The word ‘pioneer’ is defined as one who settles virgin territory, or one who is first to try new theories or technology.  It is the second definition that relates to the pioneers of agricultural aviation in the Sacramento Valley.  Their world had been settled in the nineteenth century; early pioneers such as Granville Swift and Robert Semple had been in what was then Colusi County in the 1850’s. Nonetheless; men such as Floyd Nolta, his brothers Vance and Dale, Raymond Varney, L.H. McCurley, Harold Hendrickson, Frank Prentice, and Warren Bullock were true pioneers.  They were the pioneers of the air; specifically using aircraft to seed rice and fight fires.

Floyd Nolta, who founded the Willows’ Flying Service in 1927, began the use of agricultural aviation practices for seeding and spraying in Glenn County.  In 1928 he was the first aviator to sow rice fields from the air.  Northern California’s first seeding aircraft, or crop duster as is more commonly known, was a Hisso Travelair purchased by Floyd Nolta.  This aircraft, which had no breaks, was converted to a rice-seeder in two weeks. 

A May 13, 1936 Christian Science Monitor article about Floyd H. Nolta states that he was known as “Speed” to his friends due to his love of racing airplanes and autos.  “In his red biplane seeding rice for ten Sacramento Valley growers,” his nickname was appropriate.   The article gave a description of Floyd Nolta leaving an airfield, “ on one of his three-minute trips to spread 800 pounds of rice upon the waters of the rice lands.”

The development of agricultural aviation, popularly known as crop dusting, began a new chapter in rice cultivation and pesticide application in the Northern Sacramento Valley.  By 1947 the 32,000 acres dedicated to rice in Glenn County were nearly all sown by air.  Before this pioneering work had begun, it was considered profitable if fifty acres were sown in one day.  The advent of sowing by air made possible the then unheard of maximum of six hundred fifty acres sown in one day.  “Barley, wheat, clover, alfalfa, sudan and other crops common to this district are also sown by plane.”

World War II interrupted Floyd Nolta’s career as an agricultural pilot.  He volunteered as a second lieutenant, rising to the rank of major by war’s end.   His assignment to the First Motion Picture Unit kept him in Southern California making films to boost the national moral and inspire patriotism.  During one episode filmed over the San Fernando Valley, Nolta lost power in the P-38 he was flying.  The plane crashed on a street in Simi Valley. Floyd survived with injuries that vexed him for the remainder of his life.
 
Floyd Nolta was attracted to aviation at an early age.  His 1974 obituary states that he falsified his age in order to join the air corp in World War I. While taking pilot training in San Diego he met Jimmy Doolittle.  The two would become fast friends, often hunting together in the Sacramento Valley. This friendship would lead to Doolittle choosing the Glenn County Airport at Willows as location for the final rehearsal of the famous B-25 raid over Tokyo in April of 1942. The B-25 bombers practiced takeoffs and landings on an area of the runway marked off to replicate the flight deck of the U.S.S. Hornet.  To keep the upcoming mission to Tokyo top secret, the Army Air Corps banned all aviation activity at the airport during the practice sessions.

Floyd Nolta also flew the lead aircraft in the movie version of the Doolittle raid “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.”  During part of this filming, Nolta was required to fly a B-25 under the San Francisco Bay Bridge.

After World War II, Nolta returned to Willows and became senior partner with his brother Dale in the re-instituted Willows Flying Service.  Another brother, Vance Nolta, served as their senior pilot.  During these halcyon early days of agricultural aviation, pioneers, such as Raymond Varney, who started his Varney Air Industries in 1946, and Lee Sherwood, realized the potential of aircraft as pest eradicators.   Adding special attachments to their Piper and Stearman aircraft enabled them to spray liquid pesticides to eliminate weeds and insects from the rice fields.  In the early days they used DDT, now outlawed for damaging the environment, and Chlordane to eliminate grasshoppers and other pests.  They also sprayed irrigation canals and ditches from the air to eradicate mosquitoes.

By 1948 there were three commercial agricultural aviation operators located in Glenn County: Willows Flying Service, located at Nolta’s Airport near the Blue Gum, was operated by the aforementioned Nolta brothers; Varney Air Industries, operated by Raymond Varney at the Glenn County Airport in Willows; and Lee Sherwood’s Sherwood Flying Service, also located at the Glenn County Airport.  In 1951 Harold Hendrickson, the author’s late uncle, began Hendrickson Air Service at Willows.  All of these aviators had learned valuable experience as pilots during World War II.  Hendrickson flew transport missions over the Pacific for the A.T.C., (Air Transport Command), while Varney became involved in Pacific Theatre activity directly after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  I’ve already mentioned Floyd Nolta’s wartime activities.  His brother, Vance Nolta, also saw action in the Pacific Theatre.

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In the month of June, 1955, Joe Ely of the U.S. Forest Service began to kick around the idea of using crop dusting aircraft for fighting wild fires.  He met with several of the men mentioned above and ran the idea by them.  Ely recalls asking Floyd Nolta if he thought he could drop water on a forest fire.  “He thought it over, and told me to come back in a week.” Ely was not surprised that it was Floyd who became enamored with the idea. “Floyd was an imaginative person with lots of energy and spark.  He cut a hole in the bottom of a Stearman aircraft, added a gate with hinges and a snag and pull-rope, and filled the thing with water.” A practice demonstration was put on for the Forest Service brass a week later at the Nolta Airport.  After Floyd had set the grass alongside the runway on fire, Vance successfully flew over, released the water, and extinguished the blaze.  The first air-tanker squadron was in business.

The first airdrop on an actual wildfire was made on the Mendenhall Fire, August 13, 1955, in the Mendocino National Forest.  Vance Nolta flew this pioneer mission using a Boeing Stearman Caydet agricultural aircraft modified as mentioned above.  “This aircraft, N75081, became the first registered free-fall air tanker in the history of aviation.”

In 1956 they began to mix sodium calciumborate in the water.  This made slurry that did not evaporate as quickly as water.  Thus the term ‘Borate Bomber’ was coined.  Unfortunately, the men were having a difficult time blending and preparing enough of this mixture to fight the fires with.  There was also a need for this preparation to take place at the airport where the planes were at the ready.  On the recommendation of Harold Hendrickson, Joe Ely approached Wim Lely of Orland about creating a retardant mixer.  Hendrickson knew that Lely, known for his inventiveness with machinery, could build anything. Lely created a tank with a huge aircraft propeller, “that could mix a load for a thousand gallon tanker in a matter of minutes.” He had it installed at the Glenn County Airport in Willows.  This legendary piece of historical fire-fighting apparatus is purportedly still located there.

One eventful day, after fighting a fire in Mendocino County with his N3N converted Navy plane, “Harold Hendrickson was proceeding from the Ukiah Airport to his home base at Hoberg’s when he spotted a fire in Eight Mile Valley atop Cow Mountain.  Hendrickson swooped down and clobbered the blaze with a full load of borate before radioing the Ukiah Division of the U.S. Forest Service.  A patrol dispatched to the area had little to do but mop up the fringes.”

Eventually, as the 1960’s dawned, the Forest Service brought in PBY’s and F7F’s, much larger multi-engine aircraft.  Though the local agricultural pilots were the initial pioneers, proving that wildfires could be fought from the air, they were nudged out by these big air tankers and their imported government crews.  Some of the local pilots were indignant and discouraged by these events.  Floyd Nolta just smiled and said, “What the hell, it was fun while it lasted.” Their pioneering work of fighting fires from the air finished, the local agricultural pilots continued serving the local farmers by sowing and spraying the rice fields of the Northern Sacramento Valley. 

Irene Nolta, widow of Vance Nolta, during a telephone interview from her home in Meridian, Idaho stated: “At the time it seemed commonplace, just a part of everyday life.  Now I realize that I was witnessing a part of history.” She explained to me how she would assist her late husband by serving in the role of ‘flagger’.  The job of ‘flagger’ was a crucial element in crop dusting.  Irene would stretch a six-foot length of chain across the area to be sown.  Standing at one end of the chain and holding a red flag, she would guide the pilot on his run.  After each pass of the aircraft she carefully moved the chain until the sowing was complete.  This ensured an even application of the material sown.  Irene mentioned that one could evaluate the quality of the seeding by looking at the distribution of the rice sprouts.  Bare areas signified a missed application.  Overlapping produced linear areas of dense sprouting rice.  The pilots prided themselves on their expertise.  Irene asserted that the Willows Flying Service pleased their clients such as the Llano Seco Ranch.

Irene Nolta provided one humorous anecdote about the ‘flaggers’.  She relates that her late husband Vance, in a pinch to find someone to do this job, would sometimes search the bars of Willows’s ‘skid-road’, a notorious area along Tehama Street, for likely candidates.  “If these men were inebriated, and fell asleep in the field, Vance would fly low over the drunken ‘flagger’ and wake him by revving the engine.  This would scare the hell out of them.”

Times changed and technology advanced in agricultural aviation.  For example; the position of ‘flagger’ has been mostly replaced by the innovation of G.P.S. (Global Positioning Satellite).  The author’s cousin, Gary Hendrickson, son of agricultural aviation pioneer Harold Hendrickson, has been at the forefront of the use of G.P.S. technology.  With this innovation the fields can be sown or sprayed with pinpoint accuracy.  Thus, there is no further need to search for itinerant ‘flaggers’.

The original aircraft have also been phased out over time.  No longer do you see Stearman or N3N aircraft sowing or spraying the rice fields of the Sacramento Valley. Piper and Grumman Ag-Cat biplanes have become the aircraft of choice with today’s pilots. Helicopters are also used to some extent. As you recall, those older aircraft had to be modified to serve the role of crop duster.  These modern aircraft are custom built for specialized service in agricultural aviation.

The original pioneers of agricultural aviation in the Sacramento Valley have, with the exception of Frank Prentice, also faded into the past.  Vance Nolta, an early unsung hero of the trade, died in September 1965.  Fellow pilots Frank Michaud, Lee Sherwood, Raymond Varney, Harold Hendrickson, and L.H. McCurley flew over the Willows Cemetery in final tribute to the first of the pioneers to die.  Floyd ‘Speed’ Nolta died in July 1974.  Like his brother Vance, this pioneer aviator was buried in the veteran’s section of the Willows Cemetery.  The author’s uncle, Harold Hendrickson, died in November 1980.  He was buried in the Willows Catholic Cemetery with a service that also included an aerial tribute.  Raymond Varney was the most recent pioneer aviator to die.  He died in January of 2002 at the age of 95 and was laid to rest in the Orland I.O.O.F. cemetery. 

Like the pioneers of the nineteenth century who proceeded these men into history, we must salute them for their contribution to the advancement and growth of agricultural technology in the northern Sacramento Valley.                                      WW