Old Missoula

Flying Service Is Milestone Here

Career in Aviation Gets Start in 1924

The establishment of the Johnson Flying School was a milestone in the history of Missoula aviation.

Robert R. (Bob) Johnson, who began Johnson’s Flying Service, started his flying career in 1924 when he began taking instruction from Lonnie Brennan. In 1927 Bob Johnson and Nick Mamer, who started the first transport service through the Northwest, brought a Swallow plane here and Johnson started his school of flying. After two or three hours in the air, the engine had to be worked on for a few days before it was ready to go again.

Early Students

Some of the first students to reach the solo stage in the Swallow were R. J. Hale, Dr. A. G. Phelps, Emmett Crane, Romie Deschamps, Earl Roark, and W. F. Creighton. Other early challengers were Theresa Gross, William Creighton, Maurice and Kenneth Richardson, Fritz Sterling, Neil Keim and Marie Nelson.

On one occasion Johnson and a companion were cruising over the city at 1,500 feet and watching a ball game in progress on the old diamond, where the Missoulian Publishing Co. building stands now. They went suddenly into a power spin and hurtled toward the ground and the grandstands. The crowed scattered in all directions, but the pilots managed to pull out just a few feet above the ground – barely clearing a power line.

Ordinance Passed

The next day in July 1927 the City Council passed an ordinance prohibiting any person or persons from flying lower than 1,000 feet directly above any portion of the city. Section III said that “in the judgement of the council an emergency exists which makes it necessary for the immediate preservation of the health and safety of the public and for the public peace. . .”

That year H. O. Bell, Jack Sterling, Ed Polleys, John Campbell and Hale were appointed as the first airport board. An 80 – acre landing strip was procured and in 1929 Johnson received a contract for the field.

One of Six

In 1928 Johnson was one of six licensed airplane pilots in Montana. He was the only licensed Missoula resident and one of 2,678 licensed pilots throughout the United States.

The first large ship to be owned and flown in Missoula was a $13,000 Travelaire bought by the Johnson Flying Service from a Wichita, Kan., concern. With the purchase of the Travelaire Missoula had four ships. However, a fire at the hangar in 1929 destroyed the Swallow plane which Mamer and Johnson had brought here and another plane.

It was at this time that the first nonstop flight from Missoula to Seattle was performed. According to rumors, the flight was made while a pilot was trying to evade a process server and took to the air as a means of escape.[1]

Brother Joins Team

In the meantime, Johnson had taught his brother, Dick, to fly before the Swallow was lost in the hangar fire. From then on the men collaborated with Dick taking care of mechanical work as well as flying.

Aside from flying lessons and passenger rides, both brothers made many emergency trips for the benefit of the public – all of which they considered as part of a day’s work. Many times they were called upon to aid in the search for persons lost in the mountains, where other means of travel would have taken days.

Dollar an Hour

The great depression meant giving passenger rides for as little as a dollar an hour. But business picked up after awhile with contracts with the Forest Service, the Civil Aeronautics program in connection with the University, and later, the training of Army Air Corps cadets.

In 1930 Dick Hale designed and built a hangar and a year later the field was fenced. The landing strip was dedicated and named Hale Field in 1935. The Mamer Transport Co. began its Seattle – to St. Paul service on the route now used by the Northwest Airline, flying twin-motored Lockheed Electra planes.

Northwest Arrives

In 1934 Northwest Airlines scheduled stops in Missoula between the Twin Cities and Spokane. This brought Missoula its first air mail service. Missoula had established a committee to obtain air mail service as early as 1918.

Air mail service was inaugurated in May 1918 between Washington, Philadelphia and New York. President Wilson received the first letter from New York from Gov. Charles S. Whitman who expressed wishes for the success of the coming Red Cross campaign.

The first record of air mail reaching Missoula was in 1924 when the Missoula Sentinel received a package containing news photos with the first air mail stamp ever to appear in the Garden City.

Night flying was inaugurated in Missoula in May 1935. The county had contracted in 1934 to provide lights at Hale Field for a cost of $53,000. Until 1941 when the new county airport was opened the rotating beacon flashed on the hills around Missoula every evening.