Fliers' 1948 Flight-endurance Quest Fell Short
By Van Craddock
The two aviators were confident their little single-engine airplane would easily break the world's flight-endurance record over East Texas skies.
But on the rainy night of Nov. 11, 1948, Pred Vinmont and Bert Simons crash-landed their Luscombe Silvaire aircraft near the Gregg County Airport and barely escaped with their lives.
The Longview Daily News declared that "Skill, good luck and divine providence" had ridden with the fliers as they struggled to set their crippled plane down that night.
Vinmont and Simons, World War II combat veterans in the Army Air Force, had taken off from Dallas' Love Field on Oct. 20. Their mission was to eclipse the 726 hours of continuous flight set by a couple of Mississippi fliers in 1934. In fact, they'd hoped to stay airborne 1,500 hours to shatter the record.
The flight was being sponsored by the Texas Private Fliers Association. "Barring unforeseen mechanical trouble, we will double the world's endurance record," Simons said. That statement proved to be quite prophetic.
The endurance-record effort generated nationwide publicity. Magazine writers and newsreel cameramen descended on the Gregg County Airport (today called East Texas Regional Airport) to cover the flight's progress.
Hundreds of East Texans showed up when the plane flew low over the runway, lowering a grappling hook attached to the end of a 30-foot-long rope.
Men in a fast convertible would quickly attach to the hook a five-gallon can with fuel and food as the car sped down the runway. The impressive ground-to-air pick-ups made good visuals for movie-theater newsreels shown around the nation.
On one of the runway flyovers, Gregg County Sheriff Noble Crawford stood in the car's back seat and swore in Vinmont and Simons as "special Texas deputy sheriffs."
The fliers were on a 2,500-calorie-a-day diet with "four hours on duty and four hours off for sleeping."
The flight over East Texas went well until 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 11.
"Two sad Texans, whose dream of shattering the world's record for endurance flying, ended with the final sputter of their craft's engine at 11:30 last night," reported the Longview Daily News of Nov. 12, 1948.
The men had been aloft for three weeks and a day.
It was dark and raining. They were a mile and a half from Gregg County Airport and had just reached 528 hours aloft when the engine stopped and the plane began its plunge toward earth.
The failure was blamed on a "frozen engine," possibly caused by failure of the oil system.
Simons said, "The closer we got, the smaller the (landing) space looked. "Preddy did a marvelous job of steering her in. We were plenty lucky."
Lucky indeed. The plane had "barely missed a house and several trees" in its rapid descent from 900 feet.
"The fliers escaped serious injury with an almost unbelievable landing in a narrow sandy clearing," reported the Longview paper. "They picked out the only available spot and side-slipped in. It was a miraculous landing not far from the Sabine River. Their Army flying stood them in good stead."
The only injury was a bloodied nose that Vinmont received when the plane landed. The plane didn't fare as well with the "fuselage badly twisted, tail banged against a tree, propeller broken, cowling sprung and left wing damaged."
A farmer who had seen the troubled plane drove to the crash site and took the fliers to the airport, where they checked by a local doctor.
The men were thankful to be alive, although Vinmont had a major regret. He'd somehow lost his pants belt when the plane crash-landed. "The belt was given to me by (actress) Mary Pickford, and it has a sentimental value," he said.
Simons said simply, "We did our best."
While the 528 hours aloft didn't set a national or international record, Pred Vinmont and Bert Simons did set a Texas record that stood until 1958.