I am often asked where I get the ideas for my Friday columns. Sometimes it begins with a story or question from a reader.
This week’s column is a good example of that. Bill Null asked about a pilot who successfully flew his small plane under a Kauai bridge but died in a crash less than 30 minutes later.
“Sometime back in July of 1967, a crop duster on Kauai flew his plane under the Kalihiwai Bridge on Kauai’s North Shore,” Null said. “My supervisor read about it in either the Star-Bulletin or the Advertiser.
“Some say the pilot, Joseph Bell Jr., flew under the Hanalei Bridge, but I question it as that bridge is much too low, maybe eight feet clearance, whereas the Kalihiwai Bridge was about 30 or more feet above the water. Older locals here say that he flew under the Kalihiwai Bridge.
“I’ve not been able to find anything to substantiate that flight. Did it happen, and if so, which bridge was it?”
It’s an interesting question. It did happen. I looked up reports in local newspapers in July 1967. I found a few errors, but I think I’ve gotten to the bottom of it. Let’s holoholo to Kauai’s north shore this week and take a look.
2 bridges
The Kalihiwai Bridge and the Hanalei Bridge are quite different from each other.
The Kalihiwai Bridge is about 2 miles west of the Kilauea Lighthouse and 3 miles east of Hanalei Bay. The gently curved concrete bridge is over 700 feet in length.
In 1957 a tsunami hit Kauai harder than the other major islands, and the original Kalihiwai Bridge was smashed by a wave. The wave picked up a 15-ton concrete piece of the bridge and carried it 150 feet upstream, away from the ocean.
More than 75 homes were demolished or damaged along Kauai’s north shore. An estimated 250 people were left homeless, and 1,000 residents to the west were isolated when the bridge was destroyed.
In 1962 the new Kalihiwai Bridge was unveiled about half a mile inland from the original bridge, away from future tsunamis.
I estimate the bridge is 40-60 feet above Kalihiwai Stream, depending on the height of vegetation, which could affect the clearance — plenty of room for a small plane to fly under.
Hanalei Bridge
The Hanalei Bridge, about 3 miles west of the Kalihiwai Bridge, was fabricated in New York in 1912 with steel trusses. It is 106 feet long and wide enough for only one car to cross at a time.
The bridge is located at the Hanalei Valley Lookout on Kauai’s north shore, where millions of visitors have stopped to take photos of the beautiful loi with the mountains behind them. A stream runs toward the lookout, then turns to the west and flows under the Hanalei Bridge.
The bridge is half a mile from the entrance to Princeville and 8 miles from Haena, where the plane crashed and the road ends.
The community has resisted replacing and enlarging the Hanalei Bridge to limit large buses and heavy trucks into Hanalei Valley, to and preserve the North Shore’s slow-paced, rural lifestyle.
When it’s very rainy, the stream can rise to the level of the bridge, making it impassable. In drier circumstances, I estimate the clearance is just 10-20 feet at most. I can’t imagine a small plane flying under it.
The pilot
The pilot, Joseph Bell Jr., was 42 years old in 1967. He was a World War II fighter pilot. After the war he worked as a crop duster in Arizona before moving to the Big Island in 1954.
He got a job flying for Murrayair, a crop-spraying and seed-dusting service for sugar and pineapple companies founded by Phil Murray in 1948.
“Bell transferred to Kauai in 1957,” Hank Soboleski wrote in a 2018 article in the Garden Island newspaper. “On Kauai, Bell could be seen flying his 450-horsepower Stearman PT-13 biplane almost every morning, six days a week.”
He’d fly above the cane fields to drop fertilizer pellets or to spray cane ripener upon them. He’d carry an average load of 1,500 pounds, enough to spray or fertilize 4 to 22 acres.
According to the 1967 article, Bell often said, “If it’s the last thing I do before I die, I’m going to fly under the Hanalei Bridge.”
July 16, 1967
The Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Star-Bulletin both carried the same story and photos. “He had taken off at the Lihue Airport shortly before (5 a.m.) on July 16, 1967, and flown to the north side of the island in his Murrayair Stearman biplane,” the article stated.
Bell had flown for over 20 years in a Stearman. He was sighted by a number of Hanalei, Wainiha and Haena residents skimming the ocean and soaring through aerial acrobatics.
Maile Rice Arnold of San Jose, Calif., was vacationing at a Haena beach home. Haena is where the road ends on Kauai’s north shore and the Kalalau Trail begins.
“He flew a yellow plane and wore a yellow helmet and coat,” Arnold recalled Monday in a phone call. “He passed by where we were having breakfast at our eye level. The house was up from the beach a little bit. He flew by over the beach, and we waved at him. He waved back.
“He circled around and went by again, and we waved at him again. I could even see him smiling. He landed in the pasture next door and walked over here.
“He said he had just flown under the Kalihiwai Bridge. It was something he had always wanted to do.
“We chatted, then walked down the beach to where he had landed the plane.”
Former state Attorney General Michael Lilly is Arnold’s half brother. In an email this week, he said he recalls her saying that Bell had boasted that he had flown under the Kalihiwai Bridge.
”Then, he said he would show them some tricks,” Lilly continued. “My nieces chocked his wheels with coconuts while he revved up his biplane engine. The last thing he said was, ‘Think happy thoughts.’”
Arnold recalled that Bell then “took off and flew out over the ocean, then flew back very low over us, evidently to show us some acrobatics.
“On one loop, he circled and then headed straight down, crashing nose first only a few feet away from my sister and two young nieces. He hit a rise in the sand, and the plane flew apart. It was one of the most frightening, traumatic experiences of our lives.”
Neighbors
Joseph Coconate was a neighbor of the pilot.
“Bell and his family lived on Hookipa Road in Wailua Houselots on Kauai, the same road we lived on in the 1960s,” Coconate said this week in an email. “I knew the family well as I ‘dated’ his daughter Judy during our early teen years.
“The family had one of the few two-story homes in the area. Whenever Joe returned home in his plane, he would do a spin around his house to announce his presence.
“It was irritating, as the plane was very noisy and he flew quite low. Judy once told me he was a bit of a showoff. Imagine that, from his own daughter, no less.
“I remember well the day Joe crashed his plane in the Hanalei area. Most of us were not surprised, as he was known to take risks with his crop duster.”
Which bridge?
We might never know what caused his crash, but the consensus is closing in on the bridge he flew under.
The 1967 article in both local dailies said Bell had flown under the Hanalei Bridge. They quote Arnold as saying Bell boasted of flying under the Hanalei Bridge.
Today, Arnold says Bell boasted of flying under the Kalihiwai Bridge. She said the 1967 article got it wrong.
I talked to two reporters at the Garden Island newspaper, Soboleski and Dennis Fujimoto. Both are now sure it was the Kalihiwai Bridge.
Soboleski said he talked in 2018 to longtime Hanalei resident Dick Sloggett Jr. about Bell’s flight. Sloggett, who had flown small planes, said it would have been practically impossible for Bell to have flown safely under the Hanalei Bridge, and he confirmed that it was indeed the Kalihiwai Bridge.
If you have a question about Hawaii people, places or companies, send me an email.
Bob Sigall is the author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books. Contact him at Sigall@Yahoo.com or sign up for his free email newsletter at RearviewMirrorInsider.com.
