Trophy for Eagles (23 page)

The hugeness of the task was not discussed. All the airplanes in the world searching would not have been enough, for there was no
way of knowing if the Vega had crashed just beyond the Farallons, just before Hawaii, or anywhere in the Pacific between or beyond.
Yet the search had to be made for the sake of the searchers, if not for
the lost. A glimmer of hope was held out that the Vega would be able to float indefinitely, with its empty tanks and flotation bags. There were continual mutual assurances that Winter had carried a rubber life raft. Millie Duncan could be sitting in a raft; they must search for her.

Every plane on the field was made available for the rescue effort. Dolan became the organizer, allocating areas to search and times to
fly. Bill Erwin and Al Eichwaldt, the fabric of the
Dallas Spirit
repaired, were off at 2:15
p.m.
The two were old professionals, and
Jimmie Irving had donated the two-way radio set from his wrecked
aircraft. It somehow made everything seem safer. Eichwaldt began
sending reports one after another. The first came only five minutes
after takeoff: "2:20. Going strong. We are passing the docks and will
see the lightship soon. We are carrying the tail high at 1,700 feet and making close to 100 speed. Will call again passing the lightship. "

There were a spate of trivial messages as Eichwaldt familiarized
himself with the equipment, making the typical amateur's mistake
of sending unnecessary words. Hadley ached to go outside and draw
a breath, but was riveted to the spot, watching the operator record the messages.

Later the room rippled with a brief flurry of excitement when a
message came in from Wheeler Field. The crowd waited breathless
ly as the Morse code was copied, then groaned in resentment. The
message read simply: "Race committee in Hawaii advises Hafner to
receive second prize."

Messages from the
Dallas Spirit
crackled through the gloom.

"2:40. From now on I will double up on my messages so you can
copy me better as I know my sending is none too good. Tell Jimmie
the radio set is working fine. Send my love to Ma."

"2:50. We are flying at 300 feet and under the fog with a visibility
of 30 miles and are passing the Farallons now."

The crowd in the radio shack looked concerned; the classic way to
an accident was to attempt to fly under the weather.

Hadley asked, "What kind of an instrument pilot is Erwin?"

"He's okay. He passed the flight check, didn't he?"

Dolan's voice was high, strained, ready to crack. "We didn't check them for instrument flying."

Hadley commented, "He might be a little rusty, but he'll be fine. He shot down eight Germans; a little fog isn't going to bother him."

More messages came through, none vital.

"3:49. The ceiling is now 700 feet. We are flying at 500. We have
not seen anything at all of other planes or anything since the
Farallons and all is okay except Bill just sneezed. We are keeping a
sharp lookout for the
Golden Eagle."

Hadley could visualize the tension on board Erwin's airplane.

Eichwaldt was covering his own fear with rough humor. When it
grew darker, their danger would become as great as that which had
claimed the others. Whenever there was a silence, the crowd in the radio shack tensed. Roget felt the whole effort was pointless, that
there wasn't a chance in a billion of finding the
Golden Eagle
in the
present weather conditions.

"4:20. We just passed close to a rain squall. The air was very bumpy. Visibility is clear ahead."

Other messages indicated ships they had sighted. The weather had apparently improved. People passed in and out of the radio
shack as tension curled the air, palpable with blue-gray smoke. The
messages became increasingly grim as time passed.

"8:00. It is beginning to get dark."

At 8:20
p.m.
the radio operator whistled. Erwin's radio was
powered by a wind-driven generator, and the cycles of the transmis
sions varied with the airspeed. The radio operator could tell from
the rise and fall of the cycles on his meter that the
Dallas Spirit
had
stalled and spun. The white needle on the gauge was a mute mechanical witness to the emotional drama in the Swallow.

"8:51. Belay that. We were in a spin but came out of it okay. We
sure were scared. It sure was a close call. The lights on the instrument panel went out and it was so dark Bill could not see the wings."

The pilots in the room shot worried glances at each other. A spin in the dark over the ocean was usually fatal. The crew of the
Dallas
Spirit
had been lucky.

Roget closed his eyes and imagined himself in the cockpit, feeling
what Erwin was going through as his senses told him one thing and
his instruments another. Even an experienced instrument pilot was vulnerable to the sensations of vertigo, to believe what one's ears
and eyes reported instead of the random pointing of the tiny dials on
the instrument panel. There was no such thing as seat-of-the-pants flying. If you didn't have instruments, or didn't know how to use them, and got in clouds, you would inevitably stall and spin.

Roget wondered if they had working flashlights. Despite all the
Eveready ads, flashlights were something you carried around until
the battery went dead and you needed it. Two people's lives ultimately depended upon the dim glimmer of the instrument lights. Erwin and Eichwaldt were both probably shivering with fear. It
would be worse for Erwin, for he would know precisely the danger, while Eichwaldt would die still in the hope that Erwin would master
the situation. Hadley writhed in sympathy.

The subdued murmur within the shack ceased when the radio clattered. There was another transmission.

"9:02. We are in a . . . SOS."

Then there was silence; the frequency meter showed a peak, and then fell to nothing as the
Dallas Spirit
finally crashed into the sea,
the lapsed pointer a final malevolent confirmation of two deaths.

There was a total silence in the room. Then Roget said, "Now we've got two more to look for. And maybe nobody to find.

***

PART II

THE STAKES GO UP

***

Chapter 4

Grand Central Airport, Glendale, California/
November 30, 1929

The thin heat of the early-morning sun began to battle with the
crisp white frost feathering the red-tile roof of the mission-style
terminal. Bandfield buttoned his old leather jacket, grown tighter in
the last two years, and slumped against the wall of an arch of the
covered walkway. As always, he was quite early for the meeting. He
spent his time admiring the new airport.

Aviation had come a long way in the last decade, from flying out
of cow pastures to this beautiful airfield, with its concrete runway and long line of Maddux Airlines hangars filled with Ford Tri-motors. Across the runway were the curious half-dome hangars
where they were building the crazy-looking Slate all-metal dirigible.
He had seen it once, an enormous tin ship that looked like an
accordion-pleated egg, with some nutty turbine system for power.
Good luck, he thought. It was tough enough to get a normal-looking aircraft to fly, much less a "revolutionary" one.

God knew Roget Aircraft could use some luck after struggling
almost through another year. No one yet knew what the stock market crash the month before meant, but it had been a fantastic
year for aviation. Some weird-looking Russian bomber had flown
from Moscow to New York. Two Brits had flown nonstop from
England to India. Jimmy Doolittle flew a complete flight, takeoff to
landing, on instruments. The
Graf Zeppelin,
the good old-fashioned kind of quick-burning dirigible, built of aluminum and fabric and filled with hydrogen, had flown around the world.

Even poor old maligned Richard Byrd had redeemed himself for
his humiliating flight in the
America
by being the first to fly over the
South Pole. Bandfield had ached for him in 1927, when Byrd had
finally flown the Atlantic, only to crash in the sea off the coast of France. At least he had broken with Tony Fokker, and flown a Ford
Tri-motor over the South Pole. Balchen, who could get along with anybody, even Byrd, had been his pilot.

Earlier, Bandy had parked his waxed and gleaming Roget Rocket,
the fifth—and last—to be built, next to a line of open-cockpit biplanes. The first Roger
Rocket
had burned, but three of its name
sakes were earning their keep flying from New Orleans to Atlanta for
Southern Airlines. It wasn't much to show for almost three years of
sweat and strain. Yet tight as things were, he was still sometimes glad that Roget Aircraft had stayed small, and hadn't yet made it into the big time. Lockheed had sold one Vega after another, but was then absorbed by Detroit Aircraft, which intended to become the General Motors of the air. The stock-market crash had ended those dreams, and now Lockheed was in trouble, like everybody else.

Ten thousand dollars. I won't take a cent less than ten thousand for it, he thought. He knew that he would, though, that he would
grab $5,000 if it was offered, anything to keep Roget Aircraft alive
for another few months.

That's what the meeting was about. By pure chance, two of the men he admired most in aviation, Wiley Post and Slim Lindbergh,
were together in California, attending a meeting on some new Civil Aeronautics Association rulings. He had asked them to look at the
latest version of the Rocket, and they had agreed to meet him in Glendale. Lindbergh was of course by far the most famous, but
Bandfield thought that the one-eyed Wiley Post was going to be one
of the truly great pilots of the next decade. Both men needed new
airplanes, and he had been told that Post needed a fast cabin
monoplane with a good range, and was leaning toward the Vega.
Lindbergh had said only that he wanted something in which he could fly with his new wife as copilot.

Bandfield thought he could meet Post's needs easily. The Rocket
was a better airplane than the Vega, although it didn't have its
reputation. It might boil down to price, and he wasn't sure what the
Lockheed people would do. They might be as desperate as he was.

And it depended a lot on what Post wanted to use the airplane for.
Aviation was still cursed with people wanting to set meaningless
records, dropping like rocks into the Atlantic or the Pacific, causing
expensive searches, but rarely being found. The whole business grated on him. Each time he read of an attempt, he thought of Millie. Since she had gone, more than a dozen had followed her into the oceanic void. They were lost without hope or purpose, and far from helping aviation, they harmed it.

Lindbergh's requirement would be different. He was working
with Pan American, testing flying boats. He had already set the most
important record ever made, the Paris flight. And now he was
aviation's statesman-engineer, always seeking progress, but never at
the expense of safety.

The only problem was that Lindbergh might want more than Roget Aircraft could deliver. Bandfield wondered how much of Lindy's interest stemmed from their old friendship. They had not
met since the days on Long Island, but they had corresponded every
few months, and Lindbergh was always supportive.

The rest of the field was still deserted, quiet in the sun, when a
deep-blue Franklin Airman convertible sedan rolled up; Lindbergh
was alone in a car the company had named for him.

"Hello, Bandy. Burned up any more airplanes?"

His eyes twinkled and he grinned the shy, lopsided grin of old,
but he was different. There was a wary presence in his manner, and
he repeatedly looked over his shoulder, as if he were being followed—or hunted.

"Wiley Post isn't coming. He sends his regrets."

Lindbergh checked the terminal and the parking lot, scanning for
reporters or just fans.