He Helped Air Age Get Off the Ground
By BILL EATON
Reed M. Chambers, who made it possible for aviation pioneers to go-for-broke without going broke, has retired in New York as chairman of United States Aviation Underwriters Inc.
He flew in France with Rickenbacker, 50 years ago, and on the face of this it might seem odd that a man who entered aviation as a destroyer of airplanes should have pioneered America's aviation insurance business.
But the organization he formed was to insure the test flights of such famous aircraft as the Douglas DC-3, the Boeing 314 "Clipper," the Boeing jetliner 707 and 727 and Douglas jetliner DC-8, the Boeing B-52 jet bomber and Convair B-58 supersonic jet bomber, and the "TFX" jet fighter, which became the General Dynamics F-111A.
Chambers was born Aug. 18, 1894, in Onaga, Kan., and served with the Tennessee National Guard on the Mexican border in 1916. In 1917, when the United States entered the first World War, he arranged for transfer to the newly formed aviation section of the Army Signal Corps.
He was commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to the 94th Aero Squadron, which was to carry the famed "hat-in-the-ring" emblem.
The 94th squadron was one of the first U.S. air units to fight on the Western Front, using French-made Nieuport 28 biplanes, switching in 1918 to the memorable SPAD 13 fighters. America's top ace, Capt.
Edward V. Rickenbacker, shot down 26 German aircraft and commanded the 94th in the final months of the war.
Among the aces of the 94th were Alan Winslow of Chicago;
James Meissner of Brooklyn, N.Y.,
Douglas Campbell of San Francisco, who was the son of then President William W. Campbell of the University of California; and Reed Chambers.
Chambers shot down six German airplanes and a balloon, and earned the Distinguished Service Cross with three Oak Leaf Clusters, the French Legion of Honor, and the Croix de Guerre. By the time he quit the military in 1920, he was the youngest major in the Army and commanded the First Pursuit Group.
He became a test pilot, operated his own aerial mapping service, and became president of a fledging [sic] airline called "Florida Airways," which began operations at Tampa on April 1, 1926, using the first all-metal, single-engine aircraft produced by Henry and Edsel Ford.
Five days after its inaugural, Florida Airways flew the first private-contract air mail route awarded by the Federal Government, and for the next nine months the airline maintained a 98 per cent on-time mail delivery between Miami and Atlanta.
Then a hurricane destroyed two of the Ford airplanes and a third Ford crashed and burned after hitting high tension powerlines, killing two passengers and a pilot.
With no insurance to cover the disasters, Florida Airways was forced into bankruptcy in 1927. This drove Chambers to join with David C. Beebe in 1928 to found this country's first aviation insurance market.
They argued for months to persuade eight major insurance companies to combine resources to form the United States Aircraft Insurance Group, and USAIG is today the oldest and largest aviation underwriter in the world.
It insured the first blind flight conducted for Guggenheim Foundation by pilot Jimmy Doolittle and established the first accident insurance for military pilots and for the pioneer high altitude balloon flights sponsored by the National Geographic Society.
Oakland Tribune - Sunday, August 11, 1968
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