The Spirit of ST Louis (8 page)

the telephone.

"Get me Harold Bixby at the State National Bank," he says – – – "Bix, how about coming over here for a few minutes? – – – sure you can – – – okay – – – in my office."

"He's only a block up the street," Knight tells me after hanging up, "—Fourth and Locust. You know he's president of the Chamber of Commerce."

Within ten minutes Bixby knocks on the door. He's a man you like right away—smiling and full of humor. But his penetrating brown eyes size you up and warn you that you'd better pass inspection. You know you can depend on Harold Bixby, and that if he can't depend on you he won't be around you very long.

Harry Knight outlines my project for flying an airplane from St. Louis to New York to Paris.

"You think a plane with a Whirlwind engine can make a flight like that?" Bixby asks.

"Yes sir," I answer. "Bellanca says his can make Paris from New York with a good reserve of fuel."

"How much does a Bellanca cost?"

"I don't know," I answer. "But I'm not sure I can buy one." I tell about my trip to New York and my talks with the Wright Corporation and Bellanca.

"You'd have to have a new plane built, then?" Knight asks.

"It might work to put an oversize, wing on an existing fuselage," I tell him. "That shouldn't add very much to the cost. Besides, there's not time to do a lot of building. I want to be ready to start as soon as the weather breaks next spring."

"Why wouldn't the Wright Company furnish an engine for the advertising they'd get?"

"They might," I reply, "but I don't think we can count on it. They didn't make any offer in that direction when I was at Paterson. Of course then I wasn't in a very good position to trade. If I can show them we mean business, I think we can at least get a reduction in price."

"You said you already have some money lined up. Who's in this project with you?"

"Yes sir. I can put in two thousand dollars myself. Major Lambert has promised to put in a thousand. Earl Thompson and Bill Robertson say they'll take part, but I haven't talked to them about amounts."

"Slim, don't you think you ought to have a plane with more than one engine for that kind of flight?" Bixby asks.

Harry Knight laughs. "That's what I asked him, Bix; but be doesn't think it would be much safer."

"Suppose one of the engines cuts out halfway across the

ocean," I put in. "I couldn't get to shore with the other two." "No, but you might be able to stay up long enough to find a ship you could land beside," Bixby argues.

"I can't see myself circling around over the water looking for a boat," I say. "You know, I don't believe a flight to Paris would be any more dangerous than a winter on the mail line. If one of our DH engines cuts on a bad night, it's pretty serious too—and we've only got rebuilt Liberties. None of the lines coming in to Chicago has multiengine planes, you know—except when Ford makes those experimental runs. A pilot can't fly at all without taking some risk. I've weighed my chances pretty carefully – – –""

Bixby breaks in. "Yes, you've only got a life to lose, Slim. But don't forget, I've got a reputation to lose."

"The Army's 'round-the-world' planes had only single engines," I say, searching desperately for new arguments.

"Yes, but half of them didn't make it," Bixby counters. "And they had the whole government behind them." Then, instead of following through the opening I've given him, he adds, "You let us think about this for a day or two, and talk to some of our friends. If you're going to make the flight, we've got to get started right away. Come down and see me next Wednesday. How about ten a.m., at my office?"

"Any time at all. I'll be there at ten."

I can hardly believe what I'm hearing. I hoped, at most, to get a pledge for another thousand dollars. I never dreamed of finding anyone with sufficient interest to suggest taking over the entire financial burden.

I say good-by and start driving toward Lambert Field.

9

It's snowing on the Springfield pasture. I've just flown through an area of sleeting rain. I taxi slowly to the fence corner. Wings rock with gusts of wind.

"Here's Chicago weather. It don't look so good," the Springfield mail truck driver says, handing up a folded sheet of paper. It doesn't look so good here either. I've just measured the ceiling at three hundred feet, and darkness isn't far away. I wait until the driver starts unbuckling the mail hatch, and then throw his message over the far side of my cockpit, unread. The slipstream blows it away. Chicago reports are so unreliable that I don't want to condition my mind with them. rd rather judge weather ahead as I fly. Then I won't push too far on a clear report or land too soon on a bad one. Chicago has a habit of saying that the ceiling is high when clouds are on the steeples, and that it's "zero zero" when the night is plenty good enough to fly.

We pilots once held a conference on these reports, and Nelson was appointed to investigate their origin.

"Those Chicago fellows just look out the window before they call Springfield," he told me when I next saw him. "If they can see a few blocks down the street, they say the weather's good. But if a little haze fuzzes up_the lamps, they say it's all closed in. I tried to explain what we needed, but I don't think it did much good."

"Why don't we tell them to save the money they spend on phone calls?" I suggested.

"No," he answered, "you know as well as I do that we need those reports. Don't discourage them. Maybe some day they'll get better."

Yes, Nellie is right. At least we've got the principle of weather reports established. And one thing is certain: they can't get any worse.

I know there's bad weather ahead tonight. The Transcontinental went down at Bellefonte, and Love had to entrain the southbound mail. If Love couldn't take off in daylight, there's not much chance of my getting through in darkness. But maybe I can make Peoria. And then it's just possible that the ceiling will lift enough between there and Chicago to let me squeeze underneath. When clouds leave us room above the treetops we always start with the mail, regardless of how far we think we can go. Often we get through apparently impassable barriers of storm and fog, now that we've got a few beacons turning on our route. But whether we get through or not, the Corporation is paid for the poundage we take off with.

Somehow I've got to get back to St. Louis in time to make another ten o'clock appointment with Harold Bixby tomorrow morning. I can take a train from Springfield or Peoria; and if I do get through to Chicago, I'll start at daybreak on a southbound ferry flight. The chances are that I won't get ten miles north of Springfield tonight, in the snow and haze.

Flakes of snow melt against my cheeks as I open the throttle to take off.

Is something wrong with the engine? I glance at instruments. No, the needles are all in place. Still – – – It's like that first, vague, uncomfortable feeling which proceeds the outward manifestation of an illness. I cut the left switch; then the right. The engine vibrates, spits, and sputters, with the right switch cut. I turn back toward Springfield's pasture. It's not over five minutes since I left.

The mail truck driver is waiting for me. He knew I might return. I bank, land, taxi, and stop the engine.

"Too thick?" he calls, stomping up and down to keep his warm.

"No, it was lifting a little. My engine started cutting out," answer as I crawl forward through the wings. "Put a stone behind the wheels, will you, so she doesn't blow backward."

Wind is howling through the flying wires.

"Okay. Want to entrain the mail?" he asks.

"Let me look at these distributors first."

I find the trouble immediately—a loose spring.

"Hang up the lanterns and wait here twenty minutes," I tell the driver. "I want to try again."

He nods, gives me a hand pulling through the propeller, waves me off the field.

Twenty miles north of Springfield it stops snowing. Thirty miles north, the stars are out and there's not a cloud in the sky.

I lose almost half an hour refueling at Peoria. It takes longer to do everything in winter weather, outdoors. For a time it looked as though we couldn't start the Liberty at all.

I find Chicago cloud-covered; but visibility is good, and the ceiling has lifted to at least five hundred feet.

"Think you're a mail pilot, don't you?" Love, feet apart, bands in pockets, stands beside my fuselage as I climb down. His DH rests silently behind its chocks, half hidden in the darkness.

"Oh, it was a little thick; but nothing to worry about," I answer, making the most of his embarrassment. He'll find on soon enough that I've come in with clearing skies. "Where's Nellie?"

"He's got enough sense to know a plane shouldn't fly in this kind of weather," Love says, in a special tone he reserved for condemnation. "He said nobody'd be fool enough to come into Maywood tonight — — — He's damn well right, too, if you want'a know what I think about it."

"The mail must go, Phil—post office orders."

"All right, just keep it up and we'll be looking for a new chief pilot one of these days. What kind of flowers do you like best?"

"Wild flowers."

An extra puff of steam from Love's nose is my only acknowledgment.

Everett, our Chicago mechanic, is grinning. He has that crewman's intuition which tells him whether a flight has been tough or not. He feels pretty sure I've come through without much trouble. We'll have to leave one of these planes out tonight," he remarks.

This is the moment to lay down my joker. "Oh, I'm going to ferry back just as soon as we can refuel. We don't want two planes up here at Chicago. Phil, do you think you, can get down in the morning if the weather's better?"

"Slim, are you crazy? You're not going back into that stuff tonight!" Love is starting to get angry.

Everett looks at me and stops grinning.

"Just stand by and watch," I say. "Nothing stops a mail pilot, you know. But I want supper first. Phil, how about taking me over to a restaurant?"

There's no answer. We climb into the car and drive off across the snow. I see right away that Love wants an argument. There are times when nothing makes him happier.

"Slim, when are you going to sew up my bearskin flying suit?" he demands.

That flying suit has been a bone of contention between us ever since I borrowed it one night, weeks ago, and had to jump from my plane in a storm—the second DH I've lost. It was too dark to see the ground, so I had no choice of landing places, and my parachute dropped me right on top of a barbed-wire fence. The wires eased my fall against the ground, but they put a foot-long rip in Love's flying suit.

"Phil, you ought to be so glad I'm alive that you wouldn't even think about asking me to sew it up," I answer.

"Well, if I get rheumatism in my leg and can't fly the mail, it’s your responsibility," he ends up as we enter the restaurant.

Eight — — — nine — — — ten — — — eleven — —

flash. That makes three beacons in sight on the airway ahead—all installed at government expense; by spring our entire airway will be lighted. I subtract fifteen degrees from my heading to cut across to the Springfield leg. It's as easy to fly by night as by day, with the sky clear, and flashing lights to show me where I am. "You big Swede," is all Love had said when we stepped out after dinner, and looked up to brilliant stars. He was a little mad because I wouldn't let him take the ferry flight back. But I've got to see Harold Bixby in R few hours.

I climb to five thousand feet and throttle down. Why hurry to complete this trip? I have no mail. No one at St. Louis will be waiting. No one there even knows I'm in the air; I told Love and Everett not to send any message of my departure. There are the lights of Joliet, and Lockport, and a dozen villages whose names I do not know. I have the cockpit heater turned full on, but it's so cold that my finger tips pain slightly inside their silk-lined gauntlets. And if I lean into the slipstream, my forehead feels as though a nail were being driven through it.

10

"Do you mind waiting? Mr. Bixby is still in conference. He'll be through in just a few minutes."

The secretary smiles and leaves. It's ten o’clock. I sit down in a corner chair at the State National Bank of St. Louis. A teller, behind his lightly barred window, is counting out bills for one of the customers. Stacks of greenbacks are piled neatly on a shelf at his left. Fifty dollar, twenty dollar, ten dollar—the denomination of each sheaf is marked on a paper band around it. There must be more than fifteen thousand dollars in those stacks. If I owned that pile of paper I could —fly to Paris. In exchange for those printed slips, manufacturers would give me an airplane, an engine, and fuel enough to fly across the ocean.

I have an idea. If I can translate that idea into paper, can translate the paper into reality and action. The idea and the action I understand. The paper stage which intervenes forms my major difficulty. I glance sidewise at the people waiting with me. They must be facing problems similar to mine. That middle-aged lady, what has she to sell—shop, café, or beauty parlor? And that man in the creased, strip suit? You want a sales agency? A factory? An airplane to fly across the ocean? A bank is like a courthouse. You go in state your case, to bring your plea before the judges. A poor risk? The verdict is against you. Appeal to someone else or be condemned. Good business? You get the decision, a write ten order requiring the compliance of other men. Take this pile of paper; go ahead. These slips, worthless in themselves, signify that this bank, this nation stands behind you.

I shift in my chair. My clothes bind; my collar sticks around my neck. I feel out of place. Mine is not a business proposition. How can a bank afford to back a flight across the ocean? I want to take off a heavily overloaded airplane with one engine, fly through unknown weather, over thou sands of miles of land and water where a single crack in an oil line would mean a crash. I want to --- –

"Hello Slim! I'm sorry I had to keep you waiting. I've been jammed up this morning."

Bixby slips in through one of those waist-high mahogany, semiprivate gates. I stand to shake hands.

"Slim, you've sold us on this proposition of yours," he says. "It's a tough job you're taking on, but we've talked it over and we're with you. From now on you'd better leave the financial end to us." His cheeks wrinkle back in confidence as he speaks. "If you can keep costs down to the figures you gave us, we believe we can swing the deal. You put in your two thousand dollars. We'll telephone Major Lambert and Earl Thompson and Bill Robertson, and arrange whatever organization we need. That will be our part of the partnership. You concentrate on the plane and getting ready for the flight. We want to be sure it's a practical proposition. Don't get obligated before we meet again. But let us know as soon as you have something definite lined up."

I stop, start, and turn automatically as I drive back to Lambert Field. I'm conscious of neither time nor distance. I'm really going to fly to Paris! It's no longer just an idea, no longer simply a plan in my mind. I feel like a child Christmas morning, seeing all that he's longed for suddenly piled, dazzling, before him, not knowing which object to up first. My most difficult problems are solved - organization and finance.

As soon as I get to my room, I change into boots and breeches and start walking over frozen country roads. Definite plans must be laid and immediate action taken. Now I
must find a plane. I'll sound out all the builders of aircraft in the United States. The Travel Air Company at Wichita is introducing a monoplane along the general lines of the Wright-Bellanca—National Air Transport pilots have been talking about it all winter. The fuselage is rather large and heavy for a record-breaking flight, but I'm no longer in a position to ask for perfection. There's a possiblity that it might do. Also I’ve read of a high-wing monoplane built by a company named Ryan, out in Sand Diego—Pacific Air Transport is using it on their mail route up and down the coast. It doesn't weigh as much as the Travel Air, and according to published figures has unusually good performance. The Travel Air Company is nearer. I'll telegraph them first and ask whether they'd consider building a plane for the St. Louis-Paris flight.