Author Craig Harwood Restores John J. Montgomery to the Pantheon of Aviation Pioneers with Quest for Flight

By S. Mark Rhodes

Fully 20 years before the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, N. C., a California aviation pioneer and inventor named John J. Montgomery managed to fly heavier than air craft in 1883 marking the first such flights in the Western Hemisphere. Authors and aviation historians Craig Harwood and Gary Fogel have recounted the story of Montgomery and have helped place the American West (and Montgomery) in context with regard to aviation history with their new book, Quest for Flight: John J. Montgomery and the Dawn of Aviation in the West (University of Oklahoma Press). Mr. Harwood was nice enough to correspond via email with In Flight USA’s Mark Rhodes about this work and John Montgomery’s legacy as an aviation trail blazer.

IF USA: The story of John Montgomery is of particular interest to you is it not?

CH: “John Montgomery was the brother of my great grandfather, James, and his story was relayed to me by my grandmother (John’s niece) and my great grandmother (his sister-in-law).”

IF USA: What kind of person was John Montgomery? Did he resemble other early aviation pioneers?

CH: “He was obviously brilliant and had an extraordinary capacity in the disciplines of mathematics and science as well as being prolific in invention. I can only make assumptions about his personality but he appears to have been surprisingly modest and unlikely to draw Montgomery with his peers and early aviation pioneers (L to R) John Leonard, Baloonist Frank Hamilton, Aeronaut Daniel Maloney and Mongomery himself. (Courtesy of Craig Harwood)unusual attention to his inventive work, and did so only when encouraged by friends and colleagues, or in some instances when attempting to counter loss of intellectual property for example. He appears to have been sensitive and reticent in public. He resembled some other aviation pioneers in that he pursued visionary ideas and theories even in the face of daunting obstacles and he felt that achieving control in the air (aircraft control) was by far the most important aspect of the flying proposition.”

IF USA: How did Montgomery (and other western aviation aviators) get so overlooked and/or overshadowed with regard to their successful aviation efforts?

CH: “The narrative of American aviation history tends to be very formulaic and the formula followed is devoted to the overly simplistic idea that the solution of human controlled flight came through a single source centered in Dayton, Ohio. While that idea served the Wrights and their business aspirations, it isn’t actually how invention in important evolving technology actually occurs. As the literature has repeatedly presented such a simplistic narrative, decade after decade, the personal histories and contributions of others who were also engaged in the technological pursuit have tended to become obscured. To some degree, some of the other Californian contributions have merely failed to be brought to light in the literature.”

IF USA: Montgomery’s life and exploits were dramatized in the 1946 film Gallant Journey (starring Glenn Ford and directed by William Wellman). This film is not available on DVD, however, have you seen it and is it accurate with regard to the facts of his life and work?

CH: ” There are unofficial DVD’s of Gallant Journey out there (varying from poor to high quality). I have a high-quality direct transfer from 16mm reel to DVD. It would be accurate to say it is a dramatization of his story as certain things were played up, the occasional detail introduced artificially, and others rearranged in time frame to serve the story telling from a dramatic arts point of view. Some things were pretty well done and others rather corny, but given the 1946 time frame it is pretty good movie. John’s brother James (my Great Grandfather) wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about some of the story tweaking though. Turner Classic Movies has a good discussion of the movie on their main webpage. The movie must have hit a sore spot with the Wright camp as its production prompted a lengthy campaign by Orville Wright’s chief advocates (with help from Orville himself) to apply repeated pressure on Columbia Pictures to abandon the project (see the Epilogue in the book).”

IF USA: In researching this book, what kinds of things did you discover as an aviation historian that surprised you?

CH: “I was surprised to discover how quickly relevant contributions and achievements become lost to obscurity. I was surprised to discover the phenomenon of how history-writing gets so quickly biased once an evolving technology gets grasped and exploited by its first successful capitalists. Its an old story.”

IF USA: You touch on the role of women in the development of aviation during this period. What was the impact of this involvement for the development of women’s influence in the field of aviation?

CH: “Well in the gilded age America, the male population tended toward the belief that high-risk fields and technological fields were very much a man’s domain. Convenient thinking, I suppose, unless you start to consider the hardships and challenges women overcame every day bringing boys up to become men in a man’s world. So when women began doing high-altitude trapeze work and parachute jumps from balloons, designing and piloting airships and aircraft in this period it tended to be seen as an even more significant accomplishment as they were assumed to be overcoming even greater odds and being even more daring than if a man had done it. I suspect some of these trail blazers were happy to allow the public to perceive them as the weaker sex. Some of this story has become lost to history and we hope to stimulate more interested in this aspect.”

IF USA: As has been noted, you are a distant relative of Montgomery’s, did this fact make this a challenging prospect for you as a historian and author?

CH: ” I don’t see my genealogical connection as a challenge. Some people would tend to assume I am blindly succumbing to family bias, but if you review our bibliography and references which support our book you will see how we have founded our various thesis positions.”

IF USA: If Hollywood were to take another shot at telling the story of Montgomery who do you think might play him this time around?

CH: “Well Johnny Depp would be my personal choice because I would like to meet him, but realistically I think someone like Robert Duval would be a very good choice.”

For more on John Montgomery see www.johnjmontgomery.org. For more on the authors see their Facebook pages (search “Craig Harwood” and “Gary Fogel”).