Dare County Times April 26, 1946

Dave Driskill Has Unequaled Flight Record Over Scenic Outer Banks of
North Carolina His 10,000 Hours in Air Rivals Mark of Even Feathered Visitors
by Aycock Brown

Manteo N.C., April 24-- It is very doubtful if there has ever been a wild goose, swan or duck that spent the Winter months in the sounds along the North Carolina Coast that has had more hours in the air over those waters and the Outer Banks, as Dave Driskill, chief pilot and general manager of the Manteo-Ocracoke Transportation Company here.

Since he started flying planes from Manteo to the communities of Hatteras, Ocracoke, Avon, Corolla, Rodanthe, Waves and Buxton, Driskill has chalked up considerably more that 10,000 hours to his credit and a greater part of those hours were spent over the Outer Banks.

Except for his World War II service as first a border patrolman and then a test pilot. Driskill has averaged making a flight from Manteo to some of the isolated communities at least once daily during the past 20 years. And that is where he has the jump on the geese, duck and swan. They are on the coast only during the Winter months, but Driskill--he is on, that is over--the Outer Banks every day of the year when flying conditions are favorable.

Unusual Career

Driskill is a native of Knoxville, Tenn. During the early 20’s however, he was owner of a garage at Newport News, Va. those were the days of barnstorming Jennies-- when daring individuals would pay $5 for a flight of five minutes in one of the World War I biplanes--often called "crates"--just for the fun of it.

One such barnstormer operating in Tidewater Virginia in those days was Jimmy Crane. Crane’s flying fascinated garage operator Driskill. On off days at the garage Driskill would go out to the air strip and help Crane drum up passengers for the barnstorming hops. As a result he became a sort of ground crewman for Barnstormer Crane. It gave him an opportunity to get in a batch of free flights for himself.

During those free flights, Driskill instead of holding on to the edge of the cockpit and wonder if he would ever be safely on terra firma again-- the average thought of the average Jennie passenger--would watch Jimmy Crane handle the controls which kept the ship in flight.

Then one day at the field, while Crane was out of town, Driskill decided to see if he could fly the plane. Already he had mastered the art of starting the Jennie. So that part of his adventure was easily accomplished. Then, as no one was present to tell him not to do it, Driskill taxied up and down the dirt landing strip several times. Then he did it.

Manipulating the controls as he had seen Jimmy Crane do it, he was soon airborne and thus he became one of the few pilots living today who can claim the distinction of being a self-taught aviator. His first flight was successful and when he told Crane about it later, the latter said something like this: "So you are going to be an aviator; better let me tell you some of the important things you should never forget when you take these babies into the air." And Driskill has not forgotten the advice he received.

Thus with no actual instruction, Driskill Became a pilot and in 1926 he got his license to operate planes. Since then the man on whose Jennie he learned to fly has become one of Pan American Airways’ ace pilots.

By 1928 Driskill had his own plane and was in the barnstorming business. Airplanes by that time were not unusual at Hatteras because a fleet of them had based on a nearby beach a short time previously while a man named Billy Mitchell, a general in the United States Army, was trying to prove to a skeptical government that aircraft laden with bombs and explosives would become most important to the military in sending great surface craft to a watery grave in time of war.

Driskill was the first commercial pilot to operate in the Hatteras area. By 1927 he had established a flying field at Newport News and the first commercial flying field in the Norfolk area was operated by him from 1929 until 1931. In the meantime he was making frequent hips to the North Carolina Outer Banks on barnstorming or charter flights.

In the early thirties, G. Albert Lyon of Detroit, co-owner of the Gooseville Club at Hatteras purchased a $23000 Bellanca cabin plane and employed Driskill to be its pilot. In all kinds of weather the year around, the clubs members were flown to and from Hatteras in the big expensive plane. The Gooseville Club members no longer travel by planes from their home in the North but now often use Dave’s facilities on the Roanoke Island to Hatteras hops.

Park Service Pilot

As the New Deal was spawned and the great sand fixation project was established along the Outer Banks to halt erosion by the ocean which seemed on the verge of eliminating some of the islands in that area, Driskill was employed as chief pilot for the National Park Service in charge of the work. His job was keeping him in the air constantly shuttling the mail, payrolls, supplies, patients and passengers to and from the transient and CCC-camps at various localities from Ocracoke Island to the Virginia State line along the ocean’s edge.

On this job Driskill first flew a big army Fairchild, but later he was provided with an autogyro and with it he often amazed the residents of Roanoke Island by setting the big flying machine down in the front yard of the project headquarters near Fort Raleigh instead of using the runways he had built at Skyco, midway between Manteo and Wanchese.

At that same time he was operation as chief pilot for the sand fixation project, Driskill was privileged to also operate his personal flying enterprise and aboard his own plane he made many commercial or mercy trips to and from the airport at Skyco to the beach villages South of Oregon Inlet.

Then came the war. In 1942 pilots of Driskill’s calibre were needed and needed badly out on the Mexican border.

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