Eddie August Schneider

Eddie August Schneider (October 20, 1911 – December 23, 1940) was an American aviator who set three transcontinental airspeed records for pilots under the age of twenty-one in 1930. His plane was a Cessna Model AW with a Warner-Scarab engine, one of only 48 built, that he called "The Kangaroo". He set the east-to-west, then the west-to-east, and the combined round trip record. He was the youngest certificated pilot in the United States, and the youngest certified airplane mechanic. He was a pilot in the Spanish Civil War in the Yankee Squadron. He died in an airplane crash in 1940 while training another pilot, when a Boeing-Stearman Model 75 belonging to the United States Navy Reserve overtook him and clipped his plane's tail at Floyd Bennett Field.

Eddie August Schneider on September 10, 1930 in Detroit, Michigan

Quotes

• Father was against my flying, but he's convinced now. In fact he's helping to back all my flights. All I want to do is fly.
  • Eddie August Schneider (August 28, 1930). "Three Youths In Public Eye At Aviation Races Chicago". Associated Press. 

• We named the ship the Kangaroo, because we hoped I could get to California in a couple of jumps.
  • Eddie August Schneider (October 1, 1930). "I Break a Record and have a Swell Time Besides". Flying magazine. 
  • Explaining why he named his ship, The Kangaroo.

• From the beginning I had wanted to do something with my flying. Just being able to go up in the air and come down at the same spot wasn't very exciting. Airplanes are for going places quickly, safely and comfortably. I don't know why, but my longing had always been to go to the West Coast. First, because I had never been there, and then for various reasons you fly over all sorts of country on the way, and it is the best way to see the country.
  • Eddie August Schneider (October 1, 1930). "I Break a Record and have a Swell Time Besides". Flying magazine. 

• I recently flew more than twelve thousand miles in a little over a month, through rain, fog, wind and snow, over mountains, cities and deserts, in a three-year-old, second-hand airplane that had already traveled some five hundred thousand miles. During that time I never was very late for an appointment or put a single scratch on myself. And considering that I am hardly an expert pilot at nineteen years of age, I knew that these statements must prove something about modern commercial aviation.
  • Eddie August Schneider (September 1, 1930). "Look Out, Lindbergh - Here I Come". Flying magazine. 
  • Comments on completing his setting of the junior transcontinental speed record.

• Not that it has much bearing on the story, but because people are always asking me, my name is really Eddie: I was christened that way. It isn't very dressy, but it serves the purpose. As for background, my grandfather was some kind of Scandinavian royalty and was thrown out of it for marrying a peasant girl.
  • Eddie August Schneider (September 1, 1930). "Look Out, Lindbergh - Here I Come". Flying magazine. 
  • Explaining that his name is not "Edward Schneider" and telling a genealogical tall tale. His maternal grandfather, Peder Andreas Pedersen (1831-1918) was a bread seller. All his other ancestors were farmers in Norway. His paternal ancestors were from Germany.

• Hey, I want to know for sure before I cut off my motor. Is this the Los Angeles Municipal airport?
  • "Jersey City Lad Holds Junior Flying Record for Westward Trip". Associated Press (Ludington, Michigan). August 19, 1930. 
  • Landing in Los Angeles, California after setting the east-to-west junior transcontinental speed record.

• Hello Pop, I made it.
  • "Boy Makes New Round Trip Mark". Associated Press (Coshocton, Ohio). August 25, 1930. 
  • After setting east-to-west, and west-to-east, and combined junior transcontinental speed record.

• You can stop any plane on as small a space as an autogyro if you are willing to sacrifice the speed of your ship to do it. A little plane called the Doodle Bug has been constructed at Washington, D.C. which runs at a comparatively slow speed and lands with as short a run as the flying-windmill. The big advantage of the airplane is speed, and an autogyro with top speed 5 of 80 miles an hour will never replace a plane with cruising speed of 150 miles an hour in general popularity and usefulness.
  • "Homemade Hooch". Quad-City Times. July 24, 1931. 
  • At the 1931 Ford National Reliability Air Tour banquet dinner, explaining to Bob Feeney why the autogyro will never replace fixed wing aircraft.

• I was broke, hungry, jobless … yet despite the fact that all three of us are old-time aviators who did our part for the development of the industry, we were left out in the cold in the Administration’s program of job making. Can you blame us for accepting the lucrative Spanish offer?
  • "3 U.S. Airmen Here to Explain Aid to Loyalists. Acosta, Berry, Schneider Fly to Capital With Their Attorney". Washington Post: p. 5. January 20, 1937. 
  • Congressional testimony about his participation in the Yankee Squadron during the Spanish Civil War.

• We were given nothing but unarmed sports planes with which to fight, while Russian pilots were assigned regular American army planes.
  • "Hired Soldiers". Reno Evening Gazette. January 8, 1937. 
  • Commenting on the conditions for the Yankee Squadron pilots during the Spanish Civil War.

Quotes about Schneider

• Eddie A. Schneider "grew up" at Roosevelt Field, where he was a flunkey, mechanic and student flyer. He flew in the last two air tours, and in August of 1930, flew his Cessna to a round-trip transcontinental record for pilots under twenty-one. He made the trip in 57 hours, 14 minutes, carried greetings both ways between Los Angeles Mayor Porter, and Jersey City’s Frank Hague. Eddie Schneider was publicized as a Jersey City boy with a bare 300 hours flight time. In the late nineteen-thirties, Schneider went to Spain to fly for the Loyalists in the Revolution. But whatever promises of salary and glory were made him; he was back in New York within a short time. And as though cursed by the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, like so many other young men, Eddie Schneider was killed in a student training accident at Floyd Bennett Field just two days before Christmas, 1940. He was twenty-nine.
  • The Ford Air Tours, 1925-1931 by Lesley Forden. 1973. 

External links

• Eddie August Schneider bibliography
• Findagrave: Eddie Schneider
• National Air Tour
• Spanish Civil War Participants with German Surnames