Pilot's Pilot

Long before anyone ever heard of Lindbergh, Chamberlin, Post or Earhart, one of aviation's big names was Bert Acosta. Famed as a ''natural" among pilots, he probably had a greater talent for flying than any man before or since. But like many another early barnstormer and stunter, he took to the fleshpots on earth as an offset to his work in the air. His life, consequently, became a rowdy romance in which brawls, jails and domestic entanglements were due to play a large part.

In 1927 Bertrand Blanchard ("Bert") Acosta was chief pilot of Admiral Byrd's transatlantic flight. According to legend, Byrd had to hit him over the head with a fire extinguisher when he got out of hand during the flight. Drink had by that time made him a "physical wreck," according to no less an authority than Anthony H. G. ("Tony") Fokker. Acosta's reply was that "Tony Fokker can go to hell!"

Born in San Diego, Calif, of an old Castilian family, Bert Acosta was a professional automobile racer at 13. In 1910, aged 15, he learned to fly in a ship he built himself as a copy of a Curtiss "pusher." Year later he began working for Glenn Curtiss, went to Canada in 1914 to teach Royal Air Force students to fly. Afterward he taught U. S. Army pilots, became a captain in the Wartime Air Service, returned to Curtiss after the Armistice.

As chief test pilot there from 1923 to 1925, Acosta had been by all odds No. 1 in his profession. It was his favorite boast that he would fly a barn door if it had wings on it. But as his fame grew, so did his reputation as the "bad boy of aviation."

His real troubles began in 1928 when Connecticut suspended his license for trying to fly under a bridge in the centre of his home town of Naugatuck. In 1929 he was fined $500 for low flying and stunting in the same State. When he failed to pay the fine, the Department of Commerce revoked his license. Unchastened, Acosta was arrested by State troopers in 1930 for flying without a license in Connecticut.

When medals and decorations which had been showered on him by cities and States began turning up in pawn shops, Acosta explained they had been "stolen." In 1930 his wife had him jailed for nonsupport. When that failed to regenerate him, he was sentenced to six months for abandonment. On his release he was welcomed with open arms by his wife and two sons. Said the warden: ''He was the best man we ever had in jail here."

In 1931 Acosta was fined $10 for throwing empty liquor bottles at passersby. Same year, he was arrested for tipsy driving but later exonerated. Backed by ex-Junkman Charles Levine, he started Acosta Aircraft Corp., was charged by New York with selling stock fraudulently. When his wife sued another woman for alienation of affections, and Acosta was named corespondent in a divorce suit, a New York Supreme Court Justice growled: "If it could be arranged to keep this aviator in the air at all times, it would be safer for the homes in this community."

Strong as an ox in a fight (he weighs over 200 lb.). Acosta got into many a drunken brawl. When he was fined $10 for public intoxication in 1933, his estranged wife paid that sum to save him from jail. In 1934 he was arrested again, given three months. For all his difficulties with the law, oldtime pilots still rated him top, considered him ''just a big, easygoing fellow with a genius for flying which cannot be used in these regulated days."

That he still had genius there was no doubt. At Roosevelt Field one day the builder of a rickety homemade plane was unable to get it off the ground. Other pilots gave the contraption up as utterly hopeless. Acosta, who had not flown in a year, climbed in, took off with ease, put the ship through vertical banks, dives, zooms, wingovers.*

Last week, after being "grounded" nearly seven years, Bert Acosta was back in the air. The Department of Commerce, convinced of his reformation, finally lifted its ban, granted him a "learner's permit." After five hours solo, the best living pilot was scheduled this week to take his flight test for a transport license. Said Alford J. ("Al") Williams, famed onetime Navy stunt pilot: "Aviation needs Acosta badly. Seeing him take a ship off the ground is the best eye tonic I've had in years."

*FederaI regulations permit unlicensed airmen to fly unlicensed aircraft.

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