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40. Pensacolian's Husband Attempts to Beat Lindbergh 1927

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Updated: Apr 2, 2022


Born in 1891, Noel Guy Davis graduated from Annapolis in 1914. During World War I, he laid 56,000 mines stretching across the North Sea between Norway and Scotland. After the war ended he was ordered to remove all the mines that he had so tediously and meticulously put down. Later, he entered the flight program at Pensacola and graduated in 1921 as naval aviator #2944. Here he met and married Pensacolian Mary Elizabeth "Kitten" Merritt in 1925. Two years later, the race to be the first aviator to fly non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean and win the $25,000 prize heated up. Davis and his friend Lieutenant Stanton H. Wooster threw their hat into the ring to attempt to beat the famous Charles Lindbergh. In fact, Noel’s wife Kitten, daughter of business tycoon John Abercrombie Merritt and his wife Mary Rosa Turner, was going to fly with them as a radio operator.


However, at the last moment she backed out because of their young son. On April 26, 1927, the two men were making a practice run from Langley Field, Virginia with their fuel tanks filled to the brim in preparation for their flight to Paris. But the plane, called the “American Legion,” was so heavy with 16,000 gallons of fuel that they were unable to gain enough air speed to rise more than fifty feet in the air before they crashed into a nearby swamp. They made a good landing in the marshy area and traveled about 125 feet before flipping over in the mud and water, trapping and drowning both pilots inside the wreckage.


His wife’s brother Richard Turner and their sister Mrs. Adrian O. Rule were with her when she received word of her husband’s death. Both pilots were transported to Portsmouth Naval Hospital where Davis was sent to Pensacola for burial in St. John’s Cemetery and Wooster to Arlington National Cemetery. Less than a month after Davis was buried in Pensacola, Lindbergh made his successful crossing of the Atlantic in the "Spirit of St. Louis."


Noel Guy Davis, Annapolis 1914


Lt. Commander Noel Guy Davis, 1927


Pensacola News Journal Headline 1927


US Naval Hero of Aviation 1891-1927


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