D.C. Warren, Date Unknown

D.C. Warren was an Army Air Corps flyer during WWI. During the 1920s, he became a commercial pilot and business owner in San Francisco.

He landed once at Tucson, Tuesday May 24, 1927 at 7:40 PM. He carried a single passenger, F.W. Raymond, in an aircraft identified as Travel Air "181". There is no Travel Air with registration number 181.

Rather, aerofiles.com lists as follows an aircraft identified as registration number 901 is a Travel Air 2000, S/N 181. The probability is high that Warren identified his airplane by serial number (note that C.E. Clark signed the Register just above Warren, identifying his Travel Air by serial number (160).

Regardless, based at San Francisco, CA Warren and Raymond arrived eastbound from San Diego, CA. They remained overnight in Tucson, departing the next day at 7:50 AM for Dallas, TX.

Warren was the Oakland, CA Travel Air dealer. He touched the lives and airplanes of several of our Register pilots. For example, he brokered the sale of Travel Air Mystery Ship NR613K for Pancho Barnes (see C.E. Clark's link for some specifics about that airplane). Others include NX4765, NC9914, NC6970, NC5426, and Louise Thaden. This Oakland Tribune article from May 16, 1930 cites a sale made by Warren (look in the "Contact" column). Browse around this news page; it's full of aviation information.

Interestingly, when they landed at Tucson, Warren and Raymond were inspected by the U.S. Border Patrol as indicated by the notation in the Remarks column of the Register. "Ins. William B. Crow" appears there, written in Crow's handwriting. Surrounding the date of Warren's landing, there was a flurry of 43 Border Patrol inspections of aircraft at Tucson between March 28, 1927 and April 4, 1931.

Each inspection was accompanied by the inspector's signature in the Remarks column of the Register, identified as "Border Patrol" or "U.S.I.S." (U.S. Immigration Service). There is no reason given for the inspections, or why they began and ended so abruptly. Prohibition was the law of the land during those years, and more than one Register airplane and pilot was involved in liquor smuggling. See, for example, NC4532, NC28K and NC2709.

At left is a table of individual inspectors' names (in total, they performed all of the 43 inspections cited above) and the Register pages upon which they appear. I have researched this group of names and come up dry. If anyone has information about these officers or this four-year window on U.S. Border Patrol activity, please let me KNOW.

D.C. Warren, WWI Pilot

To this day, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has a major office facility just outside the main gate of the present Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

Douglas C. Warren was born in 1889. He was killed January 9, 1932 in an airplane crash near Portland, OR. The WWI portrait, right, is from his obituary that appeared in the Washington, DC Evening Star of January 29, 1932.

He was buried with full military honors at the Arlington National Cemetery. He was 43 years old.

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Dossier 2.1.163

UPLOADED: 03/14/08 REVISED: