This amateur, silent home movie shows a visit to the National Air Races in Chicago in 1930. The film begins with images of a group of sailors, supervised by an officer, marching and performing drills as part of training. At 3:59 the coverage of the races. Although this footage is not well shot and somewhat overexposed, it does show some interesting highlights including the arrival of a Sikorsky S-38 at 4:51. This was a twin-engined ten-seat sesquiplane amphibious aircraft and Sikorsky’s first widely produced amphibious flying boat, serving successfully for Pan American Airways and the United States military. An autogiro is shown at 13:00, and planes performing a dead stick landing at 11:29 and 14:00. At 14:20 is a shot of the stands with the son of the person who filmed the home movies. The boy appears to be wearing a Boy Scout uniform. The chair back next to him advertises Stanavo aviation gasoline. He is shown at 14:46 playing with the family dog.
The National Air Races of 1930 took place at Chicago’s Curtiss-Reynolds airfield from 23 August to 1 September. Flight magazine reported that there were “about 34 races spread over the ten days, in addition to many other events on each day’s programme” and that, with the exception of the races, each day’s programme of events was much the same. The daily events included glider contests and demonstration flights, balloon-bursting competitions, dead-stick landing contests, exhibitions by Army, Navy and Marine Corps’ aircraft, parachute jumping contests, civilian aerobatic exhibitions and flights by the renowned American pilot “Jimmy” Doolittle. Plus, of course, Al Williams and the ‘foreign pilots.’
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
