The Spirit of ST Louis (52 page)

a morning practicing acrobatics, sit through hours of ground school in the afternoon, instruct in the evening, and study at night.

There was so little contact between Army and civilian personnel in the area that I don't think the officers at Brooks knew I flew at Stinson. A mile of mesquite and cactus divided the two fields as though it were an ocean. And in many ways they seemed continents apart. At Brooks, there was extreme discipline. You walked erect, saluted, made sure every button on your uniform was properly inserted through its hole. The grounds were neat, the barracks swept, the hangars kept in perfect order. Then you took a winding, cactus-studded path -- it was so hidden that you had to know exactly where it started -- and ended up where there wasn't any discipline at all. Stinson's flyers wore what clothes they liked -- new or old, clean or dirty. Only the most essential buttons were considered. Paper scraps and pop bottles littered hangar corners. Wrecks of airplanes lay around like unburied skeletons on the prairie grass.

At Brooks, your thoughts were channeled along precise, scientific lines. You followed a pattern for your landings; maneuvers were exact. Classes followed textbooks. Life was routined by military regulations. At Stinson, human nature had its freest play. You could land downwind or upwind, or come in between the trees. There was no limit to your actions so long as they placed no limit upon others. You could drink if you wished. You could smoke on duty. The individualism of the place was stamped on both personnel and aircraft. There were planes like our Canuck, flight-scarred and patched. There were two or three in perfect shape -- without a scratch -- with drum-tight fabric. There were others in conditions in between. In one corner of an oily-floored hangar, an ornithopter reposed, coated with dust. Its strangly hinged and angled wings were supposed to carry it aloft by flapping like a bird. But the inventor's enthusiasm had been dulled by constant failure, and his last attempts at flight had been made some months before.

At Brooks, our ground school increased, with the summer's temperature, in toughness. By the end of June, nearly half of our class had faced the dreaded Benzine Board and been washed out. One after another, long faces had said good-by to classmates, and abandoned cots had been stacked away in storage until, as 'Pop" Sims prophesied, our barracks were no longer crowded. Those of us who remained felt like veterans, though by no means secure. We knew that Benzine Boards would convene with regularity for close to eight months more, and we watched with apprehension each newly posted list of names.

Photography, motors, map-making, field service regulations, radio theory, military law -- twenty-five courses we took in our first half-year of training. I spent as much as seven hours writing an examination. On one of the more difficult tests, I didn't get my paper completed until eleven o'clock at night. Somehow the schedule still dropped behind, so they worked us Saturdays too.

I'd thought our engineering classes severe, at the University of Wisconsin. But they'd never been like this. Lectures on navigation, meteorology, and rigging alternated with formations, transition, and cross-country flights. A student not only had to know his lesson, but his instructor's attitude as well. "Does he like you to glide in fast or slow? Tail skid high or tail skid low?" "Sergeant X will help you through as long as he thinks you're working." Just make one slip with Captain Y, and boy, you'll be a goner!"

Eight degrees right rudder.

In September, thirty-three "veteran" cadets packed footlockers, piled into buses, and moved ten miles westward, from Major Royce's Brooks to Major Hickam's Keely, for "advanced training." We left Jennies behind. Kelly's students flew De Havilands. I was the only man left of the seven who started out with Master Sergeant Winston. Two had resigned; two had crashed; and two had been held over to the next class because of deficiency in flying.

I was assigned to Lieutenant Strickland for my first instruction at Kelly. He had that combination of ability and experience on which flying perfection must be based. Behind a caustic wit which cadet errors fed, he held a deep interest in his students. You felt he'd get you through the course if you had the "stuff" within you.

"Now just remember, DHs aren't built like Jennies," remember his saying as we started out. "They got power to pull you through more; but if you once get 'em stalled, it takes a lot of altitude to recover. And you can't stunt 'em like a Jenny either -- no rolls or loops. Their wings aren't tied on that strong; if you pull the stick back too hard, they're liable to leave you."

Most of our transition to DHs consisted of wing-overs, figure eights, spot landings, and hurdles. Of course there were days when "one-eightys," "three-sixtys," and "strange field approaches" were thrown in; but the system of training at Kelly was quite different from that at Brooks. For one thing, it was built around a much more formidable type of plane. For another, the instructors seemed to swap students every week or two. I flew with Lieutenants Canfield, Griffith„ Richter, Chapman, Cannon, Guidera, Maughan, Reeves, Moon, and Moore.

"Keep the wing tip on that barn. Don't be afraid to haul her over!" My instructors insisted on precision. "That's what they put you through this school for. Any pilot can slop around the air." And they believed that Kelly's students should follow standardized procedures. "Now Lindberg don't you slip that plane," I remember being warned. "It may be all right later on; but we don't like it in the School. Don't come in so high. Cut your gun farther back. Get used to judging distance. And don't forget, no hedge-hopping here at Kelly. We wash you out for that!"

We were trained in gunnery, photography, and bombing.. We were taught how to intercept enemy aircraft, how to get maximum performance from our planes. We learned to hold tight formations, to follow signals quickly in the air. Ground school continued in its strict routine.

Only six weeks remained before our graduation when the discipline relaxed. "You'll soon be commissioned officers," w were told. "You must learn to be responsible for your own conduct."

Each man was assigned to one of the Air Service's foil, branches -- Pursuit, Bombardment, Observation, or Attack. For months I'd been working for Pursuit, and along with Collins, Love, and Stevens, I achieved it –

The sun blinks on again in my cockpit. The cloud's shadow has passed. The ocean stretches ahead to the horizon, bleak and endless as a desert. Its brilliance smarts against my eyes. According to all previous rules, this dawn-created stupor should have departed long ago. It should have vanished with the morning twilight, given over to woken habits of the day. Now the sun is almost overhead. Why can't I break these elastic bonds of sleep? It's seven-thirty in New York. That makes it about half past ten local time. The day will grow no brighter, and I'm still carrying on the vaguest kind of navigation. I'm losing time. I'm losing fuel -- mixture control and throttle are only roughly set. My eyes close and stay shut for too many seconds at a time. No mental effort I exert can hold them open. I've lost command over their muscles.

Here it's well into midday and my mind's still shirking, still refusing to meet the problems it undertook so willingly in planning for this flight. Are all those months of hard and detailed work to be wasted for lack of a few minutes of concentrated effort? Is my character so weak that I can't pull myself together long enough to lay out a new, considered course? Has landing at Le Bourget become of so little import that I'll trade success for these useless hours of semiconscious relaxation? No; I must, I will become alert, and concentrate, and make decisions.

There are measures I haven't yet used -- too extreme for normal times. But now it's a case of survival. Anything is justified that has effect. I strike my face sharply with my hand. It hardly feels the blow. I strike again with all the strength I have. My cheek is numb, and there's none of the sharp stinging that I counted on to wake my body. No jump of flesh, no lash on mind. It's no use. Even these methods don't work. Why try more?

But Paris is over a thousand miles away! And there's still a continent to find. I must be prepared to strike a fog-covered European coast hundreds of miles off course; and, if necessary, to fly above clouds all the hours of another night. How can I pass through such ordeals if I can't wake my mind and stir my body? But the alternative is death and failure. Can I complete this flight to Paris? Can I even reach the Irish coast?
But the alternative is death and failure! Death! For the first time in my life, I doubt my ability to endure.

The stark concept of death has more effect than physical blow or reasoned warning. It imbues me with new power, power strong enough to communicate the emergency to my body's senses, to whip them up from their lethargy and mar-shall them once more -- in straggling ranks, but with some semblance of order and coordination. It's life, life, life itself at stake. This time I'm not just saying so. I know it.

I shake my head and body harshly. I flex arms and legs, compress muscles of chest and stomach, stamp feet on floor boards, bounce up and down, jam the stick forward to throw my weight against the belt, jerk it back to press myself tightly to the seat and floor. I'll break this spider web of sleep! -- But -- but -- what I need most of all is breath -- b-r-e-a-t-h -- The instrument board is vague -- like evening twilight -- My brain swims --

Instinct tells me the key to life is air. I lean to the side of the cockpit, grip the sill, push my head dizzily out of the window -- Am I gliding or climbing? -- The sense of level flight has gone -- Pull the stick back a little -- not too much, or -- a spin -- a stall. Is one wing down? -- Waves are gone from the ocean -- There's no horizon to sky -- Consciousness is leaving -- I'm passing out -- Maybe it's carbon monoxide from the exhaust -- I've been afraid of that --

The fresh blast of the slipstream washes over my face, rushes into my mouth and nostrils, forces my eyelids open, fills my lungs with breath. Can I hold on to consciousness? I must hold on -- A single second would merge into eternity -- I'm too close to the water to let go for an instant -- less than a hundred feet -- Breathe deeply --Force the eyes to see --Each gulp of air is medicine -- but has it time to work? There's not enough area to my lungs -- Sea, sky, and instruments merge in night --

God give me strength --

No -- I'm not going over the precipice --

The ocean is green again -- The sky's turning blue -- Clouds are whitening --Instrument faces stare at me -- Numbers come in focus -- I've been hanging over the chasm of eternity, holding onto the ledge with my fingertips; but now I'm gaining strength, I'm crawling upward. Consciousness is coming back.

The Spirit of St. Louis is climbing slowly. I push the stick forward -- and left to lift the wing. Left rudder to stop the turn. I keep my head in the slipstream, breathing deeply. Now, I see clearly. Now, my mind and my senses join. The seriousness of the crisis has startled me to awareness. I've finally broken the spell of sleep. The sight of death has drawn out the last reserves of strength.

I feel as though I were recuperating from a severe illness. When you're suffering from a disease, the time comes when you know the crisis has passed. The fever leaves; a sense of health returns, and you're increasingly able to use your normal mind and body. You become aware of life's quality again. I sit quietly, looking out of the open window, letting strength and confidence build up. How beautiful the ocean is; how clear the sky; how fiery the sun! Whatever coming hours hold, it's enough to be alive this minute.

The line of fog islands angles northward and disappears over the horizon. I take stock of my position. The greater portion of the ocean is behind me. There's plenty of fuel left in the tanks, and no indication of a defect in my plane or engine. Instrument needles are all exactly where they belong. I'm wide awake, It's almost noon of the day I'll land in Europe -- at Paris -- on Le Bourget.

In three minutes it will be 7:52, New York time. I watch the hand creep forward 7:50 -- 7:51 -- 7:52 -- exactly one day since take-off. At this moment yesterday, I'd just cleared the telephone wires at the end of the runway on Long Island.

THE TWENTY-FIFTH HOUR
Over the Atlantic

HOURS OF FUEL CONSUMED
NOSE TANK
¼ + 1-1-1-1-1 1-1

LEFT WING CENTER WING RIGHT WING

¼ + 1-1-1 ¼ + 1 ¼ + 11

FUSELAGE

1-1-1-1-1 1-1-1-1-1 1

I shift back to the right wing-tank, and mark another line on the instrument board. Now to fill in the log -- no, navigation is more important. I'll lay out plans while my mind is clear.

I have a strong impression that I've turned and drifted southward of my route, and I was ninety miles south when I left Newfoundland. But I've already compensated for my St. John's detour, so I must put that out of my mind entirely. I unfold the strip charts on my knees, and begin to estimate the southward factors.

First, the detours around thunderheads during the night. It seemed a long distance at the time, while I still held navigating accuracy to be of prime importance; but as I look back from the objectivity of day and sunlight, I remember that most of my detours were only fifteen or twenty degrees to the southward. After the moon rose, I made several to the north in partial compensation. Probably the distance I deviated from my route was somewhere between twenty-five and fifty miles.

The second factor is more difficult. I don't know how to estimate it. The compass swinging seemed as much one way as the other in the magnetic storm. I simply took for granted that the card was in its right position during the steadier periods. What else could I do? This second factor I'll have to class as an unknown, an X quantity in my equation.