Test Pilot Part 6

The enlisted pilot with him let him go as long as he thought he dared.

Then he nudged him in the ribs, pointed out that he was about to land a boat on land, and suggested that maybe it would be a better idea to go over and land in the river.

The pilot agreed that it certainly would. He gave it the gun and went around again and came in for a landing on the river. He made a good landing and let the s.h.i.+p slow down. When they were idling along he turned around to the enlisted pilot and started to apologize for almost landing him on land. He undid his belt as he talked.

"That was a dumb thing for me to do," he said. "I've been flying land planes for so long that I guess I just started coming in there from habit without thinking. It sure was dumb." He was obviously humiliated and confused.

"Well," he said finally, "it sure was dumb," and got up and climbed out of the c.o.c.kpit onto the wing.

"So long," he said, and stepped down off the wing into the water.

FLYER ENJOYS WORRY

Gloomy Gus got his name at Brooks Field, the army primary flying school.

He was always going to get washed out of the school the next day. When he graduated from Brooks he wasn't going to last three weeks at Kelly, the advanced school, because he had got through Brooks by luck anyway.

When he graduated from Kelly, the hottest pilot in his cla.s.s, he would never get a job in commercial flying, so he might just as well have been washed out at Kelly.

I saw him several months later in Chicago. He was flying one of the best runs on the western division of the mail. He was sure it wouldn't be very long before he cracked up, night flying, and disabled himself for life, so what good was his mail job?

I saw him several years after he had been transferred to the eastern run over the Allegheny Mountains. He didn't know what good the additional money he was making was going to do him when he was dead. Didn't all the hot pilots get it in those mountains?

He took a vacation from the pa.s.senger lines and went on active duty with the army. I saw him at Mitch.e.l.l Field. He said he was taking his vacation flying because he wanted to fly some army s.h.i.+ps for a change and have some fun. "But you know, I shouldn't have done it," he said.

"I've been flying straight and level too long. I almost hit a guy in formation this morning. I probably won't live long enough to get back to the lines."

I saw him a few days after he had gone back to the lines.

"How they going, Gloomy?" I greeted him.

"Oh," he said, "that bit of army flying made me careless. I almost hit a radio tower this morning. Carelessness is what kills all old-timers, you know."

"Gus," I said. "You'd be miserable if you didn't have something to worry about. You will probably live to have a long white beard and worry yourself sick all day long that you are going to trip on it and break your neck."

Only a faint flicker of humor lit up his gloomy eyes.

WEATHER AND WHITHER

Archer Winsten writes that "different" column in the _Post_, In the Wake of the News. I met Archer for the first time in San Antonio in 1927. He was down there for his health, and I was instructing at Brooks Field for my living. We both had ideas of writing even at that time. We became fast friends before Archer went home to Connecticut and I went to March Field, Riverside, Cal.

I resigned from the army the next year and went with the Department of Commerce. I was a.s.signed to fly Bill McCracken, head of the department, on about a seven-thousand-mile tour of the country. I kept asking Bill if his itinerary was going to take us to Westport, Conn., or anywhere near it, because if it was I wanted to go see my friend Archer Winsten, who lived there. He said he didn't know where the place was, and I began looking for it on the map. I couldn't find it and told Bill that. I remarked how strange it was several times later that I couldn't find Westport on the map. A couple of times Bill asked me if I had found it yet, and I said no.

I was strange to the East at that time, and when we got to Hartford I was sure we were going to go right past Westport without my ever finding out where it was. I complained to Bill about it and we both looked over a map and couldn't find the place.

The next day we started down to New York from Hartford and ran into lousy weather. It got so low finally that, although I was following railroads and valleys, I decided that I couldn't go any farther. I milled around, dodging trees and hills for about ten minutes before I found a place to sit down.

I landed in a small field surrounded with stone fences. A man came wading through the wet gra.s.s toward us after we had stopped rolling.

Bill asked me where we were, and I said I had only a vague idea after all that milling around but would ask the man. The man said Westport.

Bill howled with delight. Part of his delight undoubtedly was relief at getting down out of that soup without breaking his neck, but I was never able to convince him that I didn't know I was landing at Westport.

I SEE

A man came up to me for flight test once when I was an inspector for the Department of Commerce. He flew terribly, so I sent him away and told him to come back in a couple of weeks, after he had practiced a little more. He came back a couple of weeks later, and I turned him down again.

The third time he came in he said, "I think we'll get along all right this time. Can I take the test today?"

"I'm too busy today," I told him. But he pleaded so hard that I finally said, "All right, I'll squeeze you in this afternoon. Come at three o'clock."

"Thank you, thank you," he said, and held out his hand.

I reached out my hand to grip his and felt something in my palm. I pulled my hand away and found a piece of paper in it. I unfolded it and discovered a ten-dollar bill.

I stood there and looked at it, puzzled and amazed for a few seconds.

Then the full import of it dawned on me. He thought I had been holding out for something. He thought he would fix me up. He didn't know he could never fix me up if I put my stamp of approval on him when he was unfit and he should then go out and kill some pa.s.senger because of my leniency.

It started at the top of my head, that raging anger. It burned like flaming coals and raced through my veins like fire. I began to tremble violently, and when I looked up the man was a red flame in a red room.

I hurled the paper bill at him as though it were a javelin and shouted, "Get out! Get out and don't ever come back!"

Have you ever thrown a piece of paper at anybody?

The bill fluttered ineffectually down to the floor halfway between us. I rushed at it and kicked at it until it was out of the door. I kicked him out too.

I wondered, sitting at my desk afterward, why I had got so mad. It wasn't honesty. I hadn't had time to think of honesty. I wondered if it was because he had implied that I was worth ten dollars. I wondered what I would have done if he had offered me ten thousand dollars. I began to understand graft.

WON ARGUMENT LOST

"That student is dangerous. You're crazy if you fly with him again," I harangued my friend, Brooks Wilson.

"Don't be that way," Brooks answered. "He's not dangerous. He's goofy."

"That's why he's dangerous," I countered. "You tell me that he froze the controls in a panic today and you lost a thousand feet of alt.i.tude before you were able to get the s.h.i.+p away from him. The next time you may not have a thousand feet."

"I won't need a thousand feet the next time," Brooks argued. "I wrestled the controls away from him today, but the next time he grabs them like that, I'll just beat him over the head with the fire extinguisher and knock him out."