The Rainbow Aviation Company - Washington Crossing, PA

Opening announcement

Today’s residents of Washington Crossing are accustomed to planes in the sky, making their way to and from the Mercer Airport across the river. Nearly one hundred years ago residents were used to planes landing in their back yards, if only for a brief period.

Rainbow Aviation, Rainbow Flying Service, Rainbow Air Field; however you call it was a short lived private air strip located between the Delaware Canal and Delaware River, just south of Washington Crossing, PA. The field was located on the property of Eugene L. Beans, ten acres adjacent to the Wilkes Manor development. 

George R. Zinn, Jr. was the son of Captain George Zinn of Philadelphia, wealthy manufacturer with relations to the du Pont family. George Jr. was the youngest aviation field operator in the country, just twenty years old when he founded Rainbow Aviation in 1928. Zinn was also the youngest entrant in the National Air Race from New York to Los Angeles, in which he placed tenth. The event was widely covered in the national newspapers.

Staff at the Rainbow consisted of two pilots, George Zinn and Champe Taliaferro (who went on to become a well-known pilot, living until 2004), and a mechanic. Other pilots flew out of the field as well. Services included lessons, rides, trips, air carnivals, and it was a useful spot for emergency landings. Or, one could have made a fine day of just going to the field and enjoying the action. One time a pet monkey named Firpo took to the skies with it’s owner, a doctor from Morrisville.

Zinn painted rainbows of three colors on the sides of his fleet of biplanes. In May 1929, he added a Pitcairn Mailwing biplane to the fleet, which was dedicated with a ceremony. The plane’s wings were painted orange, the fuselage blue and black, with the requisite rainbow on either side. The field included a hangar, which a lifetime local resident recalls playing in when he was young. Other local pilots made good use of the air field. 

Ray Kuser, son of Frederick Kuser, of Trenton and New York, has recently become an ardent devotee of the sport, and flies continuously at the Rainbow Flying Field on the Pennsylvania River Road near Washington Crossing. Both of these young men flew recently over the city in behalf of the Junior League show.

Arch Maddock and his sister, Miss Florence Maddock, son and daughter of Mrs. Alice Maddock of the River Road, are both expert pilots, although it is understood that Miss Maddock will give up the sport at the request of her aviator-fiancé, Amberse Monro Banks, dashing air mail pilot. Her brother, however, is still in the ranks of aviators, and is now with the William Penn Airport, on the Philadelphia Boulevard, carrying passengers on local flights. TT Dec 16, 1928

Image presumably from Rainbow Air Field

Amberse Banks, hailing from Oklahoma, went on to be a successful airmail pilot known for his willingness to take risks in the sky. He is known to have performed loop-de-loops at the Rainbow, and was said to have flown under the Washington Crossing Bridge. 

A letter to the editor of the Newtown Enterprise on November 8, 1928 recaps the first year of operation:

To the Editor of the Newtown Enterprise:

Summing up the passenger flying of this summer at the Rainbow Flying Field, on E. Lynn Beans’ property at Washington Crossing, Pa., we want to congratulate George Zinn, Jr., manager of the flying field, on the way he has conducted the fields in such an orderly manner and the care he has taken to protect his passengers. Mr. Zinn has kept both the field and his airplanes in A1 condition. Also employing pilots in whom prospective customers could trust. He has done a remarkable business, considering this was his first season. In fact the large parking space on the field, which is quite large, has been filled to overflowing and in consequence the highway has been filled with parked cars. Mr. Zinn has instructed quite a few students in the art of flying, also has had a number of long distance flights. He was entered in the cross-country flight from New York to Los Angeles, making a very good showing.

Air-mail pilots consider it a very good emergency field and have set down on it a number of times, because of fog, dropping flares which have caused quite a lot of excitement over the country.

Less than a week after the letter praising the operations at Rainbow, the field saw its first accident. On November 11, 1928 George Zinn’s plane was caught in a wind current while approaching the landing, striking a treetop. The landing gears gone; the plane was badly damaged, landing on its nose. The two young passengers, students at the New Jersey School for the Deaf, sustained minor injuries. Zinn received a deep cut above his eye which landed him in the hospital.  Unfortunately, this wouldn’t be the only accident to occur on the air field; nor was it the lone accident of Zinn’s brief aviation career. 

By May of the next year, we see an advertisement for flights to Lakehurst and Washington, DC. These excursions wouldn’t last long, however, as a month later the air field experienced its worst accident.

June 13, 1929 Newtown Enterprise – Passenger Killed in Aeroplane Crash

Phila. Woman Victim at Washington Crossing – Pilot in Serious Condition.

Mrs. Hannah M. Jones, a passenger in a plane from the Washington Crossing aviation field was killed on Monday when the plane in which she was making an ascent crashed to the ground after raising thirty five feet in the air.

John Stevenson, the pilot, was also very badly injured and is in the Mercer Hospital with a fractured skull and all his ribs broken.

Those on the field watched the plane take off, but noticed that it failed to gain altitude, reaching only a height of about 35 or 40 feet in several hundred yards.

With the engine apparently gone Stevenson tried to turn the plane around for a return to the field, when the tail caught in some telegraph wires, tearing down a pole. Then the machine crashed into an embankment.

Mr. Jones, who watched his wife make the ascent, told authorities that his wife, whom he married only four years ago, was an ardent aviation fan. She had made several trips in passenger planes both in Philadelphia and Atlantic City.

An article from the June 11, 1929 Trenton Evening Times gives further details.

...The accident happened shortly after the take-off. The plane was seen to struggle for altitude after it left the field. About a quarter of a mile from the hanger, when the craft was above the Washington Memorial Boulevard, Stevenson attempted a landing. The body of the ship cleared the telegraph wires in its path, but the hooked tail skid caught on one of the wires and the plane turned on its nose. It crashed heavily, turning on its back.

...The woman’s husband, Frank M. Jones. Philadelphia mason contractor witnessed the accident, along with a group of friends. Mr. and Mrs. Patrick McGlynn and Mrs. Mary Shooter, of Philadelphia. The party had motored through Trenton to visit the memorial park at the Crossing. Mrs. Jones, an aviation enthusiast, saw the Rainbow planes flying about and decided to go aloft. Her husband wanted to accompany her, but Stevenson feared overloading and asked him to wait.

...The plane fell on a small embankment on the farm of Mrs. Fred Maust. Mrs. Lawrence Grimes, who lived opposite the Washington Crossing Hotel, saw the accident and sped to the spot in her automobile. Mrs. Jones was placed in her car by Deputy Sherriff Harry Simmons, of Brownsburg. An employee of the flying field took Stevenson to the hospital.

The accident made the national wire, appearing in newspapers from Sarasota to San Francisco.

The end of the Rainbow came shortly after the fatal accident when Zinn sold the firm to a man from Philadelphia.

July 16, 1929 Trenton Evening Times – Philadelphian Buys Rainbow Air Firm

George R. Zinn, operations manager of the Rainbow Aviation Company, Inc., of Washington Crossing, Pa., announced today that the company has sold out to Fred R. Breidenfield, of Philadelphia. Mr. Zinn has severed his connections with the Rainbow fliers and will take employment with another aviation firm.

The new company will take control at once. The new firm is known as the Rainbow Flying Service. The company will operate daily within two weeks.

It is uncertain whether the strip continued operations with the new ownership, no further information was found on the field, or its new owner.

George Zinn’s future in aviation didn’t last long. On October 18, 1930, while flying in front of 40,000 people at an event at the Mercer Airport, he met his demise in a mid-air crash. 

October 20, 1930 Trenton Evening Times – Air Disaster Called Accident

...Rounding the pylon in a wing-to-wing formation, with four ships in line, two of the planes met with a rending crash that tore the tail off one and sent the other to earth in flames. Both ships crashed to the ground at 100 mile speed.

...George Zinn, Jr. 23 years old, former operator of the Rainbow Flying Service at Washington Crossing, and R. W. Mackie, 36, instructor at Curtiss Airport, Valley Stream, L. I., were the victims.

Zinn’s ship curved upward after banking at the pylon and the propellor bored through the tail and rear of the fuselage of Mackie’s plane sending a shower of fragments into the air. Zinn was probably stunned by the impact. His plane wobbled, out of control, then curved over in a loop and hurtled to earth. It crashed nose first and burst into flames. Mackie’s plane sped over a knoll, out of view of the spectators, and hit the earth with an impact that ripped Mackie’s body asunder. His head was thrown 40 feet from the wreckage and parts of his body were strewn about.

 

...Zinn, at the time he directed the Rainbow Flying Service at Washington Crossing, was the youngest aviation field operator in the country. He discontinued the Rainbow outfit after a crash in which a woman passenger was killed.

George Zinn and R. W. Mackie

Days after the tragic accident, changes were proposed to pylon racing, the type of event that caused the crash. These changes covered using colored balloons and more regulatory oversight.  Thomas L. Hill, president of the American Society for Promotion of Aviation, sent a letter to the US Department of Commerce in protest of this type of racing.

I wish to publicly protest against a condition in aeronautics which permits such air races to be held as made possible the two fatalities at Trenton, New Jersey. Races of this type, with the necessity of close turns around pylons at tremendous speed during which time the contestants are jockeying for positions are invitations to disaster.

...Speeding around pylons near the ground at two miles a minute, too low to use a parachute, too crowded to do anything, they had no chance for their lives.

The Rainbow Air Field was a short-lived experiment in the early days of aviation. After getting off to a promising start, the field quickly met it’s demise. Unfortunately, the loss of life was a risk these early pilots knew all too well. 

Ida Borstein advertised the land for sale in 1950 as Formerly Rainbow Flying Field.