Part 6

It is a bright, golden day in Texas. A little Mexican boy is working in a field of sugar cane just back of Kelly Field. The airplanes from the field are droning in the sleepy air above his head. Occasionally he pauses in his work to glance half curiously at one of them. He is not much interested in them. They are like the automobiles swishing endlessly past on the highway near by. He is accustomed to them. And besides, they are not of his world.

Sometimes the long motor roar of a ship coming out of a dive attracts his half-hearted attention. Occasionally an intricate formation maneuver over his head warrants his momentary gaze. Often he stares, half abstractedly, skyward while he works. Like a shoe cobbler in a window watching the crowds passing in the street.

This time, however, a curious interruption in the steady beating drone of a three-ship formation of DHs passing over him makes him involuntarily raise his head from his work. It is a strange sound, somehow ominous to him. He is accustomed to hearing the motors run. Even their tapering off for a landing is a different noise than this one. His unknowingly trained ears and maybe some strange premonition tell him that.

He sees two of the three ships locked together in collision. He sees them, startlingly silent and arrested in their flight, falling in their own debris. He sees two black objects leave the wrecks. He sees a white streamer trail out behind each of them and then blossom open into two swinging, slowly floating parachutes. He stands with his head thrown back, his Indian eyes rapt in his Asiatic face.

Suddenly he is alarmed, then full of fear. The two milling wrecks, black harbingers of doom by now, are going to fall on him. He begins to run. Any way, any direction at all. He runs as fast as his little brown legs will carry him. He covers a considerable distance from where he was standing by the time the wrecks hit.

The spot he runs from, unruffled, undisturbed, lies warming, sleeping in the sun. The wrecks don't hit that spot. They hit him, running.

The world that was not his has folded darkened crumpled wings of death around him.

HIGH FIGHT

One of the briefest and most amusing family fights I have ever listened in on occurred in an airplane. I was flying its owner and his wife to the coast.

We came in over the Mohave Desert, crossed the mountains at the desert's western edge, and started out over the valley, where I knew Los Angeles lay thirteen thousand feet beneath us. The valley and the ocean beyond were covered with fog, and I could see nothing but the white, billowed stretch of it and the tawny mountains rising out of it behind us.

I spiraled down and went through a hole in the fog near the foot of the mountains. It was lower and thicker underneath than I had hoped. I picked up a railroad and started weaving my way along it into the airport.

The owner of the ship, sitting on my right, was helping me with my map, holding it for me. His wife, sitting behind me, was squirming anxiously in her seat and peering tensely out of the windows through the low mists.

Soon she tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Aren't we flying awfully low?"

I half turned my head and shouted, "Yes, the ceiling is awfully low." I wanted to add, "You fool," but didn't dare.

"Isn't it dangerous?" she whined.

"We're all right," I shouted. "I've flown stuff like this before. I can handle it."

Pretty soon she tapped me on the shoulder again. "Where are we?" she inquired.

"I can't tell you the exact spot," I shouted, "but we are still on the right railroad and will be coming into the airport in a few minutes."

We passed over a town section just then, and the railroad branched three ways under us. I made a quick jump at my map to check which of the three I should follow. The wife saw me jump and must have seen that I looked worried. She tapped me on the shoulder again.

"Oh, are you sure we are going the right way?" she whimpered.

I started to turn around to explain to her what I was doing and why, realized my flying required all my attention right then, cast an appealing glance at her husband, clamped my jaws tight, and started studying landmarks. We were in close to the airport, and I didn't want to miss it.

I heard the husband shout one of the funniest mixtures of supplication and command I have ever heard.

"Now listen, honey," he shouted at her. "You keep your damn mouth shut, sweetheart."

GESTURE AT REUNIONS

It is the year before Lindbergh becomes famous. I have graduated in the same class with him from the army flying school the year before and have seen him only twice since. I am on an army cross-country trip, bound for St. Louis, when I land at Chicago and run into him. He is just taking off with the mail, bound for St. Louis too, and we decide to fly down together in formation.

It is getting dark when we sight the river at St. Louis in the distance. Lindbergh shakes his wings. He is calling my attention. I pull my ship in close to his. I see him pointing from his cockpit. I look ahead and see a speck. It grows rapidly larger. I make it out as another DH approaching us head on from the deepening dusk. It comes up, swings around into formation with us, and sticks its wing right up into mine. Its pilot peers at me, and I peer at him. We recognize each other. It is Red Love. Red, Lindbergh, and myself were three of the four cadets in our pursuit class at flying school. Looks like a class reunion in the air.

But no. Lindbergh is shaking his wings. He is banking. He is pointing down. He spirals down, circles a field, flies low over it several times, dragging it, looking it over carefully, and lands. Red and I follow.

Lindbergh and I crawl out of our ships with parachutes strapped to us. Red crawls out of his without one. Lindbergh takes his off as the three of us converge for greetings.

"You will need this getting the mail on into Chicago the rest of the way in the dark tonight," he says to Red, holding the chute out to him.

"It's the only one in the company," he says, turning, explaining to me, "and I won't need it for the few miles on into St. Louis from here."

We say hasty greetings and good-byes, crawl back into our still idling ships, and take off. Lindbergh, chuteless now, heads off south for St. Louis, and I follow. Red swings off in the opposite direction for Chicago.

I look back. I see Red disappearing into the darkening north. I know he feels better now, sitting on that chute.

AS I SAW IT

I had to go to Cleveland to bring back a ship that a student of mine had left there in bad weather. I got on an airliner, with a parachute. The chute was for use on the way back.

The airline porter wanted to put my chute in the baggage compartment. My argument was: "What good would it do me there?" The porter looked offended, but I kept my attitude and took my chute to my seat with me.

We took off from Newark after dark. The weather was bad, and we went blind three minutes after we took off.

I tried to console myself with the thought that the pilots were specially trained in blind flying, that they had instruments, had two motors, had radio, that everything was just ducky. But I couldn't even see the wing tips.

I tried to read my magazine. I found myself peering out of the windows through the darkness to see if we had come out on top yet.

I tried to nap. I found myself hearing the motors getting slightly louder, knowing we were nosing down; feeling myself getting slightly heavier in my seat, knowing the pilot was correcting; hearing the motors begin to labor slightly, knowing we were nosing up; feeling myself getting ever so slightly lighter in my seat, knowing the pilot was correcting again; telling myself repeatedly that he knew his stuff and that there wasn't anything I could do about it anyway, but sitting there going through every motion with him just the same.

Two hours later we were still blind, and my nose was pressing up against the windowpane almost constantly. The other passengers probably thought I had never been in a ship before.

Half an hour later we were still blind and only half an hour out of Cleveland. We broke out of the stuff finally just outside of Cleveland. We were flying low, and the lights were still going dim under us as we skimmed along not very far above them. There wasn't much ceiling when we landed, and it closed in shortly after that.

Most of the passengers roused themselves from sleep when we landed. I was plenty wide awake. I knew that ship hadn't had much gas range. If we had got stuck, we would have had to come down someway before very long. If those passengers could have read my mind, or I think even the pilot's, there probably would have been a battle in the cabin over my chute.

WAS MY FACE RED!

I took off at Buffalo one time to do a test job. I had been called up there as an expert and was supposed to be pretty hot stuff.

I took the ship off and started rocking it violently from side to side. I kept this up through a variety of speed ranges, watching the ailerons closely all the time. I wanted to find out first of all if the ailerons had any tendency to flutter under a high angle of attack condition. Then I began horsing on the stick to see if anything unusual happened to the ailerons when I introduced the high angle of attack condition that way.

I interrupted my observations of the ship's behavior after a while to look around for the airport. I couldn't find it! I had forgotten that I was in a high-speed ship and could get far away from the field in a very short time. Furthermore, the country was unfamiliar to me, and I had no map. Gee, if I had only thought to stick a map in the ship before I took off.

I knew the airport was somewhere on the west side of town. I thought it was somewhat north. But how far north I didn't know. I couldn't remember even if it was close in to town or far out. I had a vague idea it was far out, but how far out I didn't know. If I had only thought to bring a map! Or if I had only kept the airport in sight. Good old hindsight!

I was panic-stricken. There I was, a supposedly high-powered test pilot, lost over the airport. What a dumb position for me to be in!

Before I found the airport by just cruising around looking haphazardly for it, I might be forced down by the weather, which was none too good and getting worse, or I might run out of gas. What if I was finally forced to pick a strange field, a pasture or something, and cracked up getting into it? How would I explain that?

I decided to cruise north and south, up and down, in ten- or fifteen-mile laps, starting far enough out of town to be sure to fly over the airport on one of the laps as I moved closer in on each one. That would be at least an orderly procedure.

I found the field on my fourth lap. But was I in a sweat! And did I keep my eye on that field after that!

CO-PILOT

Dick Blythe, who handled Lindbergh's publicity not only after Lindbergh came back from Paris but also, as Dick stated to me, just before Lindbergh went to Paris, is a bit of aviation folklore in himself.

I just ran into Dick over at the Roosevelt Field restaurant, and he told me this one about Dean Smith. Dean is one of the oldest air-mail pilots. He started flying the mail 'way back in the postoffice days, just after the war. He is a lean six-foot-two, easy-going guy who would never talk much about his flying.

Dick caught him just after he had returned from one of his crackups in the Alleghanies in the old days when Roosevelt Field was called Curtiss Field and the mail went out of there instead of out of Newark as it does now. Dean was just pouring his long self into the cockpit of another DH to take the night mail out again.

"Where in the hell have you been?" Dick greeted him.

"Oh," Dean said, "I had a hell of a time the other night. Just got back."

"What happened?" Dick asked him.

"Aw, I got tangled up with a load of ice after dark. She started losing altitude, and I eased a little more gun to her. She kept on losing, so I eased a little more gun to her. She still kept on losing, so I eased all the gun she had. She was squashing right down into the trees. I had done everything I knew and couldn't hold her up. So I said, 'Here, God, you fly it awhile,' and turned her loose and threw my arms up in front of my face.

"I guess it must have been tough, because He cracked her up. He piled into that last ridge just outside of Bellefonte."

ORCHIDS TO ME!

The late Lya de Putti, German screen actress, paid me the nicest compliment of all.

She was up front in the two-place passenger compartment of a Lockheed Sirius. The owner of that plane was in the pilot's open cockpit just back of her. And I was behind him in the rear cockpit.

He had insisted, against my better judgment, upon getting into that pilot's cockpit in the first place. But, after all, he owned the ship, I was only his pilot, and there was a set of dual controls in the rear cockpit.

The motor quit cold over Whitehall, N. Y., because we ran out of gas in one of the six tanks in the ship. I shouted back and forth with the ship's owner, halfway to the ground, trying to tell him how to turn on one of the other five tanks. There was a complicated system of gas valves in the ship, and I couldn't make him understand what to do, and I couldn't reach the valves myself.

Finally I shouted, "You play with them. I'll land," and stuck my head out and looked around. We were already low. I picked a small plowed field, the only likely-looking one in the mountainous country, and started into it.

I was coming around my last turn into the field when I discovered high-tension wires stretching right across the edge of it. I was too low to pick another field. The field was too small to go over the wires. I had to go through a gap in the trees to get under them.

I kicked the ship around sidewise. The trees flashed past me on either side, and I hit the ground. The wires flashed past over my head. I used my brakes and stopped the fast ship very quickly in the soft ground. If we had rolled fifty feet farther we would have hit an embankment that rose sharply at the far end of the field.

I crawled out of my cockpit and started to help Lya out of her cabin. She was already emerging, fanning herself with a handkerchief. She spoke with a German accent.

"Oh, Jeemy," she said, "all the way down I pray to God. But I thank you, Jeemy. I thank you."

RECOVERY ACT

Johnny Wagner came up to me for his transport pilot's license test. I was the inspector for the Department of Commerce. Johnny knew I was "tough." As a matter of fact, he figured I was much tougher than I was.

I knew Johnny and liked him. He was crazy about flying and had worked hard to get his flying training. He had pushed ships in and out of hangars, washed them, acted as night watchman and office boy, done anything and everything to pay for his flying time. But I didn't have the slightest idea how he flew. And after all, you may be a swell guy but not be able to fly worth a cent, and a transport test is supposed to determine whether you are safe to carry passengers.

I found out three minutes after Johnny got in the ship how he flew. Nevertheless, I made him go all through the test. When he came to steep banks I made him pull them in tight. He was reluctant to do it, so I took the ship to do it myself to show him. I could see right away why he was reluctant. It was the way the ship was rigged. It had a tendency to roll under in a tightly pulled in steep bank. But I wanted to see what he would do with it, so I made him do it. He did, and rolled right under into a power spin. He had gone into an inadvertent spin, the unforgivable sin in a flight test.

I started to reach for the controls but let him go. When he had pulled out of the spin I told him to land.

He got out of the ship with his face as long as a poker. He couldn't even talk, the test had meant so much to him. I didn't say anything for a moment, then with a stern face I said roughly, "Well," and waited a moment. The poor kid was getting all set for the worst. I could tell by his face.

"Well," I went on, "you passed," and I smiled broadly at him.

His mouth fell open. "But--but--" he stuttered--"but I spun out of that steep bank!"

"Yeah, I know," I said. "But you also recovered. It was the way you recovered. You stopped that spin like that and recovered from the resultant dive neatly and smoothly, with a minimum loss of altitude and still without squashin' the ship. It was a beautiful piece of work and told me more about your flying than anything else you did, although I could tell in the first three minutes that you could fly." I never saw a kid beam so much.

Johnny is now flying a regular run over the Andes in South America for Pan American Grace.

"A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME...."

I delivered a plane at a ranch in Mexico a few years ago for Joe and Alicia Brooks. I was to take back the ship they had been using. The ranch was about eighty miles over the border from Eagle Pass. The Brookses planned to leave with me and fly formation to New York. Both planes had approximately the same cruising speed. Alicia and I flew in one ship. Sutter, the mechanic, flew with Joe in the other.

The day we started didn't look too good. Thick gray clouds were rolling in from the northeast. There was no way we could check our weather till we got to Eagle Pass. We had to take a chance on the eighty miles.

Joe led the way, and everything went fine at the start, but the nearer we got to Eagle Pass the worse the weather got. We were flying on top of a jerkwater railway, just missing the tops of the trees, when we bumped into a solid wall of fog. Joe disappeared into it. I stuck my nose in the stuff and pulled out: there was no percentage in two planes milling around blind. Too much chance of collision. I picked out a spot in between the cactus and landed. There was nothing to do but wait. If Joe came out he would come out on the railway and we would see him. Ten uncomfortable minutes passed. We heard a motor. Joe reappeared. He circled and landed alongside of us.

By this time the planes were surrounded by a herd of angry shrieking Mexicans. There must have been over a hundred of them. They didn't seem to like us, but we couldn't find out why. None of us spoke Spanish. Finally an official-looking fellow appeared with a lot of brass medals on his coat. He made us understand through the sign language that he wanted to see our passports. We couldn't find them. The atmosphere was most unpleasant. We had visions of spending the next few days in a flea-bitten Mexican jail.

Then it occurred to me that I did know one Spanish word. Might as well use it, I thought, and see what happens. "Cerveza" I commanded. The Mexicans looked startled. "Cerveza" I commanded again. The Mexicans started to laugh.

The next thing we knew, we were sitting at a Mexican bar drinking beer with a lot of newfound friends. Cerveza is the Spanish for beer.

"YES, SIR!"

Our jenny hit the ground wheels first and bounced dangerously. My instructor in the cockpit in front of me grabbed his controls, gave the ship a sharp burst of the gun, and set her down right. We were in a little practice field near Brooks Field in Texas.

My instructor turned around to me: "Damn it, Collins," he said, "don't run into the ground wheels first like that. Level off about six feet in the air and wait until the ship begins to settle. Then ease the stick back. When you feel the ship begin to fall out from under you, pull the stick all the way back into your guts and the ship will set itself down. Go around and try it again."

"Yes, sir."

I came in the next time, hit the ground wheels first, and bounced. My instructor righted the ship.

"No, Collins. No," he fumed. "Six feet. Look, I'll show you what six feet looks like."

He took the ship off and flew over the open fields, then came around and landed.

"Now do you know what six feet looks like?" he shouted back to me.

"Yes, sir," I lied. I was afraid to tell him that I could not see the ground right. He might send me to the hospital to have my eyes examined. They might find some slight defect in my eyes that they had overlooked in the original examination and wash me out of the school.

"Well, then, go around and make a decent landing for me," my instructor said.

"Yes, sir."

I leveled off too high the next time. My instructor grabbed his controls and prevented us from cracking up.

"Damn it, Collins," he shouted when the ship had stopped rolling, "don't run into the ground wheels first. And don't level off as high as the telegraph wires. Level off at about six feet. Then set her down. Now go round and try it again."

"Yes, sir."

"Damn it, Collins, don't sit back there and say 'Yes, sir' and then do the same damned thing again."

"No, sir."

MOONLIGHT AND SILVER

Pat paints. She also flies.

Pat and I landed at Jacksonville, Fla., late one night in Pat's Stearman biplane. Pat was taking cross-country instruction from me. We gassed hurriedly and took off again. We left the glare of the floodlights behind us as we headed our ship along the line of flashing beacons stretching southward toward Miami. The stars were brilliant in the cloudless sky, but the night was very dark. There was no moon.

Soon we were flying down the coast. White breakers rolled in under us from the Atlantic Ocean on our left and dimly marked the coast line. Swamps stretched away to the inland on our right but were invisible in the black night. Beacons flashed brilliantly out of the darkness in a long line far behind us and far ahead. Blotches of lights slipped slowly past under us when we flew over towns.

We saw clouds ahead. We nosed down under them. We had to fly uncomfortably low to stay under the clouds. We nosed up to get above them.

We flew into them. The lights beneath us dimmed and disappeared. We climbed in opaque blackness, flying by instruments.

We emerged into an open space where the clouds were broken. The lights reappeared. The stars became visible.

The clouds spread out under us to the horizon in all directions. They were lit a dim silver by the stars. They softly undulated like a mystic, limitless sea beneath us.

Now and then we saw a break in the clouds and caught the flash of a beacon through it or saw the lights of a town. We caught glimpses of dim breakers rolling in on the beach far down under the clouds.

Something I couldn't explain was happening. The sky in the east was getting lighter. It was only about midnight. I looked at the western sky and then looked back at the eastern sky. Yes, the sky was definitely getting lighter in the east. Half an hour later the eastern sky was much lighter than the western sky.

I watched toward the east.

I saw a thin, blood-red tip of something rise up from the eastern horizon. The top of the object was rounded. The bottom of it was irregular in shape. The object got larger rapidly.

"The moon!" I shouted out loud to myself.

It rose rapidly. Invisible clouds far out at sea, silhouetted against the moon, gave the bottom of it its irregular shape.

The moon got up above the clouds in an incredibly short time. It was a full moon, golden and glorious. It made the clouds between me and it seem darker. It made the sea beneath the clouds silver. Through the large breaks in the clouds I saw a beam of moonlight like a golden path from the moon across the sea to the beach beneath us. The beam traveled with us. It raced across the sea under the clouds at the same speed that we flew through the air above the clouds.

I eased the throttle back and slowed the ship down.

"Paint that some day," I shouted to Pat.

Pat was gazing out across the ocean toward the moon. She didn't say anything. I knew she had heard me.

FIVE MILES UP