John Livingston is reputed to be Richard Bach’s muse for “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”.

Livingston landed three times at the Davis-Monthan Airfield.  On July 10,1928 he flew in solo with Ryan NC6586 enroute from San Diego to Monmouth, IL.  On September 11, 1928, he flew in with Waco NX7527, carrying passenger M.B. Allen from El Paso to Yuma.  He revisited on September 21 with the same plane and passenger, headed east from San Diego to El Paso. 

The image, above, shows him with Waco NX7527 at about the time of those flights.  It is from a full page advertisement for Waco aircraft in the February 1929 issue of “Popular Aviation and Aeronautics”.

These last two flights, as documented in the Register, were in conjunction with the 1928 National Air Races, named “On to Los Angeles”, which took place between New York and Los Angeles that year.  Livingston took first place in the Class B race , with an elapsed time of 22h56m59s for the 2,939 mile course.  He won $7,000 for his victory, plus a few minor cash prizes given by what were called “Control Cities” to the leaders of the transcontinental race as they passed through their jurisdiction. Close behind him, taking second place, was E.E. Ballough.

The image, below, shows a page from his pilot log that identifies his flight segments during the race.  It is among these flights that he landed at Tucson on September 11th.

Below is the full-page Waco ad from which the images above were extracted and enlarged.  See this link for a brief biography of John Livingston.

Following his victory in the 1928 Class B race, he next won the National Air Tour in 1929.  The National Air Tours were held from 1925 to 1931, and the 1927 Tour passed through Tucson, with many of the participants’ names inscribed in the Register.

Below, from Andy Heins, is an undated image of John Livingston. This image is from Bettie Lund's personal photo album. She was the wife of Register pilot "Fearless" Freddie Lund. The airplane behind him is a Monocoupe, which, when compared to known images of the airplane, is NC501W (not a Register airplane). NC501W was used extensively by Livingston in many winning competitions during 1930-31.

John Livingston With Monocoupe (NC501W), Date Unknown

This link gets you a PDF file of a small book written by John Livingston about his experiences during the 1929 Air Tour.  It includes data on his Waco airplane (not cited in the Register), Tour statistics, anecdotes related to some of his Tour companions, and a map of the Tour route.  For a more general description of the National Air Tour program, see this excellent link. I highly recommend this site, because it is rich in relevant material about our pilots and airplanes alike.

Dossier 2.1.4

UPLOADED: 2/14/06 REVISED: 10/07/07, 10/13/07, 04/16/08