Update to Pilot Claire Vance 2007 article by Gordon Richards - HCS 1/20/2020
An avid aviation reader recently read Gordon’s 2007 Sierra Sun article on our TDHS website and having done substantial aviation research, recently shared this information with us. On December 17, 1932, near Danville, CA, legendary air mail pilot Claire K. Vance was killed in a crash. That plane was a Boeing 40-B, Serial Number 892, Tail Number C-281. Even more amazing is that our aviation reader, David Lane, learned to fly at the Truckee Airport in the 1970s! Even MORE amazing is that he is in possession of the Data Plate from that doomed flight.
Photo provided courtesy of David Lane, January 2020. Used with written permission.
And HOW do we definitely know that this IS the Data Plate for Vance’s last flight? In a Summer 2004 article in an American Aviation Historical Society journal by Walt Bohl, there is an article titled “Boeing Model 40 and Its Descendants; the Great Mailplane of the Twenties.” Serial number 892 is confirmed.
In this same journal article about Boeing's expanding Model 40 fleet, there is a photo (p. 116) of the Reno, NV airfield. Recall Claire Vance's regular flight path was along the San Francisco - Reno - Salt Lake City corridor and his many mishaps and near misses flying over the Sierra Nevada "hump". In an earlier 2018 TDHS article, p. 6, there is another photo of this Reno, NV airfield. Amazing coincidence again.
In this same journal article about Boeing's expanding Model 40 fleet, there is a photo (p. 116) of the Reno, NV airfield. Recall Claire Vance's regular flight path was along the San Francisco - Reno - Salt Lake City corridor and his many mishaps and near misses flying over the Sierra Nevada "hump". In an earlier 2018 TDHS article, p. 6, there is another photo of this Reno, NV airfield. Amazing coincidence again.
