Commentary: Reader Report: The Avalon Zipper flew from Balboa to Catalina 105 years ago

Tourists and locals celebrating summertime on the Orange Coast and Catalina Island will be intrigued to learn that this year marks the 105th anniversary of 26-year-old Glenn L. Martin’s historic solo flight from Balboa Bay to Avalon Harbor aboard his homemade amphibian biplane.

Martin’s May 10, 1912, flight in his tiny “Avalon Zipper,” which he built in a garage attached to an abandoned Santa Ana Methodist church, set several international records. It was the first airplane flight to Catalina, the longest over-water flight in history, and the first water-to-water flight. The 33-mile flight took 37 minutes.

On his return trip to Balboa Bay the same day, Martin, whose pontoon-equipped craft was powered by a 15-horsepower Model V Ford gasoline engine donated by Henry Ford, set yet another record: He carried the day’s mail from Catalina to Balboa, the first air mail service in California history.

Young Martin’s feats made headlines around the world, and it wasn’t long before several entrepreneurs began to establish amphibian airline passenger and freight services between Catalina and Balboa, Long Beach, Wilmington and San Diego, according to long-time Catalina resident Jim Watson, a nationally known aviation historian, columnist for the weekly Catalina Islander newspaper and producer of the award-winning television documentary “Wings Across the Channel, the Golden Age of Seaplanes on Catalina.”

One of those entrepreneurs was Syd Chaplin, the half-brother of motion picture legend Charlie Chaplin. In 1919, Syd Chaplin founded Chaplin Airline, the first airline on the West Coast and believed to be the second airline in the United States, said Watson, a former merchant seaman in Africa and the Middle East who moved to Catalina in 1995.

Chaplin Airline flew amphibians on scheduled and charter passenger and cargo flights from Catalina to several Southern California seaports, including Balboa, which was not far from Charlie Chaplin’s Laguna Beach vacation home, a sprawling beachfront estate that boasted 12 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms. Built by Frank Miller, who also constructed Riverside’s famed Mission Inn, the house today is up for sale. The asking price is $29.5 million.

Chaplin Airline stayed in business for only a few years, and a half-dozen hastily established amphibian airlines that began operating out of the Hamilton Cove seaplane base near Avalon filled the void during the ensuing years. Flying the fabled Grumman Goose and Grumman Mallard seaplanes, they also flew to Balboa and other area port cities.

Land-based air links were ultimately established between Catalina and mainland destinations following the 1941 construction of Catalina’s mountaintop airfield, the “Airport in the Sky.” A rudimentary airstrip also had been built, in 1923, by Eddie Martin (no relation to Glenn) in Orange County. Named Eddie Martin Field, it was subsequently enlarged and became the Orange County Airport, according to the Los Angeles Times. In 1979, it was renamed John Wayne Airport.

With the advent of commercial and private aircraft operations between Catalina and Southern California, as well as the arrival of military flights to the island, a series of deadly aircraft accidents began with the 1921 crash into the headlands south of Avalon of a Navy Curtiss seaplane that claimed three lives.

Including that 1921 accident, 57 military and civilian airplane and helicopter crashes that killed 106 and injured more than 50 have been recorded. This figure also includes the most recent incident, of May 10, 2016, which left two men dead when their one-engine Cessna disappeared into the Pacific following takeoff from Catalina’s Airport in the Sky.

On Oct. 17, 1944, one of the two deadliest accidents occurred when a Navy blimp crashed into a Catalina mountain, killing six of the 10 men aboard. This was to be the island’s worst accident until Jan. 30, 1984, when the six men aboard a private Lear jet were killed after their plane overran the runway while attempting to land at the Airport in the Sky, plunged over a 90-foot cliff and burst into flames.

When that 252-foot Navy blimp named K-111 crashed into the base of East Peak 73 years ago, the U.S. had been at war for nearly three years, and Catalina had been turned into a virtual fortress following reports that the Japanese might attempt to capture the island and use it as a springboard for landings on the West Coast. Japanese submarines had torpedoed and sunk several U.S. merchant ships off the Northern California coast, had shelled a large gasoline refinery at Goleta, north of Santa Barbara, and the jittery residents of Catalina worried that they could be the next victims.

Armed with a .50 caliber Browning machine gun and four 350-pound depth charges, blimp K-111, one of several blimps attached to Squadron 333, which operated out of the Tustin Lighter-Than-Air base and a second facility at Del Mar in San Diego County, was on nightly anti-submarine warfare patrol over the Southern California coast and Catalina island when disaster struck, according to newspaperman Watson, author of the 2012 book “Mysterious Island, The Strange Side of Catalina.”

After taking off from the Tustin base and passing over Newport Beach, the blimp headed for Catalina. From there, it was scheduled to turn south and fly along the coast to Dana Point, San Clemente, Oceanside, San Diego and northern Baja California before returning to its massive Tustin hangar.

According to Watson, the Navy concluded in its official post-accident report that the blimp was operating in extremely foggy conditions when it passed over blacked-out Avalon, hit the mountain about 11:30 p.m. and exploded in flames, killing six crewmen and injuring four others.

But, noted Watson, one of the survivors, machinist mate Ernest Jarke, gave a much different story to a Catalina Island Museum curator in the early 1990s when she interviewed him for an oral history project.

Jarke, Watson said, told the curator that on the night of the crash “the sky was a clear and starry one” and that the blimp, instead of crashing into the mountain, came to a “slow, screeching stop” after inexplicitly losing altitude and hitting a clump of trees which tore off one of its two engines.

“There was no explosion,” he said, and all of the crewmen jumped out of the gondola attached to the bottom of the helium-filled blimp and scrambled down a hill to safety.

The crewmen, however, made a fatal mistake when they returned to the disabled blimp to inspect the damage. As they walked around the airship, its gasoline-filled fuel tanks suddenly exploded.

“Perhaps one of the crew had lit a cigarette,” said Watson after reviewing the the tape-recording of Jarke’s interview which has been preserved in the museum’s historical collections. “No one will ever know what caused the explosion.”

“As is often the case with military operations gone wrong, official versions can curiously differ from eyewitness accounts of those who found themselves participants,” said Watson.

Crewman Jarke, who suffered burns in the crash and spent several months recovering in a hospital, died in 2003 at the age of 86. He was the last survivor of one of Catalina’s most tragic and mysterious episodes.

Meanwhile, the airlines, as well as the steamships that also carried passengers between Catalina and the mainland, are long gone.

Today, the only ways to reach the island from Orange County are by 90-minute catamaran service from the Balboa Pavilion and Dana Point Harbor, by private aircraft flying to the Catalina’s Airport in the Sky or by charter helicopter.

DAVID C. HENLEY is a Newport Beach-based contributor to Times Community News