Donald Beatty

Donald Croom Beatty (April 11, 1900 – July 12, 1980) was an American aviator, explorer, and inventor.

Beatty was the son of Isaac Beatty, Jr and Hughie Duffee Beatty of Birmingham, Alabama (United States).

He began his flying career as a teenager by soloing a small plane he constructed himself with a motorcycle engine at his grandfather's farm near Tarrant on June 16, 1916.

The flight ended with a crash landing.

Not long afterward he designed and constructed a hand-powered submarine which he sank in Homewood's Edgewood Lake.

After a year at Marion Military Institute, Beatty got permission from his father to enlist in the United States Navy at age 17.

He was sent to the Navy Radio School set up at Harvard University.

In 1919 the United Fruit Company hired him to construct and install wireless (radio) telegraphy equipment along its steamer routes in Asia.

He reportedly constructed the first voice radio station in mainland China during that engagement.

After returning to Alabama, Beatty joined James Meissner and a few fellow aviators to form the "Birmingham Flying Club" in 1919 at their own "Roberts Field".

In 1921 Beatty constructed Alabama's first experimental voice radio station, then called WIAG on the second floor of the Matthews Electric building.

He used the station to broadcast weather reports to the few receiver-equipped pilots in range and had his flying student and girlfriend Mary Alice Gatling play the piano in the broadcast booth (presumably the first live broadcast of music in Alabama).

The unit was recognized as the 135th Observation Squadron, the state's first Air National Guard unit, on January 21, 1922.

An improved radio circuit Beatty developed for the station was the subject of his first U. S. patent, awarded in 1922.

Beatty qualified as a military pilot at Maxwell Field in Montgomery and, in 1924, was commissioned as a 1st Lieutenant in the United States Army Air Corps.

In 1929, Beatty recruited investors from Birmingham and New Orleans, Louisiana to back a trade delegation by air to South America.

He would serve as director and pilot with Robb C. Oertel as co-pilot, Leslie Walker as navigator, and Martel Brett, a Birmingham Age-Herald reporter, as historian.

Hopes for the flight, which were widely publicized, were dashed by the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

In 1931 Beatty re-launched his ambitions for an expedition to South America, adding the enticement of exploration of the interior of the continent to his plans.

He secured the cooperation of Major Leslie Barbrook of the National Geographic Society and William Stirling, chief ethnologist for the Smithsonian Institution, and approached J. P. Morgan for financing.

With a $25,000 check in hand he and his wife attended the christening of the "Simon Bolivar" amphibious airplane at Roosevelt Field in New York on October 18 of that year.

Months of privation in the jungle were punctuated by careful movements across tribal boundaries into Ecuador.

The group made the first photographs and motion-picture recordings of the native Jivaro (Shuar) people, known then primarily as head-hunters.

A miscommunication about the team's desire to record the shrinking of a Howler monkey head resulted, to their horror, in them witnessing the process performed on the head of their former packbearer, Sunga.

Beatty occasionally used his radio equipment and Stirling used a kit of chemical substances to awe and frighten the natives.

Eventually the expedition boarded rafts for the long journey down the Amazon River.

In addition to their photographs, the expedition collected numerous artifacts and live animal specimens.

A "tiger cub" (jaguar) sent by Beatty to his 6-year-old daughter was soon turned over to the Birmingham Zoo at Avondale Park, where it was found to be particularly uncooperative with the public.

The success of the expedition led to Beatty's induction as a "fellow" to both The Explorers Club of New York and the Royal Geographical Society.

Pan American-Grace Airways (Panagra) recruited Beatty to lead the search for a downed plane in the Andes.

He piloted a Fairchild 71 monoplane wearing an early pressurized flight suit for his hundreds of search flights over the mountains.

The site was buried in snow throughout Beatty's search and finally found by prospecting natives after an unusually warm summer.

Nevertheless, his experience and the geographical and detailed flight information he recorded allowed Beatty to develop air routes and safety practices for commercial flights across the mountains.

He implemented the first system for air-to-ground voice communications and his recommendation for pilots to report their grid-square location at 5-minute intervals was widely adopted and is credited with saving many lives.

Another recommendation to vary routes seasonally to avoid dangerous climate conditions was also instrumental in making commercial flights viable in mountainous regions.

In 1933, while Beatty was piloting a Panagra passenger flight from Los Cerillos airfield in Santiago, Chile through the Uspallata Pass, a sudden strong wind (Clear-air turbulence) carried the craft above 26,000 feet, setting an altitude record for a passenger flight in an unpressurized cabin.

The passengers and crew used breathing tubes connected to oxygen tanks, but when the incident prolonged the flight, the oxygen was reserved for the crew only, causing the passengers to lose consciousness.

The pass is sometimes called "Beatty Pass" in recognition of his development of the route.

In 1935 Beatty, piloting a Sikorsky S-43, set a speed record for a flight between the continental United States and the Panama Canal Zone.

In 1938 Beatty was forced to land a Panagra amphibious flight in the Pacific Ocean after his equipment was damaged by a lightning strike.