Transatlantic fever did not die with the successful venture of Charles Lindbergh in Spirit of St. Louis. In fact, his world-acclaimed flight in May 1927 spawned a series of distance-stretching attempts — some successful and others destined to end in tragedy — from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Perhaps none was more colorful than the flight of the Fokker F.VIIA Old Glory, with pilots James Dewitt Hill and Lloyd Bertaud and newspaper editor Philip Payne on board, on September 6, 1927. The circumstances leading up to their ill-fated flight were as unusual as their silver-and-gold monoplane that nosed skyward from the airfield at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, on that late summer day.

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Hill, the man at Old Glory’s controls on September 6, was a 45-year-old bachelor who had flown U.S. airmail for three years, a veteran pilot with more than 5,000 hours’ experience. During all that time Hill had never parachuted from a damaged plane, preferring to ride it to the ground. He had, in fact, gained a reputation for landing planes that other pilots might have abandoned in midair.

The pilot had been interested in aviation from an early age. He once told an interviewer that, as a child in Scottdale, Pa., he had borrowed his mother’s best tablecloth to use as a parachute.

In 1900 Hill enrolled at Lafayette College, transferring to Cornell University the following year. But in 1903 health problems forced him to return to his hometown, where he went to work at a local garage owned by A.G. Overholt. He subsequently moved to California and then to Oregon in 1910, at which point he homesteaded for a year and a half. Prior to his time in Oregon, Hill had apparently somehow managed to learn the rudiments of flying. In 1909 he wrote his father from Hot Springs, Ark., ‘I took up my airship today….

Hill soon became determined to find a way to fly for a living. In 1912 he sold everything he owned and traveled to the Glenn Curtiss flying school in San Diego, where he found work. He took formal lessons and earned his license, Aero Club of America Land Plane Certificate No. 234, in 1913. Thereafter, he continued to work for Curtiss at the Hammondsport, N.Y., plant, where he also learned to fly seaplanes.

The Army needed civilian flight instructors in 1916, and Hill became a teacher. After World War I ended, he served a short stint as a test pilot at McCook Field in Ohio before returning to Curtiss as an exhibition pilot.

Both Hill and fellow pilot Lloyd Bertaud participated in the 1919 Toronto-to-New York air races, held to commemorate the Prince of Wales’ trip to Canada. When Hill’s plane, a Curtiss Oriole, stalled on approach to a refueling stop in Albany during that race and crashed, he and his passenger walked away without a scratch. From that time forward, successfully landings in damaged planes became a trademark of sorts for Hill.

Hill soon returned to Oregon to fly for Curtiss’ Northwest branch. He would later describe this time as barnstorming around the Northwest. The work included setting up flying schools and airfields, as well as demonstrating Curtiss aircraft.

By 1924, Hill had taken the test to become a pilot in the U.S. Airmail Service, perhaps influenced by the fact that his friend Lloyd Bertaud had already joined the service. Hill passed the physical and was accepted on July 1, 1924 — at 42, one of the oldest pilots flying the mail.

Hill was assigned first to Hazelhurst on Long Island and later to Hadley Field in New Brunswick, N.J. Flying the New York-to-Cleveland leg of the mail, he routinely crossed the so-called Hell Stretch of the Allegheny Mountains. In 1926 he flew the first night mail run between New York and Chicago.

Instrumentation was rudimentary in the early airmail planes. Hill quickly gained a reputation for developing his own methods of figuring out where he was. For example, he was famed for using his cigars to time his flights between refueling stops across Pennsylvania. He always carried several cigars with him in the cockpit and lit one when he took off. A cigar and a half later, he would drop from the sky over Beaver Field near Bellefonte, Pa., and come in for a landing.

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