Part 12 (1/2)

CO-PILOT

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

I just ran into d.i.c.k over at the Roosevelt Field restaurant, and he told me this one about Dean Smith. Dean is one of the oldest air-mail pilots.

He started flying the mail 'way back in the postoffice days, just after the war. He is a lean six-foot-two, easy-going guy who would never talk much about his flying.

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

”Where in the h.e.l.l have you been?” d.i.c.k greeted him.

”Oh,” Dean said, ”I had a h.e.l.l of a time the other night. Just got back.”

”What happened?” d.i.c.k asked him.

”Aw, I got tangled up with a load of ice after dark. She started losing alt.i.tude, and I eased a little more gun to her. She kept on losing, so I eased a little more gun to her. She still kept on losing, so I eased all the gun she had. She was squas.h.i.+ng right down into the trees. I had done everything I knew and couldn't hold her up. So I said, 'Here, G.o.d, you fly it awhile,' and turned her loose and threw my arms up in front of my face.

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

ORCHIDS TO ME!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I crawled out of my c.o.c.kpit and started to help Lya out of her cabin.

She was already emerging, fanning herself with a handkerchief. She spoke with a German accent.

”Oh, Jeemy,” she said, ”all the way down I pray to G.o.d. But I thank you, Jeemy. I thank you.”

RECOVERY ACT