Bert Acosta Bertrand Blanchard Acosta ( January 1 , 1895 – September 1 , 1954 ) was a record setting aviator . With Clarence D . Chamberlin they set an endurance record of 51 hours , 11 minutes , and 25 seconds in the air . He later flew in the Spanish Civil War in the Yankee Squadron . He was known as the " bad boy of the air " . He received numerous fines and suspensions for flying stunts such as flying under bridges or flying too close to buildings . Birth . Acosta was born in San Diego , California to Miguel Acosta and Martha Blanche Reilly . He attended the Throop Polytechnic Institute in Pasadena , California from 1912 to 1914 . He taught himself to fly in August 1910 and built experimental airplanes up until 1912 when he began work for Glenn Curtiss as an apprentice on a hydroplane project . In 1915 he worked as a flying instructor . He went to Canada and worked as an instructor for the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service in Toronto . In 1917 he was appointed chief instructor , Aviation Section , U . S . Signal Corps at Hazelhurst Field , Long Island where he test flew early open - cockpit aircraft such as the Continental KB - 1 over New York in below freezing conditions . Acosta married Mary Louise Brumley ( 1886 – 1962 ) in 1918 but they divorced in 1920 . He won The Pulitzer Trophy Race in 1921 and the same year set an airspeed record of 176 . 9 miles an hour . In 1922 he served as a test pilot for the Stout Batwing Limousine , Stout ' s forerunner to the Ford Trimotor . In 1925 he was a lieutenant in the U . S . Navy and was living at 1 Winslow Court in Naugatuck , Connecticut . He married Helen Belmont Pearsoll , on August 3 , 1921 . They eventually separated but never divorced . Endurance record . In April 1927 , he and Clarence D . Chamberlin set an endurance record of 51 hours , 11 minutes , and 25 seconds in the air . " Time magazine " magazine reported on April 25 , 1927 : Engineer Giuseppe M . Bellanca of the Columbia Aircraft Corporation had conditioned an elderly yellow - winged monoplane with one Wright motor , and scouted around for pilots . Lieut . Leigh Wade , round - the - world flyer , declined the invitation , saying Mr . Bellanca ' s plans were too stunt - like , not scientific . Shrugging , Mr . Bellanca engaged Pilots Clarence Duncan Chamberlin and burly Bert Acosta , onetime auto speedster , to test his ship ' s endurance . Up they put from Mitchel Field , Long Island , with 385 gallons of ethylated ( high power ) gasoline . All day they droned back and forth over suburbia , circled the Woolworth Building , hovered over Hadley Field , New Jersey , swung back to drop notes on Mitchel Field . All that starry night they wandered slowly around the sky , and all the next day , and through the next night , a muggy , cloudy one . Newsgatherers flew up alongside to shout unintelligible things through megaphones . Messrs . Acosta and Chamberlain were looking tired and oil - blobbed . They swallowed soup and sandwiches , caught catnaps on the mattressed fuel tank , while on and on they droned , almost lazily ( about 80 m . p . h . ) for they were cruising against time . Not for 51 hours , 11 minutes , 25 seconds , did they coast to earth , having broken the U . S . and world ' s records for protracted flight . In the same time , conditions favoring , they could have flown from Manhattan to Vienna . They had covered 4 , 100 miles . To Paris it is 3 , 600 miles from Manhattan . Jubilant , Engineer Bellanca ' s employers offered competitors a three - hour headstart in the race to Paris . The Bellanca monoplane ' s normal cruising speed is 110 m . p . h . She would require only some 35 hours to reach Paris — if she could stay up that long again . Orteig Prize Attempt . Columbia Aircraft Corp president Charles Levine planned on using Clarence Chamberlin or Bert Acosta as pilot with Lloyd W . Bertaud as copilot on their attempt at the Orteig prize in the Wright - Bellanca WB - 2 Columbia . Levine bumped Bertaud from the copilot position , prompting an injunction preventing any Orteig record flight . Lindbergh arrived on May 5 , 1927 . While Chamberlin waited for the injunction to be lifted , his other competition , Admiral Byrd ' s team was repairing his Fokker C - 2 Trimotor , the " America " after a practice run crash . On May 20 – 21 , 1927 , Lindbergh left Roosevelt Field and crossing the Atlantic , while leaving the ' Columbia ' and ' Atlantic ' behind at the adjacent Curtiss Field . Transatlantic flight . On June 29 , 1927 , thirty - three days after Charles Lindbergh ' s record setting transatlantic flight , Acosta flew from Roosevelt Field on Long Island to France with Commander Admiral Richard E . Byrd aboard the " America " . A short film of Acosta , Byrd , George Noville , and Grover Whalen giving a farewell speech was filmed in the Phonofilm sound - on - film process on June 29 and released as " America ' s Flyers " . During the flight , the ( perhaps apocryphal ) story was that Byrd had to hit Acosta over the head with a fire extinguisher or a flashlight when he got out of control from drinking during their flight . Bad Boy . In 1928 Connecticut suspended his pilot license for trying to fly under the Whittemore Memorial Bridge in Naugatuck . According to local Naugatuck tradition , the wing span of his aircraft was much longer than the width of the center arch of the bridge . The flight may have been a publicity stunt , as there was an advertisement for Splitdorf Spark Plugs on the fuselage . In 1929 he was fined $ 500 for low flying and stunting . When he failed to pay the fine , the Department of Commerce revoked his pilot license . He was arrested by Connecticut State troopers in 1930 for flying without a license . A new Terle Sportplane was being tested at Roosevelt Field in New York in 1931 , but the CAA did not register it as a licensed aircraft . The aircraft was later test flown by the famous test pilot , Bert Acosta , who found it perfect for his use since he was currently grounded from flying licenced aircraft from a previous infraction . After performing aerobatics with the aircraft to a large crowd , Acosta and Terle planned to produce the aircraft together as the " Acosterle Wild Cet " . The aircraft was test flown for two years , but could not meet certification requirements . In 1931 with Captain Lisandro Garay of the Honduran Air Force he planned to fly from New York to Honduras . They left from Floyd Bennett Field and loaded their Bellanca monoplane with 360 gallons of gasoline to make a test flight , Bert disappeared and never made the flight . Spanish Civil War . In 1936 Acosta was head of the Yankee Squadron in the Spanish Civil War with Eddie August Schneider and Frederic Ives Lord . " Time " magazine wrote on December 21 , 1936 : Hilariously celebrating in the ship ' s bar of the Normandie with their first advance pay checks from Spain ' s Radical Government , six able U . S . aviators were en route last week for Madrid to join Bert Acosta , pilot of Admiral Byrd ' s transatlantic flight , in doing battle against Generalísimo Francisco Franco ' s White planes . Payment for their services : $ 1 , 500 a month plus $ 1 , 000 for each White plane brought down . " Time " magazine wrote on January 4 , 1937 , although the attack was later determined to be propaganda : On Christmas Eve the " Yankee Squadron " of famed U . S . aviators headed by Bert Acosta , pilot of Admiral Byrd ' s transatlantic flight , at the last minute abandoned plans for a whoopee party with their wives at Biarritz , swank French resort across the Spanish frontier . They decided that they would rather raid Burgos , Generalísimo Franco ' s headquarters . The hundreds of incendiary bombs that they dropped on White hangars and munition dumps they jokingly described as " Messages of Christmas Cheer for the boys in Burgos . " Death . In December 1951 Acosta collapsed in a New York City bar and was hospitalized with tuberculosis . He died at the Jewish Consumptive ' s Relief Society sanatorium in Colorado in 1954 . He was 59 . Acosta was buried at the Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation at Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in North Hollywood , California .