IIIBARNSTORMING EXPERIENCES

I HAD strayed over a hundred miles off my course and experienced a minor crack-up, but I departed with two hundred and fifty more dollars in my pocket than I had arrived with, besides confidence in my ability to make at least a little more than expenses by barnstorming.

The constant rains had filled the rivers to overflowing, and after leaving Maben I flew over flooded territory nearly all the way to Lake Village, Arkansas. Often the water was up to the second story windows of the farmhouses, and a forced landing at any time would have at least meant nosing over.

I had installed the compass while waiting forthe new propeller at Maben, and experienced no further difficulty in holding my course.

After circling Lake Village I landed in a field several miles north of town. The nearest building was a clubhouse and soon the keeper and his family had arrived beside the plane. They invited me to stay with them as long as I wished, but the keeper persistently refused to accept a flight in return for his hospitality. I carried only a handful of passengers that afternoon. The flying territory around that part of the country was fairly good and there were a number of fields available for planes to land in. Consequently an airplane was no longer the drawing attraction that it was farther in the interior.

I staked the plane down much earlier than usual and went over to the clubhouse.

Evening came on with the clearness of a full moon and open sky. The landscape was illuminated with a soft yellow light; an ideal night for flying. I decided to see what the country looked like from the air at night and jokingly askedmy host to accompany me. To my surprise he willingly agreed. For some reason he had no fear of a night flight although I had been unable to persuade him to go up with me in the daytime. What his reaction would have been, had he known that I had never flown after dark before, is a matter of speculation.

We untied the plane, removed the canvases from engine and cockpit, and after a few minutes spent in warming up the motor, taxied down the field and took-off for a moonlight flight down the Mississippi and over Lake Village.

Later in the evening after the ship was again securely staked to the ground and we were sitting quietly in the clubhouse, my host stated that he had never spent a more enjoyable quarter of an hour in his life.

The next morning I was again heading towards Texas against a strong westerly wind which retarded the speed of the Jenny so greatly that even with my double fuel capacity it was necessary to land at Farmerville, Louisiana, toreplenish my supply. From there I flew to Texarkana and landed between the stumps of the 1923 airport.

On the following morning I left Texarkana with a strong tail wind and after crossing the western end of the Ozark mountains, landed near a small town in north eastern Oklahoma where I took on a fresh supply of fuel and again headed north towards Lincoln, Nebraska.

My tanks began to run low about half-way through Kansas and I picked out a hillside near Alma. After flying low and dragging the field several times I came in for a landing, but just as the wheels were about to touch the ground I discovered that it was covered with fairly large rocks half hidden in the tall grass. I opened the throttle to take-off but the plane had lost too much speed for the motor to take effect and as it struck the ground the left wing hooked in the rocks and groundlooped the ship to the left but without doing serious damage. The landing gear wires were strained and about two feet of the rear spar on the lower left wing tip was snapped off. Nothing was broken however which would require immediate repairing.

WORKING ON NAVIGATION CHARTS FOR FLIGHT©EricksonWORKING ON NAVIGATION CHARTS FOR FLIGHT

©EricksonWORKING ON NAVIGATION CHARTS FOR FLIGHT

©Erickson

WORKING ON NAVIGATION CHARTS FOR FLIGHT

INSTRUMENT BOARD OF THE PLANE©EricksonINSTRUMENT BOARD OF THE PLANE

©EricksonINSTRUMENT BOARD OF THE PLANE

©Erickson

INSTRUMENT BOARD OF THE PLANE

The field was quite a distance from Alma and in order to get an early start in the morning I stayed with the ship that night. During the heavy rains at Maben, Mississippi, I had constructed a hammock of heavy canvas which could be suspended under the top wing.

I tied the corners of this hammock to the upper strut fittings and crawled into the three blankets inside which were sewn up to form a bag. Thus I spent a comfortable night.

When I arrived over Lincoln the next day I circled over the Lincoln Standard factory, and after landing on the old flying field south of town, waited for the car which was sent out to bring in visiting airmen.

The remainder of the day was spent in “ground flying” with my friends in the factory. We had not been together for seven months and the usual exchange of experiences was necessary.

I soon learned that Bud Gurney had made a parachute for himself and was intending to test it by the simple method of going up to an altitude of fifteen hundred or two thousand feet and cutting loose from the plane. If the chute opened it was successful.

After a great deal of persuasion I prevailed upon him to let me take him up in my ship while we made the first test with a sand bag.

The tanks had just been filled with fuel but I had unlimited confidence in my Jenny and we lashed the parachute and a sandbag on the right wing. Bud, who weighed one hundred and sixty-five pounds himself, climbed into the front cockpit and we started to take-off with a total load of about six hundred pounds, to say nothing of the resistance of the parachute and sandbag which were directly in the slipstream from the propeller.

Even with this load we cleared the nearest obstacle by a safe margin and finally attained an altitude of about two hundred feet. Then wewere caught by a descending current of air which carried the plane down to within ten feet of the ground, and try as I would I could not get any higher. A wooded hill was directly in front, and to avoid striking the trees I turned down wind. A railroad tressle was then in front of us and we stalled over it by inches. For five minutes we dodged hills, trees, and houses. I signaled Bud to cut the sandbag, but when he started to climb out of the cockpit to reach it, the added resistance brought the plane down still lower. Then in front of us appeared a row of trees, much higher than the rest, which I knew it would not be possible to get over. We were then passing over a grain field and I cut the gun and landed down wind. The grain was high enough to keep the ship from rolling far and we unloaded the handbag before taking off again. With the weight of the bag and its resistance gone, we had no trouble in getting out of the grain and back to the flying field.

A week later Bud carried out his original intentionof testing the chute. It was successful.

Before continuing the flight to Minnesota, Bud and I made a short barnstorming trip through eastern Nebraska. That territory had been fairly well covered by other barnstormers, however, and we did very little business.

At one place where we landed we were overtaken by a violent thunderstorm combined with a strong wind. It came up so suddenly that we had only time enough to tail the ship into the wind and lash the stick to keep the ailerons from whipping before the wind struck us. We were both holding on to the tail trying to keep the plane from blowing away. Following the wind was a heavy rain which covered the ground with water and at each flash of lightning the electricity on the wires of the ship would pass to the ground through our bodies with the intensity of a booster magnet.

In an electric storm a plane acts as part of a condenser, since it is insulated from the ground by the rubber tires and wooden tailskid. It ispossible to receive a violent shock by standing on wet ground and holding on to one of the wires.

We were unable to let go of the ship in the high wind and could only remain and take these discharges as they came. Fortunately the storm did not last long.

The night after our return to Lincoln we slept on the field so that I could get a good start in the morning. Bud was in the back of a Ford truck, and I was in the hammock.

The next morning was overcast with local showers which were visible in every direction. I took off soon after daybreak and after flying through several storms landed in a hayfield at Forest City, Iowa, where I serviced the ship between showers and took off on the final flight to Shakopee, Minnesota, where I expected to meet my father and carry him around on his campaign.

I found Shakopee covered by a cloudburst and in flying around waiting for the storm to passso that I could land I got into a heavy shower near Savage. One of the cylinders cut out, and I was circling preparatory to landing in a clover field when two more stopped firing. I was flying at less than a two hundred foot altitude and loosing that rapidly. It was necessary to land immediately but the only choice of landing places lay between a swamp and high trees. I took the swamp and cut the throttle. When the wheels touched earth they rolled about twenty feet, sank into the spreader bar and we nosed over.

The rudder did not quite touch the swamp grass and the plane stopped after passing through three-quarters of a semi-circle, with the radiator cap and top wing resting on the ground. I was hanging on the safety belt but when I tried to open the clasp with one hand, holding on with the other to keep from falling out on my head, I found it to be jammed. After several futile attempts to open it I reverted to the two strap buckles at the end of the belt to release myself from the cockpit.

All this required not more than two or three minutes.

After getting out of the cockpit I inspected the plane carefully. Again there was little actual damage. The propeller was badly cracked and would have to be replaced; there was a crack in the spreader board which required winding with strong cord. Otherwise the plane was in perfect condition although splashed with mud.

For once there was no one in sight and I made my way through the swamp to the nearest farmhouse. On the way I found that there was solid ground along the edge of the swamp less than 100 yards from the plane from which I could take-off.

The farmer had seen the plane pass over in the rain and was on his way down towards the swamp when I met him. He informed me that it was not possible to get horses through the mire out to the ship and that he had no idea of how I was to get it back to hard sod again.

I borrowed a rope from him to use in pullingthe tail back to a normal position and we started back to the swamp.

Meanwhile it seems that two boys had seen me land, and when I did not emerge from the cockpit immediately, had run to Savage with the news that “an aviator had landed upside down in the swamp” and that they had “gone up and felt of his neck and that it was stiff and he was stone dead.”

I had flown over the town in the rain only a few minutes before, and as in those days it was not difficult for anyone to believe anything about an airplane, the town promptly locked its doors and came crawling and wading through the swamp. The older inhabitants followed the railroad track around its edge and by the time I returned with the farmer and a rope there were enough townspeople to solve my problem by carrying the ship back onto solid ground.

They were undoubtedly much disappointed at having come so far on a false alarm but turnedto willingly to help me get the ship out of the swamp.

The next edition of one of the Minneapolis papers carried the following item which typically exemplifies what has been the average man’s knowledge of aeronautics.

AIRPLANE CRASHES NEAR SAVAGECharles A. Lindbergh, son of ex-Congressman Lindbergh, crashed near Savage, Minnesota, this morning. He was flying in his plane three hundred feet above the ground when it suddenly went into a nose dive and landed on its propeller in a swamp. Lindbergh says he will be flying again in three days.

AIRPLANE CRASHES NEAR SAVAGE

Charles A. Lindbergh, son of ex-Congressman Lindbergh, crashed near Savage, Minnesota, this morning. He was flying in his plane three hundred feet above the ground when it suddenly went into a nose dive and landed on its propeller in a swamp. Lindbergh says he will be flying again in three days.

After reading this and similar accounts of equally minor accidents of flight, it is little wonder that the average man would far rather watch someone else fly and read of the narrow escapes from death when some pilot has had a forcedlanding or a blowout, than to ride himself. Even in the post-war days of now obsolete equipment, nearly all of the serious accidents were caused by inexperienced pilots who were then allowed to fly or to attempt to fly—without license or restriction about anything they could coax into the air—and to carry anyone who might be beguiled into riding with them.

My next move was to wire to Little Falls for a propeller which Wyche had expressed from Americus and two days later joined my father in his campaign at Marshall.

My father had been opposed to my flying from the first and had never flown himself. However, he had agreed to go up with me at the first opportunity, and one afternoon he climbed into the cockpit and we flew over Redwood Falls together. From that day on I never heard a word against my flying and he never missed a chance to ride in the plane.

After the campaign was over I spent the remainder of the summer barnstorming throughMinnesota, northern Iowa and western Wisconsin. Most of the time I was alone, but I took one student around with me for a few weeks while I was teaching him to fly, and then I barnstormed southern Minnesota with my mother for ten days. My mother had never objected to my flying, and after her first flight at Janesville, Minnesota, she became an enthusiast herself.

We had been together constantly up to the start of my flying career and had both looked forward to flying around together. Consequently when the opportunity presented itself I wired her to meet me at Janesville.

My mother enjoyed flying from the first and has made a number of flights with me; including a round trip between Chicago and St. Louis in the mail compartment of my plane.

Some weeks I barely made expenses, and on others I carried passengers all week long at five dollars each. On the whole I was able to make a fair profit in addition to meeting expenses and depreciation.

One evening while I was waiting for chance passengers at a field in southern Minnesota, a car drove up with several young fellows in it, one of whom was a graduate of the Army Air Service Training Schools. He asked me why I did not apply for enlistment as a cadet at Brooks Field and explained that by writing to the Chief of Air Service at the War Department in Washington I could get enrollment blanks and full information on the course and its requirements.

I had always wanted to fly modern and powerful planes. Ever since I had watched a group of fourteen De Havilands with their four hundred horsepower Liberty motors come into the field at Lincoln in my flying school days, I had longed to fly one of them. The Army offered the only opportunity, for there were no Liberty engines flying around barnstorming. Consequently at the hotel that night I wrote my letter to the Chief of Air Service, and a few days later when I received my next mail forwarded from Minneapolis, a letter from Washington withthe enrollment blanks was included. The letter informed me that a candidate must be between twenty and twenty-seven years of age inclusive, unmarried, of good physical condition, and must have a high school education or its equivalent.

I completed and returned the forms, and a short time later received another message authorizing me to appear before an examining board at Chanute Field, Rantoul, Illinois, in January, 1924.

Toward the end of September I began to work south. Cold weather was coming on in Minnesota and most people did not enjoy flying in an open cockpit in winter.

I barnstormed over into Wisconsin but found that someone had been carrying passengers for half price there. I had always conformed to the rule in use among most pilots at that time, of giving a good ride for five dollars but not carrying anyone for less. So I left southern Wisconsin and turned towards Illinois. After taking off I decided to take in the International AirRaces at St. Louis, which were then in progress; so instead of sizing up each town I passed over for its passenger possibilities, I flew towards St. Louis until the gasoline ran low, then landed, took on a fresh supply from a passing gas truck, and pressed on to Carlinville, Illinois. There I picked up more fuel, and a twenty-five dollar passenger for St. Louis.

As we neared Lambert Field where the races were being held we passed over the race course while the bombers’ contest was in progress. I landed on a hill east of Lambert in order to keep out of the way of the races, and waited until evening before hopping over and staking my ship down at the end of one of the long rows of civilian planes.

A large number of my old friends were attending the races and soon after landing I met Bud Gurney who, together with one of the flying students at Lincoln, had managed to get to the races without buying a Pullman ticket. He had brought his chute with him and was enteredin the parachute spot landing contest, in which he was to be the last attraction of the meet by staging a double drop.

In the evening, after the races were over for the day, I carried a few passengers and looked over the different types of planes. I would have given the summer’s barnstorming profits gladly in return for authority to fly some of the newer types, and I determined to let nothing interfere with my chance of being appointed a Flying Cadet in the Army. This appeared to be my only opportunity to fly planes which would roar up into the sky when they were pointed in that direction, instead of having to be wished up over low trees at the end of a landing field.

When I went to St. Louis it was with the expectation of pressing on still farther south when the races were over, but with Bud’s assistance I sold my Jenny to his friend, flying instruction included. Marvin Northrop who had flown a Standard down from Minneapolis had sold his ship in St. Louis also; together with a course inflying. Since it was necessary for him to return home immediately, I agreed to instruct his student while mine was learning on the Jenny.

I had promised to carry Bud for his last jump, and towards evening on the final day of the races he packed his two chutes and tied them together with the only rope he could find. It was rather old but we decided that it would hold and if it did not the only consequence would be a little longer fall before the second chute opened.

I coaxed the old Jenny up to seventeen hundred feet and as we passed to the windward of the field Bud cut loose. The first chute opened at once, but in opening, the strain on the old rope was too great and it snapped releasing the second chute which fell another two hundred feet before opening.

©Erickson

“WE” MAKE A TEST FLIGHT

PATSY, THE MASCOT FOR “THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS”©Wide World PhotosCURTIS FIELD, L. I.—PATSY, THE MASCOT FOR “THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS”

CURTIS FIELD, L. I.—PATSY, THE MASCOT FOR “THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS”

Planes were circling all around the parachute and flying in every direction without apparent regard for one another. The air was kept in constant motion by their propellers, and the chute swung from side to side in the rough currents with the result that Bud broke an arm as he landed among the crowd on the side of a ditch. This was the only accident in which anyone was injured during the entire meet.

For the next few weeks I instructed my two students and made a short barnstorming tour through Illinois.

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