JAMES B. DICKSON

Corporate Pilot, Short on Records, Dies in Africa

Thanks to one visitor to our site (see credit in the right sidebar), we are fortunate to have a fairly complete history of the Culver family, frequent passengers of pilot Dickson, as well as one of the airplanes they landed with at Tucson, NC/X9617.  The image, below, shows Dickson, left, with Culver in front of Stinson 9617.

Written on the back of this image: "1929 Capt. Jas. Dickson - pilot and HHC in front of Harry's Stinson Detroiter - on speaking tour as Natl. Pres. of Real Estate Boards (640 cities in 1 year.  Board of Realtors of America)". See the Culver link for more information.

Pilot Dickson was a prolific visitor to the Davis-Monthan Airfield, recording eight landings in the Register during the 18-months between June 2, 1928 and December 7, 1929. 

Dickson flew three different Stinson aircraft exclusively to the Airfield, NC209 (once), NC1517 (five times), and NX/C9617 (twice).  His frequent passenger was Harry H. Culver.  Mr. Culver (1880-1946) was a real estate developer in the Los Angeles area.  Culver City, CA, incorporated in 1917, bears his name.  Culver City quickly became "The Heart of Screenland" as Culver invited filmmakers to base their operations there (e.g. Laurel & Hardy).  Dickson was Culver’s “corporate pilot”.

Image, above, with corner missing, shows James Dickson and Harry Culver inside Culver's "airplane office". Culver was famous for pioneering the use of an airplane as a "flying office". A rare look into corporate aviation in the late 1920s! Note Culver's cigar.

Most of the information I have about pilot Dickson is from news articles that post-date his landings at Tucson.  For example, in June-July 1932 he attempted a couple of transcontinental records to improve upon the times set by Frank Hawks and Jimmy Doolittle. 

The Washington Evening Star of June 16, 1932 reported his departure from Newark, NJ to break the East-West record of 14 hours, 30 minutes held by Hawks. The Washington Post of June 17th reported his arrival at Santa Monica in 14 hours, 49 minutes actual flying time.  He carried three passengers.  They were Arthur Loew, theater magnate, Henry Ginsberg, general manager of the Roach Studios and William Melnicker, South American manager for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. They must have been disappointed to miss the record by 19 minutes!

The airplane they flew in was owned by Hal Roach, motion picture producer, and was the Orion 9A, NC12229, "Spirit of Fun" (not cited in the Register). For the east-west flight, in order to make lemonade out of their 19-minute lemon, Dickson claimed a record for flying distance (2,480 miles) in one day between sunrise and sunset (they had departed Newark a half hour after sunrise, and landed Santa Monica half an hour before sunset). It wasn't the first time, however, someone had flown a long distance during daylight hours and set a record. Russell Maughan had done it in 1924.

Below, two views of NC12229 shared with us by Lockheed afficionado and friend of dmairfield.org Tim Kalina. Pilot Dickson is the man in the sport coat to the left of the propeller with his left hand on Ollie's chin.

The Hal Roach Studios airplane ‘Spirit of Fun’, NC12229

Below, Dickson is standing between the two men wearing the Laurel & Hardy cartoon heads. The others in both images are unidentified. Can you help identify them?

The Hal Roach Studios airplane ‘Spirit of Fun’, NC12229

On June 21, 1932 the Washington Post announced that Dickson's attempt to break Doolittle’s West-East record of 11 hours, 15 minutes was foiled by thunderstorms that forced his landing at Kylertown, PA. 

After these attempted record flights, the Orion was loaded aboard the Matson liner S.S. Monterey and shipped to Australia. It was undertaking a round-the-world tour. See this link for more information and pictures of NC12229. See this link to view 47 pages of documentation between Dickson and the Australian government during the preparation for the Australia leg of the flight (sometimes this link doesn't work on this research-oriented site, try again later). See this link for images of NC12229 on the ground in Australia (enter "Spirit of Fun" in the search box).

Alas, the world tour was not to be. "The Spirit of Fun" crashed in Africa killing Dickson and injuring passenger Loew.

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Dossier 2.1.81

UPLOADED: 07/11/06 REVISED: 07/17/06, 09/07/06, 05/15/07 (NC12229 images), 10/13/07