1913 Collection of Frank Schober Courtesy of Margaret Schober Seaman, 3-23-06 Transcribed by Ralph Cooper |
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Collection of Frank Schober Courtesy of Margaret Schober Seaman, 3-23-06 |
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Probably on Lake Keuka in Hammondsport Photo Courtesy of Roy Nagl Ancient Aviators Website |
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In 1913, I got a letter from Curtiss in Hammondsport to come to work there and the job they gave
me was to assemble the June Bug as the first tractor plane they were going to build. When that was finished, I was put in the boat
Dept. where I assembled E boats for Steve McGordon and Bill Thaw.
While working on their boat, they asked me one day if I would like to go with them on the road as their mechanic at $50.00 a week
and board, which was good money those days. Steve got his License at Hammondsport but Bill had to finish up on landings as he was
pretty sloppy and used to bounce a lot on landing. We headed for New Haven, Con. where we set up the Boat and stayed at the
Shoreham Hotel for free Room and board by keeping and flying the machine on their beach front. Then we flew to New London Con.
for a few days and then on to Watch Hill, R.I. where we carried a lot of society's big shots and one day when Steve and myself were
flying around, the distributor parts or the magneto got loose and the engine got missing. I had to climb up on the wing and hold on so
we could land before the engine quit, when we got down onto the shore I found three screws of the four had vibrated and fell out and
only one holding a litte, enough not to let the part drop off. Well, I quit the boys after an argument about me going along with Bill Thaw for a test flight. I did not trust Bill's ability to fly and I told him so and we got into an argument. I went back to Mineola and got a job to build a Curtiss copy for Pete McLauglin until that was finished and 1914 got a job withh John Moissant Aeroplane Co. in Newfield, L.I. building Moran Monoplanes for Mexico. Geo. Page, E.B., was working there at the same time. My folks were in Europe at the time and were on their way home on the sea when war was declared. In 1915, I went back to models again and started working on a compressed air motor for model airplanes. I had an assistant in Ruddy Fink and we developed several types of motors and planes which were the first in the U.S.A. and my planes held all records until the first gas motors appeared. In 1917 I got a call from Alfred W. Lawson, Editor of Aircraft mag. asking me if I would like to go to Green Bay, Wis. to build planes for the airforce. We built the first training plane and Lawson flew it, but it was not accepted by the government. We then designed a second plane which was a beauty, far ahead anything that was built at that time flew beautiful and handled with ease. But the war stopped before the plane was accepted, but the engineers had been working for several months before the end of the war on a post war Curtiss . It was the first 22 passenger cabin airliner built and flown in the U.S.A. Sept. 1919 Milwaukee, Wis. to Boling? Field, Wash D.C. on which flight I was a passenger with 10 others. I was working for Curtiss Airplane Co. in Garden City at the time and got a few days leave to be with the boys from Lawson and make the flight to Washington and back home on the trains and on the job again at Curtiss where I worked on the NC Boats. |
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Collection of Frank Schober Courtesy of Margaret Schober Seaman, 3-23-06 |
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Collection of Frank Schober Courtesy of Margaret Schober Seaman, 3-23-06 |
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