5 minute read
High Flying Heroine
By Lisa Hemeon, Botwood Heritage Society
Her life was forever altered, in good ways and bad, by a deadly plane crash in Botwood.
Before the Second World War,
Botwood was already buzzing with aviation activity. This small Newfoundland town was considered the crossroads of the world for transatlantic passenger and commercial flights aboard the famous flying boats of PanAm, BOAC and AEA. When WWII broke out, Botwood became a strategic RCAF base for coastal defense and anti-submarine patrol squadrons. The population of around 1,000 people swelled with more than 10,000 Canadian troops arriving via Canadian Navy vessels or train. Some were either sent on to Gander or remained in Botwood. They came here to train for war before being shipped overseas. During WWII, Botwood flourished. It was a busy spot and work was plentiful. Among those who used Botwood as a strategic North American airstrip was American Export Airlines, and in June 1942 that company became the first in the world to employ women as crewmembers on transatlantic flights. Before that time, all transatlantic flights were crewed by men only. These pioneering first six “air hostesses” were trained nurses and highly skilled to work aboard the flights. Their duties included, but were not limited to, assuring that all passengers were comfortable, cooking and serving the meals, preparing drinks, preparing the cabins for sleeping, refuelling the plane and looking after the sick.
One of those pioneering air hostesses was Adele Jenkins, a petite woman at five feet four inches tall and 115 pounds. The effects that WWII and the small town of Botwood had on her world would stay with her until the day she died. Her story is one that fell through the cracks of time, even though it has all the elements of a blockbuster movie.
Pint-size Adele was born in 1911 in New York. Her early life was one of poverty and uncertainty. She told her niece that when she was a young child and times were really tough and she needed to get away, she would run to the local airport and watch the planes taking off and landing. She said that watching the planes felt very romantic to her. At around seven years old, she was adopted by a teacher.
After Adele graduated high school, she studied nursing at the Hackensack Hospital in New Jersey. She graduated in 1932. In 1933, Adele was working for Howard Hughs and flying with Trans World Airlines (TWA). She was one of only 20 girls chosen from more than 20,000 applicants to train and work at TWA, and she was of the first female crewmembers on domestic flights. In the next eight years, Adele flew several millions of miles, in North America, the Caribbean, Africa and China. She met the most famous and influential people of the time. During her career with TWA, she worked as a recruiter, a model for TWA Advertising and an air hostess instructor in San Francisco.
After TWA, she joined Central Pennsylvania Airlines as chief air hostess and recruiter. By 1942, Adele had joined American Export Airlines, servicing the New York, USA to Foyles, Ireland overseas route. Flying during the war, especially the transatlantic route, was dangerous and still in its infancy.
On October 2, 1942, American Export Airlines’ flying boat Excalibur crashed immediately after lift-off from Botwood harbour. There were 37 passengers and crew aboard, including Adele. the water, its fuselage cracked at the wings. Adele, chief air hostess and one of only two females on the plane, jumped into action. She immediately began instructing the uninjured passengers to get out. Once they were outside the wreckage and holding onto something to keep themselves afloat, Adele dove back inside the plane six times as it was filling with water and slowly sinking. She rescued five injured men from the plane. She later told her neighbour that she had gone down a sixth time to help her new coworker, Quinton Moon, who was stuck. She grabbed his hand and kept trying to pull him out until she felt life leave his body. For the rest of her life, Adele suffered periods of survivor’s guilt.
After she came up for air on that sixth dive, she passed out and was then rescued by two soldiers, Flight Officer Colgate Vernon Mann and Rev. Thompkins, the base chaplain. Eleven people perished in the crash, but 26 survived – in great part due to Adele’s heroic actions.
Adele spent the next two days tending to her passengers at the military hospital and flew back to New York on the third day. Within a week she was back on the transatlantic flight from New York to Foynes, Ireland.
A big fuss was made of Adele the heroine. She was awarded a citation from the War Department, directly from War Secretary Stimson. It stated: “Though suffering from shock and near exhaustion, you continued your efforts in the cold waters and assisted to safety several men who, without such assistance, would have perished. And throughout the night you assisted in the care of the injured who lay in hospitals.”
The surviving passengers purchased a new watch for Adele as a thanks and to replace the one she had lost in the crash. The inscription read: “In grateful remembrance of unfailing courage, cheerfulness and kindness from the passengers on Flight No. 17, Oct. 3, 1942.”
When researching Adele and her career, the one thing that stood out to me was her amazing ability to dive into that plane six times and pull out survivors. The waters would certainly have been cold and, to me, it seemed to be almost impossible for such a small woman. That is until I came across a newspaper article about Adele from 1925. That year, when she was just 14 years old, she swam the widest part of the Hudson River in four hours, breaking a previously held record. That one small article cemented how she managed to do what she did.
In researching Adele’s life after the crash, I found an article about her retirement from American Export Airlines in 1943 because she was getting married. At that time, if an air hostess married, she was forced to retire or be fired. In the article, Adele said she was just about to board a flight for Botwood, Newfoundland, to marry Flight Officer Colgate Vernon Mann, one of the two men who’d rescued her after her collapse. The heroine was marrying her hero! They were married July 23, 1943, at the officer’s club on the base in Botwood. The officiant was none other than Rev. Thompkins, her other hero.
Adele and Colgate went on to have a long marriage. They had no children and eventually retired to Florida. Colgate died in 1996 at age 95, and Adele died in 2006.
