Tony Jannus - Early Years

Early Years

Jannus was born in Washington, D.C., where his father Frankland Jannus was a patent attorney and his grandfather, Roger C. Weightman, had previously been mayor (1824–1827). By 1910, the 21-year old young man was employed as a boat engine mechanic. He became interested in flying when he saw an airshow in Baltimore, Maryland, in November, 1910, and began flight training that year at College Park Airport in Maryland. In 1911, Jannus was the first pilot to fly the Lord Baltimore II, an amphibious airplane built in Baltimore, from the city's Curtis Bay. His older brother, Roger Weightman Jannus (1886-1918), also learned to fly and both brothers became test pilots for airplane builder Thomas W. Benoist in St. Louis, Missouri, in late 1911.

On March 1, 1912, Tony Jannus piloted a Benoist biplane when Albert Berry made the first parachute jump from a moving airplane near St. Louis. Later that year, Jannus set a 1,900-mile (3,058 km) overwater flight record following the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers from Omaha, Nebraska, to New Orleans in a Benoist Land Tractor Type XII mounted with floats.

The next year, Jannus participated in a New York Times-sponsored air exhibition. He flew actress Julia Bruns in a Baldwin Red Devil 4,000 ft above Staten Island for twenty minutes on October 12, 1913. The next day, he flew in an air race over Manhattan, the Times reporting that "The graceful Benoist biplane sailed along on an even keel...driven by the famous Tony Jannus". Jannus described flying as, "...poetry of mechanical motion, a fascinating sensation of speed, an abstraction from things material into an infinite space." The following month, he moved to St. Petersburg, Florida. On 15 October, Jannus crashed on take off while setting off to search for Albert Jewell, an aviator who had disappeared over off southern Long Island while flying to join the race on 13 October; Jannus was unhurt in the crash, though the airplane was written off.