Part 4 (1/2)

IMAGINATION

A friend of mine got an aerial mapping job last summer. He had to fly at twenty thousand feet to take the pictures. Some pilots can stand more alt.i.tude than others, but my friend didn't know how much he could stand because he had never flown that high. He decided he had better take oxygen with him, just in case.

His mechanic got a cylinder of oxygen for him, and he took off. He felt pretty groggy at eighteen thousand feet, reached down, got the hose, put it in his mouth, turned on the valve, and took a whiff of oxygen. He couldn't hear the hissing of the stuff escaping because the motor noise drowned it out.

He perked up immediately. The sky brightened, everything became clearer to him, and he went on up to twenty thousand feet. Every once in a while he would feel low and reach down and get himself another whiff of oxygen and feel all right again for a while.

He didn't say anything to his mechanic, but his mechanic decided for himself a few days later that the oxygen was probably getting low in that tank and that he would need another soon. He decided to put a new one in ahead of time to forestall the possibility of running completely out in the air.

He brought a new tank out and decided to test it before he put it in the s.h.i.+p. He opened the valve and nothing happened. The tank was empty.

He took it back to the hangar and discovered that the previous tank my friend had been flying on had come out of the same bin and had been empty all along.

He got a good one and put it in the s.h.i.+p and didn't say anything about the incident. My friend said that the next time he took a whiff of oxygen it almost knocked him out of his seat.

I SPIN IN

I had been spin testing a Mercury Chic for several weeks, doing everything at a safe and sane alt.i.tude, being very scientific. I finally spun it in from an alt.i.tude of about three feet. And I mean spun it in too. The s.h.i.+p was a complete washout.

There was a strong wind that day, and a very gusty one. When I taxied out for the take-off the wind was on my tail. There were no brakes on the s.h.i.+p. It was very light, and in addition, a high wing job-always a top-heavy thing in a wind.

The wind kept swinging me around into it, and I wanted to go the other way. I should have called a couple of mechanics from the line to come and hold my wings and help me taxi. But I was proud or stubborn or dumb or something that day.

I adopted a little strategy. I'd get the s.h.i.+p all lined up down wind and when the wind would start swinging me around the other way I'd just let it swing until the nose was headed almost into the wind. Then I would gun it, kick rudder with the swing, thus aggravating it instead of checking it, hoping to get my way by going with it instead of fighting it, and then, when it was headed down wind again, try to hold it there until the next gust started swinging me around again.

It worked fine, and I was making a certain amount of headway down the field until, on one of the swings, a particularly heavy gust of wind picked up my outside wing as I was swinging. The s.h.i.+p tipped up very slowly, and I thought I was going to tip a wing. Then a larger and heavier gust hit it. It picked that s.h.i.+p off the ground, turned it over on its back and literally threw it down on the ground.

It was the worst crack-up I had ever been in. All four longerons were broken, the wings crumpled, the motor mount was twisted, the prop bent, the tail crushed, and the s.h.i.+p looked like it had spun in from at least ten thousand feet.

I crawled out from under it unhurt except for my feelings. I never felt so foolish in my life. I had cracked up a s.h.i.+p without even flying it.

BUSINESS BEFORE FAME

Clyde Pangborne, of Pangborne and Herndon fame, the two flyers who were first to fly non-stop from j.a.pan to America over the Pacific Ocean, and also of Pangborne and Turner fame, the flying team that won third place in the London-Australia Air Derby in 1934, was operations manager for the famous Gate's Flying Circus for many years. He flew into Lewiston, Mont., in October, 1923, with his aerial circus. He had a contract with the fair a.s.sociation of that town, giving him exclusive rights to all the pa.s.senger carrying and flying to be done at the local fair then in progress.

He landed an hour before he was supposed to put on his first performance of stunting, wing-walking and parachute jumping, the preliminary crowd-attracting procedure before the money-making of pa.s.senger carrying, which was one of the attractions the fair had advertised. He found another pilot and plane, with chute jumper, there ahead of him, all set to do business in his place.

Pangborne told the other pilot to get out. The other pilot said, ”So what?” Pangborne said: ”I got a contract, and I'm going to town to see about it.”

He went to town and told the fair a.s.sociation about it. He said he would sue the city if they didn't get that other guy and his chute jumper off the field by the time he was ready to put on his exhibition.