Santa Cruz Evening News from Santa Cruz, California • Page 16

How Crack-Up Started Unique Airplane Ju use vara business out some of the famous wrecks that have made the front page as news. Often they have been held up as instances of aviation's limited future. But as a student of air accidents Balboni declares that 90 per cent of all crashes are due to neg- ligence on the part of pilot or mechanics. Properly inspected planes operated by licensed pilots seldom find their way to Balboni's gravity garden. Student fliers or radical exponents of untried theories are among the makers of his best pieces of junk.

"Here," he points out, "is all that remains of the first twin motored job to be built in this country. It cost $2,800 originally. After a short and unsuccessful career, I bought it for $75. "The local Japanese cojony produced an aviator who was ambitious to fly to Tokio. His supporters were short of funds and came to me for aid.

I had repaired the twin motor plane and offered it to them for $250. On my assurance that if the gas held out, the motors did not quit, and the pilot survived they would split Tokio in two, they bought. "Just before their takeoff a wind storm destroyed the plane and I secured it again as junk. IN his "gold book" every distinguished visitor registers. General Mitchell, Art Goebel, Captain Charles Nungesser and hundreds of names famous in the sky are recorded there.

A Le Rhone motor, 'Graveyard of the Spies' Flourishes By Furnishing Builders With Odd Parts WHEN Arrigo Balboni made a forced landing on a lonely Southern California mountainside, "cracking up" his one and only airplane beyond repair, he automatically started the country's oddest flying business. Today in Los Angeles, is proprietor of the only airplane junk yard extant. He started the unusual occupation in 1926, and thus far he's prospered. Flying from San Francisco to air races at Santa Monica in 1926, Balboni was over the Tehachapi Mountains, the ridge at Los Angeles' most northern extremity, when the motor quit. A tiny flat beckoned, and carefully "he set down his wheels on its farthest edge and hoped.

The plane skidded across the flat, crashed into the embankment and Balboni shot from his cockpit. LATER, when a nearby rancher found him in the brush and as a veterinarian picked gravel from his legs, Balboni learned that his racing plane was a total wreck. He secured a few dollars from his rancher rescuer and went to Los Angeles, but a few days of effort at the airfields convinced him that no one wanted a wrecked racing plane somewhere in the Tehachapi hills. Balboni returned to Bakersfield, near the scene of his crash, and the chief of police there offered the loan of an old car to salvage the wreck. With some volunteers, he separated the mountain from his plane and started again for Los Angeles.

It took Balboni three weeks to reach Los Angeles towing his shattered plane with the old car, and when he reached an airport, a rainstorm flooded the field and he could not reach his plane for three weeks more. He found a job, however, and when the field was dry began repair work. Finally he was able to fly again. In taking off, he hit a gopher hole with one wheel, nosed over and ruined several rows of cabbages in a truck garden fringing the airfield. Again the plane was a wreck.

Next day, as he stood regarding the wreckage, a fellow pilot asked Balboni if he would sell An unusual occupation is that of Arrigo Balboni, ex-stunt pilot, who maintains an airplane "graveyard" in Los Angeles. Left photo shows the tangled mass of wings, struts, longerons and fuselages In the yard. Right, Balboni dismantling a smashed OX-S motor. the tail assembly, which was undamaged. Balboni sold.

Then began his first selling campaign. He disposed of the motor. Another buyer took an instrument, still another found that the controls would be the ideal thing for a "backyard job" he was building. IN a short time Balboni realized $930 for the crash he originally tried to peddle for $300. Then his idea swept over him.

Why not cater to these "backyard" builders of airplanes? He recalled his own career. While "turning handsprings for hamburgers," as the "barnstorming fraternity" termed their stunting for a living, he remembered how difficult it had been to secure parts for obsolete types of planes. There was a real demand among these aerial vaudevillians for a supply house that could furnish parts. So Balboni founded his business. Most of the $930 went to repay friends, and Balboni settled down in the bed of the Los Angeles River.

He fenced in a strip of sand, installed the decrepit old car and a tent, found a police dog at the city pound and was ready for business. The Los Angeles River is notorious for its lack used by Nungesser, is one of Balboni's prized possessions. Universities and colleges are listed among Balboni's customers, being purchasers of parts of wrecked planes for study of the effect of falls. Portions of wrecks have been sent as far away as Massachusetts and to Japan for laboratory analysis of the cause and effect of air accidents. Ghost stories have originated from the piles of broken planes in Balboni's yard.

Night watchmen have sworn that ghosts haunt skeletons of planes. One watchman quit at 2 o'clock in the morning because he insisted that the headless body of a pilot was searching among the wreckage. He declared that he was ordinarily a brave man but when the ghost moaned he was through. Balboni investigated and heard the moan, also. A little search disclosed that the moan, came from a can of crank case oil that was cooling in the early morning fog.

But despite the reminders of ill-fortune all around him, Balboni still flies when business of water, except for a few months during the winter, so Balboni was safer than it might appear. BALBONI'S first deal came about when an antiquated war plane, in the hands of a careless pilot, crashed. He hurried to the scene, and through close bargaining, purchased the wreck for $3. From this crash, broken up into its various parts and resold, Balboni realized $80. Other crashes and sales followed.

His reputation began to grow among local fliers. When an old type motor coughed its last fir want of a new part, Balboni supplied it. When the builder of an experimental type plane needed a certain structural piece, Balboni had it. Active field work kept new additions to his stock flowing in as fast as obliging pilots could wreck their planes. Turning to his graveyard of the sky, he points Dooble miovmenf oumcmtzsdl 3 sf DOUBLY PROTECTED 2 Jackets of Cellophane seal-in that prize tobacco double-mellow goodness and doubly insure fresh cigarettes.

Dear Smoker: I mean business! You may have a "heavy crush" on a rival of mine, but that doesn't scare me! My proposition is this: Smoke half a pack of me. If you don't say I'm the finest cigarette you ever tasted, mail back the remaining ten cigarettes, with my wrapper, to my boss (P. Lorillard Co. 119 W. 40th St.

New York City) and he'll send you double the price you paid for the full package, plus postage This offer good for 30 days from date. I'm not swelled-headed. But the plain truth is I am made of PRIZE CROP TOBACCOS. And it's a rare smoker who doesn't find me a pleasanter companion. Sincerely, Mm 1 1 1 i () a a F.

Lorfflird.