"We"

[Illustration: ©_Wide World Photos_

“We”]

“We”

By Charles A. Lindbergh

THE FAMOUS FLIER’S OWN STORY OF HIS LIFE AND HIS TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT, TOGETHER WITH HIS VIEWS ON THE FUTURE OF AVIATION

With A Foreword By Myron T. Herrick U. S. Ambassador To France

[Illustration]

Fully Illustrated

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORK--LONDON The Knickerbocker Press 1927

Copyright, 1927 by Charles A. Lindbergh

This is a copy of the First Edition of “WE”

[Illustration: G.P. Putnam’s Sons]

July, 1927

[Illustration: The Knickerbocker Press New York]

Made in the United States of America

Dedicated To

My Mother

And To The Men Whose Confidence And Foresight Made Possible The Flight Of The

“Spirit Of St. Louis”

MR. HARRY H. KNIGHT MAJOR WILLIAM B. ROBERTSON MAJOR ALBERT BOND LAMBERT MR. J. D. WOOSTER LAMBERT MR. HAROLD M. BIXBY MR. EARL C. THOMPSON MR. HARRY F. KNIGHT MR. E. LANSING RAY

Foreword

When Joan of Arc crowned her King at Rheims she became immortal. When Lafayette risked his all to help the struggling Americans he wrote his memory forever across a mighty continent. Shepherd boy David in five minutes achieved with his sling a place in history which has defied all time.

These three shining names represent the triumph of the idealism of youth, and we would not speak of them with such reverence today had their motives been less pure or had they ever for an instant thought of themselves or their place in history.

So it was with Lindbergh, and all the praise awarded him, judged by the rigid standards of history and precedent, he has merited. He was the instrument of a great ideal and one need not be fanatically religious to see in his success the guiding hand of providence.

For he was needed and he came at the moment which seemed exactly prëordained. He was needed by France and needed by America, and had his arrival been merely the triumph of a great adventure the influence of his act would have gone no further than have other great sporting and commercial achievements.

There have been moments here in France when all that my eye could reach or my intelligence fathom appeared dark and foreboding and yet, in spite of all, my soul would be warmed as by invisible sunshine. At such times when all human efforts had apparently failed, suddenly the affairs of nations seemed to be taken from out of the hands of men and directed by an unseen power on high.

Just before the Battle of the Marne I was standing on the Seine embankment.

A great harvest moon was rising over the city near Notre Dame. It seemed to rest on the corner of a building. The French flag was blowing steadily across its face. In fleeting moments while this spectacle lasted people knelt on the quay in prayer. I inquired the meaning of these prayers. The answer was that there is a prophecy centuries old that the fate of France will finally be settled upon the fields where Attila’s horde was halted and driven back and where many battles in defence of France have been won. And pointing up the Seine to the French flag outlined across the moon people cried, “See, see the sign in heaven. It means the victory of French arms. The prophecy of old is come true and France is once again to be saved on those chalky fields.”

Now when this boy of ours came unheralded out of the air, and circling the Eiffel tower settled to rest as gently as a bird on the field at Le Bourget, I was seized with the same premonition as those French people on the quay that August night. I felt without knowing why, that his arrival was far more than a fine deed well accomplished, and there glowed within me the prescience of splendor yet to come. Lo! it did come and has gone on spreading its beneficence upon two sister nations which a now-conquered ocean joins.

For I feel with every fibre of my being that Lindbergh’s landing here marks one of the supreme moments in the history of America and France, and the faith we have in the deciding power of spiritual things is strengthened by every circumstance of his journey, by all his acts after landing, and by the electrical thrill which ran like some religious emotion through a whole vast population. “The Spirit of St. Louis” was to the French people another sign come out of the sky--a sign which bore the promise that all would be well between them and us.

What a happy inspiration it was to christen his ship with such a name! It brought as from on high a new spiritual message of peace and good-will, and it was more than a coincidence that Lindbergh should drop from his ship his farewell message to Paris on that spot, in the Place de la Concorde, where once the Spirit of Saint Louis was invoked in tragic circumstances. The priest who stood there beside King Louis the Sixteenth as the guillotine fell, cried defiantly to the assembled mob: “The Spirit of Saint Louis ascends to the skies.” With Lindbergh, _out_ of the skies, the noble Spirit of Saint Louis came back to France.

France took Charles Lindbergh to her heart because of what he was and because of what she knew he represented. His little ship came to the meeting place of the greatest conference that has ever gathered between two nations, for under the shadow of its wings a hundred and fifty million Frenchmen and Americans have come together in generous accord. No diplomatic bag ever carried so stupendous a document as this all unaccredited messenger bore, and no visiting squadron ever delivered such a letter of thanks as he took up the Potomac in returning. Has any such Ambassador ever been known?

Lindbergh was not commissioned by our government any more than Lafayette was by his; in each case it has been merely left for statesmen to register and approve the vast consequences of their acts. Both arrived at the critical moment and both set in motion those imponderable forces which escape the standards of the politician’s mind. Who shall say but that they were God-sent messengers of help, smiling defiance of their faith at an all too skeptical world? What one accomplished has already changed history through a century; what the other has just done the people of America and France will take good care shall not be wasted.

The way Lindbergh bore himself after getting here was but the continuation of his flight. He started with no purpose but to arrive. He remained with no desire but to serve. He sought nothing; he was offered all. No flaw marked any act or word, and he stood forth amidst clamor and crowds the very embodiment of fearless, kindly, cultivated, American youth--unspoiled, unspoilable. A nation which breeds such boys need never fear for its future. When a contract for one million dollars was sent him through his associates he cabled back to them, “You must remember this expedition was not organized to make money but to advance aviation.” There is the measure of his spirit; the key to his intentions.

Flying was his trade, his means of livelihood. But the love of it burned in him with fine passion, and now that his fame will give him a wider scope of usefulness, he has announced that he will devote himself wholeheartedly to the advancement of aeronautics.

His first step in that direction is the publishing of this book, and no one can doubt that its influence will be of enormous value in pushing on man’s conquest of the air. It will be idle for me or anyone else to estimate now what these results will be. But America vibrates with glowing pride at the thought that out from our country has come this fresh spirit of the air and that the whole world hails Lindbergh not only as a brave aviator but as an example of American idealism, character and conduct.

MYRON T. HERRICK. _United States Embassy Paris June Sixteenth, 1927_

Contents

Page

I.--Boyhood And Early Flights 19

II.--My First Plane 39

III.--Barnstorming Experience 63

IV.--Heading South 84

V.--Training At Brooks Field 104

VI.--Receiving A Pilot’S Wings 126

VII.--I Join The Air Mail 153

VIII.--Two Emergency Jumps 175

IX.--San Diego--St. Louis--New York 198

X.--New York To Paris 213

Publisher’S Note 231

Author’S Note 232

A Little Of What The World Thought Of Lindbergh

By Fitzhugh Green

I.--Paris 233

II.--Brussels 248

III.--London 254

IV.--Washington 265

V.--New York 297

VI.--St. Louis 315

Illustrations

Facing Page

“WE” _Frontispiece_

Father And Son 20

Instructor And Classmates In A MID-Western Military School 21

Shipping “The Spirit Of St. Louis” 32

The Men Who Made The Plane 33

Financial Backers Of The Non-Stop New York To Paris Flight 50

Fuselage Frame Of The Plane 51

Working On Navigation Charts For Flight 66

Instrument Board Of The Plane 67

“We” Make A Test Flight 82

Patsy, The Mascot 83

Police Guarding “The Spirit Of St. Louis” 98

Captain René Fonck Wishes Me The Best Of Luck 99

Getting Ready For The Take-Off 114

Just Before Starting On The Big Adventure 115

“I Didn’T Use My Periscope All The Time” 118

A Salutation From M. Bleriot 119

Paul Painlevé Extends His Welcome 126

With M. Doumerque And Ambassador Herrick 127

Crowds At The City Hall 130

Guests At The Luncheon Of M. Bleriot 131

On The Steps Of The Embassy 146

The Welcome At Croyden Field 147

With Crown Prince Leopold 162

With H. R. H. The Prince Of Wales And Lord Lonsdale 163

Crowds Pressing Around “The Spirit Of St. Louis” As The Plane Landed 178

“AT CROYDEN FIELD I ESCAPED TO THE TOP OF THE OBSERVATION TOWER OVERLOOKING THE CROWD” 179

The U. S. S. “Memphis,” Flagship, On Which The Author Returned To America 194

Coming Down The Gangplank Of The U. S. S. “Memphis” 195

Charles Evans Hughes Confers The Cross Of Honor 210

At The Tomb Of “The Unknown Soldier” 211

Speeches At Washington Monument 226

From The Top Of Washington Monument 227

At Arlington Cemetery 234

The $25,000 Check Presented By Raymond Orteig 235

Receiving The Orteig Prize Medal 235

Welcome In New York Harbor 242

Riding Up Broadway 243

New York City’S Welcome 258

A June Snowstorm 259

The Parade Passing Through Central Park 274

The Parade In Central Park 275

Speaking At The Ceremonies In Central Park 290

Speaking At The Ceremonies In Prospect Park 291

“The Spirit Of St. Louis” After Her Return 306

After The Flight To Washington 307

St. Louis’ Welcome 314

My Mother 315

“We”

I

Boyhood And Early Flights

I was born in Detroit, Michigan, on February 4, 1902. My father was practicing law in Little Falls, Minnesota, at the time. When I was less than two months old my parents took me to their farm, on the western banks of the Mississippi River two miles south of Little Falls.

My father, Charles A. Lindbergh, was born in Stockholm, Sweden, January 20, 1860, the son of Ola and Louisa Manson. His father (who changed his name to Lindbergh after reaching America) was a member of the Swedish Parliament and had at one time been Secretary to the King.

About 1860 my grandfather with his family embarked on a ship bound for America, and settled near Sauk Center, Minnesota, where he took up a homestead and built his first home in America--a log cabin. It was here that my father spent his early life.

The Rev. C. S. Harrison, writing for the Minnesota Historical Society, gives an account of the activities of my grandfather during the early days in Minnesota.

There were very few schools in Minnesota at that time, and my father’s boyhood days were spent mostly in hunting and fishing. His education consisted largely of home study with an occasional short term at country schools.

He was educated at Grove Lake Academy, Minnesota, and graduated from the law school at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with an LL.B. degree.

He began his law practice in Little Falls where he served as County Attorney. He later became interested in politics, and was elected to the 60th Congress in 1906 to represent the Sixth District of Minnesota at Washington, a capacity in which he served for ten years.

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

Father And Son]

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

Madison, Wisc.--Instructor And Classmates In A MID-Western Military School]

My mother was born in Detroit, Michigan, daughter of Charles and Evangeline Land. She is of English, Irish and French extraction. As a graduate of the University of Michigan, she holds a B.S. degree from that institution, also an A.M. degree from Columbia University, New York City. Her father, Dr. Charles H. Land, a Detroit dentist, was born in Simcoe, Norfolk County, Canada, and his father, Colonel John Scott Land, came from England, and was one of the founders of the present city of Hamilton.

My grandfather was constantly experimenting in his laboratory. He held a number of patents on incandescent grates and furnaces, in addition to several on gold and enamel inlays and other dental processes. He was one of the first to foresee the possibilities of porcelain in dentistry, and later became known as “the father of porcelain dental art.”

During the first four years of my life, I lived in our Minnesota home with the exception of a few trips to Detroit. Then my father was elected to Congress and thereafter I seldom spent more than a few months in the same place. Our winters were passed in Washington, and our summers in Minnesota, with intermediate visits to Detroit.

When I was eight years of age I entered the Force School in Washington. My schooling was very irregular due to our constant moving from place to place. Up to the time I entered the University of Wisconsin I had never attended for one full school year, and I had received instruction from over a dozen institutions, both public and private, from Washington to California.

Through these years I crossed and recrossed the United States, made one trip to Panama, and had thoroughly developed a desire for travel, which has never been overcome.

My chief interest in school lay along mechanical and scientific lines. Consequently, after graduating from the Little Falls High School, I decided to take a course in Mechanical Engineering, and two years later entered the College of Engineering of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

While I was attending the University I became intensely interested in aviation. Since I saw my first airplane near Washington, D. C., in 1912, I had been fascinated with flying, although up to the time I enrolled in a flying school in 1922 I had never been near enough a plane to touch it.

The long hours of study at college were very trying for me. I had spent most of my life outdoors and had never before found it necessary to spend more than a part of my time in study.

At Wisconsin my chief recreation consisted of shooting-matches with the rifle and pistol teams of rival Universities, and in running around on my motorcycle which I had ridden down from Minnesota when I entered the University.

I had been raised with a gun on our Minnesota home, and found a place on the R.O.T.C. teams at the beginning of my freshman year at Wisconsin. From then on I spent every minute I could steal from my studies in the shooting gallery and on the range.

The first six weeks of vacation after my freshman year were spent in an Artillery School at Camp Knox, Kentucky. When that was over I headed my motorcycle south and with forty-eight dollars in my pocket, set out for Florida. After arriving at Jacksonville I started back the same day, but over a different route leading farther west than the first. Seventeen days after leaving Camp Knox I arrived back in Madison with a motorcycle badly in need of repair and nine dollars left in my pocket. After stopping in Madison long enough to overhaul the engine I went to Little Falls to spend the remainder of my vacation.

Soon after the start of my third semester at Wisconsin I decided to study aeronautics in earnest, and if, after becoming better acquainted with the subject, and it appeared to have a good future, I intended to take it up as a life work.

I remained at the University of Wisconsin long enough to finish the first half of my sophomore year. Then about the end of March, 1922, I left Madison on my motorcycle en route to Lincoln, Nebraska, where I had enrolled as a flying student with the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation.

The roads in Wisconsin in March, 1922, were not all surfaced and when, after leaving the well-paved highway, I had progressed only about four miles in as many hours, I put my motorcycle on the first farm wagon that passed and shipped it to Lincoln by rail at the next town.

I arrived at Lincoln on the first of April. On April 9, 1922, I had my first flight as a passenger in a Lincoln Standard with Otto Timm, piloting.

N. B. In the following account of flying during the post-war period of aviation, before flying laws and the Aeronautical Branch of the Department of Commerce came into existence, it should be borne in mind by the reader that the experiences and incidents related in this book in no way describe modern commercial flying conditions. Even in this account it will be noticed that the more spectacular events took place in such a manner that all risk was taken by the pilots and by members of the aeronautical profession; also that exhibition and test flying were responsible for most of these.

In the four emergency parachute jumps described herein, it is apparent that in each case the plane would never have been flown with passengers under the conditions which necessitated the jump.

Commercial air transport has developed rapidly during the last few years, until today it has reached a stage where the safety of properly operated airlines compares favorably with other means of travel.

I received my first instruction in the same plane a few days later under I. O. Biffle, who was known at the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation as the most “hard boiled” instructor the army ever had during the war.

The next two months were spent in obtaining, in one way or another, my flying instruction, and in learning what I could around the factory, as there was no ground school in connection with the flying course at that time.

We did most of our flying in the early morning or late evening on account of the strong Nebraska winds in midday with their corresponding rough air which makes flying so difficult for a student.

I believe that I got more than my share of rough weather flying, however, because my instructor, or “Biff” as we used to call him, had certain very definite views on life, one of which was that early morning was not made as a time for instructors to arise. So as I was the only student and Biff my only instructor, I did very little early morning flying.

By the end of May I had received about eight hours of instruction which (in addition to the $500 cost of my flying course) had required about $150 for train fare and personal expenses.

One morning Biff announced that I was ready to solo, but the president of the company required a bond to cover possible breakage of the plane, which I was not able to furnish. As a result I did not take a plane up by myself until several months later.

Before I had entirely completed my flying course, the instruction plane was sold to E. G. Bahl, who was planning a barnstorming trip through southeastern Nebraska. I became acquainted with Bahl at Lincoln and offered to pay my own expenses if allowed to accompany him as mechanic and helper. As a result we barnstormed most of the Nebraska towns southeast of Lincoln together, and it is to him that I owe my first practical experience in cross country flying.

“Barnstorming” is the aviator’s term for flying about from one town to another and taking anyone who is sufficiently “airminded” for a short flight over the country. In 1922 the fare usually charged was five dollars for a ride of from five to ten minutes.

It was while I was flying with Bahl that I began to do a little “wing-walking.” We would often attract a crowd to the pasture or stubble field from which we were operating, by flying low over town while I was standing on one of the wing tips.

In June I returned to Lincoln and received a little more instruction, making a total of about eight hours.

About this time Charlie Harden, well known in the aeronautical world for his parachute work, arrived in Lincoln. I had been fascinated by the parachute jumps I had seen, and persuaded Ray Page to let me make a double drop with Harden’s chutes.

A double drop is made by fastening two parachutes together with rope. Both are then packed in a heavy canvas bag; the mouth of the bag is laced together and the lace ends tied in a bow knot. The bag is lashed half-way out on the wing of the plane, with the laced end hanging down. When the plane has reached sufficient altitude the jumper climbs out of the cockpit and along the wing to the chute, fastens the parachute straps to his harness, and swings down under the wing. In this position he is held to the plane by the bow knot holding together the mouth of the bag containing his parachute, the bag itself being tied securely to the wing. When ready to cut loose he pulls the bow knot allowing the bag to open and the parachute to be pulled out by his weight.

In a double jump, after the first parachute has fully opened, the jumper cuts the rope binding the second chute to the first. The first chute upon being relieved of his weight, collapses, and passes him on the way down.

I made my first jump one evening in June from an 1800-foot altitude over the flying field.

My first chute opened quickly, and after floating down for a few seconds I cut it loose from the second, expecting a similar performance. But I did not feel the comfortable tug of the risers which usually follows an exhibition jump. As I had never made a descent before, it did not occur to me that everything was not as it should be, until several seconds had passed and I began to turn over and fall head first. I looked around at the chute just in time to see it string out; then the harness jerked me into an upright position and the chute was open. Afterwards I learned that the vent of the second chute had been tied to the first with grocery string which had broken in packing the parachute, and that instead of stringing out when I cut loose, it had followed me still folded, causing a drop of several hundred feet before opening.

I remained in Lincoln for two weeks working in the Lincoln Standard factory for fifteen dollars a week. Then I received a wire from H. J. Lynch, who had purchased a Standard a few weeks before and taken it on a barnstorming trip into western Kansas. He was in need of a parachute jumper to fill a number of exhibition contracts in Kansas and Colorado, and wanted me to go with him in that capacity at a small fraction of its cost. Page offered me a new Harden Chute instead of my remaining flying instruction, and I took a train for Bird City, Kansas.

Lynch and myself barnstormed over western Kansas and eastern Colorado giving a number of exhibitions from time to time, in which I usually made a jump and did a little wing-walking.

In the fall, together with “Banty” Rogers, a wheat rancher who owned the plane, we set out for Montana. Our course took us through a corner of Nebraska and then up through Wyoming along the Big Horn Mountains and over Custer’s Battle Field. At one time in Wyoming we were forced to land, due to motor trouble, near a herd of buffalo, and while Lynch was working on the motor I started over towards the animals to get a picture. I had not considered that they might object to being photographed, and was within a hundred yards of them when an old bull looked up and stamped his foot. In a moment they were all in line facing me with lowered heads. I snapped a picture but lost no time in returning to the plane. Meanwhile Lynch had located our trouble and we took-off.

[Illustration: © _Donald A. Hall_

Shipping “The Spirit Of St. Louis”]

[Illustration: © _Erickson_

THE MEN WHO MADE THE PLANE. LEFT TO RIGHT: WILLIAM H. BOWLUS, FACTORY MANAGER, RYAN AIRLINES; B. FRANKLIN MAHONEY, PRESIDENT, RYAN AIRLINES; CHARLES A. LINDBERGH; DONALD A. HALL, CHIEF ENGINEER AND DESIGNER; A. J. EDWARDS, SALES MANAGER]

After we had been in Billings, Montana, about a week, Lynch traded ships with a pilot named Reese, who was flying a Standard belonging to Lloyd Lamb of Billings. Lynch and I stayed in Montana while Reese returned to Kansas with Rogers.

We barnstormed Montana and northern Wyoming until mid-October including exhibitions at the Billings and Lewistown fairs.

At the Lewistown fair we obtained a field adjoining the fairgrounds and did a rushing business for three days. We had arranged for the fence to be opened to the grounds and for a gateman to give return tickets to anyone who wished to ride in the plane. All this in return for a free parachute drop.

At Billings, however, our field was some distance from the fair and we decided to devise some scheme to bring the crowd out to us. We stuffed a dummy with straw and enough mud to give it sufficient falling speed to look like a human being.

When the grandstands were packed that afternoon we took-off from our field with the dummy in the front cockpit with me. I went out on the wing and we did a few stunts over the fairgrounds to get everyone’s attention, then Lynch turned the plane so that no one could see me on the wing and we threw out the dummy. It fell waving its arms and legs around wildly and landed near the Yellowstone River.

We returned to our field and waited expectantly for the curious ones to come rushing out for information, but two hours later, when a few Montanans did arrive, they told us about one of the other attractions--a fellow who dived from an airplane into the Yellowstone River which was about three feet deep at that point. That was the last time we attempted to thrill a Montana crowd.

The barnstorming season in Montana was about over in October and soon after returning from Lewistown I purchased a small boat for two dollars. After patching it up a bit and stopping the larger leaks, I started alone down the Yellowstone River on the way to Lincoln.

The river was not deep and ran over numerous rapids which were so shallow that even the flat bottom of my small boat would bump over the rocks from time to time. I had been unable to purchase a thoroughly seagoing vessel for two dollars, and very little rough going was required to knock out the resin from the cracks and open the old leaks again.

I had my camping equipment lashed on top of one of the seats to keep it dry, and as I progressed downstream through the ever-present rapids, more and more of my time was required for bailing out the boat with an old tin can, until at the end of the first day, when I had travelled about twenty miles, I was spending fully half of my time bailing out water.

I made camp that night in a small clearing beside the river. There had been numerous showers during the day, which thoroughly soaked the ground, and towards evening a steady drizzling rain set in.

I pitched my army pup tent on the driest ground I could find and, after a cold supper, crawled in between the three blankets which I had sewn together to form a bag.

The next morning the sky was still overcast but the rain had stopped, and after a quick breakfast I packed my equipment in the boat and again started down the river.

The rain set in anew, and this together with the water from the ever-increasing leaks in the sides and bottom of the boat required such constant bailing that I found little use for the oars that day. By evening the rocks had taken so much effect that the boat was practically beyond repair.

After a careful inspection, which ended in the conclusion that further progress was not feasible, I traded what was left of the boat to the son of a nearby rancher in return for a wagon ride to the nearest town, Huntley, Montana. I expressed my equipment and bought a railroad ticket to Lincoln, where I had left my motorcycle.

A short time before I had left Lincoln, while I was racing with a car along one of the Nebraska country roads, a piston had jammed and I had not found time to replace it. Accordingly, after returning from Montana, I spent several days overhauling the machine before proceeding on to Detroit where I was to meet my mother.

I made the trip to Detroit in three days and after spending about two weeks there I took a train for Little Falls to clear up some business in connection with our farm.

During the winter months I spent part of my time on the farm and part in Minneapolis with my father. Occasionally we would drive the hundred miles from Minneapolis to Little Falls together.

In March, 1923, I left Minnesota and after a short visit in Detroit, departed on a train bound for Florida. My next few weeks were spent in Miami and the Everglades.

II

My First Plane

Since I had first started flying at Lincoln, the year before, I had held an ambition to own an airplane of my own. So when I took my last flight with Lynch in Montana, and started down the Yellowstone, I had decided that the next spring I would be flying my own ship.

Consequently when April arrived, I left Miami and went to Americus, Georgia, where the Government had auctioned off a large number of “Jennies,” as we called certain wartime training planes. I bought one of these ships with a new Curtis OX-5 motor and full equipment for five hundred dollars. They had cost the Government nearly twice as many thousands, but at the close of the war the surplus planes were sold for what they would bring and the training fields were abandoned. Americus, Georgia, was a typical example of this. The planes had been auctioned for as little as fifty dollars apiece the year before. A few days after I arrived, the last officer left the post and it took its place among the phantom airports of the war.

I lived alone on the post during the two weeks my plane was being assembled, sometimes sleeping in one of the twelve remaining hangars and sometimes in one of the barracks buildings. One afternoon a visiting plane arrived and Reese stepped out of the cockpit. I had not heard from him since we had traded planes in Montana, and he stayed with me on the post that night while we exchanged experiences of the previous year.

One of the interesting facts bearing on the life of aviators is that they rarely lose track of one another permanently. Distance means little to the pilot, and there is always someone dropping in from somewhere who knows all the various flyers in his section of the country, and who is willing to sit down and do a little “ground flying” with the local pilots. In this way intimate contact is continually established throughout the clan. (“Ground flying” is the term used to designate the exchange of flying experiences among airmen.)

I had not soloed up to the time I bought my Jenny at Americus, although at that time the fact was strictly confidential.

After my training at Lincoln I had not been able to furnish the required bond and, although I had done a little flying on cross country trips with Bahl and Lynch, I had never been up in a plane alone. Therefore when my Jenny was completely assembled and ready to fly I was undecided as to the best method of procedure. No one on the field knew that I had never soloed. I had not been in a plane for six months; but I did not have sufficient money to pay for more instruction, so one day I taxied to one end of the field, opened the throttle and started to take-off. When the plane was about four feet off the ground, the right wing began to drop, so I decided that it was time to make a landing. I accomplished this on one wheel and one wing skid but without doing any damage to the ship. I noticed that the wind was blowing hard and suddenly decided that I would wait for calmer weather before making any more flights and taxied back to the hangar.

A pilot who was waiting for delivery on one of the Jennies offered to give me a little dual instruction, and I flew around with him for thirty minutes and made several landings. At the end of this time he taxied up to the line and told me that I would have no trouble and was only a little rusty from not flying recently. He advised me to wait until evening when the air was smooth and then to make a few solo flights.

When evening came I taxied out from the line, took one last look at the instruments and took-off on my first solo.

The first solo flight is one of the events in a pilot’s life which forever remains impressed on his memory. It is the culmination of difficult hours of instruction, hard weeks of training and often years of anticipation. To be absolutely alone for the first time in the cockpit of a plane hundreds of feet above the ground is an experience never to be forgotten.

After a week of practice flights around Southern Field I rolled my equipment and a few spare parts up in a blanket, lashed them in the front cockpit and took-off for Minnesota.

This was my first cross country flight alone, less than a week after my solo hop. Altogether I had less than five hours of solo time to my credit. I had, however, obtained invaluable experience the year before while flying around in the western states with Biffle, Bahl, and Lynch.

While learning to fly in Nebraska the previous spring, I discovered that nearly every pilot in existence had flown in Texas at one time or another during his flying career. Accordingly I decided that, at the first opportunity I would fly to Texas myself and although I travelled a rather roundabout way from Georgia to Minnesota, my course passed through Texarkana en route.

The first hop was from Americus to Montgomery, Alabama, and passed over some fairly rough territory of which both Georgia and Alabama have their share.

I had been warned before leaving the field, that the airline course to Texas was over some of the “worst flying country in the south” and had been advised to take either a northern course directly to Minnesota or to follow the Gulf of Mexico. This advice served to create a desire to find out what the “worst flying country in the south” looked like. I had a great deal of confidence in my Jenny with its powerful OX-5 engine, and it seemed absurd to me at that time to detour by airplane. Consequently I laid my route in the most direct line possible to conform with my limited cruising range with forty gallons of fuel.

The flight to Montgomery was uneventful. I landed at the army field there before noon, filled the fuel tanks and took-off again for Meridian, Mississippi.

I arrived over Meridian in late afternoon and for the first time was faced with the problem of finding a suitable field and landing in it.

An experienced pilot can see at a glance nearly everything necessary to know about a landing field. He can tell its size, the condition of the ground, height of grass or weeds, whether there are any rocks, holes, posts or ditches in the way, if the land is rough and rolling or flat and smooth; in short whether the field is suitable to land in or if it would be advisable to look for another and better one. In fact, the success of a barnstorming pilot of the old days was measured to a large extent by his artfulness in the choice of fields from which to operate. Often, in case of motor failure, the safety of his passengers, himself, and his ship depended upon his alertness in choosing the best available landing place and his ability in maneuvering the plane into it. If his motor failure was only partial or at high altitude, time was not so essential, as a plane can glide a great distance, either with a motor which only “revs” down a couple of hundred R.P.M. or without any assistance from the engine at all. The average wartime machine could glide at least five times its height, which meant that if it was five thousand feet above the ground the pilot could pick a field to land in five miles away with safety; but if the failure was soon after the take-off, then instant decision and immediate action were necessary.

An amateur, on the other hand, has not overcome the strangeness of altitude, and the ground below looks entirely different than it does from the air, although there is not the sensation, in an airplane, of looking down as from a high building. Hills appear as flat country, boulders and ditches are invisible, sizes are deceptive and marshes appear as solid grassland. The student has not the background of experience so essential to the successful pilot, yet his only method of learning lies in his own initiative in meeting and overcoming service conditions.

There was no regular airport in Meridian in 1923, and a few fields available for a reasonably safe landing. After a half hour’s search I decided on the largest pasture I could see, made the best kind of a short field landing I knew how by coming down just over the treetops, with the engine wide open, to the edge of the field, then cutting the gun and allowing the ship to slow down to its landing speed. This method brings the plane in with tremendous velocity and requires a much larger landing field than is necessary, but until the pilot has flown long enough to have the “feel” of his ship it is far safer to come in fast than too slow.

It had been raining at Meridian and the field was a little soft, so that when my “Jenny” finally did settle to the ground it had a very short roll and there was still some clear ground in front.

I taxied up to a fence corner alongside of a small house and proceeded to tie down for the night. I had gained considerable respect for the wind in Kansas and Nebraska, so after turning off the gasoline and letting the motor stop by running the carburetor dry, (a safety expedient to keep the ever-present person who stands directly under the propeller while he wiggles it up and down, from becoming an aeronautical fatality) I pushed the nose of the plane up to a fence and after blocking the wheels securely, tied each wing tip to a fence post and covered the motor and cockpit with a canvas in case of rain.

By this time the usual barnstorming crowd had gathered and I spent the remaining daylight explaining that the hole in the radiator was for the propeller shaft to go through; that the wings were not made of catgut, tin, or cast iron, but of wood framework covered with cotton or linen shrunk to drum tightness by acetate and nitrate dope; that the only way to find out how it feels to fly was to try it for five dollars; that it was not as serious for the engine to stop as for a wing to fall off; and the thousand other questions which can only be conceived in such a gathering.

As night came on and the visibility decreased the crowd departed, leaving me alone with a handful of small boys who always remain to the last and can only be induced to depart by being allowed to follow the aviator from the field.

I accepted an invitation to spend the night in the small house beside the field.

The next morning I telephoned for a gas truck to come out to the field and spent the time before the truck arrived in the task of cleaning the distributor head, draining the carburetor jet wells and oiling the rocker arms on the engine.

While I was working, one of the local inhabitants came up and volunteered the information that he had been a pilot during the war but had not flown since and “wouldn’t mind takin’ a ride again.” I assured him that much as I would enjoy taking him up, flying was very expensive and that I did not have a large fund available to buy gasoline. I added that if he would pay operating costs, which would be five dollars for a short ride, I would be glad to accommodate him. He produced a five dollar bill and after warming up the motor I put him in the cockpit and taxied through the mud to the farthest corner of the field. This was to be my first passenger.

The field was soft and the man was heavy; we stalled over the fence by three feet and the nearest tree by five. I found myself heading up a thickly wooded slope, which was sloping upward at least as fast as I was climbing in that direction and for three minutes my Jenny and the slope fought it out over the fifteen feet of air between them. Eventually, however, in the true Jenny style we skimmed over the hilltop and obtained a little reserve altitude. I had passed through one of those almost-but-not-quite accidents for which Jennies are so famous and which so greatly retarded the growth of commercial flying during the post-war period.

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

St. Louis, Mo.--Financial Backers Of The Non-Stop New York To Paris Flight

UPPER ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT: HAROLD M. BIXBY, HARRY HALL KNIGHT, HARRY F. KNIGHT, MAJOR A. B. LAMBERT

LOWER ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT: J. D. WOOSTER LAMBERT, MAJOR WILLIAM B. ROBERTSON, E. LANSING RAY, EARL C. THOMPSON]

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

Fuselage Frame Of The Plane]

I decided that my passenger was entitled to a good ride after that take-off and kept him up chasing a buzzard for twenty minutes. After we landed he commented on the wonderful take-off and how much he enjoyed flying low over the treetops; again assured me that he had flown a great deal in the war; and rushed off to tell his friends all about his first airplane ride.

The gasoline truck had arrived and after servicing the ship I took-off again and headed west. I had no place in mind for the next stop and intended to be governed by my fuel supply in picking the next field.

The sky was overcast with numerous local storms. I had brought along a compass, but had failed to install it on the instrument board, and it was of little use in a suitcase out of reach. The boundary lines in the south do not run north and south, east and west as they do in the Northern states but curve and bend in every conceivable direction, being located by natural landmarks rather than meridians and parallels. I was flying by a map of the entire United States, with each state relatively small.

I left Meridian and started in the direction of Texas, cutting across country with no regard for roads or railways. For a time during the first hour I was not sure of my location on the map, but soon passed over a railway intersection which appeared to be in the proper place and satisfied me about my position. Then the territory became wilder and again I saw no checkpoints. The storm areas were more numerous and the possible landing fields farther apart, until near the end of the second hour I decided to land in the first available field to locate my position and take on more fuel. It required nearly thirty more minutes to find a place in which a plane could land and take-off with any degree of safety, and after circling the field several times to make sure it was hard and contained no obstacles, I landed in one corner, rolled down a hillside, taxied over a short level stretch, and came to rest half-way up the slope on the far side of the field.

A storm was approaching rapidly and I taxied back towards the fence corner at rather high speed. Suddenly I saw a ditch directly in front of me and an instant later heard the crash of splintering wood as the landing gear dropped down and the propeller came in contact with the ground. The tail of the plane rose up in the air, turned almost completely over, then settled back to about a forty-five degree angle. My first “crack-up”!

I climbed out of the cockpit and surveyed the machine. Actually the only damage done was to the propeller, and although the wings and fuselage were covered with mud, no other part of the plane showed any marked signs of strain. I had taxied back about thirty feet east of the landing tracks and had struck the end of a grass-covered ditch. Had I been ten feet farther over, the accident would never have happened. The usual crowd was assembling, as the impact of the “prop” with the ground had been heard in all of the neighboring fields and an airplane was a rare sight in those parts.

They informed me that I was half-way between Maben and Mathiston, Mississippi, and that I had flown one hundred and twenty-five miles north instead of west.

When enough men had assembled we lifted the plane out of the ditch, pushed it over to a group of pine trees and tied it down to two of the trees. After removing all loose equipment I rode into Maben with one of the storekeepers who had locked up his business when he heard about the landing of the plane.

I wired Wyche at Americus to ship me one of the two propellers I had purchased before leaving, then engaged a room at the old Southern Hotel.

While waiting for the propeller I had extracted promises from half a dozen citizens to ride at five dollars each. This would about cover the cost of the “prop,” as well as my expenses while waiting for it to arrive. When it did come I put it on the shaft between showers, with the assistance of most of Maben and Mathiston. I gave the plane a test flight and announced that I was ready to carry passengers when it was not raining too hard.

The Mississippians who were so anxious to fly when the propeller was broken immediately started a contest in etiquette. Each and every one was quite willing to let someone else be first and it required psychology, diplomacy, and ridicule before the first passenger climbed into the cockpit. I taxied over to the far corner of the field, instructed my passenger how to hold the throttle back to keep the ship from taking off, and lifted the tail around in order to gain every available foot of space for the take-off.

The first man was so audibly pleased with his ride that the others forgot their manners of a few minutes before and began arguing about who was to be next.

That afternoon a group of whites chipped in fifty cents apiece to give one of the negroes a hop, provided, as they put it, I would do a few “flip flops” with him. The negro decided upon was perfectly willing and confident up to the time when he was instructed to get in; even then he gamely climbed into the cockpit, assuring all of his clan that he would wave his red bandanna handkerchief over the side of the cockpit during the entire flight in order to show them that he was still unafraid.

After reaching the corner of the field I instructed him, as I had the previous passengers, to hold the throttle back while I was lifting the tail around. When I climbed back in my cockpit I told him to let go and opened the throttle to take-off. We had gone about fifty yards when it suddenly occurred to him that the ship was moving and that the handle he was to hold on to was not where it should be. He had apparently forgotten everything but that throttle, and with a death grip he hauled it back to the closed position. We had not gone far enough to prevent stopping before reaching the other end of the field and the only loss was the time required to taxi back over the rough ground to our starting point. Before taking off the next time, however, I gave very implicit instructions regarding that throttle.

I had promised to give this negro a stunt ride yet I had never had any instruction in aerobatics. I had, however, been in a plane with Bahl during two loops and one tailspin. I had also been carefully instructed in the art of looping by Reese who, forgetting that I was not flying a Hisso standard with twice the power of my Jenny, advised me that it was not necessary to dive excessively before a loop but rather to fly along with the motor full on until the plane gathered speed, then to start the loop from a level flying position.

I climbed up to three thousand feet and started in to fulfill my agreement by doing a few airsplashes, steep spirals and dives. With the first deviation from straight flight my passenger had his head down on the floor of the cockpit but continued to wave the red handkerchief with one hand while he was holding on to everything available with the other, although he was held in securely with the safety belt.

Finally, remembering my ground instructions, I leveled the plane off and with wide open motor waited a few moments to pick up maximum speed, then, slowly pulling back on the stick I began to loop. When I had gotten one-fourth of the way around, the ship was trembling in a nearly stalled position; still, the Curtiss motor was doing its best and it was not until the nose was pointing directly skyward at a ninety degree angle that the final inertia was lost and for an instant we hung motionless in the perfect position for a whipstall. I kicked full right rudder immediately to throw the plane over on its side but it was too late, the controls had no effect.

The Negro meanwhile decided that the “flip flops” were over and poked his head over the side of the cockpit looking for mother earth. At that instant we whipped. The ship gathered speed as it slid backwards towards the ground, the air caught the tail surfaces, jerked them around past the heavier nose and we were in a vertical dive; again in full control, but with no red handkerchief waving over the cockpit. I tried another loop in the same manner but just before reaching the stalling point in the next one I kicked the ship over on one wing and evaded a whipstall. After the second failure I decided that there must be something wrong with my method of looping and gave up any further attempt for that afternoon. But it was not until we were almost touching the ground that the bandanna again appeared above the cowling.

I remained in Maben for two weeks carrying over sixty passengers in all or about three hundred dollars worth. People flocked in from all over the surrounding country, some travelling for fifteen miles in oxcarts just to see the plane fly.

One old negro woman came up and asked,--

“Boss! How much you all charge foah take me up to Heaben and leave me dah?”

I could have carried many more passengers but it rained nearly every day and each flight rutted the field badly. When I landed it was necessary to pass over a soft spot between two hillsides, and before taking off I had to taxi back over this soft place on the way to the far corner of the field. During the last few days several men were required on each wing to push the plane through the mud to the hillside beyond. Another difficulty was that the old black wartime rubber shock absorber card had deteriorated to such an extent that I replaced it with hemp rope and taxi-ing over the harder parts of the field was a very rough procedure, especially since the ground had been plowed in years gone by and allowed to grow sod without being harrowed.

I made several attempts to find another suitable field nearby but there was none from which I could safely operate.

Landing fields are of primary importance to safety in aviation. It is not a question of how small a field a plane can operate from, but rather of how large a field is necessary to make that operation safe.

Large and well equipped airports situated close to cities will go far towards developing commercial airlines and keeping the United States at the top in aeronautical activity.

The cities who foresee the future of air transportation and provide suitable airports will find themselves the center of airlines radiating in every direction.

When an airline is organized, one of the primary considerations is the condition and location of the various landing fields where terminals are contemplated. If the airport is small and in poor condition, or if a passenger must of necessity spend nearly as much time in traveling from the business district out to the field as it will require for him to fly from the field to his destination, then it is very probable that some other city will be selected for the stopping point.

The condition of the field together with the fact that after a heavy rain it was often necessary to carry gasoline in five gallon cans a mile and a half over the railroad tracks by hand forced me to leave Maben and a large number of would-be passengers behind, and early one morning I took-off for the last time and again headed for Texas.

III

Barnstorming Experiences

I had strayed over a hundred miles off my course and experienced a minor crack-up, but I departed with two hundred and fifty more dollars in my pocket than I had arrived with, besides confidence in my ability to make at least a little more than expenses by barnstorming.

The constant rains had filled the rivers to overflowing, and after leaving Maben I flew over flooded territory nearly all the way to Lake Village, Arkansas. Often the water was up to the second story windows of the farmhouses, and a forced landing at any time would have at least meant nosing over.

I had installed the compass while waiting for the new propeller at Maben, and experienced no further difficulty in holding my course.

After circling Lake Village I landed in a field several miles north of town. The nearest building was a clubhouse and soon the keeper and his family had arrived beside the plane. They invited me to stay with them as long as I wished, but the keeper persistently refused to accept a flight in return for his hospitality. I carried only a handful of passengers that afternoon. The flying territory around that part of the country was fairly good and there were a number of fields available for planes to land in. Consequently an airplane was no longer the drawing attraction that it was farther in the interior.

I staked the plane down much earlier than usual and went over to the clubhouse.

Evening came on with the clearness of a full moon and open sky. The landscape was illuminated with a soft yellow light; an ideal night for flying. I decided to see what the country looked like from the air at night and jokingly asked my host to accompany me. To my surprise he willingly agreed. For some reason he had no fear of a night flight although I had been unable to persuade him to go up with me in the daytime. What his reaction would have been, had he known that I had never flown after dark before, is a matter of speculation.

We untied the plane, removed the canvases from engine and cockpit, and after a few minutes spent in warming up the motor, taxied down the field and took-off for a moonlight flight down the Mississippi and over Lake Village.

Later in the evening after the ship was again securely staked to the ground and we were sitting quietly in the clubhouse, my host stated that he had never spent a more enjoyable quarter of an hour in his life.

The next morning I was again heading towards Texas against a strong westerly wind which retarded the speed of the Jenny so greatly that even with my double fuel capacity it was necessary to land at Farmerville, Louisiana, to replenish my supply. From there I flew to Texarkana and landed between the stumps of the 1923 airport.

On the following morning I left Texarkana with a strong tail wind and after crossing the western end of the Ozark mountains, landed near a small town in north eastern Oklahoma where I took on a fresh supply of fuel and again headed north towards Lincoln, Nebraska.

My tanks began to run low about half-way through Kansas and I picked out a hillside near Alma. After flying low and dragging the field several times I came in for a landing, but just as the wheels were about to touch the ground I discovered that it was covered with fairly large rocks half hidden in the tall grass. I opened the throttle to take-off but the plane had lost too much speed for the motor to take effect and as it struck the ground the left wing hooked in the rocks and groundlooped the ship to the left but without doing serious damage. The landing gear wires were strained and about two feet of the rear spar on the lower left wing tip was snapped off. Nothing was broken however which would require immediate repairing.

[Illustration: © _Erickson_

Working On Navigation Charts For Flight]

[Illustration: © _Erickson_

Instrument Board Of The Plane]

The field was quite a distance from Alma and in order to get an early start in the morning I stayed with the ship that night. During the heavy rains at Maben, Mississippi, I had constructed a hammock of heavy canvas which could be suspended under the top wing.

I tied the corners of this hammock to the upper strut fittings and crawled into the three blankets inside which were sewn up to form a bag. Thus I spent a comfortable night.

When I arrived over Lincoln the next day I circled over the Lincoln Standard factory, and after landing on the old flying field south of town, waited for the car which was sent out to bring in visiting airmen.

The remainder of the day was spent in “ground flying” with my friends in the factory. We had not been together for seven months and the usual exchange of experiences was necessary.

I soon learned that Bud Gurney had made a parachute for himself and was intending to test it by the simple method of going up to an altitude of fifteen hundred or two thousand feet and cutting loose from the plane. If the chute opened it was successful.

After a great deal of persuasion I prevailed upon him to let me take him up in my ship while we made the first test with a sand bag.

The tanks had just been filled with fuel but I had unlimited confidence in my Jenny and we lashed the parachute and a sandbag on the right wing. Bud, who weighed one hundred and sixty-five pounds himself, climbed into the front cockpit and we started to take-off with a total load of about six hundred pounds, to say nothing of the resistance of the parachute and sandbag which were directly in the slipstream from the propeller.

Even with this load we cleared the nearest obstacle by a safe margin and finally attained an altitude of about two hundred feet. Then we were caught by a descending current of air which carried the plane down to within ten feet of the ground, and try as I would I could not get any higher. A wooded hill was directly in front, and to avoid striking the trees I turned down wind. A railroad tressle was then in front of us and we stalled over it by inches. For five minutes we dodged hills, trees, and houses. I signaled Bud to cut the sandbag, but when he started to climb out of the cockpit to reach it, the added resistance brought the plane down still lower. Then in front of us appeared a row of trees, much higher than the rest, which I knew it would not be possible to get over. We were then passing over a grain field and I cut the gun and landed down wind. The grain was high enough to keep the ship from rolling far and we unloaded the handbag before taking off again. With the weight of the bag and its resistance gone, we had no trouble in getting out of the grain and back to the flying field.

A week later Bud carried out his original intention of testing the chute. It was successful.

Before continuing the flight to Minnesota, Bud and I made a short barnstorming trip through eastern Nebraska. That territory had been fairly well covered by other barnstormers, however, and we did very little business.

At one place where we landed we were overtaken by a violent thunderstorm combined with a strong wind. It came up so suddenly that we had only time enough to tail the ship into the wind and lash the stick to keep the ailerons from whipping before the wind struck us. We were both holding on to the tail trying to keep the plane from blowing away. Following the wind was a heavy rain which covered the ground with water and at each flash of lightning the electricity on the wires of the ship would pass to the ground through our bodies with the intensity of a booster magnet.

In an electric storm a plane acts as part of a condenser, since it is insulated from the ground by the rubber tires and wooden tailskid. It is possible to receive a violent shock by standing on wet ground and holding on to one of the wires.

We were unable to let go of the ship in the high wind and could only remain and take these discharges as they came. Fortunately the storm did not last long.

The night after our return to Lincoln we slept on the field so that I could get a good start in the morning. Bud was in the back of a Ford truck, and I was in the hammock.

The next morning was overcast with local showers which were visible in every direction. I took off soon after daybreak and after flying through several storms landed in a hayfield at Forest City, Iowa, where I serviced the ship between showers and took off on the final flight to Shakopee, Minnesota, where I expected to meet my father and carry him around on his campaign.

I found Shakopee covered by a cloudburst and in flying around waiting for the storm to pass so that I could land I got into a heavy shower near Savage. One of the cylinders cut out, and I was circling preparatory to landing in a clover field when two more stopped firing. I was flying at less than a two hundred foot altitude and loosing that rapidly. It was necessary to land immediately but the only choice of landing places lay between a swamp and high trees. I took the swamp and cut the throttle. When the wheels touched earth they rolled about twenty feet, sank into the spreader bar and we nosed over.

The rudder did not quite touch the swamp grass and the plane stopped after passing through three-quarters of a semi-circle, with the radiator cap and top wing resting on the ground. I was hanging on the safety belt but when I tried to open the clasp with one hand, holding on with the other to keep from falling out on my head, I found it to be jammed. After several futile attempts to open it I reverted to the two strap buckles at the end of the belt to release myself from the cockpit.

All this required not more than two or three minutes.

After getting out of the cockpit I inspected the plane carefully. Again there was little actual damage. The propeller was badly cracked and would have to be replaced; there was a crack in the spreader board which required winding with strong cord. Otherwise the plane was in perfect condition although splashed with mud.

For once there was no one in sight and I made my way through the swamp to the nearest farmhouse. On the way I found that there was solid ground along the edge of the swamp less than 100 yards from the plane from which I could take-off.

The farmer had seen the plane pass over in the rain and was on his way down towards the swamp when I met him. He informed me that it was not possible to get horses through the mire out to the ship and that he had no idea of how I was to get it back to hard sod again.

I borrowed a rope from him to use in pulling the tail back to a normal position and we started back to the swamp.

Meanwhile it seems that two boys had seen me land, and when I did not emerge from the cockpit immediately, had run to Savage with the news that “an aviator had landed upside down in the swamp” and that they had “gone up and felt of his neck and that it was stiff and he was stone dead.”

I had flown over the town in the rain only a few minutes before, and as in those days it was not difficult for anyone to believe anything about an airplane, the town promptly locked its doors and came crawling and wading through the swamp. The older inhabitants followed the railroad track around its edge and by the time I returned with the farmer and a rope there were enough townspeople to solve my problem by carrying the ship back onto solid ground.

They were undoubtedly much disappointed at having come so far on a false alarm but turned to willingly to help me get the ship out of the swamp.

The next edition of one of the Minneapolis papers carried the following item which typically exemplifies what has been the average man’s knowledge of aeronautics.

Airplane Crashes Near Savage

Charles A. Lindbergh, son of ex-Congressman Lindbergh, crashed near Savage, Minnesota, this morning. He was flying in his plane three hundred feet above the ground when it suddenly went into a nose dive and landed on its propeller in a swamp. Lindbergh says he will be flying again in three days.

After reading this and similar accounts of equally minor accidents of flight, it is little wonder that the average man would far rather watch someone else fly and read of the narrow escapes from death when some pilot has had a forced landing or a blowout, than to ride himself. Even in the post-war days of now obsolete equipment, nearly all of the serious accidents were caused by inexperienced pilots who were then allowed to fly or to attempt to fly--without license or restriction about anything they could coax into the air--and to carry anyone who might be beguiled into riding with them.

My next move was to wire to Little Falls for a propeller which Wyche had expressed from Americus and two days later joined my father in his campaign at Marshall.

My father had been opposed to my flying from the first and had never flown himself. However, he had agreed to go up with me at the first opportunity, and one afternoon he climbed into the cockpit and we flew over Redwood Falls together. From that day on I never heard a word against my flying and he never missed a chance to ride in the plane.

After the campaign was over I spent the remainder of the summer barnstorming through Minnesota, northern Iowa and western Wisconsin. Most of the time I was alone, but I took one student around with me for a few weeks while I was teaching him to fly, and then I barnstormed southern Minnesota with my mother for ten days. My mother had never objected to my flying, and after her first flight at Janesville, Minnesota, she became an enthusiast herself.

We had been together constantly up to the start of my flying career and had both looked forward to flying around together. Consequently when the opportunity presented itself I wired her to meet me at Janesville.

My mother enjoyed flying from the first and has made a number of flights with me; including a round trip between Chicago and St. Louis in the mail compartment of my plane.

Some weeks I barely made expenses, and on others I carried passengers all week long at five dollars each. On the whole I was able to make a fair profit in addition to meeting expenses and depreciation.

One evening while I was waiting for chance passengers at a field in southern Minnesota, a car drove up with several young fellows in it, one of whom was a graduate of the Army Air Service Training Schools. He asked me why I did not apply for enlistment as a cadet at Brooks Field and explained that by writing to the Chief of Air Service at the War Department in Washington I could get enrollment blanks and full information on the course and its requirements.

I had always wanted to fly modern and powerful planes. Ever since I had watched a group of fourteen De Havilands with their four hundred horsepower Liberty motors come into the field at Lincoln in my flying school days, I had longed to fly one of them. The Army offered the only opportunity, for there were no Liberty engines flying around barnstorming. Consequently at the hotel that night I wrote my letter to the Chief of Air Service, and a few days later when I received my next mail forwarded from Minneapolis, a letter from Washington with the enrollment blanks was included. The letter informed me that a candidate must be between twenty and twenty-seven years of age inclusive, unmarried, of good physical condition, and must have a high school education or its equivalent.

I completed and returned the forms, and a short time later received another message authorizing me to appear before an examining board at Chanute Field, Rantoul, Illinois, in January, 1924.

Toward the end of September I began to work south. Cold weather was coming on in Minnesota and most people did not enjoy flying in an open cockpit in winter.

I barnstormed over into Wisconsin but found that someone had been carrying passengers for half price there. I had always conformed to the rule in use among most pilots at that time, of giving a good ride for five dollars but not carrying anyone for less. So I left southern Wisconsin and turned towards Illinois. After taking off I decided to take in the International Air Races at St. Louis, which were then in progress; so instead of sizing up each town I passed over for its passenger possibilities, I flew towards St. Louis until the gasoline ran low, then landed, took on a fresh supply from a passing gas truck, and pressed on to Carlinville, Illinois. There I picked up more fuel, and a twenty-five dollar passenger for St. Louis.

As we neared Lambert Field where the races were being held we passed over the race course while the bombers’ contest was in progress. I landed on a hill east of Lambert in order to keep out of the way of the races, and waited until evening before hopping over and staking my ship down at the end of one of the long rows of civilian planes.

A large number of my old friends were attending the races and soon after landing I met Bud Gurney who, together with one of the flying students at Lincoln, had managed to get to the races without buying a Pullman ticket. He had brought his chute with him and was entered in the parachute spot landing contest, in which he was to be the last attraction of the meet by staging a double drop.

In the evening, after the races were over for the day, I carried a few passengers and looked over the different types of planes. I would have given the summer’s barnstorming profits gladly in return for authority to fly some of the newer types, and I determined to let nothing interfere with my chance of being appointed a Flying Cadet in the Army. This appeared to be my only opportunity to fly planes which would roar up into the sky when they were pointed in that direction, instead of having to be wished up over low trees at the end of a landing field.

When I went to St. Louis it was with the expectation of pressing on still farther south when the races were over, but with Bud’s assistance I sold my Jenny to his friend, flying instruction included. Marvin Northrop who had flown a Standard down from Minneapolis had sold his ship in St. Louis also; together with a course in flying. Since it was necessary for him to return home immediately, I agreed to instruct his student while mine was learning on the Jenny.

I had promised to carry Bud for his last jump, and towards evening on the final day of the races he packed his two chutes and tied them together with the only rope he could find. It was rather old but we decided that it would hold and if it did not the only consequence would be a little longer fall before the second chute opened.

I coaxed the old Jenny up to seventeen hundred feet and as we passed to the windward of the field Bud cut loose. The first chute opened at once, but in opening, the strain on the old rope was too great and it snapped releasing the second chute which fell another two hundred feet before opening.

[Illustration: © _Erickson_

“We” Make A Test Flight]

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

Curtis Field, L. I.--Patsy, The Mascot For “The Spirit Of St. Louis”]

Planes were circling all around the parachute and flying in every direction without apparent regard for one another. The air was kept in constant motion by their propellers, and the chute swung from side to side in the rough currents with the result that Bud broke an arm as he landed among the crowd on the side of a ditch. This was the only accident in which anyone was injured during the entire meet.

For the next few weeks I instructed my two students and made a short barnstorming tour through Illinois.

IV

Heading South

When the period of instruction was completed I flew the old Jenny up to my student’s home in Iowa and, after watching him make a few solo flights from his home field, I left on a train for Lincoln. My last sight of the old Jenny was as it passed two hundred feet over the station near the center of town--and my parting instruction had been to keep a safe gliding angle when over the city and under no circumstances to come below fifteen hundred feet.

I went to Lincoln to get an S.V.A., which is a two-place Italian pursuit plane, and fly it back to St. Louis. But on arriving I learned that it was in the old Pulitzer Field near Omaha and in questionable condition. It was reported that some cows had eaten all the fabric off the rudder. Cows and mules are fond of the fabric covering, and it is not uncommon to hear of a plane being completely stripped by these animals in a few minutes. On the other hand, I have left a machine unguarded in the same pasture with cattle for days without having them touch it. And during the two weeks I spent at Maben, Mississippi, there had been a number of mules in the same pasture with my ship yet they apparently never came near it.

We filled the back of a touring car with a new rudder and other spare parts, and drove to Omaha the next morning.

The S.V.A. was in even worse condition than had been represented. In addition to needing a new rudder, part of the lock-stitching had broken in the wings and as a result, the fabric was very loose. The radiator had developed a number of leaks which someone had attempted to stop by dumping in a pailful of bran. And when we eventually did get it started the engine skipped badly and would not “rev” up over 1100 R.P.M.

At last we decided to attempt to fly the ship to Lincoln where it would be much more convenient to work on it, and I took off with a sputtering motor and with the centigrade five degrees below boiling. At the end of five minutes the needle was crowding the peg at 115°, and in fifteen minutes the water expansion tank exploded. I landed in a stubble field and hired the farmer to hitch his team to the ship and haul it to a fence corner next to his house, where I left it to be taken apart and hauled to Lincoln by truck.

I passed the month of December barnstorming in Illinois, and in January went to Chanute Field to take the entrance examinations for a Flying Cadet.

On one occasion while at Lambert Field I had made a short flight into the Ozark foothills with Leon Klink, an automobile dealer who had bought a Canuck that fall and was just learning to fly it. After I returned from Chanute Field and was waiting for the results of my examinations, we decided to make a pleasure flight through the south, barnstorming only enough to make current expenses, if possible. Klink wanted to learn to fly, and at the same time take a vacation, while my only objective was to keep flying and at the same time be ready to enter the next class at Brooks Field which commenced in March, providing my examinations had been passed satisfactorily.

Accordingly on the twenty-third of January we took off from Lambert Field in five below zero weather and headed for the Sunny South.

Our first stop was at Perryville, Missouri, where we visited with some of Klink’s friends for several days, and carried nineteen passengers. After leaving Perryville we flew to Hickman, Kentucky, and landed in a soft field east of town. We had passed out of the extremely cold weather and the wheels of our plane sank several inches into the southern mud. When we had refueled and attempted to take-off, it was impossible to get enough speed to lift the tires out of the mud. So Klink got out and I tried to take-off alone. On the third attempt the ship gained enough speed for the wings to begin to carry a portion of the load and keep the wheels from sinking so deeply; then it was only a matter of a few more feet before I was off.

I picked out a hayfield a little further from town, which appeared to be a little more solid than the first, and landed. By that time it was too late to make another hop before dusk, and as even the new field was too soft to make it advisable to carry any passengers, we left the Canuck tied to a fence and went into Hickman for the night.

The first effort to take-off the following morning was unsuccessful, also the second. We could not gain a speed of over five miles an hour over the soft ground. Finally, with the assistance of several men pushing on each wing, we got the ship to the top of a gentle rise which gave us enough of a start to take-off without serious difficulty. We stopped once in Tennessee for fuel; then at Friar Point, Mississippi, where we landed in an old cotton field and tied down for the night.

The Canuck had only one fuel tank with a capacity of twenty-three gallons or enough to last for two and a half hours. By leaving half an hour for locating a landing field, which was quite difficult at times, we had enough gasoline remaining for about one hundred and twenty-five miles in still air. If we were bucking a head wind it would be just that much less.

We spent the night with one of the plantation hands near the field and the next day in seeing the country and carrying a handful of passengers. In the evening we visited a “hanted” house with a party of the younger residents but were unable to find any “hants.”

Our next stop was at Hollandale, then Vicksburg, where we landed in a little field six miles north of town by slipping in down the side of a small mountain and ground-looping before striking a stump. After a day seeing Vicksburg we flew to Clinton where the passenger trade was quite lively and another day passed making sightseeing flights.

We refueled at Hattiesburg and Mobile, then landed at the Naval Air Station near Pensacola, Florida, where the Commanding Officer showed us every courtesy during our visit.

At last I received notice from the War Department to the effect that my examination had been satisfactorily passed, along with an order to appear at Brooks Field, San Antonio, Texas, in time to enter the March fifteenth class of Flying Cadets.

Klink and I decided to cut short our stay at Pensacola and to work our way as far west as time would allow before it was necessary for me to leave for Brooks Field.

We had promised to take one of the ladies of the post for a short hop before leaving, and on the morning of our departure I took off for a test flight before taking the lady over Pensacola. Just after the ship had left the field and was about two hundred feet high over the bay, the motor “reved” down to about five hundred. I banked around in an attempt to get back to the field but lacked by about fifteen feet enough altitude to reach it, and was forced to land in the sand hills less than a hundred feet from the edge of the flying field. The first hill wiped off my landing gear and one wheel went up through the front spar on the lower left wing, breaking it off about two feet from the fuselage.

A quick survey of the plane showed that we would require a new landing gear and propeller in addition to the material required to splice the spar.

The Navy hauled the plane into one of its large dirigible hangars and allowed us to make use of its equipment in repairing the damage. We purchased a spare landing gear and a propeller, then built a box frame around the broken spar and after gluing all the joints, screwed it in position and wound the splice with strong cord, which was then shrunk tight by several coats of dope. In this way the splice was made stronger than the original spar had ever been.

When we were not working on the ship we made several trips to the old Spanish forts which protected the city during the days when Florida still belonged to Spain. These are in an excellent state of preservation and contain a number of passageways, one of which is supposed to lead underground between the two fortifications, but although we searched carefully for the opening to this tunnel we never found it.

In all we spent about a week repairing the plane and when it was ready to fly once more I tested it with an Irving parachute borrowed from one of the officers of the station. That was the first service type of chute I had ever worn and I experienced the unique feeling of not caring particularly whether the ship held together during the tests or not. I put that Canuck through maneuvers which I would never have dreamed of doing with it before, yet with the confidence of absolute safety.

The advent of the service parachute was a tremendous step forward in the advance of aviation. It gave the test pilot a safe means of escape in most cases when all else had failed. It permitted formations to fly closer in comparative safety and in short allowed flyers to learn more about their planes than ever before. All this contributed to the ever-increasing knowledge of practical flying which makes possible the safety of present air commerce.

The airplane parachute has developed with the rapidity of the planes themselves. For years descents with chutes were made from balloons, but the first jump from a plane was by Capt. Berry at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1912. His parachute was a comparatively crude affair and of no use in an emergency. Ten years later, service type parachutes had been perfected which were strong enough to stand any strain the weight of a man’s body falling through the air could place on them, no matter how many thousand feet he fell before releasing the parachute from its pack; and today, fifteen years after Capt. Berry made the first jump from an airplane, every army and air mail pilot is required to wear a parachute.

The test flight over, we lashed a five gallon can of gasoline on each wing and followed along the Gulf of Mexico to Pascagoula, Mississippi. There was a small crack half-way down the back of the Canuck’s gasoline tank and when the gas no longer oozed out through the crack we knew that the tank was half empty. By carrying the two gas cans we obtained an extra hour’s cruising range, and when the main tank became low I would pour their contents into it through a short length of steam hose. In this way we expected to make longer flights between landing fields and partially make up for the time lost at Pensacola.

From Pascagoula we went to New Orleans, landing in the race track north of the city. Then to Lake Charles and from there to Rice Field at Houston, Texas. At Rice Field we installed three fuel tanks under the top wing and center section, which gave us twenty-seven gallons extra capacity, or, in addition to the five gallon cans lashed on the wings, a cruising range of about four hundred miles.

The field was covered with water and as our next stop was to be Brooks Field, which is just a few miles south of San Antonio, we only filled the wing and main tanks, leaving the five gallon cans empty.

At Brooks I obtained definite instructions to report not later than March fifteenth.

It was then the end of February but we decided to push on as far west as the intervening time would allow. Then I would return by rail and Klink would continue alone.

We filled all of our tanks and after running along the ground for half a mile, stalled into the air; but after three circles of Brooks Field were completed and the plane was less than fifty feet high we landed and left one of the cans. Klink held the other in his lap in the rear cockpit.

We had no more trouble in attaining several hundred feet of altitude with the lessened load and greatly lessened resistance, which counted for much more than the weight of the gasoline, but an hour later, when the elevation of the ground below us increased as the mountains were approached, we were again just skimming the mesquite and cactus. At last it was necessary for Klink to heave his gas can over the side and for me to turn the ship down a ravine to keep from striking the ground. It was disappointing enough to leave the first can at Brooks Field but I do not believe Klink will ever forget the sight of the second as it burst on the ground below us.

Sometime later we came to the West Nueces River and, mistaking it for the Rio Grande, turned north. We had been cutting across country but had hardly flown long enough to have reached the Rio Grande. The Rio Grande was the only river, according to my map, with a railroad running along the northeast bank. We followed the West Nueces to Camp Wood where the rails ended. By that time I knew that the map was in error and we were on the wrong course, but as there was insufficient fuel remaining to warrant our cutting across the mountains to the west, we landed in a small sheep pasture near Barksdale. This pasture was not large enough for us both to take-off together so I flew the ship over to Camp Wood alone and landed in the town square. With the wind blowing from the right direction, and by taking off under two telephone lines and over one road, the square afforded a long enough runway, provided the wind was blowing from the proper direction.

The next day conditions were ideal but Klink wanted to go to a dance that evening, and the day after, the wind was blowing from the opposite direction. Our remaining time was passing rapidly and we were both anxious to get to California before my return to Brooks Field. If we could get the plane to a larger field six miles south of Camp Wood we would have room to take-off with a full load of gasoline.

One of the town streets was wide enough to take-off from, provided I could get a forty-four foot wing between two telephone poles forty-six feet apart and brush through a few branches on each side of the road later on. We pushed the ship over to the middle of the street and I attempted to take-off. The poles were about fifty feet ahead and just before passing between them there was a rough spot in the street. One of the wheels got in a rut and I missed by three inches of the right wing tip. The pole swung the plane around and the nose crashed through the wall of a hardware store, knocking pots, pans and pitch-forks all over the interior.

The merchant and his son thought that an earthquake was in progress and came running out into the street. He was highly pleased to find an airplane half-way into his place of business and not only refused to accept anything for damages, but would not even allow us to have the wall repaired. He said the advertising value was much more than the destruction.

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

CURTISS FIELD, L. I.--POLICE GUARDING “THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS” ON ITS WAY TO THE RUNWAY FOR THE TAKE-OFF]

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

Curtiss Field, L. I.--Captain René Fonck Wishes Me The Best Of Luck]

The greatest damage to the plane was a broken propeller, although from that time on it always carried left rudder. We wired for a new propeller and a can of dope from Houston and in a few days were hedgehopping the mountain tops in true Canuck fashion on our way west.

A Canuck, or J.N.4C is nothing more or less than a Canadian Jenny and while it is lighter and performs a little better than a Jenny, it is subject to the same characteristic of being able to just miss most everything it passes over.

We passed over the Rio Grande and cut through a corner of Mexico, then landed on one of the Army emergency fields at Pumpville and induced the section boss to sell us enough gasoline to continue our flight.

Dusk overtook us near Maxon, Texas, and we landed between the cactus and Spanish dagger west of the town, which consisted of a section house and three old box cars of the type used throughout the Southwest for housing the Mexican section hands.

The section boss was living alone. He was soon to be relieved and stationed in some more populated locality. We spent the night with him and in the morning cleared a runway for the ship. Maxon was quite a distance above sea level and as the air was less dense, an airplane required a longer distance to take-off in. There was a small mountain on the east end of the field and the land sloped upwards toward the west. We worked until midday cutting sagebrush and cactus. There was a light breeze from the west and the air was hot and rough. After using three-quarters of the runway the Canuck rose about four feet above the ground but stopped there, and when the end of the runway was passed the wings and landing gear scraped along on the sagebrush. As soon as we picked up a little extra flying speed, another clump of sagebrush would slow the ship down again until, after we had gone about two hundred yards, a large Spanish dagger plant passed through the front spar of the lower left wing. After being cut off by the internal brace wires, it remained firmly planted in the center of the outer bay. We landed immediately and found the plane to be undamaged except for a fourteen inch gap in the spar and a number of rips in the wing fabric.

The engineer on a passing freight train had seen us go down and stopped long enough for Klink to climb on board. It was agreed that Klink would go to the nearest place where he could get the material to make repairs, while I remained with the plane. We were thirty-two miles from the nearest store and as the section boss was leaving that day for his new location, I walked a mile and a half to a ranch house, where I arranged for accommodations until we were ready to fly again.

Klink went all the way to El Paso before he could get any dope and wing fabric. Meanwhile I spent the day with the plane, and a large part of the night following the ranchers’ hounds in their search for wildcats and panthers. They had treed a large cat the night before while we were staying in the section house, but were unable to duplicate their performance for my benefit. About all I succeeded in accomplishing after following them for hours, was to pull one dog out of a wire fence which had caught his foot as he jumped over.

Klink returned with a can of pigmented dope, two lengths of crating board, some nails and screws, a can of glue, several balls of chalkline, and enough fabric to replace the torn wing covering. We borrowed a butcher knife, a needle and thread, and an axe from the rancher, and set in to make the Canuck airworthy once more. We hued the crating down roughly to size, cut it into proper lengths with an old hacksaw blade from our toolkit, and finished it off with the butcher knife. In a short time we had constructed a second box splice similar to the one at Pensacola, but a few feet farther out on the spar.

We had just enough dope to cover the splice, so the fabric in the outer bay was left undoped; and after we had sewed up the longer rents caused by the sagebrush, we were once more ready to take the air.

It was too near the fifteenth of March to continue west, so we decided to take the Canuck back to San Antonio where we would finish off the repairs and Klink would continue on to California alone.

V

Training At Brooks Field

I arrived at Brooks Field on March 15th, 1924, but was not enlisted as a Flying Cadet until March 19th. Ordinarily a cadet enlists at the nearest station to his home and is given free transportation to his post of service and back to the enlistment point after his discharge. By enlisting at Brooks I was entitled to no transportation allowance except possibly bus fare back from Kelly where I graduated a year later.

There were one hundred and four of us in all, representing nearly every state in the Union. We filled the cadet barracks to overflowing. There were two cots to each window and some of us were even quartered in the recreation hall. We were a carefree lot, looking forward to a year of wonderful experiences before we were graduated as second lieutenants and given our wings. Nearly all of us were confident that we would be there to graduate a year later. We had already passed the rigid physical and mental entrance examinations which so many of the other applicants had failed. We had no doubt of our ability to fly although most of us had never flown before, and we had yet to get our first taste of the life of a flying cadet.

By the time we had been in the barracks a few hours stories began circulating around which originated from conversations with the last class of cadets who were waiting to be transferred to the advanced flying school at Kelly.

Rumors of “Benzine Boards” and “washouts,” “academic work” and “eight-hour examinations,” “one eightys,” and “check pilots,” “walls with ears” and “cadet etiquette”--these and a hundred other strange terms were condescendingly passed down to us by the old cadets of six months experience. Someone remarked that less than forty per cent of us could expect to finish the primary training at Brooks and that probably half of those would be washed out at Kelly.

By bed check that night we had already begun to feel the apprehension which is a part of a flying cadet’s life from his first day at Brooks until he has received his pilot’s wings at Kelly.

Our actual flying training was to begin on the first of April. Two weeks were required to become organized and learn the preliminary duties of a cadet. During these two weeks we were inoculated against typhoid and small-pox at the hospital, taught the rudiments of cadet etiquette, given fatigue duty, required to police the grounds surrounding our barracks, inspected daily, and instructed and given examinations in five subjects. In our spare time we were allowed to look around the post or take the bus to San Antonio, provided, however, that we were back in bed not later than ten o’clock on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. At all other times we could stay out as late as we desired.

When we did have a few spare moments in the afternoon, they were usually spent in trying to “chizzle” a hop from one of the instructors on the line.

Early one morning we were allowed to take the training ships out and push them to the line for the old cadets to fly. But when one of the planes nosed over after eight husky rookies heaved up on the hundred and fifty pound tail, it was decided to put us to work moving hydrogen cylinders for a balloon ascension.

As the first of April approached we were looking forward to the start of actual flying with great anticipation. Coupled with this was the anxiety of waiting for the returns from our examination papers, the failure of any two of which would be sufficient cause for their owner to be washed out from the courses.

The flying instruction was carried on from two stages or different sections of the field. I was assigned to B stage which was about a half mile out in the field from the cadet barracks. Each instructor had about six cadets assigned to him, and early in the morning on the first day of April, our instruction commenced. I was assigned to Sergeant Winston, together with five other cadets. We pushed his instruction plane out from the hangar to the line. Sergeant Winston picked out one of us, told him to get into the rear cockpit and was off. The rest of us walked over to B stage, watching for tarantulas along the road on the way.

In 1924, the Curtiss Jenny was still used by the Army for a training plane, although the 90 H.P. Curtiss OX-5 engines had been replaced by 150 H.P. Hispano-Suizas. The more modern types of planes for training were still in the experimental stage. The Jennies had been designed during the war and they were becoming obsolete, but it is doubtful whether a better training ship will ever be built, although undoubtedly the newest type is much safer. Jennies were underpowered; they were somewhat tricky and they splintered badly when they crashed hard; but when a cadet learned to fly one of them, well, he was just about capable of flying anything on wings with a reasonable degree of safety.

I had been particularly fortunate in my assignment of an instructor. Sergeant Winston held the record for flying time in the army with about thirty-three hundred hours. He was an excellent pilot and knew how to instruct if he wanted to. When my turn came he asked me how much flying time I had had and after I told him about three hundred and twenty-five hours he turned the controls over to me with orders to take the ship around and land it. I had some difficulty in flying with my right hand. The wartime ships which I was accustomed to were built to be flown with the left, but after the Armistice it was decided to change the throttle over to the other side on the theory that the right hand was the natural one to fly with. After three landings, however, Sergeant Winston got out of the cockpit and told me to fly around for thirty minutes and try to get used to right handed piloting.

When we were not flying we were gathered around the stage house watching the progress of our classmates and learning how to turn the propellers over in starting the engine without placing ourselves in a position to be struck in case it kicked backwards. To a pilot, the propeller is the most dangerous part of his plane, and is a constant source of worry to him when his ship is on the ground among people who vie with each other in seeing how close they can stand to the whirring blade while the motor is still running. Then there is usually a contest to see who can be first to move it up and down after it stops turning over.

A cadet is usually given about ten hours of dual instruction before he is allowed to solo. The instructor first takes him up and after flying around for a few minutes, allows the student to take hold of the controls to get an approximate idea of the amount and direction of movement necessary for gentle banks and turns. Then the instructor throws his hands up in the air in full view of the student--the signal that he has turned over entire control of the ship. The cadet is given the opportunity suddenly to realize that flying is not a simple operation of pulling the stick back to go up and pushing it forward to come down, but that an instinctive and synchronized movement of all controls is necessary even to keep the machine in level flight.

For a moment after the pilot turns over the controls the plane keeps on a straight course, then the nose begins to lose its normal position on the horizon, a wing dips down, and a blast of air rushes in from one side of the cockpit. Carefully learned instructions are forgotten and the controls serve only to move the earth still farther from its proper position. All this time the instructor’s hands are gripping the top of the cowling. The cadet realizes that it is up to himself in some manner to level the plane out into a normal flying position once more, not realizing for an instant that his instructor can operate the stick nearly as well with his knees as with his hand and that he has probably already saved the plane from falling into a spin several times.

After splashing around the sky in this manner for several minutes the pilot brings his ship back into position and pulling up into a stall with a throttled motor, roars back his instructions at a cadet who is much more absorbed in watching the approaching ground below than in listening to his instructor. When forty-five minutes have passed, the ship is flown back and landed near the stage house where the next cadet, with helmet and goggles adjusted, is waiting for his turn in the air. The first climbs out and takes his place on the bench surrounding the base of the building and the plane is off to repeat the performance over again.

At the end of ten hours, if the cadet is not capable of soloing he is in grave danger of being washed out as a flyer. However, if the instructor believes that a little more time will be sufficient and that the student has shown signs of eventually becoming a military pilot, the dual instruction may be continued for three or four more hours.

At Brooks when an instructor came to the conclusion that one of his students would never master the art of flying quickly enough to keep up with the standard of the class, he turned the cadet over for a check hop with the stage commander who was always a pilot of long experience. Few cadets ever passed this check; if the stage commander believed that any cadet had been misjudged, however, he had authority to place him back on flying status for further instruction. If the commander concurred with the decision of the instructor, he recommended the cadet for a final check on headquarters stage with the chief check pilot. The decision of this officer was final and to be returned to flying after a flight with him was an occurrence seldom recorded in cadet history. After failing his final check flight a cadet was ordered to appear before a board of officers known as the “Benzine Board.” If he was reporting for misconduct or academic deficiency there was still some slight hope of beating the board, but if it was for inability to fly, the decision of “washout” was a foregone conclusion.

The washing out for our class commenced in earnest with the approach of solo flights and the returns from our examinations. I was fortunate enough to have passed them and my previous flying experience kept me from worrying on any other account during the first part of our training.

There was no disgrace in washing out. It simply meant in the majority of cases, that the cadet was not especially adapted to flying and he was sent back to his point of enlistment with an honorable discharge and the advice to take up some other form of occupation.

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

CURTISS FIELD, L. I.--GETTING READY FOR THE TAKE-OFF. “THE WEATHER WAS PRETTY SICK”]

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

Curtiss Field, L. I.--Just Before Starting On The Big Adventure]

Our first “Benzine Board” met about a month after the start of school and reconvened more or less regularly from that time until we were ready to be graduated from the primary school and transferred to Kelly for instructions on service types of planes.

With the washing out process our barracks became less congested. It was not unusual to see the fellows on both sides pack up and cheerfully depart for destinations in different corners of the United States. After a few weeks there would be one bunk standing where eight had been--this in some part of the barracks on which the decisions of the “Benzine Board” had fallen hardest. In another case an entire bay was washed out and left entirely vacant. We never knew who would be next to go, and we could only continue to plug along as best we could with our flying and study a little harder on our ground-school work while we waited for the almost weekly list of washouts to be published on our bulletin board. We were in the full swing of cadet life and under the constant apprehension which accompanies it.

Along with our trials and worries went the fascination of flying together with the priceless goal before us of graduation with an Air Service commission. The wings of the service would be for those of us who were able to survive the rigid training and discipline of a year in the United States Army flying schools.

Always there was something new to look forward to. The start of actual flying; the first solo; learning various stunts and maneuvers; transitions from Jennies to faster and quicker ships; and finally our transfer to Kelly Field, the alma mater of Army fliers.

The Army Air Service was an exacting instructor. There was no favoritism shown and no amount of politics could keep a cadet from being washed out if he fell down in flying. As a result, only a small per cent of those entering Brooks ever graduate from Kelly. In our class of one hundred and four, thirty-three finished their primary training and only eighteen of us received our wings. This appears on the surface to be an unusually low number but as a result of the rigid requirements and careful instruction, our Air Corps schools rank among the best in the world today. They have an extremely low fatality list, not one man in our class being seriously injured.

Probably the most exciting period in our flying training was when the soloing began. The instructor would climb out of his cockpit, tie a white handkerchief on the rudder as a danger signal, indicating that the ship was usually out of control, and signal his student to take-off. In some cases the plane would take-off nicely, circle the field and make a comparatively good landing. In others the landing would amount to a series of bounces, resulting in the necessity of a second or third attempt before the wheels would hold contact with the ground more than a fraction of a second at a time. In one particular instance, after several futile attempts to get down, the cadet began circling around overhead. His apparent idea was to clinch the chances of landing on his next attempt by waiting until the gasoline ran out. His instructor was out in the field trying to flag him down without the slightest success and for half an hour we watched the ship intently for the first signs of a lowering gas supply; hoping that the fuel would not hold out much longer as the morning flying period was nearly over and we were all anxious to see him land. After half an hour, however, he apparently regained enough courage and determination to make a last attempt at a landing, which turned out much more successfully than the others.

When the solo flights were more or less successfully completed the flying instruction was divided into two periods of forty-five minutes each. One of these was used for dual and the other for solo practice.

The instructor would attempt to smooth out the rough points in his students’ flying and demonstrate the method of going through new maneuvers so that the cadet could be given the opportunity to go up alone and try out the maneuvers for himself.

[Illustration: © _U. & U._

“I Didn’T Use My Periscope All The Time, But Could Look Out My Windows”]

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

Paris, France--A Salutation From M. Bleriot]

One of the first lessons was the “three sixty”--so named because its completion required a total change in direction of three hundred and sixty degrees. The cadet would take-off and climb to eight hundred or a thousand feet. The higher he went the less difficulty he had in properly completing the maneuver. Then he would fly into the wind directly over a landing “T” in the center of the field. As the plane passed over the “T” he throttled his motor and made a quick bank either to the right or left depending upon his preliminary instructions. The object was to make a complete circle and land without using the motor, bringing the plane to a stop beside the “T.”

“One eightys” were the next requirement and they were probably the cause of more crashes than any other maneuver. They were started in the same manner as the “three sixty,” but with the plane heading down wind and at only five hundred feet altitude. They required quick manipulation of controls and a steep bank into the field just before landing.

Next came acrobatics. Loops, spins, barrel rolls, Jenny Immelmans, figure-eights, wing-overs, and reversements, every one of which each cadet had to master thoroughly during his course at Brooks.

After the first few weeks had passed we became more or less accustomed to life in the cadet detachment, and found a little time now and then to look around the country and even spend a night in San Antonio. Our examinations were purposely given on Saturday morning so that we would not spend the week-end studying. It was well known that too much studying affected a cadet’s flying and the school schedule was arranged with that in mind.

Our day began with first call at five forty-five and flying started about seven. At eleven we returned to the barracks and from one to five o’clock was devoted to ground school. After supper we could study until bed check at ten o’clock. Plenty of sleep is a necessity for the student pilot, and that fact is recognized nowhere more than in the army schools. Every week night at ten P.M. the cadet officer of the day checks each bunk and turns in the names of any vacant ones. Some of our academic subjects, such as aerodynamics and machine guns required nearly all of our time after school because of approaching examinations, whereas others were comparatively easy and the classroom instruction was sufficient in itself. When we were not studying there were always plenty of other things to attract our attention. If one of the boys left the post, as sometimes happened, he often returned to find his belongings heaped together in the middle of the floor with the army cots piled on top. Several times some cadet returned at midnight to find his equipment carefully transferred and set up on the roof or in the mess-hall. Another one of the favorite sports was to put a hose in the bed of a sound sleeper at two A.M. or, if he slept with his mouth open, to fill it from a tube of shaving cream or hair grease.

One of the fellows found a scorpion in his bed and each night for a week thereafter looked through the bedding for another, but finally became careless and forgot to look. His nearest neighbor promptly placed a number of grasshoppers between the sheets near the foot of the bed.

Another evening it was reported that three pole-cats had crawled into a culvert in front of the barracks. For an hour we attempted to smoke them out. When that failed the fire department was called and we washed them out. The smoke had evidently taken effect, however, and soon three dead pole-cats came floating out from the culvert. The next problem was how to make use of such possibilities. That question was worthy of a most careful consideration. After a survey of the barracks we found that our cadet first sergeant was in San Antonio. There was scarcely one of us who did not have some small score to settle with him so we took one of the pillows from his bed and after removing the pillow case, placed it behind one of the pole-cats. The desired results were then obtained by stepping on the back end of the cat, and after cautiously inserting the pillow back in its case, we replaced it on the first sergeant’s bunk. The results were far above expectation. One by one the occupants of that bay arose and carried their cots outside, until by midnight, when our sergeant returned, there were only a half dozen bunks left including his own. By that time the odor had permeated through the other bedding and he was unable to locate the pillow as being the primary cause of offense. Any night for nearly two weeks thereafter our first sergeant and his cot might be located out behind the barracks, and the inspection of quarters, which was to have been held the following morning, was postponed indefinitely.

During our last six weeks at Brooks, life became much less difficult. Most of us who had survived the check pilots and “Benzine Board” were reasonably sure of graduating and although our studies were just as exacting as ever, we were able to absorb them much more easily. Also we had passed our primary flying tests and were making cross country flights in T.W.3’s; and learning formation flying in Voughts. And finally we were given a few hours in De Havilands in preparation for the advanced training at Kelly.

We were paired up for the cross country flights. One of us flew on the way out, while the second acted as observer. On the return flight we traded about, so that each achieved an equal amount of experience, both as an observer and as a pilot. These trips were usually laid out in a triangular course, and included landing at each corner of the triangle.

While on one of our first trips from the home airdrome, we landed in the designated field alongside of a road just as a load of watermelons was passing by, so we carried several of them back to the Detachment in our plane.

Always there was some new experience, always something interesting going on to make the time spent in Brooks and Kelly one of the banner years in a pilot’s life. The training is rigid and difficult but there is none better. A cadet must be willing to forget all other interest in life when he enters the Texas flying schools and he must enter with the intention of devoting every effort and all of the energy during the next twelve months towards a single goal. But when he receives the wings at Kelly a year later he has the satisfaction of knowing that he has graduated from one of the world’s finest flying schools.

VI

Receiving A Pilot’S Wings

In September, 1924, we were transferred to Kelly. The time we had looked forward to for half a year had arrived. We were through the period of just learning how to fly and were entering a new experience; that of learning how to make use of our flying ability in actual service. We would no longer be floating around the airdrome in machines whose only purpose was to stand up under the hard knocks of inexperienced pilots; but we were going to fly planes which had an actual military value in warfare.

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

PARIS, FRANCE--PAUL PAINLEVÉ, FRENCH MINISTER OF WAR, EXTENDS HIS WELCOME. ON THE RIGHT IS AMBASSADOR MYRON T. HERRICK]

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

Paris, France--With M. Doumerque And Ambassador Herrick]

We were old cadets and felt the importance of our experience. We were no longer treated as rookies but as potential officers. Before leaving Brooks we had conformed with cadet traditions and allowed groups of the new class to gather around us while we gravely spoke of examinations, check pilots, “Benzine Boards,” and “washouts.” We thoroughly enjoyed the awe inspired by our seventy-five hours of flying experience.

At Kelly our difficulties set in with renewed vigor. The De Havilands did not maneuver like the training Jennies, and we were required to fly as we had never flown before. If a cadet was not able to handle his ship in a maneuver which was at least equal to the standard, he was usually heading towards home within a week.

We were allowed a few days to become accustomed to flying the new type of plane, then an instructor would go up with us to see if our progress had been satisfactory. If so we were sent to the next stage; if not we went up with a check pilot.

From landings we went to the “eight” stage, where were assigned two landmarks such as a tree and a haystack several hundred feet apart, and required to do figure-eights around them. Then came the spot landing stage, when we throttled our engine at about a thousand feet and were required to land in a large white circle without using our motor. On this stage we were graded on our take-off, climb, approach, landing, roll, distance from mark, and method of handling the ship. In fact at Kelly we were constantly under observation and our only method of relaxation while flying was when the sky was cloudy and we could get above the clouds.

On one occasion we were flying with a low ceiling and the visibility was not very good. In fact it was an ideal day to do the things we were not supposed to. I was hedgehopping along over the country when I saw another D.H. playing around on my right. I flew over, and after chasing each other around for a while we proceeded to do chandelles, vertical banks, wing-overs, and everything else we could think of; all within a few feet of the ground as the clouds themselves were only about three hundred feet high. At last I decided to go up close to the other plane for a little low formation flying, but as I approached I saw that there were two men in the ship and that I had been breaking every rule ever established about low flying with an instructor watching me from another ship. I left that locality with wide open motor and for several days expected to be called on the carpet before the commanding officer on a washout offense. That instructor must have been a good sport, however, because I never heard from him and never was able to find out who he was.

On another occasion, near the end of my course, I came very near being washed out for something I knew nothing about. I had been practicing landings in an S.E.-5 on one corner of Kelly Field. When my time had expired, I landed on the pursuit stage, taxied up to the line, and turned the ship over to the mechanics. That afternoon I was called from class and ordered to report to the operations officer; whereupon he informed me that my flying days were over and that as I knew why, there was no use in explaining further. I was then ordered to report back to my studies.

It came out of a clear sky. I knew of a number of offenses I had committed but none of them at that time. I had actually no idea of what the operations officer was talking about.

When school was over I returned to the operations hut and requested an account of the alleged offense. It appeared that the propeller on my S.E.-5 was cracked, and the spreader board broken on the landing gear. The crew chief had reported this together with a statement that there were corn stalks hanging on the landing gear, and as there was no corn growing on Kelly Field, that was a sure sign that I had landed away from the airdrome without reporting the fact. A washout offense. We drove to the pursuit stage and found conditions exactly as stated, except that the corn stalks turned out to be weeds, and it was decided that the damage had been caused by a stake left standing in the corner of Kelly Field where I had been landing, although I had not felt the ship strike anything. The cadet who flew the plane earlier in the morning was using the same part of the field and said that he felt it strike a bump on one of his take-offs but did not believe any damage had been done. Who was flying the ship made little difference, however, because as long as he had not landed away from the airdrome without authority, the slight damage was of no consequence. I had come very close to the “Benzine Board” for an offense of which I knew nothing, but it was probably only the open-mindedness and sense of fair play of the operations officer that kept me from being washed out as a result.

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

Paris, France--Crowds At The City Hall At The Official Reception]

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

Paris, France--Guests At The Luncheon Of M. Bleriot

LEFT TO RIGHT: PAUL PAINLEVÉ, CHARLES LINDBERGH, M. BLERIOT, AMBASSADOR HERRICK]

One day during the beginning of our term at Kelly, someone decided that the cadets should stand reveille. How it came about or who caused the decision was never known by the detachment, but there was a strong rumor circulated to the effect that our beloved Cadet Sergeant had not forgotten the episode of the pole-cats. It was an unheard of thing for the cadets of Kelly to stand formations. We had graduated from that when we left Brooks, and the thought of continuing it in our advanced status was, we concluded, degenerating to the morale of the detachment.

Consequently, when our first sergeant himself delighted us with verbal visions of being tumbled out of bed at first call if we were not up at the blast of his whistle, we decided that if it were in the combined power of the detachment, the first call should not sound the next morning. We could not disobey an order; army training banishes even the remotest thought of that; but we might prevent that order from being given. The Cadet Captain and first sergeant were assigned to a private room together. The rest of us were given cots in the barracks. While supper was in progress that night the hands on the sergeant’s alarm clock were so manipulated that the alarm would sound exactly one hour after the time set. At two o’clock the next morning a padlock was placed on the hasp outside of his door, and when first call blew a few hours later the cadet detachment slept soundly on.

From spot landings we passed to hurdles. Hurdles require the ship to be brought down without assistance from the engine, and after just passing over a line stretched about eight feet above the ground, to be landed as close as possible to the hurdle. This gave us excellent practice for landing over a fence in a small field.

One of the traditions at Kelly was that anyone knocking down the hurdle must treat the rest to a case of refreshments. It often happened that a pilot was so intent on getting over the hurdle string that he did not notice that his plane was in a stall, and about the time he was over the hurdle the bottom would fall out from under him and his plane would pancake into the ground. Almost every class had one or two minor crack-ups as a result of stalling over the hurdle string.

The De Havilands were not considered safe for hard stunting and as a result we were only allowed to do wing-overs and split air turns. Diving in excess of one hundred and fifty miles per hour was also forbidden. Consequently only air work allowing us to be thoroughly accustomed to the plane was included in the flying schedule before our formation training began.

The strange field landing training was one of the most interesting parts of our schooling. An instructor would lead a number of planes and land in some field we had never seen before. Then each cadet was required to land and take-off after the instructor. Some of the fields were small and full of obstructions. Yet we had comparatively few even minor crack-ups. Later each cadet was given an opportunity to lead the rest and pick out a field for them to land in while the instructor trailed.

At Kelly we were given more and longer cross country trips than at Brooks. One of the most important parts of flying training is cross country experience. We made flights to Corpus Christi, Galveston, Laredo and a number of other places.

Each class spent about two weeks on a gunnery expedition at Ellington Field between Houston and Galveston. Ellington Field was one of the few double fields built during the war, but was later abandoned and, except for a National Guard squadron, was entirely deserted.

We set up our mess in the clubhouse and made the old building which had served as officers’ quarters as comfortable as possible. This was in winter and the weather was cold, even in Texas, unusual though it might have been. There were no stoves available so we contrived all sorts of makeshifts to hold a little fire in. If nothing better was obtainable, we shovelled several inches of earth on the floor and devised a hood of some kind leading through a few lengths of tin pipe to the chimney. Of course these fires could not be left unguarded, so it was necessary to put them out in the morning to be rekindled at the close of operations for the day.

Our gunnery work was divided into three parts: ground targets, shadow targets and tow targets. The ground targets were large sheets of paper similar to those used on a rifle range and were set up at an angle on the ground. We shot at these with both the Browning and Lewis machine guns.

The Browning guns on a De Haviland were mounted rigidly in front of the pilot and were synchronized with the engine to shoot between the blades of the propeller. They were capable of firing up to twelve hundred rounds a minute, depending on the motor R.P.M. when they were fired.

Several of us would form a large circle with our planes, and starting our dive from about one thousand feet, would fire short bursts into the target on the ground. After completing our bursts we would zoom back up into the circle while the next ship started its dive. Each plane had its individual target.

After emptying the Browning guns we gave our observers a chance with their Lewises by circling low around the targets. On the next flight the pilot and observer traded places.

The Lewis gun is mounted on a turret on the rear cockpit. Two guns were usually used together and they could be pointed in any direction.

After a few days on ground targets we were sent out over Trinity Bay for shadow targets. One plane is flown fairly high over the water while another fires at its shadow. The splashes from the bullets are easily seen and the accuracy of marksmanship very apparent.

The tow targets are by far the most difficult of the three varieties, and require skillful maneuvering and excellent marksmanship. They consist of a cloth sleeve similar to a wind sock which is towed a few hundred feet behind a De Haviland flying at sixty or sixty-five miles an hour.

When the forward or Browning guns were used, the attacking ship approached the tow target head on, firing one or two short bursts as it passed. In this way there was no danger of the occupants of the towing plane being struck by a wild shot. The De Havilands were much too large to use the forward guns effectively on a tow target. Any accurate shooting required the quick maneuverability of a pursuit ship.

The Lewis guns were used while flying parallel with the target and were very effective. When we were close enough we could often see the tracers pass directly through the cloth sleeve.

After returning from Ellington Field we were given a few hours in each of the various types of service airplanes. The M.B.-3 and the S.E.-5 scouts; the Martin Bombers with their twin Liberty engines; the T.W.-5 two-place transition planes; and the little Sperry messengers. In this way we obtained experience in each branch: pursuit, attack, observation and bombardment. Later we were given our choice of which we desired to specialize in. If our wishes corresponded with the judgment of the instructors we were assigned to that branch.

Together with three other cadets and four student officers, I was sent to the pursuit stage, where we spent the few remaining weeks of our course, piloting the S.E.-5 and the M.B.-3 single seaters.

Pursuit combines a little of every branch of the air corps. In addition to formation combat, dog fighting, and ground strafing, the pursuit pilot is often called upon to make observations and do light bombing.

A great deal of our time was devoted to formation flying. Air combat of the future will probably often be between large formations rather than individual pilots, and it is accordingly of utmost importance for the pursuit pilot to hold his place in formation instinctively, so that his entire attention can be devoted to the enemy rather than to his own formation.

We often maneuvered our flights while the individual planes were less than ten feet apart and it was not unusual to dive vertically for several thousand feet in a fairly close formation.

We learned the use of Lufberry circles, cross over turns, and other formation tactics. Our formations were often tight, it is true, but strange as it may seem, very few accidents occur from too close flying. A pilot is constantly alert when his plane is only a short distance from the one in front and nothing is allowed to distract his attention. On the other hand, when there is quite some distance separating them he is often more engrossed in lighting a cigarette or watching some object on the ground than in his own formation.

In pursuit flying we came to have great confidence in our parachutes. The planes we were flying were kept in excellent condition and none ever failed, notwithstanding the fact that we placed them under every conceivable strain imaginable. But the knowledge that we did not have to concern ourselves about whether they did fall apart or not was an invaluable factor in building up our morale. Our formations were tighter, the combats faster, and our flying better as a result.

We had a number of close calls but considering the amount of flying we had done, and that all of it was military flying, which cannot be ever compared to commercial traffic as far as safety is concerned, our accidents were remarkably few and none resulted seriously.

No one knows of the risk he takes better than the pursuit pilot and no one is less concerned about it. Every move, although at lightning speed, is made with a coolness born of experience and love of flying. The army Air Corps is built up of men who fly for the love of flying. Their only mission in life is to build up the finest air corps in the world, and their greatest desire is to be given the opportunity to do so without restriction. If an officer is lost in duty he would be the last one to wish for resulting restrictions on his comrades.

A week of our pursuit training was spent on a gunnery expedition at Galveston. We flew there from Kelly Field in M.B.3A. machines and fired on tow targets exclusively. Our field was close to the Gulf, and when the day’s operations had been completed we were free to go about as we chose. Consequently a large part of the evening was spent along the rocky beach.

On the night of our last day at Galveston several of us were holding a contest to decide which could reach the most distant rock between the breakers, before the next wave rolled in. One of the fellows was outstanding in his accomplishments. In fact he was so dextrous that none of us could compete, so we were all loud in our praises and unanimously agreed that there was not a rock in the gulf too obscure for him. There was, however, a rock a number of feet beyond the most distant point any of us had attained, which was visible only for an instant as the last breaker receded and before the next arrived. Even this was possible, we confidently assured him.

He watched that rock intently for several minutes; then bolstered up by our praise and his own confidence, he stood poised and ready. At the proper moment he nimbly leaped from boulder to boulder after the retreating surf but just before the final rock was touched a large wave towered above it. Too late! The chance of retreat had never been considered and its opportunity had passed. With do or die determination he leaped onto the boulder and into the breaking wave. This incident would not have been serious or its consequences important had we been able to carry any extra equipment in our pursuit planes, but as it was, extra clothing was a scarce article, and when we took off for San Antonio and Kelly the following morning, it was necessary for him to send his wet clothes back in a De Haviland and make his flight in a bearskin flying suit without insulation against the bearskin.

In warm weather these suits acquired an odor similar to that of a goat which has been in the barn all winter and the fur itself was far from comfortable. On the trip back a piston froze in the engine. For two days the cadet was alternately roasting in the southern sun and freezing in the Texas nights while he guarded his ship and waited for a new engine.

After our return from Galveston while we were practicing formation attack on two seaters, I experienced one of the incidents of the military pilot’s life. I made my first emergency parachute jump. When an Army plane crashes, the pilot is required to write a detailed report of the crash. My account was as follows:

“A nine-ship SE-5 formation, commanded by Lieut. Blackburn, was attacking a DH4B, flown by Lieut. Maughan at about a 5,000 foot altitude and several hundred feet above the clouds. I was flying on the left of the top unit, Lieut. McAllister on my right, and Cadet Love leading. When we nosed down on the DH, I attacked from the left and Lieut. McAllister from the right. After Cadet Love pulled up, I continued to dive on the DH for a short time before pulling up to the left. I saw no other ship nearby. I passed above the DH and a moment later felt a slight jolt followed by a crash. My head was thrown forward against the cowling and my plane seemed to turn around and hang nearly motionless for an instant. I closed the throttle and saw an SE-5 with Lieut. McAllister in the cockpit, a few feet on my left. He was apparently unhurt and getting ready to jump.

“Our ships were locked together with the fuselages approximately parallel. My right wing was damaged and had folded back slightly, covering the forward right-hand corner of the cockpit. Then the ships started to mill around and the wires began whistling. The right wing commenced vibrating and striking my head at the bottom of each oscillation. I removed the rubber band safetying the belt, unbuckled it, climbed out past the trailing edge of the damaged wing, and with my feet on the cowling on the right side of the cockpit, which was then in a nearly vertical position, I jumped backwards as far from the ship as possible. I had no difficulty in locating the pull-ring and experienced no sensation of falling. The wreckage was falling nearly straight down and for some time I fell in line with its path and only slightly to one side. Fearing the wreckage might fall on me, I did not pull the rip cord until I dropped several hundred feet and into the clouds. During this time I had turned one-half revolution and was falling flat and face downward. The parachute functioned perfectly; almost as soon as I pulled the rip cord the riser jerked on my shoulders, the leg straps tightened, my head went down, and the chute fully opened.

“I saw Lieut. McAllister floating above me and the wrecked ships pass about 100 yards to one side, continuing to spin to the right and leaving a trail of lighter fragments along their path. I watched them until, still locked together, they crashed in the mesquite about 2000 feet below and burst into flames several seconds after impact.

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

PARIS, FRANCE--WITH AMBASSADOR HERRICK ON THE STEPS OF THE EMBASSY, JUST AFTER ARRIVAL IN PARIS]

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

LONDON, ENGLAND--THE WELCOME AT CROYDEN FIELD WHERE A MILLING MOB OF NEARLY HALF A MILLION HAD GATHERED]

“Next I turned my attention to locating a landing place. I was over mesquite and drifting in the general direction of a plowed field which I reached by slipping the chute. Shortly before striking the ground, I was drifting backwards, but was able to swing around in the harness just as I landed on the side of a ditch less than 100 feet from the edge of the mesquite. Although the impact of landing was too great for me to remain standing, I was not injured in any way. The parachute was still held open by the wind and did not collapse until I pulled in one group of shroud fines.

“During my descent I lost my goggles, a vest pocket camera which fitted tightly in my hip pocket, and the rip cord of the parachute.”

During the descent all the other planes broke formation and arched around us. Every ship within sight proceeded at full speed to the spot and before long the air was full of machines. Several of the De Havilands landed in the plowing and within half an hour two planes with extra parachutes were sent to take us back to Kelly. About an hour after the crash we had two new S.E.-5’s and were back in the air again.

The parachute is a marvelous invention, experimented with as early as the 16th century by Leonardo da Vinci.

The first parachute was built by a Frenchman in 1784. This parachute was a rigid structure covered with very strong paper and fabric. It was used in a jump from a building in Paris.

About a year later the same type of parachute was dropped from a hot-air balloon in England. Soon jumps began to be made from balloons with other types of rigid parachutes.

About 1880, Captain Thomas Baldwin made a name for himself by jumping from hot-air balloons with a chute which was a forerunner of the present type. He was the first really successful jumper, but success in those days was judged by how long a man lived in this profession.

In 1912, the first parachute jump from an airplane was made. The container was attached to the plane and the man who did the jumping pulled the parachute out as he fell.

The war really proved that the parachute is a life saving apparatus for use with airplanes. Early in 1918 the allied pilots reported that German pilots were using parachutes to escape from their planes whenever they were out of control or set on fire. This was the beginning of insistent demands on the part of our allied pilots for parachute equipment. The A.E.F. tried to produce a satisfactory parachute by combining the good feature of several chutes already in existence. All of these, however, were very bulky and heavy and hard to get on the plane.

During the summer of 1918, the U. S. Air Service officials appealed to Washington for good airplane parachutes. A large number of tests were made. Finally, after combining all the good points of foreign and American chutes, a satisfactory free type of parachute was developed. By free type I mean the kind of parachute which is entirely independent of the plane.

Stories often come out in the newspapers about parachutes that fail to open. What probably really happens is that men who make jumps from planes are killed before they are able to pull the rip cord which opens the parachute. In the past there was always a great deal of danger in testing out a new type of chute, but now they have been developed to such a high degree of efficiency that there are practically no fatalities. Each parachute that is used by the government is repacked every month and tested every six months.

Altogether, about 57 lives have been saved by parachutes in government service. In every instance the jump took place because of fog, engine failure while flying over unfavorable country, collision of planes or other very definite emergencies. They say in the service that any flyer who jumps to save his life becomes a member of the “Caterpillar Club.” This is because the parachute is made entirely of silk, and silk comes from caterpillars. All the 57 members of this club feel that their lives have been saved by the silkworm caterpillar!

There is a saying in the service about the parachute: “If you need it and haven’t got it, you’ll never need it again!” That just about sums up its value to aviation.

For two of the last days we were on tactical maneuvers with the other branches. Half of our number were assigned to defend the bombers and observation planes while the other half attacked them. When we met, a lively combat ensued and the air would be full of pursuit planes in every conceivable position, each trying to get on the tail of an enemy plane without being first shot down itself.

At night in the barracks we would argue about which side won the war, but whenever one of us would demonstrate to the enemy that he had been shot down in battle, another would interpose the claim that he had put the attacking ship out of commission several minutes previous to the combat.

When graduation day arrived eighteen of us remained of the hundred and four cadets who started the course at Brooks a year before. We were presented with our wings and commissioned second lieutenants in the Air Service Reserve Corps. That night we gave a farewell dinner in San Antonio and for the last time assembled together.

The next day we departed from Kelly.

VII

I Join The Air Mail

I went by rail to St. Louis and took an O.X.-5 Standard out for a barnstorming trip in Illinois, Missouri and Iowa. The Post Office Department had just advertised a number of contract air mail routes for bid, one of which was between St. Louis and Chicago by way of Springfield, Ill. I decided to barnstorm around the country until it was determined which bidder would be assigned the contract. The Robertson Aircraft Corp. had placed a bid and offered me the position of chief pilot if they were successful in getting the contract.

After returning from Iowa I flew on several flying circus dates and made a few short cross country flights to nearby cities.

On June second, while testing a commercial plane built at Lambert Field, I was forced to make a second emergency jump. I had flown the ship for a few minutes the previous week and on this occasion was testing it for various maneuvers. I had completed everything except tailspins, but when I attempted a right spin the plane refused even to start, so after a second attempt with the same result I gave that up and tried one to the left. The ship fell in easily and, when I reversed the controls after a half turn, came out at once. I then put it into a second left spin and held the controls in a spinning position during two complete turns. When I reversed them they had no apparent effect and using the engine was of no assistance. After trying for fifteen hundred feet to bring the ship out of the spin, I rolled over the right side of the cockpit and, since I had jumped only about three hundred and fifty feet above the ground, I pulled the rip cord as soon as the stabilizer had passed. The chute opened quickly but while it was functioning, I had fallen faster than the spinning ship. On its next revolution the plane was headed directly towards the chute. How close it passed will never be known, for the risers leading up from my harness were twisted and swung me around as the ship passed. However, less than twenty-five feet intervened between the wing and my parachute.

I watched the plane crash in a grain field and turned my attention to landing. A strong wind was drifting me towards a row of high tension poles and it was necessary to partially collapse the chute in order to hasten the descent and land before striking the wires. I landed rather solidly in a potato patch and was dragged several feet and over a road before several men arrived and collapsed the chute. In addition to the strong wind and rough air, collapsing or “cutting” the chute so close to the ground had caused a very rapid descent, and my shoulder had been dislocated in landing.

In July I went on two weeks active duty at Richards Field, Missouri, where I instructed on Jennies and D.H.-4’s. In August I flew a Curtiss Oriole to Nevada, Missouri, to carry passengers during the Missouri National Guard encampment.

While at Nevada I received a proposition to fly in a circus in Colorado and, as there was no immediate prospect of starting work on the mail route, I accepted and when the encampment ended I flew the Oriole back to St. Louis and took a train west.

On arriving at the field a few miles east of Denver, I discovered the plane I was to fly to be the same Lincoln Standard that Lynch and I had flown to Montana three years before. We did a little barnstorming along the eastern slope of the Rockies preliminary to the start of our flying circus. We had contracted to exhibit before a number of fairs in Colorado and there was nothing barred in the exhibitions. We put on everything the committee was willing to pay for. At the smaller places we used only one plane, but at the more important exhibitions two were required.

We flew to the town where a fair was taking place about one day before we were to exhibit. In that way everything was in readiness for the circus and the next morning there was no delay in our performance.

We started with wing-walking. The performer would climb out of the cockpit and walk along the entering edge of the wing to the outer bay strut, where he climbed up onto the top wing, and stood on his head as we passed the grandstand. After finishing his stunts on the wing he would go to the landing gear and from there to the center section, where he sat while the plane looped and did Jenny Immelmans. From the center section he went to the tail and then, unless it was an unusual occasion, the wing-walking exhibition was over.

After wing-walking came the breakaway. This was accomplished by fastening a cable to the landing gear. The performer went out to the wing tip, fastened his harness to the loose end of the cable and to all appearances fell off the wing. No one on the ground could see the cable and a breakaway always produced quite a sensation. Iron loops were clamped along the cable for use in climbing back up.

One of our feature attractions was the plane change. A rope ladder was attached to the wing of a plane and as one ship flew past the grandstand with the performer standing near the tip of the top wing, a second plane with the ladder attached, passed over the first, so that the ladder was in easy reach of the performer. We usually made two fake attempts to effect the change and actually counted on the third for success. In this way the feat looked more difficult.

A parachute was attached to the opposite wing from the rope ladder. After the plane change was completed, the performer jumped off with the chute and the show was over.

In the evening we made a night fireworks flight. A series of candles, which when lighted emitted a trail of fire for several hundred feet behind the ship, was attached to each wing. After these candles had burned out, two magnesium flares started burning, lighting up the country below well enough to read a book very clearly. The display was set off by an electric battery in the cockpit.

When the plane reached an altitude of two or three thousand feet, a number of bombs were dropped to attract attention; then the switch was thrown in to start the trails and colored lights, and the ship looped and shunted around the comet-like trail of fire.

Our greatest difficulty in night flying lay in lighting the landing fields from which to operate. Sometimes a number of cars were on the field and I landed and took-off across the beams of their headlights. Under such conditions the ground was well illuminated and landing very simple. On other occasions there would not be more than one car available and in one instance, on a dark night, I took-off and landed by the light of a pocket flashlight which one of the men flashed constantly while I was in the air, to enable me to keep track of the landing field.

At one town in Colorado, we were booked for a fireworks exhibition to be given between darkness and midnight. We had been barnstorming during the day and on our way to this town we ran short of lubricating oil. By the time we had replenished our supply it was too late to get in before dark, and I had never landed at that town before. The owner of the plane, however, was sure that he could easily locate the landing field, even in darkness. He had been there many times and he knew that the field was “right next to the golf links.”

We arrived over the town and after circling a few times, I throttled the motor and shouted “Where’s the field?”

The reply was immediate and full of confidence, “Right next the golf links.”

“Well, where are the golf links?”

“I don’t know!”

I was up against another of the very amusing but equally serious incidents in barnstorming life. We were over strange territory on a dark night and with a rapidly diminishing fuel supply. It was imperative to land within a very few minutes, yet it was not possible to tell one field from another, and even the line fences were not visible.

I flew around until the outline of a strawstack appeared in the field below us. This field was outlined on one side by the lighter color of the pasture adjoining it and a number of trees were discernible along the end. There was no way of telling whether it contained posts or ditches, but we had no alternative, and I landed beside the strawstack in the center.

A hasty examination of the field showed it to be suitable for night flying and we hailed the first car passing for a ride into the town. We had difficulty in locating our fireworks and, as the stores were all closed, still more time was lost before we obtained the bailwire, nails and boards used in building the framework for the flares and candles and attaching it to the plane.

It was nearly midnight when the ship was at last ready for the display. Only one car remained on the field. We ran this machine out beside the strawstack and placed it in a position to show up on one side of the stack, in addition to throwing most of its light on the field. I was about to take-off when the headlights on the car became so dim that they were entirely useless. One of the men had a pocket flashlight and I took-off while he threw its beam on the strawstack.

It was eleven-forty when I left the ground and eleven-fifty seven when the last flare had burned out. Our contract had been fulfilled with three minutes to spare.

I located the field by the flashing of the spotlight and levelled off and landed by its beam.

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

Brussels, Belgium--With Crown Prince Leopold During The Official Reception]

[Illustration: © _Wide World Photos_

LONDON, ENGLAND--WITH H. R. H. THE PRINCE OF WALES AND LORD LONSDALE (LEFT) IN THE ROYAL BOX AT THE DERBY BALL]

If the position of a light is known and the field is fairly level, it is not necessary to see the ground, but a plane can be stalled in and landed on the darkest night. Pilots often bring their ships down when only the outline of a field is visible. For thi