28 Facts About Cole Palen

Cole Palen became recognized for his work in the preservation of early aviation history.

Cole Palen created many accurate flying replicas of historical aircraft.

Cole Palen's schoolhouse was across the road from Poughkeepsie's Red Oaks Mill Airport.

At the age of five, Cole Palen discovered an aircraft starting crank in his parents' yard, and he returned it to its owner, Johnny Miller, the famous barnstorming pilot who managed the airport.

When he was 10, Gates Flying Circus visited the airport, and Cole Palen took his first flight, a 50 cent ride in a New Standard D-25.

Cole Palen discovered that one of the hangars at Roosevelt Field contained a small collection of dirty and disassembled World War I aircraft.

Cole Palen became the owner of an Aeromarine 39B, Avro 504K, Curtiss Jenny, Sopwith Snipe, SPAD XIII and a Standard J-l.

Cole Palen was given just thirty days to remove the aircraft from Roosevelt Field, which required nine 200-mile round trips to the family home where they were stored in a barn which he rented from his father.

Cole Palen flew the aircraft at nearby Stormville Airport from where he once had to make a forced landing in the neighbouring prison's vegetable garden.

In 1956 Cole Palen met Frank Tallman, who would later co-found Tallmantz Aviation.

Cole Palen seized the chance, and the money he made from the venture was to come in very useful.

In 1959, Cole Palen found a farm for sale near Rhinebeck, New York.

Cole Palen collected aircraft spanning the period of the birth of aviation up to the start of World War II.

Cole Palen restored them and flew them regularly, and where surviving examples of early original aircraft did not exist, he built accurate reproductions powered by authentic, vintage-era engines.

Cole Palen gathered a sizeable collection of veteran and vintage vehicles, mostly in working order.

Cole Palen had a strict philosophy regarding his aircraft; he believed that a plane was not truly a plane unless it could fly.

Where original aircraft existed elsewhere, Cole Palen would visit them, taking copious notes and photographs, and employing a special fuselage measuring clamp and rubbing paper for maximum accuracy.

At first Cole Palen lived alone in the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome farmhouse, and would construct and repair some of his aircraft there.

Cole Palen made a little money hiring aircraft for advertisements.

Cole Palen made appearances at airshows anywhere in the eastern US, flying to the closer ones, but trucking the aircraft to more distant shows, travelling as far as Florida where he did 11 shows in 1965.

The first show attracted just 25 people, but they soon developed into regular events, held on the last Sunday of every month, They became scripted, with pilots and other volunteers in period costumes playing WW1 comedy characters, with Palen himself acting as "famous fighter pilot" Eloc Nelap.

In return, Cole Palen was given the replica Passat Ornithopter that had been built for the film.

Cole Palen was disappointed that he wasn't given a flying aircraft, but it remains as part of the museum collection.

Cole Palen was associated with several more movies, most notably in 1983, when he worked as a stunt double for Woody Allen in the film Zelig.

Cole Palen ran workshops for local kids, and on some evenings, would go out by himself or gather a group to fly their models on the airfield.

Cole Palen had a workshop at the Florida home, and started to construct a replica of the Ryan NYP, Spirit of St Louis, Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic aircraft.

The Smithsonian, with whom Cole Palen had a close relationship, even providing identical cockpit instruments from their stores.

Several of the original World War I aircraft that Cole Palen acquired and restored to airworthy condition are now on display in museums such as the United States Air Force Museum, Canada Aviation Museum, and the National Air and Space Museum.