The Spirit of ST Louis (45 page)

The clock's minute hand shows quarter of two. It's almost time for my hourly routine of log and tanks and heading. Previously, I've looked forward to this as welcome diversion, as something to sharpen my senses, to force mental concentration, to bring movement to muscles cramped from the fixed position of long, straight-forward flight. Now, the effort seems too much to bear. It's all I can do to rouse my senses sufficiently to pull out the pencil and lay the log sheet on my chart.

THE NINETEENTH HOUR
Over the Atlantic

TIME - 1:52 A.M.

Wind Velocity Unknown Visibility Unlimited outside of clouds

Wind Direction Unknown Altitude 9,000 feet

True Course Air Speed 87 m.p.h.

Variation Tachometer 1625 r.p.m.

Magnetic Course Oil Temp. 35°C

Deviation Oil Pressure 59 lbs.

Compass Course Fuel pressure 3 lbs.

Drift Angle Mixture 4

Compass heading 96° Fuel tank Nose

Ceiling Unlimited

Above Clouds

Eighteen hundred miles behind. Eighteen hundred miles to go. Halfway to Paris. This is a point I planned on celebrating out here over the ocean as one might celebrate a birthday anniversary as a child. I've been looking forward to it for hours. It would be a time to eat a sandwich and take an extra swallow of water from the canteen. But now all this seems unimportant. Food, I definitely don't want. And wate -- I'm no longer thirsty; why trouble to take another drink? I have as far to go as I've come. I must fly for eighteen endless hours more, and still hold a reserve for weather. Time enough for food and water after the sun rises and I wake; time enough after the torture of dawn is past.

Shall I shift fuel tanks again? I've been running a long time on the fuselage tank. I put another pencil mark on the instrument board to register the eighteenth hour of fuel consumed. That wasn't so difficult; it didn't require any thought -- just a straight line, a quarter inch long, one more in those groups of fives. But shall I shift tanks? Let's see; how did I plan to keep the balance? Oh, yes; it's best not to let the center of gravity move too far forward, so the plane won't dive under the surface in case of a forced landing. I turn on the nose tank, and shut off the flow from the fuselage tank, instinctively.

There's one more thing -- the change of course -- each hour it has to be done. But what difference do two or three degrees make when I'm letting the nose swing several times that much to one side or the other of my heading? And there are all the unknown errors of the night. Sometime I'll have to figure them out -- make an estimate of my position. I should have done it before; I should do it now; but it's beyond my ability and resolution. Let the compass heading go for another hour. I can work it all out then. Let the sunrise come first; with it, new life will spring. My greatest goal now is to stay alive and pointed eastward until I reach the sunrise.

During the growth of morning twilight, I lose the sense of time. There are periods when it seems I'm flying through all space, through all eternity. Then the world, the plane, my whereabouts, assume unearthly values; life, consciousness, and thought are different things. Sometimes the hands of the clock stand still. Sometimes they leap ahead a quarter-hour at a glance. The clouds turn from green to gray, and from gray to red and gold. Then, on the thousandth or two thousandth time I’m leveling out my wings and bringing the nose back onto course, I realize that it's day. The last shade of night has left the sky. Clouds are dazzling in their whiteness, covering all of the ocean below, piled up in mountains at my side, and -- That's why I've waked froth my dazed complacency -- towering, a sheer white wall ahead!

I have only time to pull myself together, concentrate on the instruments, and I'm in it -- engulfed by the thick mist, covered with the diffused, uniform light which carries no direction and indicates no source. Mechanically, I hold my hand out into the slipstream. The temperature of air is well above freezing -- no danger from ice.

Flying blind requires more alertness. And since alertness is imperative, I find it possible to attain. I'm able to accomplish that for which there's no alternative, but nothing more. I can carry on the essentials of flight and life, but there's no excess for perfection. I fly with instinct, not with skill.

The turn-indicator must be kept in center. That's the most important thing. Then the air-speed needle must not be allowed to drop or climb too far. The ball in the bank-indicator can wait until last; it doesn't matter if one wing's a little low, as long as everything else is in position. And at the same time, I have to keep the earth-inductor needle somewhere near its lubber line. Thank God it's working again. Altitude isn't so important. A few hundred feet up or down makes little difference now.

The knowledge of what would happen if I let those needles get out of control does for me what no amount of resolution can. That knowledge has more effect on my mind and muscles than any quantity of exercise or determination. It compresses the three elements of existence together into a single human being.

Danger, when it's imminent and real, cuts like a rapier through the draperies of sleep. The compass may creep off ten degrees without drawing my attention; but let the turn-indicator move an eighth of an inch or the air speed change five miles an hour, and I react in an instant.

It's not a large cloud. Within fifteen minutes the mist ahead brightens and the Spirit of St. Louis bursts out into a great, blue-vaulted pocket of air. But there are clouds all around -- stratus layers, one above another, merging here, separating there, with huge cumulus masses piercing through and rising far above. Sometimes I see down for thousands of feet through a gray-walled chasm. Sometimes I fly in a thin layer of clear air sandwiched between layers of cloud. Sometimes I cut across a sky valley surrounded by towering peaks of white. The ridges in front of me turn into blinding flame, as though the sun had sent its fiery gases earthward to burn ay the night.

Another wall ahead. More blind flying. Out in the open again. But only for minutes. The clouds are thickening. I'm down to nine thousand feet. Should I climb back up where valleys are wider? No, I've got to get under these clouds where I can see waves and windstreaks. I must find out how much the wind has changed. I must take hold -- begin to grapple with problems of navigation. The rising sun will bring strength -- it must. Half the time, now, I'm flying blind.

When I leave a cloud, drowsiness advances; when I enter the next, it recedes. If I could sleep and wake refreshed, how extraordinary this world of mist would be. But now I only dimly appreciate, only partially realize. The love of flying, the beauty of sunrise, the solitude of the mid-Atlantic sky, are screened from my senses by opaque veils of sleep. All my remaining energy, all the attention I can bring to bear, must be concentrated on the task of simply passing through.

THE TWENTIETH HOUR
Over the Atlantic
TIME - 2:52 A.M.

Wind Velocity Unknown Visibility Variable

Wind Direction Unknown Altitude 8800 feet

True Course Air Speed 89 m.p.h.

Variation Tachometer 1625 r.p.m.

Magnetic Course Oil Temp. 35°C

Deviation Oil Pressure 59 lbs.

Compass Course Fuel pressure 3 lbs.

Drift Angle Mixture 4

Compass heading 96° Fuel tank Nose

Ceiling Flying between

cloud layers

I change neither fuel tanks nor course.

This is morning -- the time to descend and make contact with the ocean. I look down into the pit I'm crossing, to its misty gray bottom thousands of feet below. The bottom of that funnel can't be far above the waves. Then is the ocean covered with fog? Suppose I start down through these clouds, blind, where should I stop -- at 2,000, at 1,500, at 1,000 feet? I reset my altimeter when I was flying close to the water, east of Newfoundland coast. But that's almost eight hours back, now. Since then I've crossed an area of major storm. The barometric pressure has surely changed during the night. How much, there's no way of telling I think of the Canadian pilot, caught in fog, who flew his seaplane into the, water without ever seeing it. I'd be taking a chance to descend below a thousand feet on my altimeter dial. It would be cutting the margin close to fly blind even at that indicated elevation. No, I'll hold my altitude a little longer. The climbing sun may burn a hole through the clouds.

As sky draws attention from the earth at night, earth regains it with day. Sometime unperceived, during this hour of morning twilight, I took back the earth and relinquished the sky. I no longer watch anxiously for stars in the heavens, but for waves on the sea. The height of cloud above is now less important than the depth of cloud below.

I've been tunneling by instruments through a tremendous cumulus mass. As I break out, a glaring valley lies across my path, miles in width, extending north and south as far as I can see. The sky is blue-white above, and the blinding fire of the sun itself has burst over the ridge ahead. I nose the Spirit of St. Louis down, losing altitude slowly, two hundred feet or so a minute. At eight thousand feet, I level out, plumbing with my eyes the depth of each chasm I pass over. In the bottom of one of them, I see it, like a rare stone perceived among countless pebbles at your feet—a darker, deeper shade, a different texture—the ocean! Its surface is splotched with white and covered with ripples. Ripples from eight thousand feet! That means a heavy sea.

It's one of those moments when all the senses rise together, and realization snaps so acute and clear that seconds impress themselves with the strength of years on memory. It forms a picture with colors that will hold and lines that will stay sharp throughout the rest of life—the broad, sun-dazzled valley in the sky; the funnel's billowing walls; and deep down below, the hard, blue-gray scales of the ocean.

I nose down steeply, resetting my stabilizer as pressure on the stick increases. Controls tighten -- ribs press against fabric on the wings -- the air-speed needle rises -- 110 --120 -- 140 miles an hour. I close the mixture control and pull the throttle back still farther, letting the engine turn just fast enough to keep it warm and clear. Air crowding around the cowlings screams strangely in my deafened ears, the first different sound I've heard since take-off, yesterday.

A layer of cloud edges over the ocean. I turn sharply back to spiral through the open funnel. I forget about my plan to turn the altitude of night into distance during day. Those thousands of feet I've hoarded, I'll squander on the luxury of coming down with sight. Suppose I lose ten or fifteen miles in range. It's worth that to get down in safety to the wind-swept sea.

I bank again as another wall of cloud approaches. The shadow of my plane centers in a rainbow's circle, jumps from billow to billow as I spiral -- The sun's rays flood through the fuselage window, cut across my cockpit, touch first this instrument, then that. Whitecaps sparkle on distant water -- I'm banked steeply -- I'm descending fast -- My ears clear, and stop, and clear again from change in pressure --My air cushion wilts until I feel the hard wicker weaving of the seat -- Wings flex in turbulence -- Layer after layer of thin gray clouds slip by, merging here, broken there; mountains, caverns, canyons in the air.

Two thousand feet now -- under the lowest layer of clouds. The sea is fairly writhing beneath its skin -- great waves – breakers -- streaks of foam -- a gale wind. From the northwest? I've been spiraling so long that I'm not certain of direction. I straighten out and take up compass course. Now I'll have the answer I wanted so badly through the night -- I'm pointed obliquely with the waves -- Yes, the wind's northwest -- It's striking the Spirit of St. Louis at almost the same angle it blew off the coast of Newfound-

land at dusk -- but it's much stronger. A quartering tail wind! It's probably been blowing that way all night, pushing me along on my route, drifting me southward at the same time.

A tail wind! A tail wind across the ocean. That's what I've always wished for. How strong is it? I can judge better close to the surface. I ease the stick forward and begin a slow descent, translating my remaining altitude into extra miles toward Europe. The air's warmer and more humid -- a different atmosphere than that above the clouds. It's like stepping through the door of a greenhouse full of plants.

I'm under a dark stratus layer of cloud. Only a spot of sunbrightened water behind marks the bottom of the funnel I spiraled through, as though the beam of a great searchlight had been thrown down from the heavens to guide me to the ocean's surface.

Curtains of fog hang down ahead and on each side, darkening the air and sea, shutting off the horizon. I nose down to 1000 feet -- to 500 -- to 50 feet above huge and breaking waves. The wind's probably blowing 50 to 60 miles an hour. It would have to blow with great force to build up a sea like that -- to scrape whitecaps off and carry the spray ahead like rain over the surface. The whole ocean is white, and covered with ragged stripes of foam.

It's a fierce, unfriendly sea -- a sea that would batter the largest ocean liner. I feel naked above it, as though stripped of all protection, conscious of the terrific strength of the waves, of the thinness of cloth on my wings, of the dark turbulence of the storm clouds.

This would be a hellish place to land if the engine failed. Still, it wouldn't be as bad as a forced landing during the night -- gliding blindly down through freezing mist and onto an ice-filled ocean. Nothing that could happen now would be as bad as that. Now, at least, I know which way the wind's blowing; I could head into it and stall onto the water with almost no forward speed at all. I could see what I was doing.