The Spirit of ST Louis (16 page)

33

This morning we hauled the Spirit of St. Louis to Dutch Flats. By taking off the landing gear on one side, it was easy enough to move the fuselage through the big doorway of the factory's ground floor; but the wing in the loft created an unexpected problem. When Hall concluded that ten feet should be added to the standard M-2 span, no one thought about getting a forty-six-foot wing out of the room where it was built. For a time it looked as though we'd have to tear out a section of the wall; but careful measurement showed that we could get by if we tipped the wing over at an angle and removed the loft's double doors.

Such a delicate structure required careful handling. Fortunately an empty boxcar was standing on the railroad siding next to the factory, and all hands turned out to push the boxcar into a position which would form the first step downward from the loft. Then, with a contractor's derrick, we maneuvered the wing onto the car top, and from the car top down to a waiting truck. The workmen who weren't tugging at guy ropes or steadying the panel, stood watching from open doors and windows as though some child of theirs were going away to war. Their part was done. To them, the flight had started. For two months theirs has been the active part, while I stood by watching their craftsmanship. Now, the roles are reversed, and I'll have the field of action. Now, the success of their efforts depends upon my skill; and my life, upon their thoroughness.

34

DAVIS AND WOOSTER KILLED

AMERICAN LEGION CRASHES
ON TAKE-OFF

HAMPTON VA., April 26.—Lieut. Commander Noel Davis and Lieutenant Stanton H. Wooster lost their lives today in the last of the trial flights of the huge trans-Atlantic plane in which they were to attempt a flight to Paris next week.

The tragedy occurred when the machine was carrying almost the equivalent of its full load for the trans-Atlantic trip. Those on the ground saw a huge splash as the big machine came down in an area of marsh land, not far from Langley Field.

Both Commander Davis and Lieutenant Wooster were exceptionally skillful aviators. They had planned on taking off for the transatlantic Sight to Paris within the next few days. ---

Davis and Wooster killed! My God! Every one of the big multiengine planes built for the New York-to-Paris flight has crashed—Fonck's Sikorsky, Byrd's Fokker, and now Davis's Keystone! Four men have lost their lives, and three have been injured. Even the Bellanca has had a crack-up. What happened? Did an engine cut out on take-off? Maybe the plane was just overloaded beyond its ability to climb.

That's another example of how dangerous it is to have a cockpit forward. If the cockpit had been aft, the way it is in the Spirit of St. Louis, the chances are that nobody would have been even injured, since the fuselage wasn't badly crushed and the gasoline didn't catch on fire.

35

This morning I'm going to test the Spirit of St. Louis. It's the 28th of April—just over two months since I placed our order with the Ryan Company, and exactly sixty days since business formalities were completed and work on the plane began. What a beautiful machine it is, resting there on the field in front of the hangar, trim and slender, gleaming in its silver coat! All our ideas, all our calculations, all our hopes lie there before me, waiting to undergo the acid test of flight. For me, it seems to contain the whole future of aviation. When such planes can be built, there's no limitation to the air. In a few minutes I'll make the first take-off -- for I plan to run all tests myself.

Today, reality will check the claims of formula and theory on a scale which hope can't stretch a single hair. Today, the reputation of the company, of the designing engineer, of the mechanics, in fact of every man who's had a hand in building the Spirit of St. Louis, is at stake. And I'm on trial too, for quick action on my part may counteract an error by someone else, or a faulty move may bring a washout crash.

"Off! Throttle closed."

I'm in the cockpit, still unfamiliar and strange in spite of the hours I've spent sitting in it on factory and hangar floors. John van der Linde, chief mechanic, turns the propeller over several times.

"Contact!"

"Contact!"

He swings his body away from the blade as he pulls it through. The engine catches – – – picks up quickly as I crack the throttle-800 revolutions per minute, every cylinder hitting, oil and fuel pressures normal, the temperature already up. I check controls, moving them from one position to another in a last attempt to get their feel. This is considerably different from any cockpit I've been in before. The big fuel tank in front of me seems doubly large, now that I'm actually to fly behind it.

I open the throttle slowly – – – 1000 – – – 1200 – – 1400 – – wide. The fuselage trembles with power, and I feel the wheels crowd up against their chocks. I cut first one magneto and then the other—not a miss or a jerk in the engine—each gauge tells its proper story.

I signal the chocks away. A young mechanic named Douglas Corrigan ducks under the wing to pull them out. The Spirit of St. Louis rolls lightly over the baked-mud surface of the field. How strange it is to taxi with such a wide wheel tread! I glance again at the wind sock on the hangar, at instruments, valves, and levers, at the field ahead, at the sky above—and open the throttle.

Yes, my cockpit is a little blind; but I can see ahead well enough by leaning to one side. I've never felt a plane accelerate so fast before. The tires are off ground before they roll a hundred yards. The plane climbs quickly, even though I hold Its nose well down. There's a huge reserve of power. I spiral cautiously upward-500 feet – – – 1000 – – – 2000 feet. I straighten out and study my instruments – – – nose up

– – nose down – – – they're all working properly – – – the liquid inclinometer shows nicely a dive or climb. I circle over the factory, watching little figures run outdoors to see the machine they built actually flying overhead. I rock my wings, and head across the bay.

Now I'm over North Island, looking down on big naval hangars, planes on the line, and flying boats at anchor in the harbor. Both the Army and the Navy have establishments down there, with a huge landing area in between. The Naval Air Station is on one side and Rockwell Field is on the other. I'm perfectly safe now, even if the engine stops. One couldn't overshoot North Island in a forced landing.

But I have no time for gazing over the earth. There are tests to run, and men waiting anxiously for the reports I'm to bring back. Ailerons ride a bit too high. The fin needs slight adjustment. I note these items down on my data board, and push the stick over to one side. The wing drops rather slowly. The ailerons on the Spirit of St. Louis aren't as fast as those on the standard Ryan. But we expected that. Hall made them short to avoid overstraining the wing under full-load conditions, and he gained a little efficiency by not caryring them all the way out to the tip. The response is good enough for a long-range airplane.

I straighten out, pull into a stall, and let go of the stick. The nose drops and has no tendency to come back up. The dive steepens and the right wing slants lower until I force the plane back to level flight again. I take my feet off the rudder, and steer with stick alone. The fuselage veers the opposite way to the ailerons. It's clear that stability isn't a strong point with the Spirit of St. Louis. But we didn't design the plane for stability. We decided to use the standard tail surfaces to save construction time, and possibly gain a little extra range.

What top speed can I make? That's one of the crucial tests. If the Spirit of St. Louis has enough speed and can take off with enough load, I can fly nonstop to Paris. Otherwise I can't. I drop down to one thousand feet, level off, and open throttle. The indicator starts to climb; 100 – – – 111 – – – 120 – – – 128 miles an hour, jumping up and down over several graduations in turbulent air. A hundred and twenty-eight miles an hour is encouraging too. If time over the measured course checks with the needle, then the speed exceeds Hall's calculations by three and a half miles. I throttle down and head toward the white houses of San Diego. That's enough for the first flight. There's no use doing more until ailerons and fin are adjusted.

A Navy Hawk fighter dives down from higher altitude to inspect, at close range, the strange creature which has dared invade its skies. Almost instinctively I bank for position in mock combat. Of course the Hawk has greater speed, but the Spirit of St. Louis can turn in a shorter radius. We spiral, zoom, and dive for several minutes, while we try to get imaginary guns on one another. Then I break off, and take up course again for the Dutch Flats field.

I do two or three stalls on the way back to get the feel of my plane and practice for its landing.

"How's the control, Charlie?"

"Good enough, but she needs some adjustment." I let my engine idle for a minute or two while I describe the results of the flight.

"Say, you ran only a hundred and sixty-five feet before your wheels left the ground -- only six and one-eighth seconds." Hall is enthusiastic over the performance.

"What was the stability like?" he asks.

"Not very good," I tell him.

"I was afraid of that, Charlie. You know I wanted to put on bigger tail surfaces – – – we can still do it, but – – –"

SAN DIEGO. APRIL 29, 1927

_________________________

LINDBERGH ESCAPES CRASH

PLANE NEAR COLLISION

Captain Charles A. Lindbergh, former airmail pilot, narrowly escaped disaster when the plane he is grooming for a transatlantic flight almost collided with a Curtiss Hawk fighter from North Island. Lindbergh was putting his plane through its first tests preparatory to taking off for St. Louis tomorrow night on a non-stop flight which will put him in that city Sunday afternoon ---

36

I read the morning paper as I eat breakfast. Well, it's news me. I've had narrow escapes in flying, but that's one I didn't know about. And the statement that I'm going to start home tomorrow is just more fiction. I've told everybody that I have several days of tests to run.

37

This is May 4th, the day of my final speed and load tests. A morning fog is lifting when I take off and head toward the Army's three-kilometer speed course along Coronado Strand. It's 5:40 a.m. My plane has been ready since sunrise. As I climb over San Diego Bay, I find it still half covered with low, rolling clouds which obscure the buoy markers I must use. The sun is not high enough to burn them off quickly. Inland, mountains are clear. Seaward, I can see most of North Island through breaks in fog. I decide to drop in at Rockwell Field and try out the roughness of its surface. I'd like to use it as my departure point from San Diego.

I slip down on the final glide, nose high and left wing low -- that gives me perfect forward vision. Then I straighten out just before my wheels touch. Bumps and hummocks are worse than I expected. The Spirit of St. Louis gets a good shaking up, landing and taxiing—it won't strain anything with a load of less than thirty gallons in the tanks, but taking off with enough fuel for the flight home will be a different matter. I'll need two hundred and fifty gallons to give me the reserve I want to carry.

Several officers are waiting on the line as I taxi in. They saw my plane coming down, and want to inspect it at close range. There's still much skepticism among most of them about my flight; but they extend a hearty welcome, and invite me to spend the morning and stay for lunch.

"Thanks, but we've got to run tests today. I'll have to take off as soon as the fog clears."

"Well, how about coming over to the club while you're waiting?" they insist.

"Id like to, but I'd better size up the field first. I want to take off with a fairly heavy load when I leave for St. Louis, and some areas are probably a little smoother than others."

"We'll drive you over it."

"Thanks, but I'd rather walk. I can get a better idea of what it's like."

They laugh and wave me off.

"We'll look over your plane until you come back. Let us know if there's anything we can do to help."

I want to dig my heels into the surface, see the height of grass on my legs, and study contours of earth by zigzagging back and forth across them. If Rockwell Field turns out to be too rough, even for a medium load, then I'll have to take off for St. Louis from Camp Kearney. My decision will depend largely on the tests we're to make this afternoon, and the length of run the plane requires.

When I return to the hangars, the day is beginning to feel warm and the clouds are fading away. A mechanic swings my propeller, and another holds a wing-strut as I taxi out from the line. I do a chandelle off the field, to show how well the Spirit of St. Louis performs, and head toward the speed course. The buoys are still obscured by patches of mist, so I return to Dutch Flats and let an hour pass.

When I reach the bay on my third flight there's no trace of fog. I fly once over the speed course to locate its markers. Then, at a distance of about two miles from the nearest one, I turn back, nose down to fifty feet above the water, and push my throttle wide open, adjusting the stabilizer for neutral load on stick. One mile of level flight before striking the first marker is what we agreed on. At times, when the plane hits turbulent air, the indicator jumps to over 130 miles an hour. I press my stop watch as the first buoy streaks by under the wing. I can't see the next, but I know it's dead ahead: Now the third buoy is in sight, a black dot in the distance. I press my watch again as I pass above it, throttle back, and climb several hundred feet while I fill in the time on my data board. One flight back over the buoys in the opposite direction, two more round trips to average with the first, and the high-speed runs are finished.

Now I'll fly to Camp Kearney for the load tests. On my way I note down the relation of air speed to engine revolutions, so Hall will have several check points for his curves. By the time I'm over the parade grounds there's only one more test to make before we start putting fuel in the tanks for the load take-offs. I pull the throttle back to 1500 r.p.m. and let needles steady — 96 miles an hour: that's pretty good. I take a pencil from my pocket and pick up the data board - - - The nose rises --- a wing drops - - - I reach for the stick - - - a gust of air snatches the data board from my hand and carries it through the open window! All the figures I've collected this morning go fluttering down toward a brush-covered hill below! I bank sharply and watch the board, flashing as it catches sun, land in the branches of a thick bush about two hundred yards from the edge of a clearing. Now it's only a white spot among brownish-green leaves.

The clearing looks big enough to land on with one of the company's Hisso-Standards. I circle around for several minutes, locating in my mind the exact position of the data board. When I'm sure I can spot its bush again, I fly back to Camp Kearney and land. In spite of loose stones, the surface is smoother than that of Rockwell Field. But wheels bang up and down uncomfortably at times.

Donald Hall, A. J. Edwards, and several mechanics are waiting beside a gasoline truck parked on a corner of the parade grounds. And there's Mahoney, a little to one side, leaning against his car. (Benjamin and Franklin are his given names, but nobody dares use them.) Apparently the secrecy of our plans has been well kept, for there isn't a newspaperman in sight. Hall's face lengthens when I tell what happened to the data board. Either it will have to be retrieved or all lime morning's tests must be run again. Mahoney sends a mechanic to the nearest telephone, with orders to have one of the Hisso-Standards sent over from Dutch Flats. Meanwhile we'll fill the center wing-tank with gasoline for our first load test. After that, we'll add fifty gallons for each flight, until Hall gets enough measured points to check his theoretical curves.

The Hisso-Standard arrives in a half hour. The pilot and some of the mechanics want to go with me to help hunt for the board, but I decide it's wiser to take the plane alone. The clearing where I must land is small, and there's not enough wind to cut down landing speed appreciably. The weight of even one more man might cause a crack-up.

When I arrive over the brush patch again, I find the data board still clearly visible. I stall down into the clearing and stop rolling with several yards to spare. Leaving the engine idling, with a stone under each wheel of the plane to keep it from creeping forward, I crawl in through thick and scratchy bushes to where I think the board should be. After hunting for several minutes without result, I remove my coat, spread it on top of some branches, return to the clearing, and take off again in the Standard.

As soon as I'm in the air, I see my coat to be at least fifty yards from the data board. My sense of direction certainly went wrong that time. Maybe I should have brought a compass. I land again, but am still unsuccessful in my search; so I leave the coat in a new location and take off once more. This time, coat and data board are only twenty feet apart. I land, pick them both up, and head back to Camp Kearney.

The Spirit of St. Louis is ready for its first load flight when I arrive. Hall takes charge of the data sheets as though they contained directions to a lost gold mine. We're several hours behind schedule, and anxious to finish tests before any major change in weather. A quartering wind has already sprung up—close to seven miles an hour, we estimate. The late take-off, the delay at Rockwell Field waiting for fog to clear, and the time spent regaining my data board, have eaten up the morning. Now we'll have to work fast to finish before dark.

The first two or three take-offs are easy. The Spirit of St. Louis runs only a few yards farther than with no extra load at all. But as we keep putting in fifty-gallon increments of gasoline, the run lengthens and the wheels jerk up and down over loose stones until I wonder how tires can be built to stand the strain. When I'm ready for the 300-gallon test, the wind has dropped to zero and the sun is almost touching the horizon. My plane is off the ground in twenty seconds; but the tires took a terrific beating, and the landing is even rougher than the take-off.

"Charlie, your wheels were clear in one thousand and twenty-three feet!" Hall tells me. His curves are checking out.

"Do you want us to put in fifty gallons more?" the chief mechanic asks.

"It's too late for another flight today," I say, looking toward the west.

"I don't think you ought to take a heavier load across those stones anyway," Mahoney says. He's out in front, examining tires and landing gear.

"Do we need any more check points?" I ask.