by Max Hennessy
Ira said nothing and Sammy began to unroll the plans under his arm. ‘Why don’t we think along the same lines?’ he asked. ‘It’d weigh a bit more than an ordinary one, but without it we’d cut down the drag in the air and get extra range.’
‘What about landing?’ Ira asked. ‘What’s Hal say?’
Sammy grinned. ‘Hal hasn’t said much at all today. He’s been trying to telephone Courtney in Boston to twist his arm a bit. He hasn’t delivered the money he promised yet and the bills are piling up.’
Ira gestured at the plan. ‘We’d need some sort of metal skid underneath,’ he said. ‘And a strengthened fuselage.’ He moved his hand along the plans. ‘Here. Or here.’
‘You’d be landing her with empty tanks.’
Ira studied the drawing. ‘How much extra weight would have to go into the strengthening?’ he asked.
‘A few pounds, Hal says.’
Ira frowned. ‘He’s already got to strengthen the undercart to get the load of fuel off the ground,’ he pointed out. ‘Wouldn’t this bring the weight up too much?’
‘There’d be no drag.’
‘No. But we’re streamlining the undercarriage already. And suppose we found ourselves facing headwinds and had to turn back with a full tank and no undercart.’
‘Couldn’t we fix something to jettison the petrol?’
‘A dump valve’s OK. We could fix that.’ Ira paused and grinned. ‘Let’s stick to the conventional gear, Sammy,’ he said. ‘We shan’t have much chance to practise landing without wheels, shall we?’
Sammy rolled up the plans. ‘Probably you’re right,’ he said. ‘It was just a thought. How’s the navigation coming along?’
Ira shrugged. ‘You’ll pick it up easy enough. It’s practice on instruments we need, and I’d like to make it the real thing.’ Ira was frowning. ‘Sammy, how long would it take us to fix some sort of hood over the cockpit of the DH?’
‘Hood over the cockpit?’ Sammy stared. ‘You wouldn’t be able to see!’
‘For a lot of the way across the Atlantic we shan’t be able to see either. It’ll be dark and we’ll be flying on instruments. You could sit in the rear cockpit and correct me if I went wrong. It’s an idea the Air Force’s beginning to use. Hal told me there’s a chap over here called Doolittle working a lot on it.’
Sammy frowned thoughtfully. ‘I reckon we could do it,’ he said. ‘You’ll want some sort of folding device like the hood of a kid’s pram, that you can push back when you’ve finished.’ He considered for a moment, then he nodded. ‘It’d be easy enough with some steel tubing and canvas.’
Ira was drawing a rough diagram on the edge of the chart, then he looked up at Sammy.
‘Why don’t we go along to see Hal Woolff about it?’ he suggested. ‘We could talk to him about this detachable undercart idea of yours at the same time. Besides’ – he grinned – ‘perhaps he’ll have made some more gin!’
* * *
The weather had grown suddenly hot as the early Southern spring edged towards the heat of a long dry Southern summer. Round the airfield, the trees drooped their leaves in the heat and the scattered clumps of conifers, stark against the brassy sky, took on the dusty colour of the red earth.
As the sewing machines and the planers and sanders clattered in the stifling tin-roofed hangar, the Courtney began to take shape quickly as Woolff’s workmen translated his drawings into a gleaming white fuselage and wing. The whole factory was working overtime now to make sure they’d have plenty of time for the final details, and Sammy and Ira were often busy for twenty-four hours at a stretch. With the drawings finished, Woolff was concentrating on performance figures and rarely left his office for the shop floor. It was Sammy and Alix who watched progress.
They had long since telegraphed their application for entry to the Orteig competition officials, and with the machine at last emerging from the plans, they were able to concentrate on the details hedging the flight. The pace was increasing now and as the game warmed up, it seemed that there were would be entrants all over the world.
Fonck was still in the running, it seemed, backed this time by an aeronautical corporation, and was biting his nails as Sikorsky struggled to build him his new machine in time. Over in France, Nungesser and his navigator, Coli, were said to be ahead of everyone. Aeroplanes and crews were also reported in England, Italy and Germany; and Junkers, Farman, Bernard and even Savoia-Marchetti in Italy were said to be getting in on the game. Only one team in America appeared to be anything like ready, however. Noel Davis and his navigator, Wooster, had already taken delivery of their new tri-motor Keystone Pathfinder and were testing it in Pennsylvania prior to heading for Mitchel Field, Long Island, for the take-off for Europe.
‘Seen the price?’ Sammy asked glumly, gesturing with the newspaper. ‘Hundred thousand dollars. Bit more than our effort.’
‘It won’t be any better,’ Woolff promised. ‘It’s only a Huff-Daland with a new name. Though I’m told Davis is a red-hot navigator and this guy Wooster he’s got with him’s supposed to be pretty hot stuff, too.’
He moved a pile of bills on the desk thoughtfully. ‘Talking about dough,’ he said uneasily, ‘I wish the Old Man would hand over that two and a half thou he promised.’
Ira looked up. ‘Hasn’t it arrived yet?’
Woolff gave a little gesture of embarrassment. ‘It will,’ he said. ‘I guess he just forgot.’
‘Does Alix know?’
‘She’s tried to telephone him, like I have. She’s not been able to contact him.’ Woolff shrugged. ‘I guess he’s just too busy right now. Maybe the press are chasing him. They’re beginning to get in on the act.’
Certainly the newspapers carried regular articles on the competition that they studied eagerly, trying to assess how they stood against the other competitors, trying to pick up tips that might have slipped past them despite the regular conferences in Woolff’s office and the notes they all made for discussion and decision.
‘Who’s this bird down in San Diego?’ Sammy asked, staring at the small print at the bottom of the page. ‘He’s keeping quiet and he’s flying alone, he says.’ He gestured. ‘Who’s going to do the navigation while he flies the thing?’ he asked.
‘Perhaps he’s got two heads,’ Ira suggested.
* * *
The fuselage and wing of the new aeroplane were completed now and the workmen were brushing the acid-smelling dope on to the fabric. Ira watched them at work whenever he could, knowing how important to him it would be that it was well done. Together, these two components, deliberately kept as fragile as possible to save weight, had to carry Sammy and himself across the Atlantic, had to lift them, with the weight of the aeroplane, its engine, and a ton and a quarter of petrol, from ground that might well still be soggy from spring rain.
They had already talked long into the night about what equipment they should take and had finally decided to do without parachutes.
‘How about a rubber raft?’ Alix asked, still obsessed with the idea of safety. ‘You could stow it on top of the tank.’
‘Byrd developed a good one,’ Woolff pointed out. ‘It weighs only twelve pounds.’
‘All right,’ Ira said. ‘Let’s try to get one.’
‘How about food?’
‘It won’t do us any harm to be on short rations for a couple of days.’
Alix looked concerned. ‘Are you sure you won’t consider a radio?’ she said. ‘You’ll probably be trying to find Le Bourget in the dark.’
‘They’ve got beacons all the way from London,’ Ira pointed out. ‘We ought to be able to line up on them.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘If there’s no fog,’ he added.
‘If there’s no fog,’ Sammy repeated. ‘Beacons are fine when you can see ’em. When you need ’em, though, you never can see ’em.’
For a moment, they were all silent, knowing how easily the unexpected advent of fog could bring disaster, then Ira changed the subject.
‘Let’s plan
on being ready around June twenty-first,’ he said. ‘The weather’ll be best then and the nights’ll be shortest.’
They sat up late in their room with a bottle of bootleg gin from the saloon, poring over charts and books and performance figures. Woolff joined them from time to time, his round face growing grey from overwork as he tried to improve his graphs. His estimate of the range had gone up to 4,200 miles now and he thought they ought to be able to land in Paris with over forty gallons of fuel still in their tanks.
‘That’s enough for anybody,’ he said. ‘So long as we find the correct throttle and mixture setting, and we can do that in tests.’
Sammy jabbed at the newspaper. ‘One thing’s for sure,’ he said. ‘Somebody ought to pick up that twenty-five thousand dollars this summer.’
* * *
Now that the aeroplane was approaching completion, there seemed to be plenty of time for planning. Sammy worked with Alix at the factory over every detail of construction, while Ira laboured again and again at the navigation or sat in the library in Charleston, reading all he could find on the coastal areas of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Ireland and France. A Fowey man, he hardly needed to read up the iron coast of Cornwall to check his landfalls. When he wasn’t studying, he sat with a notebook on the beach, staring at the sea they were proposing to cross, and trying to decide all the minor questions which had to be resolved before take-off. When would he have to turn back, if the decision were forced on him? When would it be wiser to push ahead instead of turning back? How heavy could he expect the weather to be and how much ought he to endure before he felt there was no chance of succeeding? How much headwind and for how long? He frowned at the charts of the Atlantic and the wind roses with their blue arrows, working out his chances in a take-off when he might have to risk heavy ground conditions simply because the weather over the sea was expected to be good.
He had struggled with the charts for some time now, going over again and again the course he was drawing off on them, transferring points on a straight line between New York and Paris on to the Mercator’s projection, indicating on each one the change of course to the next one. Since Woolff expected the aeroplane to travel at around a hundred miles an hour, he worked at hundred-mile intervals and when he had finished he took the course along to Ziegler’s ship.
Ziegler was beginning to grow excited now. He had turned out to be an expert on spherical mathematics and they talked for a while about gnomonic projection before he started to lay out a second route across the sea, using trigonometry to find the courses.
‘You’re bang on the button, Captain,’ he announced. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your workings. I’ve followed it all the way across and you haven’t been more than a degree out anywhere. You’ll be OK on that course, and even if you’re a little out at the other end you ought to be able to hit Europe somewhere between the north of Scotland and Gibraltar.’
* * *
Having found out how to plot a course, they now began to study how to fly it.
Woolff had constructed a black fabric hood to go over the pilot’s cockpit of the De Havilland and had installed a second compass in the rear cockpit.
‘She’s yours, Ira,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘See what you can do with her.’
‘OK, Sammy,’ Ira said. ‘Let’s go.’ He spread a chart on the lower wing and indicated the triangular course he’d marked out. ‘This’ll do for a start: Charleston–McCormick–Savannah–Charleston. That’s just under four hundred miles and near enough her full range. We’ll get up to five thousand feet for safety and fly at a hundred, then I’ll close the hood and use instruments. OK?
Sammy nodded. ‘OK.’
‘All you have to do is keep your eyes open for other aircraft and watch the turns. If I go off course or don’t turn at the right time, waggle the stick. If I fly one wing low or nose down, the same. If we’re in real trouble, keep on waggling and take over and I’ll shove the hood back.’
‘OK, Ira. I’ve got it.’
Alix was waiting by the wing tip as they settled themselves into their seats. Behind her, Courtney waited with Lavery Boyle, while Woolff prowled round the machine, his eyes on wheels, rigging and fabric. Courtney’s face was thin and tired. He had arrived by train the previous day with Boyle but had put in only a brief appearance at the hangar before returning to the house with the excuse that he had work to do. Alix’s eyes had followed him anxiously and they had heard that he had spent half the night at the dining-room table poring over papers with Boyle.
As the propeller turned, there was a splutter and a strangled cough from the engine, like a metal animal stirring in its sleep, then as Ira eased the throttle, the big Liberty crackled to life at the second pull, with a rich roar of exhausts. Listening to it, his head on one side, Ira sensed the machine quiver under his touch. As the propeller whirled into invisibility, he opened the throttle, feeling the machine surge against the chocks, catching the flexing of its muscles through the soles of his feet on the rudder bar as he listened to the thundering resonance of the exhausts which seemed to belong to something more alive than mere wood and steel could ever be, more vital than mere pounding pistons.
As he lifted his eyes from the instruments and adjusted his helmet there was a bang on the fuselage alongside him and he looked round to see Alix standing by the cockpit, her hair plastered flat to her small neat skull by the blast. She looked serious and concerned.
‘Good luck!’ she shrieked above the din of the engine.
‘Thanks.’ He grinned. ‘If I end up over Cape Cod, we’ll know we’re miscalculating somewhere.’
Her grave face broke into a crooked grin.
‘You’ll not end up over Cape Cod!’
Ira lowered his goggles and lifted a gloved hand and, as the mechanic pulled away the chocks the machine began to lurch forward.
It was some time since they’d been off the ground and it was an exhilarating feeling to be in the air again – the same sort of eagerness any craftsman has for the feel of the tools of his trade – and Ira settled into the cockpit behind the big Liberty, catching the tang of hot oil and metal and watching the ripple of fabric above the wing spars. At once, as they lifted into the emptiness above the crowded land, the spaciousness of the sky – a thing which never failed to surprise him, no matter how often he flew – struck him again and he drew a deep breath at the views and the distance about him, more overjoyed to be back in his element than he’d have thought possible.
Under the bright sun, the earth had an ashen, worn look about it, but every road, every river and patch of swamp land, every tree, was sharp in the harsh light and they were able to pick out every individual homestead and barn. The big Liberty pulled them up through the hot humid air and at 5,000 feet, with Charleston spread below them like an arrowhead between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, and the swampland bright green and glinting with water on either side, Ira signalled to Sammy, and, pulling the hood into place, locked it firmly.
Inside the cockpit it was dark enough now to see the phosphorescent marks on the instruments and Ira began to fly on the altimeter, turn-and-bank indicator, compass, and rev counter. At first he found it was easy, but as the minutes passed, he found his instincts were telling him that the instruments were faulty and that he was flying left or right wing low. Tempted to correct, he was reassured, as the stick shook in his hand, that there was nothing wrong and that he must have absolute faith in them and force his mind to ignore his instincts. They had worked out what little drift there was before they’d taken off, and, unless the wind changed direction, the course he’d written down in the notebook strapped to his knee was the course he had to fly. If he kept the ball in the centre of the turn-and-bank indicator and the compass and altimeter needles steady, and turned at the right time, he ought to end safely back over Charleston.
Watching the hands of his watch, he set his new course after an hour and thirty-three minutes, keeping the bubble of the turn-and-bank indicator central. It was noisy and gro
wing warm under the hood by this time, in spite of the height and the blast from the propeller, and working with his head down he began to wish he had donned less clothing. His turn was cautious and, watching the bubble carefully, he tried to ignore the feeling of his senses that told him he was sliding off his bank. Setting the new course, he noticed there was no response from Sammy and he assumed he’d taken up the new direction successfully.
With a feeling of pleasure, he decided he was doing very well, then he remembered that there had been practically no breeze to blow them off course and decided, as he watched the compass settle, that he’d try it next time with a strong wind.
At the end of another eighty-seven minutes of flying, he turned again, swinging from south-east on to an almost north-easterly course. Again, there was no response from Sammy and he assumed he was safe and apparently the right way up.
Fifty minutes later he unlocked the hood and thrust it back. The sun dazzled him for a moment, then he saw Sammy grinning at him and pointing over the side. Below him and just ahead, pointing to the south like a wedge, was Charleston, blue under a haze of smoke, the Ashley and Cooper Rivers curving northwards in the sunshine, the broken fragments of land between Folly and Morris Islands and James Island lying like a disturbed jigsaw, the tacky scrub of the land glaringly green alongside the blue water that threaded web-like between the chain of pools and tidal creeks.
Below them the Courtney house stood out clearly, circled by the necklace of the river curving through the marshes towards Charleston, and they came in low over oaks draped with long folds of parasitic moss. The field was long and wedge-shaped, set on a strip of hard earth between the swamps, and they made their touch-down across its narrowest part.
