Cape's aviation history, Part 1: From balloons to Blue Angels

Editor's note: This is the first in a four-part series on aviation in Cape Girardeau appearing in connection with the Cape Girardeau Regional Air Show this weekend.

The U.S. Navy's Blue Angels will soar over the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport on Saturday, more than 103 years after the first recorded flight here.

Aviation advancements, airport growth and local pilots in the skies are a large part of Cape Girardeau's history.

"Most people don't understand what the airport has brought to this community over the years," said John Farquhar, 83, of Cape Girardeau. Known as "Papa John," Farquhar has been repairing and building planes at the airport since the early 1970s.

Cape Girardeau aviation was at its busiest during World War II when the U.S. Army began training pilots at Harris Field, named for Lawrence Harris, a flight instructor from Illinois who was killed in a plane crash.

The first recorded flight in Cape Girardeau happened long before World War II when a balloon named America left St. Louis on the evening of April 30, 1907, and passed over Cape Girardeau at 9 a.m. the next day. Onboard were J.C. McCoy and Army Capt. C.D.F. Chandler.

Establishing an airport here was first suggested in 1917, and throughout the 1920s and 1930s planes flew in and out of Cuskaden Field south of Cape Girardeau on U.S. 61.

"Up until the late 1930s, the flying around Cape was really hit and miss. There were places where airplanes landed but no dedicated airfield," said Terry Irwin, 59, of Gordonville, who is working on a book on Cape Girardeau aviation.

Richard Hirsch built the first airplane in Cape Girardeau, taking six years to do so. The 370-pound plane first flew over the city Oct. 20, 1932, in a flight that lasted 20 minutes. The craft had a top speed of 90 mph.

In aviation's early years, hydroplanes occasionally landed on the Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau. Tony Jannus visited Cape Girardeau in 1912 and again in 1913 in a hydroplane and took several residents for rides but died in 1916 in Russia, where he was hired by the government to instruct pilots.

A seaplane called the Santa Maria stopped in Cape Girardeau on its way to New Orleans on Sept. 9, 1921, and carried passengers on sightseeing trips.

The first flight school in Cape Girardeau, the Consolidated School of Aviation, opened on the Barrett Cotner farm off Highway 74 near Cape Girardeau in September 1940. Its first class in 1941 had 20 students, each of whom had to carry a life insurance policy of $1,000 and a liability policy for $3,000 to cover damage they might cause to the planes they flew.

In September 1941, a $85,000 bond issue to construct an airport failed to meet voter approval. Support for the airport changed dramatically after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of that year and the United States entered World War II. The Consolidated School of Aviation became in effect a military training academy by July 1942. Later that year officials broke ground at what became known as Harris Field, where the city's airport is today.

"We were woefully unprepared for war," Irwin said. "The airplane was the most sophisticated weapon that existed, and we didn't have much of an air force at that time. Not enough planes and not enough pilots."

The U.S. Army built 24 buildings, including four large hangars and 12 barracks units, at Harris Field in 1942. A 4,000-foot runway was also constructed. By 1943, seven classes of aviation cadets had graduated.

Clifford Rudesill, 84, of Cape Girardeau was a flight instructor in Cape Girardeau during World War II and returned to teach again after the war.

"We got them here for primary training. They'd never flown before," Rudesill said. "I taught them how to fly and how to land."

Flying is something you can't learn from reading a book, he said.

"Landing is the hardest part of flying," he said. "You've got to feel when that airplane is ready to stall. There's only one way to learn that, to just do it."

After being stationed in Cape Girardeau as a flight instructor, Rudesill was sent to Misamari, India, where he flew The Hump, a supply route from India to China. His plane transported fuel, which couldn't be shipped to the Chinese by boat because Japanese troops occupied China's coastline.

Rudesill traveled the route 87 times, with only one emergency landing he was forced to make after one of his C-46 plane's two engines went out.

"That's when God and I had a talk," he said. "The clouds parted and there was a mountain right in front of me. I knew exactly where I was. I went around the mountain and there was an empty field I could land in."

Flight instruction at Harris Field stopped in March 1944 and it soon became a sales center for military aircraft, with as many as 1,200 planes at the airport for sale in February 1945.

The airfield was turned over to the city of Cape Girardeau in January 1947 and later that year, voters approved a $115,000 bond issue to convert the military base into a municipal airport.

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Coming Monday: The post-World War II history of aviation in Cape Girardeau.

Coming Tuesday: The pilots who call the city's airport home.

Coming Wednesday: Notable performers and politicians who have passed through the airport.

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