Saturday, November 9

11 am – 12:00 pm

Join us as early aviation historian Roy Mize spins a tale of “Aerial Treason,” a story of spies, Sunset Magazine, the silver screen, and pioneer San Jose aviator Bob Fowler’s 1914 “dance” with the U. S. Attorney General.

In April 1914, Sunset Magazine publisher Charles K. Field put his personal liberty and the future of his magazine on the line when he published pictures and a story and about the military defenses of the nearly completed Panama Canal.

The Attorney General of the United States charged Field and three other men as spies:  Robert George Fowler, famous early aviator; Riley E. Scott, West Point graduate turned bomb-dropping expert; and Ray Duhem, San Francisco aerial movie maker .

Their efforts challenged the status quo for military defenses that protected coastal installations.  The article’s title ignited a national firestorm: CAN THE PANAMA CANAL BE DESTROYED FROM THE AIR?

About Roy Mize:

Roy Mize is an early aviation historian with a passion about forgotten stories of the early days of flying. In 1956 he enlisted in the Army and spent three years as a student and then an instructor at the Army Air Defense School in Fort Bliss, Texas, working with computer control systems for ground-to-air missiles. After the Army he moved to what later became Silicon Valley and over the next 40 years he worked at five advanced telecommunications research companies.

He holds three university degrees in business. However, his entire experience has been in the care and feeding of research and development scientists and engineers for aerospace, satellite communications, high energy lasers and advanced software development projects. 

Roy has taught continuing education classes for several universities, including UC Santa Cruz, UCLA and Sonoma State University, and adult education classes for a local school district. He also developed and taught one of the first online Web search classes for UC Santa Cruz in 1996/97 and has guest lectured on planning and scheduling concepts and on his avocation, early aviation history.  

Event included with museum admission.