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Registration Number NC5961
A Competitor In The 1928 Air Races,
Class A
This aircraft is a Lincoln-Page LP-3 S/N 226 (ATC #28) manufactured
on June 14, 1928 by the Lincoln Aircraft Company, Lincoln, NB. It
came equipped with a 90 HP Curtiss OX-5 engine, S/N M5672.
It weighed 2,200 pounds. It had a simple and short life.
It sold new on July 3, 1928 to William M. Gardner of 516 Grant
St., Pittsburgh, PA. The airplane was kept at Rodgers Field,
about 8 miles NW of downtown Pittsburgh. Gardner owned Gardner
Aviation Service, which sponsored the airplane in the 1928
"On to Los Angeles" Class A cross country race
held September 8-16. The race that year spanned 2,939 miles,
from New York to Los Angeles. Below, courtesy of the San Diego Aerospace Museum Flickr Stream (SDAM), is a photograph of NC5961 on the ground at Los Angeles after the Class A event. I wears the Gardner Aviation Service livery. Companion racers Kreider-Reisner NC7246 and Travel Air NC6108 stand just behind NC5916.
Lincoln-Page NC5961, Los Angeles, CA, September, 1928 (Source: SDAM)
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NC5961 landed at Tucson twice. Both times it was piloted
by M.E. Grevemberg (transport license #1711). The first time
was westbound from Lordsburg, NM on September 9, 1928 as a participant
in "On to Los Angeles." If you look at pages
58-59 of the Register, you'll see that he and his passenger,
Paul Malone, landed in the middle of the tangle of pilots
competing in the Class A race that day. What a sight and sound
that must have been! Ultimately, they placed 19th.
The second landing was on October 4, 1928 eastbound from Yuma,
probably on the way back from California. On both flights
he carried Paul Malone as passenger, and on the second he
also carried Mrs. Malone.
About six-months later, on April 7, 1929, pilot Grevemberg had
an accident with the NC5961 in Magnolia, OH. He and his passenger,
J. Mench, were uninjured. The airplane, “attempted
take-off from small, muddy field. Plane struck tree and
nosed over in landing.” It sustained, “4 wings
washed out, damage to L/G, lower longerons of fuselage,
tailgroup washed out.” Its registration was cancelled
May 17, 1929.
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Doing a little research in the Pittsburgh area, I visited
the Archives Service Center of the University of Pittsburgh
during the summer of 2005. The image below (#15733) is used
with permission. It shows Rodgers Field as described above.
The date is probably during those dreary, cold months in
Pittsburgh, sometime in the late 1920s-early 1930s.
On the original TIFF file received from the archivist
I can read "RODGERS
FIELD" painted
on the roofs of the two large buildings lying parallel with
the main runway near the center of the image. You may not
be able to see this, because the
image above is web-optimized, so is of lower resolution.
At left center, on the ramp above the circle, there are clearly
three aircraft, a high-wing monoplane and two biplanes. Perhaps
one is our Lincoln-Page during its final months of life.
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THIS PAGE UPLOADED:
7/2/05 REVISED: 05/12/06, 10/12/07, 11/25/08, 01/01/15
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