Part 2 (2/2)

When I had got level and got things quieted down and my head had cleared I saw that I was right. Only the gla.s.s cover had vibrated off the manifold-pressure instrument, and the needle had popped off the dial. I was thoroughly shaken. And I was mad because I had allowed so little a thing to upset me so much.

I checked my altimeter. It read five thousand feet. I figured I had dived eleven thousand and taken two for recovery.

My ears had a lot of pressure on them. I held both nostrils and blew.

The pressure inside popped my ears out easily. They were going to stand the diving all right.

I brought the s.h.i.+p down to be inspected that night and decided to celebrate the successful conclusion of the long dive. Cirrus clouds were forming high up in the blue sky, so I figured maybe I could do it safely. I went up to the weather bureau on the field to check on it.

”How is the weather for tomorrow?” I asked. ”Terrible, I hope.”

”I think it will be,” the weather man said. He consulted his charts further. ”Yes, it will be,” he a.s.sured me.

”Definitely?” I pressed him.

He looked his charts over again. ”Yes,” he rea.s.sured me, ”definitely.

You won't be able to fly tomorrow.”

”Swell!” I exclaimed to the mildly startled man. He didn't quite get it.

It was lousy the next morning, all right. You couldn't see across the field. Even the birds were walking. The engineers were dismayed. They wanted to get on with the demonstrations. I was overjoyed. I had a head.

I had celebrated a little too much.

Along about the middle of the morning it began to lift. The engineers began to cheer up. I watched with gathering apprehension while it lifted still further and began to break. In an incredibly short time there were only a few clouds in the sky. I was practically sick about it, but the engineers, with beaming faces, were having the s.h.i.+p pushed out.

I went up to the field lunch wagon to get a cup of coffee while the mechanics warmed up the s.h.i.+p.

I went back down to the hangar and crawled into the s.h.i.+p to do the first two of the next set of five dives. These were to demonstrate pull-outs instead of speed. Here was where I found out what the accelerometer was for.

I knew that the accelerometer was to indicate the force of the pull-outs. I knew that it indicated them in terms of _g_, or gravity. I knew that in level flight it registered one _g_, which meant, among other things, that I was being pulled into my seat with a force equal to my own weight, or one hundred and fifty pounds. I knew that when I pulled out of a dive, the centrifugal force of the pull-out would push the _g_ reading up in exactly the same proportion that it would pull me down into my seat. I knew that I had to pull out of a ten-thousand-foot dive hard enough to push the _g_ reading up to nine, and pull me down into my seat with a force equal to nine times my own weight, or thirteen hundred and fifty pounds. I knew that that would put a considerable stress on the airplane, and that that was the reason the Navy wanted me to do it; they wanted to see if it could take it. But what I didn't know was that it would put such a terrific stress on me. I had no idea what a nine _g_ pull-out meant to the pilot.

I decided to start the dives out at three hundred miles an hour and increase each succeeding dive in increments of twenty miles an hour for the first four dives, as I had in the speed dives. I decided to pull out of the first dive to five and a half _g_, and pull out of each succeedingly faster dive one _g_ harder, until I had pulled out of the fourth dive of three hundred and sixty miles an hour to eight and a half _g_. Then I would do the grand dive of ten thousand feet to terminal velocity and pull out to nine _g_.

I took off and went up to fifteen thousand feet and stuck her down to three hundred miles an hour. I horsed back on the stick and watched the accelerometer. Up she went, and down into my seat I went. Centrifugal force, like some huge invisible monster, pushed my head down into my shoulders and squashed me into that seat so that my backbone bent and I groaned with the force of it. It drained the blood from my head and started to blind me. I watched the accelerometer through a deepening haze. I dimly saw it reach five and a half. I eased up on the stick, and the last thing I saw was the needle starting back to one. I was blind as a bat. I was dizzy as a coot. I looked out at my wings on both sides. I couldn't see them. I couldn't see anything. I watched where the ground ought to be. Pretty soon it began to show up like something looming out of a morning mist. My sight was returning, due to the eased pressure from letting up on the stick. Soon I could see clearly again. I was level, and probably had been for some time. But my head was hot with a queer sort of burning sensation, and my heart was pounding like a water ram.

”How am I going to do a nine-_g_ pull-out if I am pa.s.sing out on five and a half?” I thought. I decided that I had held it too long and that I would get the next reading quicker and release it sooner, so I wouldn't be under the pressure so long.

I noticed that my head was completely cleared from the night before. I didn't know whether it was the alt.i.tude or the pull-out. One or the other, or both, I decided, was good for hang-overs.

I climbed back to fifteen thousand feet and stuck her down to three hundred and twenty miles an hour. I horsed back quick on the stick this time. I overshot six and a half and hit seven before I released it. I could feel my guts being sucked down as I fought for sight and consciousness, but the quicker pull and the earlier release worked, and I was able to read the instruments at the higher _g_.

I brought the s.h.i.+p down for inspection. Everything was all right. I went back up again and did the next two. They sure did flatten me out, but the s.h.i.+p took it fine. I brought it down for a thorough inspection that night.

I felt like I had been beaten. My eyes felt like somebody had taken them out and played with them and put them back in again. I was droopy tired and had sharp shooting pains in my chest. My back ached, and that night I blew my nose and it bled. I was a little worried about that nine-_g_ business.

The next morning was one of those crisp, golden autumn days. The sky was as blue as indigo and as clear as a mountain stream. One of those good days to be alive.

To my surprise, I felt fine. ”Those pull-outs must be a tonic,” I thought.

I went out to do the terminal-velocity dive with the nine-_g_ pull-out.

I found that the last dive I had done the day before had flattened out the fairing on the belly of the s.h.i.+p. The sudden change of att.i.tude of the s.h.i.+p in the eight-and-a-half _g_ pull-out had pushed the belly up against that pretty solid three-hundred-and-sixty-mile-an-hour blast of air and crushed the metal bracings that held the belly fairing in shape as neatly as if you had gone over it with a steam roller. It was not a structural part of the s.h.i.+p, however, as far as strength went, and could be repaired that day. They decided to beef up the bracings when they repaired it.

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