A Trio of Porterfields Trek Across Time

Cable Airport Begins with A Porterfield
Cable Airport (CCB), the United State’s largest privately-owned public-use airport, is seven miles northwest of Ontario International Airport, in Upland, California. Nestled against the San Gabriel Mountains, the airport was built in 1945 by Dewey Cable, an enterprising mechanic who, in addition to his day job as a foreman of the P-38 maintenance depot at Ontario Airfield, had a vision of owning and operating his own airport. Dewey, a ‘get-it-done’ personality, undertook the task of building an airport that 70 years later encompasses 160 acres, 500+ aircraft and a family tradition of friendly flying in Southern California (see article ‘Cable Airport – 70 Years of Service’ in this issue).

The first aircraft that landed on the gravel mix runway of Cable Airport on May 5, 1945, was a 1939 CP-50 Porterfield, owned by the Cable family. Today, Cable Airport is home to three Porterfields — a 1941 CP-65, NC37895 owned by my husband, Chris and I, a 1941 C-75, NC34837, owned by Harold Dyck and Bob Cable, grandson of Dewey Cable, and a 1940 CP-65, NC25590, co-owned by Mike Polley and Bob Cable. These three Porterfields represent a small but relevant snapshot of the development of general aviation training prior to WWII, and today demonstrate the usefulness of these aircraft for training and plain old fun flying.

The Man Behind the Porterfield
The business mind behind this trainer was Edward Everett Porterfield Jr, not an engineer, but a successful Kansas City, Mo., businessman, who had already made a name for himself building biplanes as the American Eagle Aircraft Corp. in the 1920s. The mid-1920s saw the aircraft industry quickly building up, due in part to the passing of the Kelly Act of 1925 that allowed the U.S. Post Office to contract out mail transportation services to private carriers. This created an element of financial security for the commercial operators of air mail routes. Aviation development increased rapidly, as predicted by several aviation experts such as Gen. “Billy” Mitchell, for both passenger and cargo transport. Contractors to the U.S. Postal Service could carry revenue passengers, but the priority was the air mail offered for transport.(1)

Porterfield, who was born in 1890 in Kansas City, Mo., was the son of a local circuit court judge. He learned to fly in 1925 in a surplus Curtiss JN-4 Jenny, which he nicknamed a ‘flying coffin,’ at Richards Field, Kansas City, Missouri. Porterfield was already a successful entrepreneur having turned a used car business and a Ford dealership into one of the largest business concerns in Kansas City.2 He felt that both aircraft and aviation training facilities were lacking, and that. . .