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Ready for takeoff: How Oak Cliff and Dallas made their way in U.S. flight history

From local inventor, Frank McCarroll to Fair Park hosting daredevil pilot Otto Brodie the early 1900s in Dallas was history in the making.

Editor’s note: Take a look back in The Dallas Morning News Archives.

In the long history of flight, no two names are more recognizable than Orville and Wilbur Wright. But since that historical launch at Kitty Hawk, N.C., both Dallas and Oak Cliff has made their own way into the aviation history books.

Local inventor Frank McCarroll made contributions to the modern airplane design and helped North Texans embrace the new technology that is still remembered through the historical marker at Love Field airport. His embrace of flight brought the exposure needed to encourage other Dallasites to take interest in flight. By 1910, industry leaders in aviation came to Dallas to put on a historic event at Fair Park where thousands of locals flocked to see fearless pilot Otto Brodie fly the latest Curtiss airplane.

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Dallasites read about the flight at Kitty Hawk

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January 17, 1904 clip from The Dallas Morning News.
(The Dallas Morning News)

Since the Wright Brothers first powered flight out of Kitty Hawk, N.C., on Dec. 17, 1903, news swept the nation. Readers of The Dallas Morning News saw the report and images of the Wright Brothers’ plane on Jan. 17, 1904, a month after the famous flight.

Shortly after news spread about the Wright Brothers’ accomplishments, many aviation enthusiasts started working on their own aeroplanes, including local inventor Frank McCarroll of Oak Cliff.

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Frank McCarroll: An Oak Cliff visionary

Clipping from June 3, 1911 from The Dallas Morning News.
Clipping from June 3, 1911 from The Dallas Morning News.(The Dallas Morning News)

One year after the famed Wright Brothers took flight in North Carolina, Frank McCarroll barricaded himself in his workshop, located in the newly annexed Oak Cliff. His workshop was on Ninth Street, and he set his sights to design and build an airplane.

After finishing the final inspections of his design he “wheeled out his own craft and “roared across” the Trinity River bottoms “to the consternation of wood-chopping, buggy ridding” inhabitants of Dallas,” according to The Dallas Morning News writer Sam Acheson.

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‘If any one man may be cited as the father of aviation in Dallas, the honor belongs to Frank McCarroll, a pioneer in the theory of soaring, a builder and pilot in 1904 of the first airplane built in Dallas and a central figure until his death in 1937 in the city’s rise to its present place on the commercial air map of the nation.” — Dallas Morning News journalist Sam Acheson

By 1910 flying becomes a daredevil act

Texas winds whipped around the fairgrounds as revelers pack themselves in the grandstand to witness the first recorded flights in Dallas. The police are standing at attention around the newly created airfield to protect the prized Curtiss airplane from the curious onlookers. Otto Brodie, the traveling daredevil himself, was set to fly on March 3, 1910, at 3:30.

Clipping from the Dallas News on March 3, 1910.
Clipping from the Dallas News on March 3, 1910.(The Dallas Morning News)

The disassembled plane arrived just the day before by train in the care of soon-to-be-famous Floyd “Slats” Rodgers. One year after Brodie’s demonstration at Fair Park, Dallas’ very own early aviator adapter and inventor Frank McCarroll started making headlines as he helped lead the way for modern aviation in Dallas.

Days before the first attempt to fly at Fair Park, The Dallas Morning News ran a small story about the modest and daring pilot, Otto Brodie, and how he got his death-defying start at an early age. By 16, he was off in the countryside impressing crowds with the loop-the-loop stunt on a bicycle and parachuting 5,000 feet out of hot air balloons. His late uncle, Steve Brodie, was known for similar death-defying based acts of high bridge jumping.

Clipping of the front page of The Dallas Morning News from March 4, 1910.
Clipping of the front page of The Dallas Morning News from March 4, 1910.(The Dallas Morning News)

After much anticipation and press, March 3 was finally here and the crowds of spectators swarmed to see 23-year-old Otto Brodie do swallow swoops, figure eights, and race an automobile. Sadly by March 7 it was all over with a broken plane and an injured pilot.

Just the day before, Brodie attempted six flights to meet promised expectations. Each flight took him to a height of about 25-30 feet and a distance of around 1,000 feet before the winds knocked him down. It was all over in thirty seconds.

Sometime in between the sixth final flight and the early morning of March 6, Otto Brodie, determined to soar above the crowds, took off. With a graceful start and reaching a height of 35 feet before falling back to the earth, Brodie bounced up and down before attaining his desired height to make a turn.

Clipping from the Dallas News of March 4, 1910.
Clipping from the Dallas News of March 4, 1910.(The Dallas Morning News)

As he attempted his turn, a gust of wind caught his wing and caused the plane to flip upside down. He fell to the ground first and then the plane landed on top of him. The spectators gasped in shock as his crew and manager rushed toward the crash.

Over the next two days, nestled in the back pages of The News, the headlines read, “Aeroplane Wrecked And Aviator Hurt” and “Will Take Biplane To Chicago For Repairs. The flight exhibition at Fair Park was over, with many spectators disappointed. Three years after his debut in Dallas, Otto Brodie was killed in Chicago in a fall from his plane.

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Frank McCarroll is awarded patents

An avid observer of the mechanics of birds in flight, McCarroll took many of his ideas and implemented them in his designs. His designs were significant enough to the aircraft that he was able to hold three U.S. patents, including one that inspired the modern retractable landing gear and another that caused the movement of wings to increase or decrease speed.

Clipping from the Dallas News from Sept. 8, 1915.
Clipping from the Dallas News from Sept. 8, 1915.(The Dallas Morning News)

On Oct. 14, 1911, The News reports, “Frank McCarroll, one of the local aeroplane enthusiasts and himself a designer and inventor of a monoplane which has made several successful flights, yesterday received what is probably the first letter to be sent to a Dallas resident partly by aeroplane mail.”

The report goes on to describe that the letter was part of a bag of mail that weighed 75 pounds and flew from an airfield in St. Louis to a post office 14 miles away on a Wright brothers plane. The attempt was the first to “carry mail west of the Mississippi River.”

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By Sept. 8, 1915, after 20 years of working on aviation mechanics, Frank McCarroll is able to get patents for his work. The News reports that one of Frank McCarroll’s inventions “will enable a flying machine to soar without the aid of artificial power.” He also “obtained a patent on a new running gear, which will fold against the body of the machine.”

On May 8, 1967, Dallas News writer Sam Acheson writes a tribute to Frank McCarroll and said “during [McCarroll’s] 47 years in Dallas he had seen the air age born and his city take a leading place in it. Truly a motivating pioneer, his contributions to the advance of “the flying art” and Dallas’ part in it were memorable.”

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