E.B. Quackenbush, a Spokane attorney and grand dragon of the state chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, welcomed 200 delegates to the annual convention in Bellingham. Cherry and pear trees in Jefferson County were beset by slugs. President Hoover bemoaned “talkie” moving pictures because, he said, “They demand too close attention.”
A Tacoma driver could buy a 1925 Packard sedan for $985.
The crash of the stock market was three months away during that last week of July 1929.
The crash of the City of Tacoma would come within hours.
The bright orange Lockheed Vega monoplane was scheduled to set a record longer than any before – flying from an airfield in Pierce County to another outside Tokyo. The airplane would take Harold Bromley to heights of fame greater than those enjoyed by Charles Lindbergh, whose only accomplishment had been to fly the Atlantic two years before.
Bromley would fly the Pacific.
He would fly for 4,755 miles, from Tacoma to Port Angeles, up above Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and down over the Aleutians to the land of the Rising Sun.
He would begin his journey with 5,517 pounds of gasoline and 193 pounds of oil, plus charts, mail and enough sandwiches to sustain him throughout the journey. In his pocket he carried a gold watch he expected to present to the emperor of the Chrysanthemum Throne.
Twenty thousand people had gathered at the field by 3 a.m., and another 5,000 arrived as the Tacoma sun rose across the runway that fateful Sunday.
As Bromley walked from the hangar to his plane, the crowd grew tense. A trio of chase planes rose into the sky carrying photographers who would record the momentous event.
The single engine of the Lockheed had been alive since before dawn, warming itself for the journey. And that might have been the problem.
At 6:08 a.m., from his cockpit near the tail, Bromley pushed the throttle full and began moving forward. According to The Tacoma Daily Ledger, the crowd cheered. Bromley reached a speed of at least 50 mph.
But a moment later, those cheers “turned to a frenzied gasp of dismay as the huge craft turned from its course and piled up in a cloud of dense black dust.”
Was Bromley still alive? Had he survived? Had the dream of a city so suddenly died?
The “swarming throngs” broke through a line of police officers, state patrolmen and mounted troopers of the National Guard who “could not keep the half-hysterical mobs from running towards the wrecked machine. In less than a minute after the famous orange bird piled up, an army of rushing, sobbing people were scurrying over the field.”
Some could not run. They were “struck motionless by the awful report (and) stood rock-like with tear-wet faces, unable to realize that the event that had so thrilled them a moment before had now developed into what they believed to be the death of the beloved young flier.”
The first to arrive found Bromley on his feet, dazed and smelling of gasoline.
The tanks, filled to capacity, had spilled the warm and expanded fuel through vents. The gasoline hit Bromley in the face. He removed his goggles. Again he was sprayed. He cut the engine and jumped. The plane dove nose-first into dirt.
According to the newspaper, Bromley was taken to a local sanatorium where “on being told his ship was a wreck, he broke down and cried for several hours.”
But all was not lost, not for the intrepid Bromley nor for the Tacoma boosters – led by lumberman John Buffelen – who had financed the flight.
Over the next year, according to a story in The New York Times, Bromley would more than once again attempt the flight.
In September, Bromley’s second Lockheed Vega crashed into a street in Burbank, Calif., during a test flight. A third plane crashed into the Mojave Desert, killing the test pilot.
For the fourth attempt, Bromley decided to start in Japan, and he shipped an Emsco monoplane to an airfield near Tokyo, intending to fly east to Tacoma.
Thirteen months after attempting the original journey, and accompanied by a navigator, Bromley left the runway – and was forced to dump fuel to clear a set of trees. He immediately turned back.
A final flight that September took Bromley from the lantern-lit sand of Sabishiro Beach, north of Tokyo, 1,200 miles toward his goal – before the exhaust system gave out. Bromley turned back, and he landed 35 miles whence he began.
Like the exhaust system, like the dream, the funding evaporated. Bromley returned home, and he would enter a career as a federal aviation inspector. He would graduate to grow grapes and dates, and sell real estate, in California.
He died in 1998 at age 99.
It would be up to two other men, Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon, to make that first transpacific flight from Tokyo to the United States.
They landed in October 1931.
In Wenatchee.
C.R. Roberts: 253-597-8535
blogs.thenewstribune.com/business
The New York Times contributed to this report.
This is one of a series of stories appearing during The News Tribune’s 125th year. Every Sunday we take a look at what happened during the same week sometime in the past 125 years. To suggest a week or an event for an upcoming story, e-mail your idea and any details to randy.mccarthy@thenewstribune.com.