A.Paulita Roa
AS a kid, I learned that there are two local words for airplane--aeroplano and idro. The word idro has not been used nor heard of for a long time now. It was only the other year that I came to know why the plane was also called “idro.” No, it is not a hick or baduy word that was coined by the people who saw with their own eyes a real plane here in Cagayan in 1925. In fact, idro was then commonly used to describe a plane in Bohol and other places around the Visayas.
Idro comes from the first two syllables of the word “Hydroplane” - though the pronounciation is different for the first letter, “I” is heavily accented. The hydroplane known also as the seaplane was the preferred type of air transportation in the 1920s for lack of airports in many parts of the world. The idro can land on the river, lake and even the open sea.
From our old family baul, I found a postcard photo in sepia of the first landing of the idro in Cagayan on Nov. 13, 1925 near the Macabalan wharf. The photo showed the plane being surrounded by several bancas filled with men with a boy standing in one of the bancas and there is a huge crowd of onlookers standing at the wharf. There are two other photos on the first landing taken on different angles that are on display at the Cagayan de Oro City Museum.
A friend told me that the news of the coming of this seaplane was a big one and got many Kagay-anons very excited. Her grandfather at that time was a teenager. He and a big group of residents living in Opol, woke up at 3 am and walked all the way to Macabalan in order to witness the first landing of the idro at mid-morning. My father, Pio, told me he was a student at the Misamis Provincial High School then. All classes were suspended that day. He and his classmates stood outside at the baseball field with their teachers and watched the plane passed by on its way to Macajalar Bay. At that time, the idro was seen as a novel flying machine and many were curiously fascinated by it.
The hydroplane that made the first historic landing in Macajalar Bay on Nov. 13, 1925 or 97 years ago, was an O - 5 Douglas # 24 - 7. It was an armed military seaplane that was based in Camp Nichols, Rizal. The first prototype of the O - 5 Douglas was known as the Douglas World Cruiser of the DWC. This was the plane that successfully flew around the world in 1924. The success of the DWC established firmly the Douglas Aricraft Company as the leading airplane manufacturer in the world. The company adopted the motto “First Around the World - First the World Around” in commemoration of the first aerial circumnavigation.
But the seaplane that first landed in Cagayan met a fiery end in Balingasag two months later as recounted by an eyewitness (Vega, Garcilaso. Glimpses of Balingasag,1997. p.97) who wrote: “On January 17, 1926, the people were surprised to see flying object diving from one cloud to another and creating a sound totally strange to them. The object made acrobatic exhibitions to the delight of the people who watched with awe, and wondered how a non-bird could fly with such dexterity. Suddenly the object became uncontrollable and smoke was seen coming from its tail. The flying object was a Douglas hydroplane, belonging to the United States Air Force. It crashed at Banuot as it hit a tall coconut tree. The pilot, a certain Lt. Williams, was able to free himself from the plane before it burst. He was unhurt.”
In the following decades after the 1920s, the seaplane gradually declined in use as airports, huge and small were built all over the world. And all of us now say “aeroplano” not idro when we used it to describe airplanes or anything associated with it.
(Special thanks to our Kagay-anon military historian, Kerwin Salvador P. Caragos for sharing to me the data about the O-5 Douglas seaplane.)
