Test Pilot Part 7

"If you are high enough to do that, you won't be in any danger," I pointed out. "And if you are low enough to be in danger when he freezes, you won't have time to knock him out."

Brooks and I were both very young army instructors, and Brooks was stubborn with the confidence of youth. He only growled, "Don't be a sissy all your life. I can handle this guy."

The next day a solo student spun in, in a field of corn beside the airport. Brooks had just landed with his goofy student and was crawling out of his c.o.c.kpit when he saw the ship hit. He jumped back into his c.o.c.kpit, gave his still idling motor the gun and took off, his goofy student still in the rear seat.

He flew over the wreck, circled it, dove on it, pulled up, wing-it, dove on it, pulled up, wing-overed, and dove on it again. He was a beautiful pilot. He was pointing out to the ambulance where the wreck was in the tall corn. He pulled up and started another wing-over, flipped suddenly over on his back, and spun in right beside the wreck.

When they pulled Brooks out of his wreck he was unconscious but was muttering over and over again in his Southern vernacular, "Turn 'em loose. Turn 'em loose. Turn 'em loose before we crash."

The goofy student was hardly even scratched. Brooks died that night.

MONK HUNTER

Monk Hunter was a dashing aviator, the only really dashing aviator I have ever known. There was dash to the cut and fit of his uniforms, dash to the shine and the fit of his boots, dash to the twirl and flip of the cane he carried. There was dash to the set of his magnificently erect and darkly handsome head, dash in the flare of his nostrils and the gleam of his flashing black eyes, dash in his violently dynamic gestures and in his torrential, staccatoed, highly inflected speech which he aimed at you as he had aimed machine guns at enemy flyers during the war when he had shot down nine of them.

There was especial dash to Monk's mustache. Only Monk could have worn that mustache. I saw him once without it, and something seemed to have gone out of him as it went out of Samson when they clipped his hair. He looked naked and helpless.

It was a big mustache, the kind you see in tintypes of swains of long ago. It bristled, and Monk had a way about him in twirling it that you should have seen.

Poor Monk took off at Selfridge one day in an army pursuit ship. He even did that with dash. He held it low after the take-off and then started a clean, left, sweeping climb into the blue sky.

We all saw the white smoke start trailing out behind his ship. Then with bated breath we watched the ship slump slowly over from its gestured climbing and nose straight down inexorably toward the ice of Lake St.

Clair. Monk's chute blossomed out behind the diving ship just before it disappeared behind the trees.

We all jumped into cars and rushed madly over to where we thought it had hit. We found Monk, unhurt, except for the jar from landing on the ice, waving his arms, wildly shouting that the ship had caught fire and to look what the d.a.m.ned thing had done. We looked at the ship, but Monk was still gesticulating excitedly, so we looked at him. He meant to look what it had done to him.

We all started laughing like h.e.l.l. We were really laughing with Monk, not at him. He appreciated it, too.

His mustache had been burnt clear off on one side.

COULDN'T TAKE IT

I was testing an airplane one day. Its wings came off, and I jumped out in my chute. I am convinced that the people on the ground watching me got a bigger thrill out of it than I did. I was too busy.

For one thing, Admiral Moffett, who was later killed in the _Akron_, rushed home to his office in an emotional fit and wrote me a very nice letter about what a hero I was. I wasn't any hero. I had just been saving my neck.

And for another, my mechanic came up to see me in the hospital right afterward. I wasn't in the hospital because I was hurt, but because the military doctor on the post made me go there. After I had got into the hospital I discovered that my heart was beating so violently that I couldn't sleep, so when Eddie, my mechanic, came up they let him in.

He didn't say anything at all for a while. He just sat on the bed opposite mine and twirled his cap, looking down at the floor. Finally he said, "When your chute opened, I fell down."

I pictured him running madly across the field, watching me falling before I had opened my chute, and then stumbling just as my chute opened. "Why didn't you watch where you were going?" I said banteringly.

He kept looking at the floor, twirling his cap, his face expressionless.

"I wasn't going any place," he said.

The conversation wasn't making much sense to me. "Didn't you say that when my chute opened, you fell down?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, as if he were talking to the floor. He was in a sort of trance.

"Well," I said, puzzled, "then you must have been running across the field watching me. You must have stumbled and fallen."

"No," he said, like a man in a dream, "I didn't stumble on anything. I was just standing there looking up, watching you."

I was getting frantic. "Well, how in the h.e.l.l did you fall down, then?"

I asked.

"My knees collapsed," he said.

GOOD LUCK

Soon now, he would be flying out over the ocean. Soon he would be famous and rich. Lindbergh had made it. Why shouldn't he?

His ship was almost ready. Its belly bulged with new tanks. Its wings stretched with new width to take the added gas load. Its motor emitted a perfect sound that his trained ears could find no fault with.

Only the final adjusting of his instruments remained. Lindbergh had taken great pains with his instruments. He would too. When the ground crew had finished with them, he flew his ship on a short cross-country trip to check the instruments in flight. They worked fine.

He brought his ship down to put it in the hangar until he got his break in weather. He lingered in the c.o.c.kpit for a few moments, contemplating his instruments in antic.i.p.ation of the weary hours he would have to watch them during the long flight.

A thought occurred to him. Lindbergh had been lucky. He would be too.

His girl (sweet kid-maybe when he came back ... but he would do the job first) had already wished him luck. She had given him a token of her wish. It was only a cheap thing she had picked up in some novelty shop, but he treasured it. He took it out of his pocket. He tied it to the instrument board and fashioned its bright red ribbon into a neat bow knot that reminded him of the way she fastened her ap.r.o.n when she made coffee for him in her kitchen late at night. There. Yes, he too would have luck now.

Several days later his break in the weather hadn't come yet. He got worried about his instruments. There were no landmarks in the ocean.

Maybe he had better check his compa.s.s again.

He went out to the field and flew his ship. The compa.s.s was off! It was way off! When the ground crew checked it again it was off twenty degrees on the first reading.

They soon found the trouble. As everybody knows, metal near a compa.s.s will throw it off. They found a metal imitation of a rabbit's foot suspended on a red ribbon tied to the bottom of the compa.s.s case.

WILL ROGERS IN THE AIR

I was flying as a pa.s.senger on one of the airlines once, going out to Wichita to take delivery of a ship I had sold. Will Rogers was a pa.s.senger on the same ship.

When we stopped at Columbus, I managed to engage Rogers in conversation.