Oakley George Kelly (December 3, 1891 – June 5, 1966) was a record setting pilot for the

United States Army Air Service The United States Army Air Service (USAAS)Craven and Cate Vol. 1, p. 9 (also known as the ''"Air Service"'', ''"U.S. Air Service"'' and before its legislative establishment in 1920, the ''"Air Service, United States Army"'') was the aerial war ...

Biography

He was born on December 3, 1891 in Pennsylvania and grew up in Grove City. In May 1922, Lieutenant Oakley G. Kelly and Lieutenant

John Arthur Macready John Arthur Macready (October 14, 1887 – September 15, 1979) was an American test pilot and aviator. He was the only three-time recipient of the Mackay Trophy, receiving the trophy three consecutive years. Macready won the MacKay Trophy thr ...

were awarded the 1922

Mackay Trophy The Mackay Trophy is awarded yearly by the United States Air Force for the "most meritorious flight of the year" by an Air Force person, persons, or organization. The trophy is housed in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museu ...

for the beating the world's air endurance record and staying aloft for 36 hours, 4 minutes, and 32 seconds. On May 2, 1923, Lieutenants Kelly and Macready departed in their single-engined, high-wing Army

Fokker T-2 The Fokker F.IV was an airliner designed in the Netherlands in the early 1920s, with only two ever made, both for the United States Army Air Service (designated T-2). Design and development The Fokker F.IV was constructed in typical Fokker styl ...

from from

Mitchel Field Mitchell may refer to: People *Mitchell (surname) *Mitchell (given name) Places Australia * Mitchell, Australian Capital Territory, a light-industrial estate * Mitchell, New South Wales, a suburb of Bathurst * Mitchell, Northern Territory ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

, and landed in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

on May 3 after a flight of 26 hours, 50 minutes and 38 seconds, setting the record for transcontinental flight by a heavier-than-air craft winning the 1923

. In October 1924, Kelly piloted

Ezra Meeker Ezra Morgan Meeker (December 29, 1830December 3, 1928) was an American pioneer who traveled the Oregon Trail by ox-drawn wagon as a young man, migrating from Iowa to the Pacific Coast. Later in life he worked to memorialize the Trail, repeated ...

along portions of the

Oregon Trail The Oregon Trail was a east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and Westward Expansion Trails, emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of what ...

to generate support for marking and preserving the historic route using the same airplane in which Kelley had set the record: a single-engine, high-wing Army Fokker T-2. Traveling by air at 100 mph, Meeker traveled the same distance in an hour that had taken him a week to travel by ox at 2 mph. Between 1924 and 1929, Kelly was the squadron commander for the 321st Observation Squadron at

Pearson Field Pearson Field also once known as Pearson Airpark, is a city-owned municipal airport located one mile (2 km) southeast of the central business district of Vancouver, a city in Clark County, Washington, United States. Pearson Field is the ...

Vancouver, Washington Vancouver is a city on the north bank of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, located in Clark County. Incorporated in 1857, Vancouver has a population of 190,915 as of the 2020 census, making it the fourth-largest city in Was ...

. Kelly retired from military service as a Colonel on March 31, 1948. He died at age 74 in

in 1966.

Biography

References

See also