120 Hours Aloft: The Spokane Sun-God

Nicholas Bernard Mamer was a Hastings, Minnesota native who learned to fly in San Diego in 1916 and served as an Army Air Service pilot in WWI — credited with three German aircraft shot down and awarded the French Croix de Guerre. He came home, bought a surplus biplane, barnstormed his way to Spokane around 1920, and built up the Mamer Flying Service at Parkwater (Felts Field) — flying mail, passengers, forest-fire patrols, and pioneering mountain routes through the Cascades. Then in August 1929, with mechanic Art Walker, he set out to do something that had never been done. The plan: fly nonstop from Spokane to San Francisco, then to Cleveland and New York, and all the way back — without ever landing. Refueling would happen in midair, with a hose lowered from a tanker airplane to the Buhl CA-6 Special "Spokane Sun-God" flying below — a technique still in its absolute infancy. Five days later, on August 20, 1929 at 6:01 PM, Mamer touched down at Felts Field with 120 hours and 1 minute aloft, 7,200 record miles flown nonstop, and 11 successful midair fuel transfers — including the first nighttime refueling and the first refueling above 8,000 feet. About 10,000 people were waiting at Felts. President Hoover sent congratulations. Mamer would go on to fly the Seattle-Minneapolis route for Northwest Airlines and log over a million accident-free miles before a tail-structure failure on a Lockheed Super Electra killed him near Bozeman, Montana on January 10, 1938. The Mamer Memorial Clock at Felts Field went up the year after he died, and is still keeping time.