“Craycroft elected to try and beat the storm into Des Moines. He did, however, order Ryterband to change course and land at Grand Island, because he didn’t want to risk Ryterband’s being stuck in obscure weather with a faulty altimeter. Ryterband peeled off in his B-24, and that left eight.
“At about nine forty-five (now on Central Time) the flight entered a bank of floor-to-ceiling cloud which obstructed visibility but contained very little turbulence; it was the remainder of a slow-moving cold front crossing the plains, and was not connected with the hurricane weather system to the southeast. Craycroft and his pilots seem to have felt no alarm about the cloud front. They had expected it. They also expected to emerge from its leading edge some twenty-five miles later.
“Some of them did.
“Unfamiliarity with the old controls, and lack of visibility within the cloud front, made for uncertain navigation for the pilots. At nine fifty-two one B-17 sideswiped another in the murk.
“The collision seems to have been wingtip-against-tail. The aircraft struck in the tail lost most of its rudder surface, and its elevator controls seem to have been rendered inoperative by the crash. The plane spiraled down out of control through the clouds and plummeted into a soybean field, killing the pilot instantly.
“The second plane, with part of its starboard wing crumpled, had lost much of the cambering effect of that wing, and while it did not go completely out of control, it was no longer capable of sustained flight. The pilot, Richard Tree, was commended afterward for the skill with which he set the plane down-a belly landing on farm fields. The plane was a total loss-cut apart with welding torches and sold for scrap after Aeroflight had salvaged some of the more portable components-but Richard Tree walked away from it unscathed.
“That left six. Emerging from the cloud front, regaining radio contact with the ground, Craycroft’s flight now found the entire horizon ahead of them blocked by black swirling weather. The hurricane had leaped across their path.
“Craycroft requested permission from the ground to divert to Kansas City, which lay to the south of the storm. Permission was granted and the six planes-half the original flight-arrived intact at KC airport shortly after noon. But facilities there had not been prepared for them, nor was it possible to get back on the original schedule; so the six planes had to wait on the ground in Kansas City for three days before a new clearance schedule could be arranged. In the meantime two of the earlier aborts bypassed them and made their way independently to New York, while Ryterband and the remaining pilot brought their repaired planes into Kansas, rejoining the flight and expanding its strength to eight aircraft.
“By this time the expedition was attracting more than just local publicity. The death of ‘Dusty’ Robinson, pilot of the B-17 that had crashed in Nebraska, had focused media attention on the Craycroft trek. Television and wire-service personnel began to crowd the KC airport and, angered by them, Craycroft kept his eight subordinates incommunicado and refused to cooperate with the press until a hurried call from Spaulding at the head office persuaded him, with reluctance, to grant interviews.
“The flight had become an adventure in the eyes of the public. In the eyes of Aeroflight, however, it had become a fiasco. The publicity was not the sort which was likely to encourage customer confidence in Aeroflight’s products. And the ferrying of the planes across the country was becoming tremendously costly-an expense capped by the fact that the insurance on the two wrecked B-17s was not nearly enough to cover their replacement cost on the open market; the insurance companies had refused to cover any sums greater than the actual purchase price of the airplanes, which had been bought from ACA at sacrifice price.
“It seems to have become a high-adventure challenge to the men in Craycroft’s flight group, however. Spurred by the television attention they were getting, the pilots encouraged Craycroft and on March twenty-sixth the eight planes left Kansas City in tight formation. Seven of them arrived in New York that night; the eighth was forced down in Pittsburgh by hydraulic failure. It was a minor dysfunction, easily and quickly repaired, but the news media seized on it and milked the story unashamedly: A photograph which appeared on front pages across the country showed the copilot-the hapless but expert Richard Tree-in the act of disgustedly hurling his cap at the ground, with the sagging airplane behind him on the runway.
“After that the disconsolate Craycroft sat in his office at Aeroflight waiting for the orders to come in, and evidently knowing in his bones that they never would.
“Of the ten surviving aircraft from the great cross-country adventure, only three were ever sold to paying customers. In nineteen seventy-two Spaulding donated two of the B-24s to the Air Force Museum at Wright Field in Ohio, hoping the tax credit from this contribution would wipe out the company’s taxes for the year; but as it turned out, Aeroflight had no profits on which to pay taxes anyway, and the donation simply reduced the company’s inventory assets by seventy-five thousand dollars.
“The two Constellations were the only planes from the flight to go into standard commercial operation; they were bought in nineteen seventy-one by a Canadian oil company for transporting workers to and from the isolated oil fields on the Western Slope.
“One of the B-17s was bought by an amusement park in upper New York State. The purchase price was approximately fifteen percent of the cost of Aeroflight’s investment in the plane.
“The remaining five aircraft took up space on the company’s runway. Out of what has been described, by company test pilot Richard Tree, as ‘that crazy obsession of Harold’s,’ the planes were kept in instant-ready condition at all times: fueled up and ready to take off. Now and then Craycroft would take one of them up for a spin, but these occasions became less frequent with time because of the expense of refueling.
“Aeroflight struggled through nineteen seventy-two and early nineteen seventy-three, staying afloat by selling its standard light planes. Craycroft and Ryterband had little to do, actually, other than kibitz with the production mechanics and toy with trifling improvements they incorporated into Spaulding’s designs. But Spaulding, out of intense loyalty to his old commander, kept the two men on; and they stayed because there were no other offers.
“On June seventh, nineteen seventy-three, Spaulding suffered an acute coronary thrombosis. He died within thirty-six hours.
“Controlling stock in the company went into the hands of Spaulding’s childless widow, but effective control of the company’s operations fell to Craycroft and Ryterband; Mrs. Spaulding, in ill health herself and severely traumatized by her husband’s death, trusted his two old friends and seems to have had little or no interest in taking part in company business.
“Craycroft and Ryterband, according to pattern, ran the company into the ground. They did so with amazing alacrity, even for them. By the end of nineteen seventy-three the company’s creditors were suing for payment of back debts, and Craycroft and Ryterband faced bankruptcy once again.
“Minority stockholders had no lever with which to prevent the brothers-in-law from mismanaging Aeroflight, because Mrs. Spaulding had gone into a sanitarium, had signed over controlling authority to Craycroft and Ryterband, and refused every effort by the stockholders to vote her stock against the two men. She seemed quite content to let them do as they pleased. A legal effort to have her declared incompetent failed in the courts.
“The issue was the same one that had faced the brothers-in-law at ACA. The stockholders wanted to change over to the design and manufacture of small jet aircraft. Craycroft, according to pattern, refused. ‘He was demented about that,’ Tree recalls. ‘Really bent out of shape. He refused to let anybody mention the word “jet” in his presence. Some of the rest of us felt the same way, of course, but we didn’t get violent about it. I mean the world changes, you’ve got to be realistic if you’re in business. You go along, or you go under. But Harold didn’t seem to care.’