Editorial: Voices from the Past
A Lady, an Airplane, and a Volcano
By Ed Downs
Erva Marche (Courtesy of Ed Downs)The editorials I usually write for In Flight USA frequently spend a lot of words ranting about what is wrong. Let’s take a break. Thanksgiving gave this writer pause to consider the good fortune I have had to spend over half a century in aviation. But, I also remembered my early legal fights with the, then new, FAA and the help given to me by a remarkable lady, Erva Marché, my Grandmother. Her life resembles that of the Kate Winslet character in the movie, Titanic. Erva lived a life of aristocracy, adventure, travel, political intrigue, military service and a successful bid into the Hollywood circles of the 1930s. Her later years were spent as a published writer, newspaper columnist and artist. She was a great fan of flying and joined me on many flights, including serving as a navigator in an air race! She even experienced her own version of “The Titanic” on December 7, 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
I stumbled across one of Erva’s several flying adventures (later published in a Los Angeles newspaper) that say much about a long-lost time when fun and adventure inspired a world without fear of rules and lawsuits. Read and enjoy the perspective of a lady, who was already in her 60s when this was written in June, 1950.
The instant a volcano eruption is broadcast, everyone makes a mad rush to get reservations to go see it. I first heard of the Mauna Loa eruption early Thursday morning, and by early Friday, a friend in Waikiki had made reservations for herself, her daughter and me on the new Pan-American 377 Clipper that evening - Friday. I was looking forward to the flight on this new plane and wondered if others knew it was based on the B-29 my office had supported during the war.
I left work an hour early and drove to Waikiki from Schofield, (ed note: Schofield Barracks, a major supply center in WWII) and picked up my friends. At the airport, we boarded the huge, four-engine Clipper. All 70 luxurious seats were taken, with more people in the lower deck lounge. The trip towards the island of Hawaii was uneventful except for a rising excitement as the red glow in the sky grew brighter and larger as we approached. Suddenly, we came upon an unbelievable scene of awesome beauty and grandeur. We had expected to see great flares of red fire, but there was not one tongue of red; everything was pure gold. Great fountains of molten gold shot 700 and 800 feet in the air. Rivers of gold flowed from these fountains with black lace lightly covering the rushing gold. The lava streams seemed to be racing - and so reports later stated - a speed of from six to 30 miles per hour. The giant Clipper swooped low along the width of the mountain to give us as close a view as possible, then came back so everyone on both sides of the plane could see the eruption. No one stayed in their seats, and those with cameras tried to be nearest the windows. We were all so excited with everyone uttering, “My God – oh my GOD!
I was particularly fortunate. My friend knew one of the pilots, and I was invited to join her on the flight deck. The pilot kindly let me shoot a few feet of film with my 8mm movie camera from the big front window of the plane. By this time our plane was doing many dips, drops and twistings, and it became very hot inside, in spite of air conditioning. We made eight complete circles of the scene, and the excitement and very real fear we felt left us drained and ready to leave.
The trip back to Honolulu was quiet and calm with little conversation. Glad to be back, we were filled with exultation at the memory of the awesome spectacle.
Still, I hadn’t seen enough of it. I wanted to see it in the daytime to understand the location of the flows and the topography of the mountain and surrounding countryside. At night it looked unearthly and appeared to be many golden rivers running in all directions with no destination. After many telephone calls trying to get a reservation, I was finally able to get a small, four passenger plane to take us to Hawaii. I dashed to the photo shop to get more 8mm film, and my friends and I hurried to the airport for our Saturday afternoon flight back to the “Big Island.”
When we looked at the plane, I was ready to back out of the trip. It looked like a little mosquito compared to the big Pan-American Clipper. There was just the seat beside the pilot (mine) and one wide seat behind him. Our pilot said that this airplane had the same name as the one in which we had just flown, the Clipper, but was manufactured by Piper. I recalled supporting Piper “Grasshoppers” during the war. The pilot seemed so assured about the whole thing that I forgot any fear of the smallness of the plane. It turned out that a small plane was better suited to get close to the scene of activities. As it was daylight, we could see the other islands of the group. We flew over the sunken battleship Arizona on the way out, and I wondered if these heroes would be forgotten like the friends I lost in WWI. We passed over a portion of Lanai. On the other side of the plane was Molokai. In the distance, the extinct crater of Haleakala loomed into the sky way above the clouds. As we neared the island of Hawaii, the pilot radioed to Hilo Airport to get weather conditions and was told that smoke and clouds obscured the eruption. We were upset about it, of course, but the pilot screamed at us above the monstrous noise in that tiny plane and said that we would go along the coast line and see the lava flow going into the ocean. We flew low and could easily see Kona as we passed, then the City of Refuge (ed note: an ancient Hawaiian religious site) and a small village, which had been threatened with destruction. Shortly, we saw a lava flow seeping into the ocean. Ahead, we saw an immense cloud of white smoke which turned out to be steam forming into a cloud, and this was the largest flow of all. Here a broad stream of red hot lava was pouring down from the mountain and, with hissing steam spouting forth as it touched the water, was making a new water line. For hundreds of yards from the land, the ocean was bubbling as it boiled from the immense heat of the lava. I kept rewinding my camera to take this all in. It looked like tons of red hot charcoal or tar as it poured into the sea.
We turned, passed again, and headed for Kona Airport to refuel. While we waited in the little lounge, we talked to a cameraman who had just landed in a two-place Piper after taking pictures of the eruption. His pilot told our pilot how he could get through the clouds, so off we started. We slowly climbed to 11,000 feet and, believe me, we were mighty cold, for our little Clipper had no heat of any kind. We had been told to wear our coats and we were very glad we had them. We were way up above the clouds in the clear sunshine, but it looked like clouds and smoke were everywhere. Our pilot flew the little plane right in between two mountains, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa (the volcano). Mauna Kea had lots of snow on it, and we were flying almost as high as the peak. Surprisingly, Mauna Loa also had large patches of snow on it. I had thought that the top of the mountain would be a real crater, as I had seen in pictures, but quite the contrary. The top of the mountain was like an ice cream serving, round and unbroken with no crater. Then, as we went through the “saddle,” as the break between the mountains is called, we came into clear sky over, under and beside us. The clouds weren’t there at all, and then the awfulness of the picture below was visible. It looked as though some great giant had taken a massive, sharp cleaver and had brought it down to cleave the mountain in half. Near the top of the mountain a few puffs of smoke were seen, but about 1,000 feet below that, along the rift, great fountains of red (golden, the night before) were spouting forth the livid lava. From the fountains poured the rivers of blood red, some of it settling into pools, but mostly swirling here and there until it found an outlet over the rim of the plateau called the crater. Then, in great wide streams, the flowing red hot, boiling lava rushed down the mountainside. Forks of lava shot off at angles and into crevices to disappear or to cool into blackness as the flow divided into other streams. Three main flows headed straight for the sea, where we had seen them entering the ocean in a cloud of steam.
Our little plane had become a magic carpet, allowing us to see things that were invisible to others. This adventure was recorded on film and sent to my son-in-law (this writer’s father) for processing. I knew the twins (this writer and my brother) would enjoy seeing them, as they are nuts about flying. Maybe, some day, they will fly over this same mountain (this writer did!).
