When the high-winged, cloth-covered Bleiriot XI, an original aircraft dating from 1911, had arced skyward, albeit briefly, from the rolling green grass field of Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, criss-crossed on both sides by the October red, orange and yellow. brushed trees reminiscent of the stormy days of the 1910s and 1920s, it seemed as if this age of aviation had suddenly been resurrected.
Located on the easily overlooked little Norton Road on the east side of the Hudson River, not far from the historic town of Rhinebeck, New York, equidistant from the Taconic State Parkway and the New York State Thruway, Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome is both the story of, and beginning of, one person’s dream. However, unlike many people’s dreams, hers did come true, but not until years of perseverance, dedication, and hard work made it a reality.
That person had been Cole Palen, whose birth name was James H. Palen, Jr., and that dream had been the recreation of the ancient age of aviation through a living history museum where vintage planes used to fly.
Growing up next to the old Poughkeepsie Airport in New York, Palen earned his airframe and engine license at Roosevelt Aviation School on Long Island and later earned his private pilot’s license, purchasing a Piper Cub. The seeds of his airfield had been planted when he located six partially and fully assembled vintage aircraft in 1951 at Roosevelt Field, which had to be cleared for a new shopping center. After bidding on his life savings, he had purchased them. Thus, the location had become famous as the starting point for Lindbergh’s solo transatlantic flight and Palen’s eventual Old Rhinebeck Airfield. Paris, the former’s destination, was 3,500 miles away, while Palen’s farm in Rhinebeck, the latter’s destination, was only 100 miles away but had taken much longer to arrive.
After storage in abandoned chicken coops, the six aircraft, consisting of a 1917 SPAD XII, a 1918 Standard J-1, a 1914 Avro 504K, a 1918 Curtiss Jenny, a 1918 Sopwith Snipe 7F1 and a 1918 Aeromarine 39B By 1918, they had formed their initial fleet and the “airfield” had been understood to be a rocky, swamp-drained, 1,000-foot-long clearing called an “airstrip” and a single crude building that served as a “hangar” in a farmland that he had subsequently purchased. Acquisitions of additional aircraft, and parts of them, had expanded the mostly biplane lineup, after considerable restoration and rebuilding.
Always motivated by his passion for early aviation, he had continued to expand the crude airfield, but it had taken on a new meaning when it attracted public interest. An initial air show, performed to a crowd of 25 with a handful of World War I aircraft, had taken place in 1960 and had given way to a scheduled one held on the last Sunday of each of the summer months from 1967. Airfield improvements had resulted in the grass strip being lengthened to 1,500 and ultimately 2,000 feet, and the aircraft had formed the largest private collection in the Northeast.
During the 1970s, the airshow had been held every Saturday and Sunday, weather permitting, from May through October, and 40 authentic and replica aircraft with original engines had included the fleet. Five had been used in the filming of “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines”.
Three metal, cabin-like hangars, built between 1963 and 1964 and located on the top of a small hill above the main dirt-and-grass parking lot, today house Pioneer, World War I and Lindbergh-era aircraft, facing a new museum facility and a small gift shop. But the airfield itself, on the other side of Norton Road, is accessed by a wooden covered bridge that serves as more than just an entrance to a grassy field; instead, it serves as a time portal to the age of aviation, a historical dimension somehow stopped and preserved in time.
The hangars, as if ignorant of the calendar, proudly brave the winds and bear names like Albatros Werke, Royal Aircraft Factory Farnborough, AV Roe and Company, Ltd. and Fokker. But it is the multitude of monkeys, biplanes and triplanes that most proudly struggle with the conception of the present time.
The current air show schedule, which runs from mid-June to mid-October, features the “History of Flight” show on Saturdays, featuring pioneering aircraft such as the Bleriot XI, Curtiss D pusher and Hanriot, while the ” World War I” shows on Sundays include designs such as the Albatross, Avro 504K, Caudron G.III, Curtiss JN-4D Jenny, Fokker D.VII, Fokker Dr.I, Nieuport II, Sopwith Camel, the SPAD VII, the Davis D1W, the Havviland Tiger Moth and the Great Lakes 2T-1R. Four-passenger New Standard D-25 biplane rides take place before and after shows, while spectators can admire the fleet in hangars or on the grassy airfield while eating lunch at outdoor picnic tables in the Aerodrome Canteen.
Audience volunteers, dressed in Victorian, Edwardian and 1920s dress, provide fashion shows after changing in the unique red, crawler-mounted caboose, often transporting spectators in vintage vehicles such as a Renault a 1909, a 1916 Studebaker, and a 1914 model. T sprinter. Period music completes the scene.
The air shows themselves, which feature only treetop-height sprints of the pioneer aircraft before promptly re-landing in the grass, otherwise offer more dramatic maneuvers from wing-era designs. World War I and Lindbergh, including aerobatics, dogfights, bomb attacks, balloon explosions, paratroopers. and “Delsey Drives”.
Many air show “characters” have evolved over the years and now include “famous old Rhinebeck” names such as Black Baron, Trudy Truelove, Sir Percey Goodfellow, Officer O’Malley, Keystone Cops, Madame Fifi, and Flying Farmer.
Of the 70 aircraft in the Old Rhinebeck collection, only a small percentage remain airworthy at any given time.
The Bleriot XI, for example, powered by a 35-hp Anzani engine and a single propeller, was the first heavier-than-air aircraft to fly across the English Channel and the first to be mass-produced, and paradoxically became in the oldest in the world. design still in flight at the beginning of the 21st century. But it’s not the only historically significant aircraft in the field.
The US-designed Curtiss D, for example, which first flew in 1911 with an 80-hp Hall Scott pusher propeller engine, survived Lincoln Beachey’s famous Niagara Falls fall and was instrumental in the first ship landings. The US Army and Navy accumulated initial experience with the type.
In France, the army was coincidentally practicing reconnaissance and artillery target detection with its 80 hp Le Rhone-powered Cauldron G-III as early as 1913. Instrumental during the First World War, the type enjoyed a production run of 126 units.
Across the English Channel, the British were enjoying tremendous success with its 110 hp Le Rhone rotary counterpart made by AV Roe from 1914 to 1918 called the Avro 504K. The two-seater biplane, with a speed of 82 mph and a duration of three hours, made the first bombing runs and, as a trainer, became the most numerically produced World War I design.
The Nieuport II, another important French design, had originally been designed for the 1914 Gordon Bennett Cup race, but equipped with a Lewis machine gun, the fast-climbing, highly maneuverable N-II eventually became Lafayette’s mainstay. Escadrille, the American group of volunteers
Perhaps the most famous European aircraft manufacturer of the time was Anthony Fokker, whose designs became synonymous with the First World War. His DR-I, an abbreviation for the German Drei-Decker-Eins, or Triplane One, was built in Schwerin, Germany, in 1917 and offered peak contemporary performance: a speed of 115 mph, a rate of climb of 1,750 fpm, maneuverability energetic. , and a duration of two hours in the air, which perhaps explains Baron Manfred von Richthofen’s overwhelming preference for this type. The replica on display was interestingly built from plans devised after the British capture of a DR-I.
Although the triplane had been Fokker’s most famous World War I design, it was quickly joined by the 200 hp Mercedes-powered D-VII in 1918, which became the German counterpart to the fighters of competing countries, particularly the Nieuports, the Sopwiths, and the Espadas. The last of the Fokker designs to see combat had been the D.VIII. The 160 hp Gnome rotary engine aircraft, originally designated the EV, had been withdrawn from service in August 1918 and modified due to structural failure of the wing as a result of poor workmanship. Returning to the skies on October 24, the sleek German fighter quickly earned the title of Flying Razor during its brief but impressive combat career until the Armistice was signed the following month.
In the United States, attention shifted from destruction to peaceful application and the Curtiss JN-4H Jenny, while providing initial training for pilots flying fighters in Europe, introduced the nation to air flight across the continent during its stormy days and subsequently operated the first scheduled U.S. airmail route from Newark to Washington in May 1918. Alternately powered by a 90-hp Curtiss OX-5 engine or a Hispano-Suiza water-cooled engine from 150 hp, the infamous Jenny saw production in excess of 10,000.
The slow-flying formation of five planes that suddenly appeared over the airfield in the metallic silver sky during my own visit had eerily reminded me of an earlier era, seemingly a snapshot of history frozen in time, except their silhouettes receded. gradually from the edge. of the frame – perhaps towards infinity and immortality…
Its rate of movement seemed to imply that despite all efforts to freeze history, that time was nonetheless moving and impossible to stop. But when I looked back at the Bleriot XI, the oldest design in the field and the one that had sparked the start of the air show, I couldn’t help thinking that it oddly resembled today’s increasingly popular ultralights and, why therefore, almost resurgence. We may not have been able to freeze the story, but we certainly seemed to recycle it, approaching it with a new perspective, insight, knowledge and technological skill and extracting from it what we missed in the first step, in an attempt to elevate it to a higher level. top “flat”.
Cole Palen died untimely on December 7, 1993. It is from this “higher plane,” I am sure, that he views the magnificent vintage aircraft airfield that he created through his passion and his dream of a living aviation museum, one that had he ultimately transcended his own life and thus had been left to the world to be enjoyed by those who had followed him. As he had often advocated, “keeping the dream alive”, a goal he had indisputably achieved on many levels.
