immediately announced he would undertake a non stop solo flight from Los Angeles to New York, carrying a lion. The lion, named Leo, was one of the Metro Goldwyn Mayer studio mascots; they took off on September 16 after the lion had raw steaks. However, the aircraft never arrived in New York; Jensen crash landed on an Arizona mountain in heavy fog. Woolaroc has survived and is on display at the Woolaroc Museum in Oklahoma, which started as a hangar to store and display the plane. Aloha was sold to a New York businessman and destroyed in a 1933 hangar fire at Roosevelt Field. Wyatt believed that "[no] scientific value can be derived from such flights [with land planes]." Goebel, Davis, and Jensen proposed that all aircraft flying over large bodies of water should be required to carry radio equipment. Planning for a memorial service at sea occurred in late August and early September. A separate service was held by the San Francisco Women's Club on September 8. Tributes and flowers were loaded onto SS Maui at the Matson Lines dock on Piers 30 and 32 in San Francisco before it departed for its regular service to Honolulu. On September 16, Maui stopped at the spot where the last message was received from the Dallas Spirit to spread the flowers and release a floral Bible made by Miss Doran's students. Each of the seven flyers who died was eulogized and Tennyson's poem "Crossing the Bar" was recited. Constance Ohl Erwin, the wife of Bill, pilot of Dallas Spirit, gave birth to a son on October 12, 1927 and named him Bill. Davis, navigator of Woolaroc, stated "We know now that flying is a practical means of transportation across the Pacific. All that is necessary is a popular demand for this speedy transportation." The United States Navy set a record for flight time in a successful mass flight from California to Hawaii concluded in January 1934; later that year, Kingsford Smith became the first to fly east from Hawaii to California in November when he retraced his 1928 flight in reverse using Lady Southern Cross, setting a new speed record in the process. In January 1935 Amelia Earhart completed the first solo flight from Hawaii to California. Pan American established a trans Pacific route later that year during a series of flights, and began regular commercial "Clipper" flying boat service from San Francisco to Manila via Hawaii, Midway, Wake, and Guam in October 1936.