Buehl worked with another man to establish Flying Dutchman Air Service. In March 2011, Air & Space Magazine featured an article stating that the partner was a man named Emory C. Malick. The source of the information used in the article was Malick's grand-niece, Mary Groce. She had been sorting through family memorabilia and came across material that linked Malick with Buehl. We contacted Groce and have since become friends. Certainly the material she found included material we also have in our collection and these at least suggest that Malick had a strong interest in Flying Dutchman Air Service. During his lifetime, Malick directly told people that he was a partner in establishing Flying Dutchman Air Service. We have since shown that Malick was not Buehl's partner.
Background
According to the story Buehl told, in the beginning of Flying Dutchman Air Service he had a partner. The partner contributed most, if not all, of the capital investment in the business - he provided the airplane, a KR-31. Buehl contributed his time and labor. As Buehl told the story, he did the flying. The business was named for Buehl, who came from Germany ("Deutsch" is the word Germans use to identify their own nationality, so it was not too much of a stretch to make him the "Flying Dutchman"). It was the partner who promoted Buehl as having been a German "ace" pilot during World War One (a complete fabrication). Buehl and his partner split the money they took in from giving sky rides and flying lessons.
The partnership came apart, according to Buehl, when he realized that his partner had borrowed the money to purchase the airplane. In Germany, this sort of financing was unknown. It was a huge revelation to Buehl to find out it was common in the United States. Buehl realized that he could borrow money, buy his own airplane and become an independent business man.
In trying to confirm the story, the immediate problem was that none of us had any clear documentary evidence that Buehl and Malick worked together. No one in the Buehl family could recall the name of the partner and no one in either family could find any surviving records of this arrangement. Also, there are no photos in Buehl's collection that clearly include anyone of Malick's description. In Malick's collection, there is no evidence that Malick ever owned a KR-31 (Malick preferred Waco). After 1928, Buehl did not have any partners; after 1928, business papers show that he was the sole owner of Flying Dutchman Air Service.
While there is no mention of the partner's name in the log books, they identifiy the airplanes Buehl was flying. Buehl's Pilots Log shows that in 1928, he was flying airplanes belonging to Thomas Trivigno, a beginning pilot who had his eyes on a career in aviation. Trivigno did own a KR-31 and Buehl used it for giving commercial flights. None of the airplanes Malick ever owned are mentioned in Buehl's log. The story Buehl told fits perfectly with evidence from airplane registrations that the partner was Trivigno.
A little about Malick
We have a copy of Malick's complete Airmen's record, as well as other material. Malick received a pilot's license in March 1912. Later, Malick worked in the Philadelphia area, doing aerial photography for Aero Service Corporation and Dallin Aerial Surveys. Malick graduated from the Curtiss Aviation School, in San Diego, in March 1912 and received International Pilot's License #105.
Malick was among the earliest licensed pilots in the United States and even in the world. Recall that in 1905 the fact that Wilbur Wright demonstrated sustained, controlled flight (flying 24 miles around New York City) was considered a big deal. He was able to fly around the city, all alone in the sky, going where he wanted to go, and was able to land when he wanted to. Other great pioneers, such as Alberto Santos Dumont or Louis Blériot, who first flew across the English Channel (1909), were in the air not much before Malick. Also, it is worth noting that Malick had been flying for years before he went to Curtiss.
We believe it possible that Malick and Buehl may have worked together at some point, perhaps during the time Buehl worked for Brock & Weymouth and when Malick was working for Dallin Aerial Surveys, both of them doing aerial photography. This would have been between 1926 and 1928.
