COLUMN: Heroic Sault airman lauded on special anniversary

As surprising as it might seem, it was only 113 years ago today that the world’s first international overseas airplane flight took place – a hop of just 36.5 km (22 statute miles) across the English Channel from France to England.

Shades of that hilarious 1965 comedy Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines – in reverse. That star-studded movie featured contestants performing all sorts of zany antics in an air race from England to France.

In real life, during the early morning hours of July 25, 1909, mechanic/inventor Louis Blériot climbed into the cockpit of a small monoplane in a field near Calais on the French side of the English Channel (which the French call La Manche or The Sleeve), asked the jaw-dropping question: “Where is England?” then pointed his flimsy aircraft north and took off. 

When he crash-landed near Dover after 36 ½ minutes in the air – flying an average of one kilometre per minute - he not only made aviation history he also tucked away £1,000 (equivalent to about £120,000 today) in prize money awarded by the London newspaper The Daily Mail.

It would be another 18 years before American aviator Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean – from New York City to Paris on May 20/21, 1927.

Lindbergh’s feat inspired a Northern Ontario bush pilot, Clarence Alvin “Duke” Schiller, to start gearing up for a similar adventure that year with fellow pilot Phil Wood, brother of famous speed boat racer Gar Wood. 

Their flight plan would have had them winging non-stop from Windsor, Ontario to Windsor, England. However, with two other Lindbergh-following ventures ending in tragedy, the backers of Duke’s hoped-for exploit pulled the financial plug on the operation before it could literally get off the ground.

I probably know more about Duke Schiller than anyone else these days. Not only have I read of his exploits in Bruce West’s fact-filled book about Canadian bush pilots, The Firebirds, and visited Duke’s display at the Sault’s Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre, but as a child I was riveted by stories my mother told us about this wild and woolly character who was married to her aunt, the former Ada Greer – sister of my grandfather Gordon (Kelly) Greer.

Duke was born in 1899 in Onawa, Iowa where his Canadian parents were managing a hotel. They returned to Canada shortly thereafter and Duke signed up with the Canadian Army when the First World War broke out. When it was discovered that, despite his height and build, he was only 14, he was given an honourable discharge. Still eager to fight, he sailed to England and joined the Royal Flying Corps. Deemed too young to fly combat missions, after flight training he remained in the RAF as a flying instructor and became a post-war bush pilot with the Ontario Provincial Air Service (OPAS) based in Sault Ste. Marie before embarking on a more lucrative career as a commercial aviator.

Like a lot of his flying colleagues of the 1920s, Duke was a daredevil – which would lead to world recognition for piloting the first plane to arrive on the scene of the unsuccessful conclusion of the first east to west flight over the Atlantic following Lindbergh’s historic west to east accomplishment.

The three occupants of “The Bremen”, a Junkers W33, had been forced down by bad weather on isolated Greely Island, Labrador after making the first successful Europe to North America flight.

The Junkers was damaged in the landing but fortunately the spot where it came down was near a manned lighthouse and news of the successful crossing and ignominious landing was soon radioed to the authorities. One attempt to rescue the crew of The Bremen ended in tragedy but this didn’t deter Duke. Using his dead reckoning skills – flying through treacherous weather conditions without any navigational aids – Duke was the first of several pilots searching for the stranded crew to reach the downed aircraft.

The rescue was the main news story around the world for weeks, but Duke shrugged it off as being all in a day’s work. That “work” was paid for by the Toronto Star since the daily had hired Duke to find The Bremen and send back an exclusive story.

Rescuing downed colleagues was old hat to Duke, who had also gained fame by saving a party of prospectors from certain death when they were lost in Northern Canada for six weeks. Duke used his dead reckoning skills on that occasion as well and ended up bringing the men to safety.

Duke was also on the receiving end of lifesaving assistance on several occasions. He almost died of starvation on one occasion when his aircraft was forced down near Baker Lake, not far from the Arctic Circle. When he was found by a fellow bush pilot, he allowed as how he had never been worried because he knew his buddies would be looking for him and would eventually find him.

Duke’s daughter, Barbara Jane Schiller Tindall, who passed away recently, kept the many scrapbooks her mother Ada had made of her husband’s many exploits. I visited Barbara several years ago in Duncan, B.C. and pored over these accounts for hours. In addition to The Bremen caper, the news clippings showcased a number of Duke’s exploits, including:

• His rescue of a blind man from a house fire in Newfoundland
• His unsuccessful air search for Dr. Frederick Banting, co-discoverer of insulin, who was killed in a plane crash off Greenland
• His mercy flight taking a fellow Ontario Provincial Air service employee back to civilization when the man was stricken with appendicitis in Northern Ontario
• His winning of numerous trophies for air race victories across North America
• The terrible beating he took when he landed in Nassau, The Bahamas, and was mistaken for a prohibition officer

Duke’s adventurous spirit would eventually get him into trouble. In July 1928, Duke was fired by his employer, Canadian Transcontinental Airways, when he damaged the pontoon of a Loening Amphibian while attempting a manoeuvre near Montreal’s Lachine Rapids. The reason for his firing was that he had taken the aircraft up without permission.

The owners didn’t find the stunt at all funny and took Duke to court where the judge, taking into account his heroic past flying record, sentenced him to just two weeks in jail. As a former OPAS bush pilot, Duke had his jail sentence delayed so he could help fight forest fires raging across Canada’s northland. But instead of reporting directly for duty, he made a detour to marry my great aunt Ada, took her on a short honeymoon and then informed her he had to leave her in the Sault so that he could fly off to fight the fires. It was years before she learned that his time away from home included two weeks in the slammer.

When World War Two broke out, Duke was too old for active duty – which he found ironic because he had been too young to serve in World War One. In order to play a role in the war effort, Duke volunteered for service with the Royal Air Force Ferry Command and flew lend-lease aircraft to Great Britain from the United States.

On the night of March 14, 1943, Senior Captain Duke Schiller and most of the crew of the Canso amphibious aircraft he was piloting were killed off the coastline of Bermuda. An overzealous US serviceman stationed there had sent up a flare to help guide the aircraft in for a landing. Duke was temporarily blinded by the flare and misjudged the distance to the surface of the water where he was attempting to bring the plane down.

Newspapers around the world reported his death, with the New York Times calling him “Canada’s Best Pilot”. 

 But the newspaper report that still brings a lump to my throat appeared in a Canadian Press account of his death in which it is stated that he never took personal belongings with him on his many Ferry Command flights to England during World War Two.

“Schiller always insisted he did not need any luggage on his transatlantic flights,” the report stated. “He always saw to it that the space thus available be filled up with parcels for the British kiddies.”