Howdy folks I'm Hank Sheffer and welcome to another true life story right here with
Larry Hedrick on Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains today we have a rather unusual story
in that the story starts in Italy of all places Francisco de Pinado was born in 1890 and as soon
as he was old enough he joined the Italian naval academy and by world war one he was plotting
and flying reconnaissance missions for the Italian military he was a strong advocate of
pontoon planes and had every opportunity he would promote that type of aircraft
in fact he didn't even think that you should build a land-based airport and spend all that
money when you had all this water surrounding your country Francisco began to rise and rank and gain
influence with his superiors and was convinced them that pontoon planes were very important
and he began to make world record setting trips long-range trips across the country one of these
trips was from Italy to across India to Japan and down to Australia and back along the pacific rim
and in 1922 Benito Mussolini came into power and he was basking in Francisco's glory
and he will he wanted to show off his air force to the world particularly to the United States
Benito was a self-centered arrogant individual in fact I looked him up in the dictionary
and his name his picture was right next to the word arrogant
anyway he arranged with Francisco to make a round-the-world trip Francisco chose this airplane
to do the job this had a dual engine on top of the wings that had a push and a pull motor at the same
time and the the plane was manufactured to take off with a full load at sea level and this proved
to be a problem as we get a little later down the line he left from an island off the coast of Italy
in 1927 and he flew down through morocco and down the African coast until he could fly
across to Brazil he done a tour of South America and was one of the first people
in fact the very first person to fly the length of the amazon river with this seaplane and
then across he went across the gulf of Mexico and landed in Louisiana, New Orleans
from there he flew across Texas with a stop or two and into New Mexico where he his stop was at
hill lake just south of truth Truth or Consequences New Mexico
there the sea level was at 4 600 feet and they couldn't get the plane off off the surface
he had to dump 250 gallons of fuel some tools and some spare parts before he could get to
plane airborne but this necessitated to arrange for another stop because from
from New Mexico he was supposed the next stop was in San Diego they had to to make a makeshift stop
in Arizona and he mentioned if he could find canyon lake which had just been built
that he could surely find Roosevelt lake so evidently they plan to go to phoenix and come back
up the salt river in order to find these lakes you got to remember a seaplane can't land on land
and so therefore a seaplane looking for a body of water that small is like an airplane looking
for an island in the middle of pacific but he finally got to Roosevelt lake and made his landing
and they started to refuel the plane and there was a spillage of some type a young
man there who had piloted the boat that towed the seaplane up to the port at Roosevelt lake
was watching the proceeding there and there was two stories that were written about that
one was that he threw a cigarette in the water and that ignited the flames
but that isn't likely in that big of a space so we think that the other story where he lit
a cigarette and threw the match in the water which ignited the flames and burnt the plane to
a crisp and it sank in 40 foot of water well the engine was later recovered and uh but Mussolini
was not to be stopped by this uh uh wonderful media thing that he had going so he had an
identical plane shipped to New York and Francisco went to New York to get the plane but by that time
Lindbergh had made his world record flight and the media attention was all on Lindbergh so Francisco
just simply went back to Italy he finally got out of the military and came to the United States and
he bought a plane on his own and was fixing to do another long distance world record setting flight
but on takeoff his plane crashed in 1933 and he was killed Benito Mussolini being involved with
the Superstition Mountains is just another little mystery of the superstition mountains
thank you for watching this episode of Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains
you