Walking on Air (3 page)

But, as it happened, it would be a long time before she got another ride. She took the trolley and walked to the airfield every weekend, but all the available men were simply too busy to bother with her. Yes, she was the proud owner of an airplane, but without someone to take her up in it, the plane had to remain parked in the hangar. It was not until a new pilot arrived on the scene that she got her chance.
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Vernon Omlie strode onto the airfield one day in early spring. Tall and ruggedly handsome, he was a twenty-five-year-old veteran of the Great War and an experienced flight instructor.
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Like so many veteran fliers, he was searching for a way to make a living in aviation. At that time there were few opportunities beyond entertainment. He flew exhibitions and competed in stunts at the Minnesota State Fair in 1919, then joined Clarence Hinck and his Federated Fliers' barnstorming tour in 1920, flying exhibitions and “hopping” passengers.
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Omlie flew the first forest fire patrols in the United States over the Minnesota woods. And he once flew a calf from the twin cities to South Dakota to demonstrate that cattle could be transported by air. After failing to establish his own company in Aberdeen, he ran a garage in Minneapolis during the winter, and worked for Curtiss Northwest ferrying planes to new owners during the summer.
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He also served as pilot for Arthur C. Townley, head of the Non-Partisan League, an agrarian political organization.
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This day, he had come to the field to prepare the League's two Curtiss Orioles stored there for the coming summer tours. Phoebe joined the group gathered around the popular Omlie. “It was not one of those theatric moments when a young girl's heart is supposed to go pit-a-pat,” Phoebe later recalled. “He looked more like a pilot than anyone I'd yet seen, and all my thoughts in those days were centered on aeronautics. … What I felt … was that maybe here was someone who would extend a helping hand.”
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She wasn't looking for romance; she was looking for a pilot. She was in business; she needed to make money right away to pay off her debt. Phoebe began a conversation with Vernon by referring to her classmate Bonita Townley, Arthur's daughter. She told him that she owned a plane and wanted to learn stunts, and complained that no one would work with her nor teach her to fly. She told him of her “contract” with the movies and insisted that she needed to get going in order to earn money to repay her loan for the plane. Unlike the other pilots at the field, he listened attentively. Apparently intrigued by this tiny young girl with the steely determination, he looked dubiously at her slight frame and told her that she would first have to build up her strength before he would consider helping her prepare stunts.
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When she could chin herself twenty times from a hanging position, without touching the floor, they would start her training. That was just the incentive she needed. Within a few weeks, by the time the weather turned warm, she was ready.
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Vernon turned out to be the perfect foil for Phoebe. He took it upon himself to temper her youthful enthusiasm when that threatened to lead to
dangerous recklessness. He spent time on the ground explaining the rudiments of aerodynamics, trying to familiarize her with how airplanes flew and how they responded in certain situations. The Jenny was an enormous biplane. Its fuselage was 27.5 feet long, with a 43.7-foot wingspan. Its two wings were supported by heavy struts, four between the wings on each side and four short ones beside and in front of the front cockpit. On top of the top wing was a short strut that supported guy wires leading to the fuselage. Guy wires laced back and forth between the wings, providing abundant handholds. “They used to say that after the mechanics had rigged the plane,” wrote Charles Planck about the Jenny, “that is, adjusted the wires and struts for the best flying position, they would put a canary in between the wings. If he got out, the plane wasn't rigged right.”
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Phoebe was short enough that she could almost stand upright between the wings. Vernon showed her where she could step on the wing, where the ribs joined a spar. The rest of the wing was unsupported fabric covered with a hardening agent called “dope”; if she stepped there, her foot could easily go right through the wing. He suggested Phoebe wear close-fitting clothing that would not easily catch the wind, basketball shoes with suction cups attached to the soles to help her footing, and a harness with belts around her waist and thighs.
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Vernon rigged a safety line from the cockpit to her harness. He told her to be sure to stay in front of the rigging because if she slipped or lost her hold, the prop blast would glue her to the wires long enough to get another grip. When they reached 2,000 feet, he gave her the signal to climb out of the cockpit and walk along the wing to the end of her tether. Each day he lengthened the rope, allowing her to travel a bit further. By the time she was allowed to go the full length, she was familiar with every inch of the rigging and wing surface; she could have done the walking blindfolded. One day she forgot about using the safety rig until she was standing on the wing with her leg wound around the outer-bay strut. She felt free and confident, but Vernon was vigorously waving at her to come back. She ignored him, wanting to show what she could do, so she climbed onto the top of the wing and stood up, holding the upper mast. As she looked down into the cockpit at Vernon, he sharply waggled the controls to express his displeasure. She hastily climbed back down.
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Once they had landed, Vernon told her that they had to work together as a team, that each had to know what the other planned and was thinking, or they would court serious trouble and, he implied, he would work with her no more.
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Still the safety line was clearly more of a psychological tether than a safety one since if she'd fallen while still attached to it, there was little
either of them could do to rescue her. She would not be able to climb back up the rope to save herself, given the speed and strength of the relative wind of the prop. Vernon did not dare turn the Jenny loose in order to help since the plane would immediately slip into a spin, especially with the human drag dangling below. And, of course, landing with her in that position was out of the question.

As they worked together, Phoebe worried that Vernon would soon return to flying for Townley. But as it happened, the problem resolved itself. One day as they arrived at the field, they found the hangar containing the League's two Curtiss Orioles had burned to the ground. The organization could not afford to buy another ship, so Vernon was effectively released from that job. He was left only with a verbal contract with Curtiss Northwest for $25 a week, and much more free time to work with Phoebe.
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Once she felt comfortable wing-walking, Phoebe was eager to tackle the parachute jump. Charley Hardin brought her beribboned parachute to the field, and she spent long hours learning to pack and repack the chute. It was critically important that the chute be dry and freshly packed immediately before takeoff to minimize the possibility of the silk sticking together and tangling. The chute was packed into a duffle bag and tied to the strut of the landing gear.
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They planned the whole stunt very carefully. Vernon would climb the plane to 1,200 feet and pass over the field, flying into the wind while estimating the approximate wind drift of the chute. When he had the plane lined up properly, he would tap her on the shoulder as a signal for her to climb down. Phoebe first practiced on the ground the difficult and complex journey to reach the chute. She climbed out of the cockpit, down over the leading edge of the wing. She placed one foot on the shock absorber, being very careful not to step on the tire because once in the air, the wheel would turn. Then she had to slide herself through the landing gear struts into position next to the chute tied to the spreader-board of the axle. This was much more dangerous than walking among the struts on the wing. She had little to hang onto and this time the slipstream would be against her. If she slipped, the wind would blow her away. Once she felt stable on the axle, she would clip the chute to the harness around her waist. As soon as he saw her in position, Vernon would throttle back, the signal for her to cut loose. Make sure the snaps are good and secure, he instructed, and don't jump until you are certain you are ready. We can always go around again. Given the signal, Phoebe would slide off the strut until she was hanging by her harness. Then she was to pull the cord attached to the flaps that held the chute
in the bag, and jump. As she fell clear of the plane, the folded silk should play out of the bag like a fire hose, first the shroud lines, then the canopy itself. To keep the whole thing from dropping out of the bag at the moment of the cut-away, the vent (or crown) of the chute was tied to the bag with a piece of light twine that was supposed to break after the chute was fully deployed.
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Finally it was time to try it in the air. They decided not to tell anyone because of the experimental nature of the jump. There would be ample time to alert the press later. Phoebe did tell her mother. She enlisted her brother to vouch that she was well trained for the jump, and that Vernon was such a careful pilot that he would never approve the jump until he was certain Phoebe could do it safely. Her mother promised to bring her dad to the field, although she would not tell him beforehand why they were there.
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It was a beautiful spring day, the seventeenth of April, and many people were milling around the airport enjoying the nice weather. Phoebe repacked her chute very carefully. Then she climbed aboard. All the practice and care paid off. She jumped free of the plane without a hitch. It felt like being in a “high, gossamer swing where the oscillation is as smooth as the silk above you. There is no noise, strain, or mechanical vibration and no feeling of descending speed.” She looked up to see Vernon circling nearby; down below her brother Paul, and his passenger Charley Hardin, bounced across fields and through ditches trying to follow her in his car. Phoebe was so entranced with the view, “the dull light of the setting sun against the big white umbrellas which, set against the background of the blue sky … was so enchantingly beautiful” that she forgot to look where she was going until she was only a few hundred feet off the ground. Ahead was a small stand of trees, which from the air looked “soft and inviting.” She slid through the branches until her chute caught on a tree top. Dangling several feet off the ground, she unsnapped her harness and dropped to her feet. People rushed toward her; among them were her mother and father. Her parents, perhaps grateful that she had survived, hugged her close and, apparently accepting the inevitable from their headstrong daughter, chose to be proud of her.
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Word about a young girl who jumped soon reached the press, and several members turned up at the field the next day to talk to her.
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She told reporters that parachute jumping was even more exciting than doing stunts on the wings of speeding airplanes, and she intended to make it a regular practice from now on. “I find no trouble in climbing anywhere on a moving plane, but I was just a little scared when I began to sail through the air. And I almost lost my nerve before I made the jump. But after this I am sure I
shall like it.” Phoebe announced that she was planning a tour of county fairs with her brother, giving “dare-devil exhibitions.”
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All that spring, Phoebe trained herself to do a host of standard stunts and some of her own invention. As it turned out, her brother did not become her pilot. Although he traveled with Phoebe on her exhibition circuit throughout the summer of 1921, it was Vernon who flew the plane.
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A little over a month following that first jump, on 21 May, Vernon officially quit his job with Curtiss Northwest to work full time as Phoebe's pilot. Despite her lack of resources, Phoebe offered him $75 a week plus expenses, in addition to what they could make “hopping passengers” during the barnstorming season.
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She also arranged to sell stunts to the movie companies, although it was not as lucrative as she had at first assumed. In the early years of the Hollywood stunt pilots, for example, the going rate for a midair transfer was about $25; crashing an airplane paid $100.
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After a couple of months of intensive practice, the Phoebe Fairgrave Flying Circus was ready for its debut. The thrill show featured the daring Phoebe, wearing riding breeches, a silk shirt, a goggled leather helmet, and basketball shoes with suction soles. Once airborne, Phoebe would climb out onto the wing, make her way to a vertical strut, then climb to the top of the upper wing. She told the press that wing-walking wasn't much different from climbing up on a table: “You shinny up the strut, grab hold of something on the top wing, throw your knee up there, and climb up.”
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Once on top, with the wind whipping her clothes, she would hook a toe beneath a guy wire, spread her arms wide and ride, and sometimes dance, while Vernon put the plane through loops, wingovers, and touch-and-go landings. She did headstands and handstands on the top wing and hung from the tail skid with one hand. Phoebe had a special leather mouthpiece attached to the end of a rope tied to the landing strut which she gripped between her teeth as she dangled and twirled in the plane's slipstream as Vernon made low passes over the crowd. The showstopper, though, was her own invention: a double parachute drop. “As no other woman in the world was doing a double parachute drop from an airplane, I made up my mind that I would be the first and only woman doing this stunt.”
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It started like a standard jump, but once she was free of the plane and apparently headed for a safe landing, she would cut loose from the canopy and free fall. With the crowd holding its breath—thinking her chute had failed—Phoebe would wait until the last possible moment, then pull the cord on a small drag chute just in time to slow her descent and prevent certain death. Because the double
jump was both “more attractive for the people on the ground. … and more remunerative to the jumper,” Phoebe did this jump almost exclusively.
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