The Spirit of ST Louis (35 page)

St. Louis! What time and space and incidents lie between us now! Only eight months ago -- it seems as many years -- I was sitting in the reality of my mail cockpit, dreaming of a plane that would fly across the sea. Now, I'm in the Spirit of St. Louis, on that very flight. The dream has become the reality; and the reality, the dream. Such things happen then in fact and not alone in fable. Aren't my silver wings fully as remarkable as those Daedalus made of wax and feathers? Placentia Bay -- the strange -- is my world, down there below me; and Illinois -- the familiar -- my object of imagination. Ideas are like seeds, apparently insignificant when first held in the hand! If a wind or a new current of thought drifts them away, nothing is lost. But once firmly planted, they can grow and flower into almost anything at all, a cornstalk or a giant redwood—or a flight across the ocean. Ideas are even more wonderful than seeds, for they have no natural substance and are less restricted by hereditary form. Whatever a man imagines he can attain, if he doesn't become too arrogant and encroach on the rights of the gods.

Is aviation too arrogant? I don't know. Sometimes, flying feels too godlike to be attained by man. Sometimes, the world from above seems too beautiful, too wonderful, too distant for human eyes to see, like a vision at the end of life forming a bridge to death. Can that be why so many pilots lose their lives? Is man encroaching on a forbidden realm? Is aviation dangerous because the sky was never meant for him? When one obtains too great a vision is there some power that draws one from mortal life forever? Will this power smite down pilot after pilot until man loses his will to fly? Or, still worse, will it deaden his senses and let him fly on without the vision? In developing aviation, in making it a form of commerce, in replacing the wild freedom of danger with the

civilized bonds of safety, must we give up this miracle of air? Will men fly through the sky in the future without seeing what I have seen, without feeling what I have felt? Is that true of all things we call human progress -- do the gods retire as commerce and science advance?

I climb higher as I approach Avalon Peninsula. Bleak mountain summits glow coldly against a deepening sky. A thin layer of cloud burns molten gold. The wind lifts me up and carries me with it over the mountains, blowing hard and nearly on my tail, rocking my wings as it swirls past ridges and stirs in valleys. Each crevice fills with shades of gray, as though twilight had sent its scouts ahead to keep contact with a beaten sun. The empire of night is expanding over earth and sea.

Night has always affected the activities of men. To the farmer, it brings rest; to the marauder, action. The executive returns to his mansion. The watchman starts his vigil. For each person and each circumstance, night carries different meaning—safety or danger, home or adventure, revelry or prayer. To the pilot of an airplane without flares or landing lights, night has a meaning that no earthbound mortal can fully understand. Once he has left the lighted airways there are no wayside shelters open to a flyer of the night. He can't park his plane on a cloud bank to weather out a storm, or heave over a sea anchor like the sailor and drag along slowly downwind. He's unable to control his speed like the driver of a motorcar in fog. He has to keep his craft hurtling through air no matter how black the sky or blinding the storm: To land without sight is to crash.

A plane in flight is dependent on the inertia of countless particles of air. Its wings must strike these particles suddenly, rest on them, deflect them, and leave them instantly behind in order to strike another mass. Where there is no speed, air seems to have no substance, and an airplane no more buoyancy than a rock.

I sometimes liken an airplane in flight to running over log jams on the Mississippi as a boy. Lumber companies were cutting virgin timber in the north, and each summer the river was filled with logs on their way to sawmills. Great numbers of them would pile up against boulders in the rapids until jams formed all the way to shore. The logs varied in size from huge, reddish butts of Norway pine to black, spindly top lengths of smaller timber. The neighbor boys and I often went out on these jams to fish and swim, and stretched naked in the sun on a warm, barkless surface of some larger butt log. Often we had to cross an area of freely floating top lengths, too small to hold up even a boy. Then we would leap so quickly from one to another that our weight was on the second before the first had time to sink, and on the third before the second was submerged. From the moment of leaving one big log until we could jump onto another, safety lay in speed. Fields remind me of butt logs; and air, of the top lengths in between.

All day, there have been "butt logs" of a sort along my route, places I could head for in emergency -- a coast line to the west, fields and clearings, bays and lakes where one might land and swim ashore. Right now there's an area of thick young pine in the valley on my left. I'd bark my shins landing there all right, but I'd probably be able to walk away from the wreck.

At night, these "butt logs" disappear. Soon their existence will do me no good if a cylinder starts to miss. I won't be able to see them even if I turn back and reach a coast. To the eye, night equalizes mountains and meadows like ink spilled over the details of a map. If my engine should fail, I'd still have to keep on running, flying, touching swiftly the uniform particles of air, holding my speed and rhythm to the very instant of the blind, inevitable crash.

I never fully understood the value of sight until I lost my only parachute flare one night on the mail. I was caught in a storm, last November. Clouds blanketed the earth behind me and shut it off ahead. I had used much of my fuel circling low over the city of Peoria, searching for its mail field. Twice I had tried to follow a line of street lamps toward the river, only to lose the ground in mist Finally I climbed to 2,000 feet by instruments, and took up a course northeast. Unless the weather improved enough for me to pick up a beacon on the transcontinental route, my plane and its cargo of mail depended on the single parachute flare I carried. According to my calculations, 30 minutes of flying toward Chicago would put me over some of the flattest country within reach. At the end of that time I nosed down to 600 feet and found, as I had hoped, that there were frequent pockets in the clouds. But snow was falling and, even from that altitude, lights on the ground were dim.

I passed over a small town at less than 400 feet. Then, cloud shut off the earth again. But after a few minutes of blind flying I came to a large pocket of snow-hazed air. I pulled up, released the flare, and whipped the ship around to get under it before the parachute drifted to the ground. Clouds flashed as though with lightning against the night, as I hauled back on the stick. But instead of hanging in the sky above me, a point of dazzling fire catapulted toward the earth below. There were brilliant seconds—then total blackness.

I learned later that the rigger had put a new shoe on my tail skid before the flight. He'd left the end of the shoe projecting forward. That end hooked the flare's parachute and held it firmly, while the heavy flare jerked off and plunged to ground. But I had little interest in mechanical causes at the time. I was fully occupied with problems of survival. My plane was diving and banking, but I was so blinded by the flare that I couldn't see the instrument board to read my exact position. I lifted the down wing, pulled up the nose, and waited for dials to clarify—ready to throw myself out of the cockpit and yank the rip cord if sight were too long returning. Tense seconds broke through their cage of clocks; but vision came back in time. I levelled out the DH and climbed.

Landing lights had been installed on that plane only a few days before. One was set with a narrow beam to show obstructions far ahead. The other's beam was broadened to show the pilot nearby ground. I spiraled down as low as I dared over a large, black area between faintly glowing farmhouse windows, and switched on my lights. They were worse than useless. Snowflakes streaked the glare ahead. Farmhouse windows disappeared. I couldn't see a single object down below -- not a fence post, tree, or building.

I switched off the landing lights, renounced the earth, and climbed. There was no more emergency equipment for me to rely on that night, except my parachute. My plane and engine were in perfect shape. There were plenty of fields below, large enough and hard enough to land on without damage. But it took sight to bring the one in contact with the other -- a sound airplane; an open field. Between them, hidden like fortified lines of an enemy, stood trees and poles, hills and houses, fences and gullies.

I didn't have enough fuel to reach the dawn. That left me the choice of jumping out into darkness or of groping down blindly with my plane, to crash into whatever lay at the end of its glidepath -- Then, in that mail plane, I had the choice; I had a parachute. Tonight, in the Spirit of St. Louis, I--

But why waste these minutes on thoughts of crashes or incidents that are past? This is my last hour of America and day. Whatever may come later, it shall be filled with life. I fly low across these last mountains, close to their granite summits, exploring ledges and crevasses no man has seen before. I skip over precipice and canyon, the ground now fifty feet, now a thousand feet beneath. I've never felt so carefree of terrain. Why should I concern myself with engine failure; I, who have flown above Nova Scotian forests and ice fields of a northern sea; I, who am about to take on the entire ocean and the night? What joy it is to fly past crags like an eagle, to glide fearlessly over the edge of these great cliffs. From now on, the explosion of the engine will be inseparable from the beat of my heart. As I trust one, I'll trust the other.

THE TWELFTH HOUR
Over Newfoundland
TIME - 6:52 P.M.

Wind Velocity 30 m.p.h Visibility 10 Miles

Wind Direction W Altitude 700 feet

True Course 68° Air Speed 98 m.p.h.

Variation 31° W Tachometer 1650 r.p.m.

Magnetic Course 99° Oil Temp. 37°C

Deviation 0° Oil Pressure 59 lbs.

Compass Course 99° Fuel pressure 3.5 lbs.

Drift Angle 7° R Mixture 2

Compass heading 92° Fuel tank Fuselage

Ceiling Unlimited

Hazy in the light of sunset, a great finger of water points down between the ridges on my left. The gray mass behind it, scarcely perceptible in the distance, is Conception Bay. Skirting the coast line timidly, a scratch of man across this tremendous wilderness, lies the winding track of a railroad. Looking at bay and mountains, I become aware of the roadbed as one notices a thread lying on a parlor floor.

I've covered 1100 miles in 11 hours. That's an average of exactly 100 miles an hour in spite of the detours I had to make around storms in Nova Scotia. I must be making a mile every 30 seconds now, with this wind on my tail. That would put St. John's just over a quarter hour's flight ahead. How surprised people there will be when they see the Spirit of St. Louis swoop down from the western sky, and head straight out into the Atlantic and the night!

No plane en route to Europe ever flew over Newfoundland before without landing. Commander Read used it as a refueling point for his transatlantic flight. It was in 1919, and also in the month of May, that his pilots pulled the overloaded NC-4 off the water. For them, this island was a steppingstone to Europe. Three of the Navy's big multiengined flying boats left Newfoundland; but only the NC-4 arrived at the Azores the next morning. Their four engines hadn't helped much when they ran into low visibility and fog; but their boat hulls helped a lot. The weather forecast had been wrong. The NC boats encountered an area of storm. Destroyers, stationed every 50 miles along the line of flight, flashed beacons and shot up star shells to guide the Navy pilots through the night; but after daybreak all three flying boats lost their bearings.

The NC-1 and the NC-3 landed in open ocean and were damaged too badly to take off again, but they stayed afloat. The crew of the NC-3, under Commander Towers, managed to sail through heavy seas for more than 200 miles, to Ponta Delgada. The NC-1, after drifting for several hours, was found and taken in tow by a ship. It sank later, but everyone on board was rescued. The NC-4 reached the island of Fayal, and landed off a lee shore to pick up its exact position. Then Commander Read and his crew flew to Horta's harbor.

I remember the chief mechanic at Lincoln telling about it; he'd been a member of the expedition. There were emergencies, forced landings, and engine trouble all along the route, he said. To begin with, four boats were going to make the flight; but there'd been a storm in which the NC-1 had been so badly damaged that the NC-2 was cannibalized to put it back in shape. Then, there was a hangar fire which caused more problems. On the flight north from New York, propellers began to crack, and had to be replaced with a new, less efficient type. Commander Read had so much difficulty flying up the American coast that the others thought he might not get to Newfoundland in time to start on the Azores leg. It was skill, determination, and a hard-working, loyal crew that carried him through to Lisbon and the completion of the first transatlantic flight.

How secure those naval aviators must have felt, when they started out, inside their big hulls. But they paid heavily in range for what they gained in seaworthiness. That was why they took off from Newfoundland and headed for the Azores. With flying boats they couldn't have gotten into the air with enough gasoline to make a nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Beacons and rescue ships -- well, only the Navy can afford such things; for me, it's like wishing for the moon. No, I had to choose a land plane and go without rescue ships or not make the flight at all. But there are advantages on my side, too. When I stop to think about it logically, I know that I've got a better chance of reaching Europe in the Spirit of St. Louis than the NC boats had of reaching the Azores. I have a more reliable type of engine, proved instruments, and a continent instead of an island for my target.

I'm certainly better off than Alcock and Brown -- and they got across the ocean in their twin-engined Vickers bomber after burrowing through hundreds of miles of fog and storm. It was a wonderful flight they made, for the year 1919. They took off from Newfoundland a month later than Commander Read, and crashlanded in an Irish bog.

Of course Hawker and Mackenzie Grieve went down in mid-Atlantic with their land plane when its engine overheated. But they found a Danish ship out there, and they too were rescued.

Those flights took place only eight years ago. What leaps forward aviation has made since then! It's amazing that pilots could get across the ocean at all with wartime engines and aircraft, even from island to island. Why, I've already flown over 1100 miles, and I still have fuel in my tanks for more range than they were able to take off with.

I come upon it suddenly -- the little city of St. John's, after skimming over the top of a creviced granite summit -- flatroofed houses and stores, nestled at the edge of a deep harbor. It's almost completely surrounded by mountains. Farther ahead, the entrance to the harbor is a narrow gap with sides running up steeply to the crest of a low coastal range which holds back the ocean. Fishing boats are riding at buoys and moored at wharves.