Jack Bonn, The Flying Fox

It is Wednesday, June 23, 1920.  Several hundred people have gathered in a field outside Montevideo, Minnesota.  A light drizzle falls.  A Curtiss Jenny 4 airplane stands nearby.  Some in the audience have never even seen an airplane.

Local businessman, Leroy B. Jahn, has been designing a parachute.  His company, Jahn Aerial Life Saving Apparatus Co., has produced a prototype and wants to test it with a human subject for the first time.  Although attempts to develop parachutes surprisingly go back centuries, it wasn’t until the Wright Brothers historic flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903 that efforts began to accelerate.  After World War I began in 1914, especially, the militaries of various countries recognized the need for parachutes.   Hundreds of pilots died in aerial combat because they had no means to eject safely.  Mr. Jahn was one of a number of inventors in America and Europe who were devevloping parachutes.  The U.S. Army had announced a bid to produce parachutes.

Jahn’s goal was to become the sole contractor.  He came very close.

Suddenly, it is announced to the crowd that the man who was supposed to jump has fallen ill and cannot make it to the field.

“We need a replacement.  Would anyone present be willing to volunteer?”  Asks Jahn.

After a pause, Orville “Jack” Bonn raises his hand and yells out, “I will!”

After a period of instruction and fitting, Bonn climbs into the Jenny with pilot Harry G. Selzer and takes off.  Several minutes of excitement pass as the airplane climbs.  Finally, from a height of about 2,000 ft., Bonn jumps from the plane, the parachute opens, and he successfully lands.  The crowd is stunned and thrilled.  Jahn is overjoyed.

Orville Phillip Bonn (1896-1985) was my granduncle.  At some point early in life, he adopted the nickname Jack and thus was always known in the family as Uncle Jack.

Jack Bonn was a World War I veteran of the U.S. Air Service, as detailed in 7 previous articles.((The first one is posted here.  You can follow them in progression.))  Uncle Jack enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Service as a private and was discharged honorably three years later as a sergeant first class.((His enlistment date was 5 March 1917; the discharge date is 11 March 1920.))  Unlike almost all his comrades who went home after the war, Jack reenlisted and spent an additional year stateside at Mitchell Airfield on Long Island and Carlstrom Airfield in central Florida.))  During his military service, Jack became a certified aviation mechanic and was involved in some capacity in air gunnery.  Many details of Jack’s service are lost to history because his military personnel file is one of those destroyed by fire at the National Military Records Center in St. Louis in 1974.  Although he claimed otherwise, I don’t believe he was ever a sergeant pilot and certainly was never shot down.  He likely had occasion to go up in airplanes, however — either as a pilot trainee or as an observer/gunner.  There is one reference in December 1919 to having flown across the Everglades, although it is unclear if he or the man pictured with him was the pilot.

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After the Great War, Jack returned home to Montevideo, Minnesota, and took over his younger sister Dorothy’s bedroom in the family home at 205 South 4th St.  The local newspaper announced his return:

“With 36 months of service to his credit, Orville Bonn, son of Mr. and Mrs. B. O. Bonn, is home from the army.  He was one of the first to go from Montevideo, enlisting in the regular army in March, 1917, and is one of the last to come back, being furloughed to the reserve March 11, 1920.  In those three years, Bonn saw service in five different countries, on the Mexican border in 1917, then to Italy with a special detachment of cadet aviators.  After a short stay there, he went to England for a month’s training … near Oxford.  Three weeks were later spent in Belgium, and the balance of his two year stay overseas was in France, where he served with the British at Vendome and the French at Tours.  Those 36 months entitle Bonn to a soldier’s bonus under Minnesota law … (at) $15 a month for three years.”(())

Only two short months later, Jack found himself standing in a crowd of spectators in a field outside Montevideo preparing to watch an experimental parachute jump.  The family legend is that the man who was going to jump couldn’t make it or was ill, and the promoters asked if anyone in the audience would be willing to participate.  Jack raised his hand!  Several Minnesota newspapers recorded the scene:

Mr. Jahn, a native of Montevideo, had formed a company to design and produce parachutes, which he called the Jahn Aerial Apparatus

 

Jahn Aerial Life Saving Apparatus Co. incorporated in Minnesota on 30 July 1919.

 

The Ravens flyleaf states that he had two other novels in production, both expected to publish in 1932.  Sky Gypsies was named as one of them; it is described as follows:

SKY GYPSIES will tell of adventures in the early days of aerial daredeviltry; a momentous record of that romantic pre-Lindbergh era in barnstorming, before landing fields, beacons, airplane gasoline, spare parts or air-mindedness were known.  Two flying-circus clowns herd their Jenny over the country against overwhelming odds, heroes today and hoboes tomorrow.  Every town a new experience.  A provocative study of the hardships encountered by these little-known pioneers, vividly told from the author’s own experiences.