America fell in love with aviation in the 1930s and the dangerous nature of air races drew large crowds to airports such as Cleveland Municipal Airport, shown as it appeared under construction on a race day in the photo below. A half-mile of grandstands adjacent to the home stretch of the race course accommodated 50,000 spectators and thousands more in standing room only. The large field on the right speaks for itself…each black dot is an automobile in the airport parking lots.
Some of the contests were relatively ho-hum endurance flights but the closed-course races—with pilots flying at high speeds and very low altitudes—were extremely hazardous; crashes were common, some were fatal.
