Danny Grecco

Quick Facts

Significance:

Pilot and mechanic

Place of Birth:

San Jose, CA

Date of Birth:

November 10, 1896

Date of Death:

October 13, 1983

By Fort Vancouver National Historic Site Volunteer-in-Parks Dr. Robert Staab

Early Life and Career

Dionysus Daniel "Danny" Grecco was born in San Jose, California, on November 10, 1896. Just one year earlier, his parents and older brother had immigrated to the United States from Italy. In 1904, the family moved again, this time to Portland, Oregon. In 1905, a 9 year old Grecco stood in awe and watched Lincoln Beachey fly his dirigible at the Lewis and Clark Exposition. From that moment, Grecco looked to the sky for his future.

In 1910, at the Rose City Speedway, Grecco saw his first airplane, flown by Eugene Ely. Ely was part of the Glen Curtiss aviation demonstration team, flying in exhibitions and showing off Curtiss products around the country. Curtiss airplanes featured a simple construction style, which could easily be disassembled, trucked to another city, and reassembled. 

On June 11, 1912, Grecco was one of the "mechanics" who helped assemble Silas Christofferson's pusher-type airplane on the top of Portland's Multnomah Hotel. Grecco worked on the wings and landing gear. The aircraft had to be disassembled and hoisted in pieces to a wooden runway constructed on top of the hotel's roof, where it was reassembled. It weighed only 860 pounds and was pushed by a Curtiss OX-5 engine. The airplane was constructed from spruce, muslin, wires, and bamboo. Christofferson lifted off from the top of the Multnomah Hotel, made his historic flight - the first to cross the Columbia River - and landed at the Aviation Camp at Vancouver Barracks in Vancouver, Washington. The flight took a total of 12 minutes.
 

Wing Walking

After briefly working in China as an airplane mechanic, Grecco returned to the United States to work for Tex Rankin, a well-known Portland-based pilot and operator of a flight school. Grecco first began flying in 1919, in a Great Lakes biplane powered by an OX-5 engine, an agile little plane, popular with acrobatic pilots. The abilities of this biplane came in handy during Grecco's death-defying career with the Tex Rankin Air Circus.

In addition to running a flight school, Tex Rankin had employed a number of "extra ordinary, brave, or plain crazy" men who were part of his "Tex Rankin Air Circus." As he worked to pay for flying lessons and training, Grecco became a "wing walker." Walking on the wings of in-flight aircraft was a popular performance in the years following World War I, and Grecco was one of the best. He would walk from one plane to another, one plane to a boat, or one plane to an automobile. He accomplished all this without a harness or a parachute, flying 400-500 feet off the ground. Grecco performed in cities along the West Coast, especially in Oregon, at state fairs and other functions. In 1928, he "hung on to a Curtiss Jenny's wing as it flew over the Columbia River."

By 1936, federal regulations were passed banning wing walking at under 1,500 feet elevation; if above 2,000 feet, wing walkers were required to wear a parachute. With these new safety rules, the thrill of watching wing walking performances lessened, and the stunt lost its appeal.
 

Mechanics Career

During World War I, Grecco served as a mechanic in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

In 1927, at the new Portland Municipal Airport on Swan Island, Grecco serviced Charles Lindbergh's plane when the famed aviator arrived to help dedicate the new airfield. Also in that year, he earned his aviation mechanic's license.

Like many early pilots, Grecco experienced some devastating crashes. On April 25, 1927, at Pearson Field, Grecco took two Portland telephone operators for a joy ride, but at 100 feet elevation, the airplane faltered and crashed into the high grading of the SP&S railroad berm. The two women, Zola V. Schan and Harriette Franklin, were killed. Grecco survived the crash, but his injuries required a lengthy hospital stay. Records show that Grecco had been married to Franklin in 1922. Grecco remarried in 1929, to Genevieve Coffey. The Greccos had a son, Warren, in 1931.

In 1937, Grecco became a test pilot for a new plane built by Marvin Joy. The plane was given many names, among them "the flying fuselage." This newly designed plane did not last long, and was very unstable. Grecco remarked that "it had no lateral stability."

As good as he was at flying and stunts, Grecco became most well known as a talented airplane mechanic. He was part of a team that assembled the first plane to fly from the airfield at Portland's Westmoreland Park. Grecco was affiliated with both the Ace Aircraft Company in Portland, and the Oregon, Washington, Idaho Air Plane Company.

In 1937, he was one of the mechanics who disassembled the famed ANT-25 Soviet aircraft that made the world's first transpolar flight, from Moscow, Russia, to Pearson Field. After it was disassembled, it was shipped back to the Soviet Union via the Panama Canal. One of Grecco's most treasured memories was receiving "tools and a survival kit" from the Soviet crew.
 

After World War II

In 1946, Grecco earned the first helicopter mechanic rating from Bell helicopters. Later, he was involved as a mechanic in the test flights of Chuck Yeager's X-1 in 1947. In his later years, Grecco worked at Pearson Field, maintaining old aircraft and doing mechanical work up until the months before his death in October 1983.

Grecco is a member of the Oregon Aviation Hall of Fame. In 1963, the Federal Aeronautic Administration designated Danny Grecco as "the best mechanic in the west."
 

Bibliography

Alley, Bill. Pearson Field: Pioneering Aviation in Vancouver and Portland. Charleston: SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006.

Harris, Patrick J. The Coming of the Birdman: The Aviator's Image in Oregon, 1905-15. MA Thesis, Portland State University, 1981.

Oregon Aviation Historical Society, 2011, Oral History Document, Danny Grecco, 1978.

Sinclair, Donna. Part III: Riptide on the Columbia: A Military Community Between the Wars, Vancouver, Washington and the Vancouver National Historic Reserve, 1920-1942, with suggestions for further research. Vancouver, WA: National Park Service, 2005.

U.S. Census Bureau (1920). Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920 - Population. Portland, Oregon. Precinct 85.

U.S. Census Bureau (1930). Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930 - Population Schedule. Portland, Oregon.

Walker, John. A Century Airborne: Air Trails of Pearson Airpark. Vancouver, WA: 1994.

Washington Marriage Records, 1854-2013 [database online]. Washington State Archives. Olympia, Washington: Washington States Archives. Accessed through Ancestry.com.