The Spirit of ST Louis (12 page)

WANAMAKER BEHIND NEW
YORK-PARS FLIGHT

WILL FINANCE BYRD VENTURE
WITH $100,000

May Race with Fonck

NEW York, March 2.—Rodman Wane-maker, who once financed a project to fly the Atlantic ocean which was prevented by the war, will back Commander Byrd's attempt to fly non-stop from New York to Paris next spring. A huge three-engined Fokker monoplane, now under construction, is to be used for the trip. It Is expected that the inachine will be ready by May, which Is the earliest month weather conditions will be suitable for a transatlantic flight

In carrying out his project, Commander Byrd will make use of the most advanced instruments and navigational devices known to science.

(This is the most definite and comprehensive story about the Paris flight I've seen. I continue reading.)

This spring may see a race between American and French pilots for the honor of being first to fly between New York and Paris. The Sikorsky Company announced recently that a big plane was being built for the Atlantic flight Although company officials would not comment, it is reported that the pilot will be Cant Rene Fonck. the French ace who crashed on Roosevelt Field on an attempted take-off for Paris last September.

A number of American pilots. Including Commander Noel Davis. are known to be planning on competing for the Orteig prize of $26,000 which will be awarded to the first aviator to fly between New York and Paris without stopping. Charles A. Lindbergh, a St Louis mail pilot, has filed the latest entry, according to the National Aeronautic Association. He will pilot a singleengined Ryan monoplane, and plans to make the flight alone.

On the European side of the ocean, it is understood that transatlantic planes are being constructed in France. England. and Italy.

I fold the paper and stand up.

"We'd better go get some supper." I say it firmly.

Donald Hall straightens on his stool. Pencil lines curve and Ingle delicately over the face of his drafting board's white 'beet. A fuselage is taking outline form. He's been sitting on that stool since early morning, with no break except for quick meals and a few trips downstairs to talk to Bowlus and the workmen. It was the same yesterday, and the day before.

"You've been here long enough," I tell him. "A fellow can work so hard that he loses time, you know."

"I have to get these drawings done, Charlie," he explains. "They're holding everything up. Bowlus can't start work on the plane until he gets them. All he can do is assemble some of the material and order a few parts." Hall hangs his T square on its nail and stretches his body stiffly. "I've got to have some sleep tonight, though, and I think I can finish the first drawing in the morning."

We close windows, turn off lights, make sure all factory doors are locked, and climb into his roadster.

"Don, don't you think you ought to set a regular pace at this work?" I suggest, while we're eating at the café counter. "A fellow can't think as clearly without sleep."

"I know. I'll get some rest as soon as I get ahead of the shop," he says vaguely. "Say, we ought to have some kind of ventilation in the cockpit if you're going to fly with the windows closed." Then, pulling his mind away from design with obvious effort, he comes back to my question. "I'll go for a hike through the mountains this week end. Did you ever hike through the mountains? It's the best way of getting a rest I know. Last summer, I went hiking up in the - - Say, do you want gauges on your gasoline tanks, Charlie?"

"No. That would mean extra pounds, and they never see to work. I'll measure fuel consumption with my watch."

8

How does one navigate along a great circle, crossing 360 miles of earth and ocean? I've never made an over-water flight before. In fact, I've never really done any long-distane flying at all. Not one of the planes I've piloted in the pas was capable of five hundred miles nonstop without a stron tail wind. My navigation has always been carried out on maps which I checked with landmarks on the ground. There were lakes, town, bends in rivers, and railroad tracks to tell me when I was on my route or how far I'd drifted from it, At night, on the mail, there were familiar lights below. Flying the Atlantic will be different. I'll have to use navigation like that of ships at sea. I'll have to change my heading by time and theory instead of by railroad tracks and rivers. How do ship captains find their destined harbors after sailing fot weeks out of sight of land? Of course they take sextant sights on the sun and stars. Why can't I do that too? And they have radio to help them. Maybe I can carry a set in the Spirit of St. Louis—if it's not to heavy. How does one lay out a great-circle route? Does it require much knowledge of mathematics? Where can I find out about such things?

I could undoubtedly get the information I need from some of the naval officers stationed at San Diego, but I hesitate to ask them for advice. There's enough skepticism about my flight now, without adding to it by showing how inexperienced I am in the technique of long-distance navigation. Most men already look at me askance when they hear of my plans, and shake their heads when they learn that I intend to go alone. They say I'm attempting the impossible, that I'm too young to realize what I'm undertaking, and that someone with authority should stop my flight. That attitude, if carried far enough, might even affect the officers of the Ryan Company and the workmen in the shop. It could put my partners St. Louis in a false position of responsibility. It could add greatly to my problems, and cause all kinds of trouble. No, it's essential to maintain an atmosphere of experience and capality concerning every detail of my flight. I can't afford to inquire openly about such an elementary procedure as the construction of a great-circle course. Well, San Diego is an ocean port. There'll be ship chandlers on the waterfront, where stocks of charts are carried. I'll go there first and see at I can buy.

9

"I want a set of charts covering the North Atlantic Ocean," I tell the clerk. He looks up in obvious surprise.

"The Atlantic? Sorry, we supply only Pacific shipping. You might get Atlantic charts at San. Pedro. We've never had a request for them before."

That means a trip up north. I'll try to borrow one of the Ryan Company's monoplanes.

10

The store at San Pedro has drawers of charts that apparently cover all the earth's salt water.

"I think these are what you want."

The salesman pulls out two oblong sheets. They're Mercator's projections and --yes, I'm in luck -- they extend inland far enough to include New York and Paris. Then, like stumbling over a nugget of gold, I see a gnomonic projection covering them both. "A great circle on the earth's surface translates into a curve on a Mercator's chart, but it becomes a straight line on a gnomonic projection" -- I remember learning that in the Army's navigation class. Why? Because all maps are distorted in one way or another. You can't just skim the surface off a globe and flatten it out neatly on a table.

Rummaging around still farther, I locate a time-zone chart of the world, a chart of magnetic variation, and others showing prevailing winds over the Atlantic for April, May, and June. I buy them all.

For crossing the continent to St. Louis and New York, 1 know of nothing better than the Rand McNally railroad maps one can buy at any first-class drugstore, for fifty cents per state.

11

Donald Hall has cleared off a table for my use in his drafting room. It's a dusty, uninspiring place, with damp-spotted walls and unshaded light bulb hanging down on a wire cord from the ceiling's center. Divergent factory noises mingle with the odors of dope and fish, and on rainy days a bucket has to be placed on the floor to catch dripping water. But there's enough room to spread out sheets of charts and drawings; and, locked in, we work in relative seclusion.

My navigating problems have begun to clarify. I found, printed on the charts I bought, ample instructions for laying out my great-circle route. With the instruments Hall loaned me, I drew a straight line between New York and Paris on the gnomonic projection. Then I transferred points from that line, at hundred-mile intervals, to the Mercator's projection, and connected these points with straight lines. At each point, I marked down the distance from New York and the magnetic course to the next change in angle. I chose hundred-mile intervals as convenient distances to work with because, wind and cruising speed considered, it seems likely that the Spirit of St. Louis will cover about that distance each hour. Since there's no way to be sure, one might as well choose a convenient figure. Now, I have my route inked in and its time zones measured off. The distance scales at exactly 3610 miles.

I stand looking down at the completed chart. It's fascinating, that curving, polygonic line, cutting fearlessly over thousands of miles of continent and ocean. Independent of the world it seems -- just as I was independent of the world that moonlit night in September when I conceived this flight to Paris. It curves gracefully northward through New England, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, eastward over the Atlantic, down past the southern tip of Ireland, across a narrow strip of England, until at last it ends sharply at the little dot inside of France marked "Paris."

What freedom lies in flying! What godlike power it gives to man! I'm independent of the seaman's coast lines, of the landsman's roads; I could as well have drawn that line north to the Arctic, or westward over the Pacific, or southeast to jungles of the Amazon. I'm like a magician concocting magic formulae. The symbols I pluck from paper, applied to the card of a compass held straight by rudder and stick, will take me to any acre on the earth where I choose to go.

But laying out that course seems too simple to justify building my entire project on its accuracy. After all, when everything else has been done, when the Spirit of St. Louis

been built, tested, and paid for, when I've made the final take-off from New York with enough fuel in the tanks to reach Paris, then success, reputation, life itself will depend on

the correctness of that curving black line and the numerals I've marked along its edges. I'd feel better if I could get some check on my work, some confirmation of my figures land my angles.

The public library downtown has texts on navigation that give detailed instruction about spherical mathematics. I decide to lay a second route across the ocean by trigonometry. But it's not as easy to find great-circle latitudes and longitudes through logarithmic formulae as it is to pick them off charts. Even after I learn the procedure, it takes a long time to work out each position, and there are thirty-six of them in all. After spending several days at this task, I reach a point in the Atlantic twelve hundred miles beyond the coast of Newfoundland. My mathematical route and my charted route coincide so closely that it seems time wasted to continue with the calculations. I have satisfied myself that the headings I marked on the Mercator's projections are correct; and there are other problems which demand attention.

Now that I have my courses laid out properly, I must be sure I can hold them -- over the ocean -- over fog -- at night -- and with unknown wind drifts.

Should I buy a sextant and study celestial navigation? But could I handle a sextant at the same time I'm flying a plane? That at least is something I can ask the naval officers on North Island -- no one expects an airplane pilot to know much about celestial navigation. I can also ask them about the radio sets they use. The next question is how to make contact with the Navy.

12

You might get a sun-line, but I don't think you can hold a sextant steady enough to take a bubble sight at the same time you fly the plane. You ought to carry a navigator on a flight like that."

A blue-uniformed officer has come to see the Spirit of Si, Louis. Insignia and stripes of gold mark a rank I do not know. But here's a source of information I can tap.

"How much do your aircraft radios weigh, and how far can you get direction with a loop?" I ask.

"I can't answer those questions," he tells me. "Radio isn't my specialty. But why don't you come out to North Island and visit us? I'll introduce you to the experts there."

13

I find that naval radios are much too heavy for my single-engined plane, and that their value on a flight like mine is doubtful. The more I study the problem, the more I realize that I'll have to rely on dead reckoning for my navigation, and that a successful flight will depend primarily on the reserve of fuel the Spirit of St. Louis can carry. After I tell Hall the result of my studies, we decide to increase the tank capacity to 425 gallons—we'll trade radio and sextant weight for extra gasoline. What I lose in navigational accuracy I hope to gain twice over in total range.

"How difficult would it be to design the landing gear so I could drop it in flight?" I ask.

"We could do that. Of course it would weigh a few pounds more," Hall tells me. "But you'd crack up landing, Charlie!"

"Not badly. It might get the prop, but if I landed on sod, I don't think the fuselage and wings would be damaged much—with a light load. If the margins are close, it might make the difference between success and failure. It might even save the plane."

"Well, that would give us a lot of extra range," Hall says. "But suppose you had to turn back after you cut loose the gear?"

We discuss methods of dropping a landing gear from the air, so that it would break free cleanly without danger of injuring any part of the plane. Hall's, not happy about the idea and neither am I. We decide to put it in the back of our minds, as an emergency reserve, in case more accurate performance calculations prove disappointing.