Paul Redfern. In August 1927, Redfern became the first person to fly solo across the Caribbean Sea and the first to fly nonstop from North to South America. He has never been found or heard from since he was observed flying inland over Venezuela. Redfern's flight was twelve weeks after Lindbergh made his historic flight from New York to Paris. In 1929, Lindbergh came close to skimming the sands of the Sea Island, Georgia beach Redfern took off from and dropped carnations in his fellow flyer's honor. If Redfern had reached his final destination, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, his flight would have outdistanced Lindbergh. Redfern had an alternative landing site planned if his fuel ran too low, but it is unknown whether he pursued that alternative or decided to continue on to Rio where thousands awaited his arrival, including the President of Brazil and movie star Clara Bow.
Biography
Paul Rinaldo Redfern was born in 1902 to Blanche Myrtle Redfern and Dr. Frederick Coachefer Redfern in Rochester, NY. His uncles were Richard S. Redfern and Edwin C. Redfern. As a teenager, Paul lived in Columbia, S.C. where his father was a Dean at Benedict College and an advocate for black rights who advised Roosevelt on poverty in the South. His mother taught English at Benedict and represented South Carolina as a delegate at national political conventions. Paul was a mechanical and musical prodigy. He was planning to go to MIT, but after building several planes, he was asked by the U.S. government at age 16 to go to N.J. to be a production inspector for the Army Air Corps at the Standard Aircraft Company. Upon returning to South Carolina, he became a barnstormer at air shows and started the first airport in Columbia, S.C. He married Gertrude Hildebrand in Toledo, Ohio in 1925.
Flight and disappearance
Redfern went missing in 1927 when he attempted to fly from Brunswick, Georgia to Brazil in a Stinson SM-1 Detroiter NX-773 nicknamed the Port of Brunswick. He was spotted by the Norwegian freighter Christian Krogh a few hundred miles off the coast of South America, after dropping a message asking for the ship to be turned in the direction of the nearest land, and when nearing Venezuela he was spotted by a fisherman just off the coast and then later by others in towns and outposts in Venezuela. He failed to arrive in Rio de Janeiro, and over the years more than a dozen search parties were organized. Missionaries and people visiting tribes living in the jungle reported on a white man living among the Indians, but he was never found and no credible evidence documenting that he somehow survived the flight exists. In September 1927, George Henry Hamilton Tate, sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, went to look for Redfern. Some believed him to still be alive as late as 1932. In 1936, Art Williams claimed he found traces of the Redfern crash in British Guyana. In 1937, the 13th expedition was organized to find out his fate. Now missing for ten years, he could be legally declared dead. In February 1938, Frederick John Fox died while trying to find Redfern. In April 1938 Theodore J. Waldeck believed he found the wreckage of Redfern's plane. His father died in 1941, still hoping that his son would be found alive. His widow, Gertrude Hillabrand, died in 1981 and was buried in Detroit, Michigan. In 1988 Robert Carlin believed that Redfern had flown over Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela only to be killed in a crash in the jungle and that a report that aviator Jimmy Angel had seen wreckage of Redfern's plane was not bragging but correct. Carlin believed the area to be approximately 40 miles NNW of Angel Falls.
