Aeronautics: Rainmaker

In 1917 a small-town chemist-electrician named James A. Boze, trudging through the muck of French battlefields, concluded, like many another before him, that the almost constant rains were caused by the incessant explosion of heavy artillery shells. This summer’s drought gave James A. Boze of Waxahachie, Tex. an idea. Obtaining damage waivers from the owners of some 27,000 parched acres south of Dallas, he hired a plane, flew over clouds, dropped high-explosive bombs into them. That day it rained in Waxahachie. Farmers thanked Nature, not Boze.

Next day the indefatigable rainmaker went up again, accompanied by Pilot Lou Foote, a newsreel photographer, a Dallas night-club entertainer. A bomb dropped from 15,000 ft. exploded prematurely, set off three other bombs inside the plane. With one side of the cabin blown out and flames eating their way through the cockpit, able Pilot Foote sideslipped coolly into a cotton field, saved himself and passengers. But next day pneumonia, brought on by burns, took James A. Boze.